Читать книгу Street Trees - Furman Lloyd Mulford - Страница 4

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Providing shade on city streets is as much a municipal function as providing lights or sidewalks and should, therefore, be cared for by public officials. All street trees should be directly under the care of duly appointed officers, who should be responsible for their planting and care, as well as for their pruning or removal. Negative control by requiring permits for planting, pruning, and removal is little better than no control.

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Fig. 6.—A desert of asphalt in the business center of a city having less than 100,000 population.

The officials in charge should have the necessary authority and should be required to initiate and carry forward planting and all other needed work connected with the establishment and maintenance of street trees. Probably the most satisfactory way of securing supervision is through an unpaid commission of three or five members, which in turn employs an executive officer. In a small place a commission of three persons may be best, one being appointed every 2 years for a 6-year term. In large places five members may be better, and the ideal term would be 10 years. A compromise would be a 5-year term, a new member being appointed each year. The great need of long-term appointees is that it takes two or three years for a member of such a board or commission to see and realize the things needed to be done and the policies that should be carried out. Because it takes a long time to get results in growing street trees, the policies should be as nearly continuous as possible and the terms of the members long enough to insure a majority of experienced persons on the board at all times.

The method of appointing the commissioners is not so important as that each shall be selected from the territory as a whole rather than from a part of it. In some places where the term of service is 10 years, each one's successor is appointed by the remaining commissioners, subject to confirmation by the court. Where this is done a member is not permitted to succeed himself. In other places the commission is appointed by the court; in others, it is elected by the city legislative body or is appointed by the mayor subject to the approval of the legislative body. The important point is to keep the administration as nearly as possible on a purely business basis.

A good board can accomplish nothing without liberal funds. There are two methods of providing these: (1) By an appropriation from the general tax levy and (2) by direct assessment against the properties, collectible with the other taxes. If the funds are provided by appropriation, a fixed minimum, expressed in millage of the tax rate, should be provided in the organization of the commission. This minimum should be such that a fair amount of maintenance work can be done when no other funds are available. Councils that appropriate money sometimes hamper boards by withholding appropriations. Work of the nature of tree planting should not be permitted to suffer or be lost by a year's neglect. The fund provided by this minimum amount should not be so large that regular additional appropriations will not be needed to carry on the work properly, as this will give a desirable point of contact of the commission or board with the ordinary channels of expressing public sentiment in the district interested. The minimum appropriation mandatory should be sufficient to prevent injury from lack of care of work already begun. A period of minimum care and attention while a board and the people or their representatives are coming to a new understanding of one another's position is not necessarily a detriment, provided a reasonable maintenance has been possible in the interim, but without such care the results are ruinous and work would better not be started than be undertaken with the possibility of such a period of neglect occurring.

It is probably desirable to assess the cost of tree planting against the adjacent property owners at a proportional cost per front foot and to provide for maintenance out of a general fund. Boulevards and other unusual developments are sometimes maintained with satisfactory results by regular assessments against the abutting properties.

After a proper governing board is provided, the securing of a competent executive is a matter of ordinary business procedure. It is usually desirable that he shall be not only a good executive but also a man with a knowledge of trees and trained in their care, so that he may be a competent adviser of the board as well as its executive.

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Fig. 7.—Increased attractiveness due to trees on a city street, as shown by contrasting the two sides of the thoroughfare. If trees like red oaks, American elms, or the Eucalyptus in the distance had been used, the effect on this wide street would have been comparable to figure 3. The trees in the left foreground are umbrella trees. Merced, Calif.; midsummer.