NB There's already an ongoing discussion here: http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/9484-city-workers-destroying-trees

But clearly nobody from the city is reading that other thread, so the more exposure of the issue, the better. Next step: printing out these pages and stapling them to City Hall...??

Must be a new employee. All along Humphrey as well

It has been happening on Avon & Orange for at least the last year as far as I've noticed.

This happens on Front Street regularly. They staple signs to trees and tape them to metal posts. No regard for trees. Go figure...
I doubt the city will send someone to remove staples from trees. I promptly remove sign and staple. Why post signs when street signs give the street sweeping schedule anyway. If you are able to drive you should be able to read the signs and not park.

Would it really be that difficult or cumbersome to use some twine? Or maybe use some cup hooks...one shot deal...not a miilion staples.

Robn, it is apparently impossible--that was one of many suggestions I had made.

For the sake of everyone, I'll re-post some of the suggestions that I got from other municipalities. They all focused on establishing a schedule and sticking to it. They all said don't do anything to the trees, ever. (Every city I spoke to was aghast--even when I detailed the cities "genius" plan to buy permanent velcro cosies for the tree that lets them add signs)

1. If you can't sweep a street on schedule, leave it for next scheduled date.
2. Place sawhorses at the end of the block, on the side where parking is banned, on each side of the block, with big signs warning residents if you do have to sweep on a non-scheduled day.
3. Use reverse 311 to let residents know you missed a day but will sweep the streets on an alternate day.
4. Use postal mail to let residents know you missed a day and will sweep the street on a different day.
5. Simply tow the cars out of the way, then return them after sweeping is over, if you have to street sweep out of schedule.

In every instance, they were aghast at how backward we do this, and perplexed by the bizarre scheme of installing velcro cosies on the trees.

I have no idea what is going on at City Hall that they think this is OK.

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Department of TT&P:
Should I FOI their emails to prove that I did respond?

I sent Howard a detailed email.

I love it when our city government gets snarky on the internet.

and exactly why is it our responsibility to prevent the city from destroying the trees they pay for?

Pardon the snarkyness. I am speaking out of turn.

Streever's right, this is a complete and utter no-brainer. A five year old could understand it: don't staple signs to trees.

One side of City Hall is spending hundreds of dollars to plant trees. The other side is spending hundreds of dollars to kill them. And we wonder why the budget is unbalanced... it's not just unbalanced, it's unhinged.

Again, what do we have to do to stop this idiocy? Staple letters of protest to the Mayor himself? "Ow, that hurts!" Exactly, sir: you speak for the trees.

I've put in an inordinate amount of time into planting trees in this city--even donating personal money on top of time--and I am flabbergasted that a city employee, paid by our tax dollars, would feel the need to make snarky comments criticizing my investment and work on this.

If the city truly believes that I somehow failed, I will submit a detailed FOI for all emails between Howard and myself, and the phone logs of our calls, so I can show that not only did I conduct almost 4 hours of research for the City, but I summarized my findings and reported back to Howard.

He never responded--because he did not like the answer he received--but that is not my fault. If the City is truly invested in their trees and the hard work of their citizens, they will do their own research and actually come up with solutions, instead of throwing stones on an internet message board.

Just went out to have another look at the signs. Four staples in a young tree whose trunk is thinner than the supportive wooden stake right next to it. Who does that?

Lorax--I first asked the people stapling the signs if they could avoid stapling them to young trees (politely! I swear! one of our local politicians was standing there when it happened). They refused to acknowledge me, finally telling me they "aren't supposed to talk to people", and drove away.

Meanwhile, Director Prokop was using colorful language and telling my friend who was with me off when he called him to ask him about it.

When I continued to complain about this (never once getting any apology or admission of wrong-doing), I was finally contacted by Howard, who asked me to do a bunch of research.

I did that research--he never responded to me because he didn't like the answer--and now other city employees are blaming me? for this mess and being snarky, when the real problem is that the city made a lame-brain decision years ago and is sticking by their guns.

All of this is a very round-about answer to your question, Lorax: "Who does that?" The people who do that are the same people who behave so poorly when a citizen who has done a lot of work tries to help them and do more.

The experiences I've had with city hall drive home a message--that the employees are small-minded and petty. This is just one of dozens of examples I can point to--another example is the blackout on information from them to me--I disagree with them on Route 34, and have been completely shut out of the information flow.

They even told another citizen they disagree with that they would charge her an enormous amount of money to give her basic information, because they've decided to lock her out too.

Our city is run by people on the defensive--and instead of asking themselves why they are so defensive, they turtle up and band together, and view citizens as the enemy.

That is why they haven't fixed this, despite years of complaints from arborists, environmentalists, tree planters, and other tax payers--they exist in a toxic atmosphere where citizens are the problem, not the solution, and we just don't have enough respect for their work.

No but seriously....these guys are accomplished arborists. They know how to tie removable constrictor knots and things like like versa tackle and such. It won't take as short as 2 seconds like a stapler, but it won't take more than 20 seconds either to just tie a sign to a tree with twine. Last time I checked twine costs about 10 bucks for 2500'.

@David Streever, Thank you for your well worded and spot-on post. I completely agree with all you have said.

Example of tree from stapling policy

That photo is totally gross, Ben :(.

(but thanks for sharing it... it is just pretty upsetting to see how bad it is)

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Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking (13425 civic points)
1 day ago

Someone please repost what Jim Travers wrote on behalf of his department.... and why did the Admin delete it?

Our city is run by people on the defensive--and instead of asking themselves why they are so defensive, they turtle up and band together, and view citizens as the enemy.

David, you are younger than I thought. When you write all these GOLDEN responses, which indeed they are, please try and use the term WE almost exclusively, rather than "I". Trust me on this one.

It is especially bad to do this to the young trees at this time of year. The high heat promotes sap leakage from wounds in the trees (stressing the trees due to moisture and nutrient loss) and this in turn attracts insects who can further damage the the saplings. It must stop!

@Ralph-

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Megan

Labor Day weekend road race, one more frontal assault on New Haven trees with staple guns. Saw some of the whacked up parking signs pulled down Sunday, back up Monday a.m. Relentless mindless disregard. Is human nature hopeless?

Closing because street sweeping season is over.