The mayor of the Village of Great Neck Estates recently passed two measures to be strictly enforced that are meant to address new climate patterns affecting our area, which have caused considerable damage to trees, power lines and property.
The first measure requires that vines growing on trees be cut down. The second measure requires that dead trees /branches be cut down.
In order to fast track these measures the mayor did not invite any input from residents, who in the end would be bearing the cost of tree service companies charging $300, $600, even $1,000, depending.
The mayor normally is very good at informing all residents about matters large and small involving the village. A two-page or more village bulletin the mayor oversees is mailed out three to five times a year to all residents.
The mayor’s strict enforcement overlooks certain facts. Almost all the trees uprooted, or sheared in these storms were considered healthy, their leaves in full bloom. Why they fell had more to do with an odd phenomenon of the aging process. A tree having a lifespan of say 100 years will by middle age already be well weakened. This is not unlike that of a human being at 50 years of age who may be quite active and seemingly fit, but nonetheless is more susceptible to the effects of even normal stress. The wood and root fibers in trees, like muscle and bone in humans begins deteriorating well before old age.
On the matter of dead trees. I have a couple of dead trees in my backyard. They help support a magnificent wisteria. But they show no signs of disease, or canker, or buttress, or hollowing out. They are no more dead than the wood used to build a house. Or even to make the gavel and lectern from which the mayor passes some laws better suited for mulch. What will the mayor do next? Make a law that prevents a person from going to home depot, buying a 40-foot beam, sticking it in the ground, and calling it a trellis that supports a new vine to replace the dear one the mayor forces me to kill under threat of a $2,500-a-day fine?
Richard Shein
Village of Great Neck Estates
