Remember the trees I warned the Village about in April? Well those trees are now dead. Why it matters.

Warnings, alarms, requests were issued in April about two oak trees being smothered, surrounded by concrete as part of the 3rd bridge construction in Coral Reef Park. They went unheeded. And now, two stately oaks, well over 30 feet tall appear quite dead, suffocated in just over 5 months time. How old were these trees? We can count the rings when the trees are cut down and removed. What a waste. A squandering of our natural environment.

Palmetto Bay: Tree City USA, are you kidding me?  Palmetto Bay "leadership" should be hanging their heads in shame. Village of Palmetto Bay officials seem to be on a mission to reach record numbers for tree killing in Palmetto Bay. Obviously green is no longer a priority or an official policy for the current mayor, council and staff.

There are several ways to kill trees. The most obvious is to cut down, rip out, like what is now happening along SW 136 Street - remember trees that we paid for in prior tax dollars. But don't worry, our tax dollars will be used to replace some of these mature trees with fewer and much smaller landscaping trees. Our tax dollars at work 3 times: 1. The original planting, 2. Removal,  and 3. New smaller trees representing partial replacement.

Another way to kill a tree to to smother it by raising the ground level around its original base as well as surrounding the root line with asphalt. This is the tactic Palmetto Bay officials employed at Coral Reef Park. The results are documented in the photos posted here.

The alarms were raised back in April of 2021. Alarms that were ignored and instead, village officials mocked those who attempted to bring this issue forward. Another example of official and blatant disrespect for any civil discourse in this community. Of course the deforestation of Palmetto Bay has since moved from Coral Reef Park and continues along SW 136th Street. See PRIOR RELATED POST of April 26, 2021, Poor Tree. Who determined where and how to locate the Coral Reef Park Bridge? Regulations ignored. Once again, Palmetto Bay acts say: do as (Palmetto Bay) says, not as Palmetto Bay does.

I warned. I called out to the public and asked for support, but no one heeded the call. What did we get from Palmetto Bay officials? Crickets. Now look at the trees pictured here. Do they look healthy to you? How about we have mayor Cunningham and each council member reach into their own pockets to pay to have them replaced rather than raise our taxes to pay for the damage going on in this village. 

It is obvious that these trees were expendable as they were in the way of what this current mayor and her administration felt to be more important: more cement, more asphalt and a third bridge that no one from the public asked for in Coral Reef Park.

Why it matters:

• People go to parks for trees. As mayor, I took pride in this village, I coined and introduced the moniker "Village of Parks". But more importantly, I worked hard to make Palmetto Bay the Village of Parks. The title should have meaning. But with that title comes responsibility.
• 
  A question of competence. Every child who has ever trapped a lizard in a jar knows that, if a living thing doesn't have enough air, it dies. Yet the mayor and council, a group that includes two supposed educators, didn't realize that pushing up the ground around the trees and then actually pouring an asphalt walkway around them would suffocate them. We were told they would be OK. Obviously they aren't. This current group of officials can't even care for mature trees that only need to be left alone to thrive. 
• 
  I took pride in leading Palmetto Bay to become a "Tree City USA" community. But let's face it, the village is backsliding under the current leadership. Poinciana Trees have been removed from 184th Street, trees are afterthoughts and are being removed from 136th Street to make way for the unnecessary mega 10 foot sidewalk and now this. Trees that survived Hurricane Andrew and so many other intense storms, named and unnamed, were unable to survive the onslaught brought on by the current administration.
  
• Our Budget. Mature specimen trees are expensive, At best, we start over with yearling trees that will take 30 years to reach the size of the two trees that finally succumbed to the asphalt. Can this group be trusted with new plantings when they are obviously so destructive on the well established specimens throughout Palmetto Bay?
• Responsibility to mange our natural resources. 
• Designing public projects. Who designed this bridge? A huge structure which many opine is out of scale with the park, both in its size as well as the lengthy railing seemingly required for this bridge (but somehow that railing is not the other 2 bridges that have served the park well for 40 years). And of course, they could not design the bridge to work in the park without smothering two very large specimen oak trees.
• Community trust in our government and the officials. We can see a continuing pattern of saying one thing; saying what people want to hear, but either doing the opposing or simply failing to follow through.

Palmetto Bay's Tree Inventory Action Plan. Well, members of the Palmetto Bay's Tree Board, here are two more trees that need to be counted along with all those along SW 136th Street; that you should update and remove from that great tree survey that Palmetto Bay taxpayers funded. Are you keeping score? You should be. You have but one very important job and we have not heard anything from you concerning the issues we have been raising. For a historical reference, I was the prime sponsor of creation of this Tree Board, part of our requirements for becoming a "Tree City USA" Community. the tree Board was created under ordinance 09-02, now codified under Article IV, Sec. 2-108. - Tree board, of our Village Code of Ordinances. It was enacted on 1-12-2009

Additional suggested reading:  July 6, 2021, “Trees are stationary superheroes”. Why not work around the long-time specimen trees that have historically shaded Palmetto Bay? They have much to contribute. They never received a fair hearing. What trees do for our Palmetto Bay community.

Is there still time to call upon Miracle Max? Maybe, just maybe, we can get lucky, and as Miracle Max (a character in The Princess Bride) would say, those trees are only mostly dead. Perhaps there is action that can be taken to bring these trees back that are mostly dead, if not actually dead, but as Miracle Max said: It would take a miracle! 

Below are some photos of how Coral reef Park look with when the trees were healthy, before the mega bridge.

A photo of the trees that thrived before the bridge.

The trees post bridge. Note the new raised elevation that impact their trunks.
Paving over their root lines

Concerned residents were told not to worry, this the tree would be fine - Wrong!