Resident: City decimated my tree, squandered my tax dollars
PAWTUCKET - Each year, David Keyser spends hundreds of dollars trimming and fertilizing the trees on his historic Oak Hill property. One tree in particular receives special attention, a majestic oak estimated by his arborist to have stood in the front yard for as many as 200 years. The massive tree is trimmed and fertilized at only the appropriate times, says its owner. Imagine Keyser's surprise when, on the afternoon of April 8, he received a phone call at work from a neighbor informing him that workers were dismantling his prized tree piece by piece. Not only was a significant portion of the oak already gone, he remembers being told, but the neighbor had already been handed a business card and offered the opportunity to buy the mulch gleaned from the tree. "They take it down without my permission and then offer to sell the mulch from it to my neighbor?" said Keyser, clearly still incredulous over the incident. "Really?" Keyser, a certified public accountant, says he had not commissioned any work to be completed in his yard, nor had he been informed by anyone that workers would be coming to shear off the giant limb that once partially hung over the road. As most people who work with trees know, he said, the work at his home was done at the wrong time of year for the tree's continued health. He was in for another shock. It was the Pawtucket Public Works Department that put in a work order to remove a significant portion of his tree. Keyser says he was never notified or consulted as required by Chapter 371 of the Pawtucket City Charter, nor was there ever an indication from anyone that he was out of compliance with subsection 9 of that chapter requiring homeowners to prune their trees. Keyser claims he spends about $800 just to have his trees trimmed each year. He suspects, based on the opinion of the man who cares for his yard, that the business that he says completed the work in his yard, North Eastern Tree Service of Cranston, was paid as much as $2,000 or more by Pawtucket taxpayers for the work completed at his home. Workers were at his home for about four hours, said Keyser, from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m., performing a service that he says was both completely "undesirable and unnecessary." "No other work was done in my area," Keyser told The Breeze. "There was nothing wrong with this branch. It was a perfectly healthy branch." Reached Monday, Public Works Director Jack Carney disputed Keyser's claim that the branch was alive. "We had a scenario where there was a dead branch hanging over the street creating a dangerous situation," said Carney. "It needed to be removed." Carney declined to comment any further on Keyser's contentions, deferring all comment to City Solicitor Margaret Lynch-Gadaleta. Gadaleta said Monday that she is currently reviewing the claims of Keyser "to see that things were done properly." She plans to have that review complete next week when she should have some answers for the homeowner. Carney did say that residents are typically notified before any tree work is done. "That's what usually happens," he said. "I don't know what happened in this case." Keyser reacted strongly when told of Carney's claim that the limb on his tree was dead. Though he hasn't been able to find a picture of his tree before April 8, he said neighbors will testify the limb was alive and well. "It was not dead," he said. "That's absolutely ridiculous. And if that's the case, that they took it down because it's dead, I can take them around and show them about five or six branches that really are dead in the neighborhood." Keyser said one need only look at what remains of the limb to know it was not dead. How did city officials know the limb was dead with no leaves on it, Keyser wonders. If it was such a "danger" to the public, he wants to know, why wasn't it taken down a long time ago? Why not last fall when the leaves were still on it and they could prove it was dead? A representative for North Eastern Tree, a man in charge of Pawtucket projects who goes by the name of "Steve," according to the receptionist, did not return a call for comment. Keyser, his wife Kate, and one child have lived at 1 Sayles Ave. in the Oak Hill section of Pawtucket since the couple purchased the home in January of 2005. Their property, which once held the old Frederick Sayles Mansion, is on the National Register of Historic Places. If age estimates are correct, the oak tree in the Keysers' yard was likely seen in its early days by Frederick Sayles himself, the city's first mayor and the former part owner of both the Moshassuck Bleachery and the Lorraine Mills. After sending out certified letters and e-mails to all members of the City Council, Mayor James Doyle, and other public officials the day after the work on his historic tree was done, said Keyser, he was still waiting to hear from any of them on Monday of this week, 10 days after he initially made contact. A number listed for District 5 Councilor Jean Philippe Barros, Keyser's councilor, was not accepting phone messages Monday. Doyle and City Council President Henry Kinch also could not immediately be reached. Read Keyser's four-page letter to city officials here: www.valleybreeze.com/www/Unauthorized_Tree_trim.pdf Keyser said he understands that some might see his complaint as petty. After all, it is only a couple thousand dollars and one tree limb removed. He contends, though, that if you paint this situation with a broader brush, it's the story of property/taxpayer rights being violated, wasteful government spending, ineffective city government services, and perhaps even political connections to outside vendors. "My wife and I agonized over whether to make a big deal of this," said Keyser. "It may not be a big deal in dollars and cents, but you have to wonder, if (officials) operate like this with something 'small,' what about the big things they spend money on?" At a lesser level of importance, said Keyser, is the way in which workers completed the job at his home. He claims they not only trampled on his flowers, but damaged the historic stone wall located between the oak tree and the roadway, scarred the sides of the tree during the limb removal process, and left sawdust all over his driveway. "This whole thing is not too much different from trespassing and larceny in my opinion," said Keyser, pointing as he did so to evidence of his claims. One of many ironies surrounding his situation, said Keyser, is that he has asked city officials for years to pay attention to certain problems in his neighborhood, from graffiti on signs to people who regularly speed past his home. "I don't mind paying taxes, and I'll gladly pay more taxes if I get something for the money, something I value," he said. "But I don't value this." In his letter, Keyser excoriates city officials for allowing what happened at his home, while questioning how many other people are experiencing the same types of abuses. Many likely decline to speak up, he said, believing their complaints will not be heard. "In difficult economic times, it is hard to comprehend why the city of Pawtucket would strive to make such a severe hasty decision which potentially increases financial burden to the taxpayer while simultaneously squandering its own well publicized scarce resources on such a blatantly careless project," he writes in his letter. "It is also curious that the city is remarkably proficient at ignoring other obvious value-added lower cost projects and services in the neighborhood, which its residents would more readily value." Among those services Keyser says the city is coming up short on are: * Cleaning up graffiti on telephone poles, mailboxes and street signs; * Regular street cleaning; * Repainting fire hydrants, traffic lines and safety islands; * Repairing sidewalks in poor condition; * Improving "poor" snow removal services; * And upgrading "sloppy" trash and recyclable services. In almost every area the city is lacking in, said Keyser, he and his neighbors are filling in, completing on a year-round basis many of the tasks typically done by employees at the Public Works Department. Keyser told The Breeze that if someone from the city had come to him and presented viable reasons why his tree should be trimmed, he would have gladly cooperated if he determined that the work was warranted. When officials from National Grid have come knocking and discussed trimming his trees to protect their wires, said Keyser, he has allowed everything they've asked. Not only does he receive phone calls from the National Grid folks before they come, he said, but letters come in the mail detailing the work to be completed. If he had been given the opportunity to hire his own arborist in this situation, said Keyser, he would have had the work done at the proper time of year last fall and used some of the resulting mulch to offset the $1,500 he spends on mulch for his yard each year.
