Last year, North Arlington Councilman Steve Tanelli began looking for a way to turn the tide of gray sweeping the town into a wave of green. "North Arlington is fast becoming a blacktop community," Tanelli said at a council meeting several months ago.
Now, the borough will join other area towns by creating its own Forestry Management Plan to protect healthy trees and maintain borough-owned trees. The borough has also hired certified arborist James Ilgenfritz to craft the plan and recommend the best courses of action for dealing with borough trees.
"This is a way to restore and beautify the borough," said Tanelli.
Borough administrator Terence Wall said the program would help in three ways. First, it would give the borough protection from liability suits stemming from fallen trees in the borough. Second, it opens the door for grants. Lastly, by improving the "municipal forest" property values in town will increase according to borough administrator Terence Wall.
Ilgenfritz would be given an annual stipend not to exceed $1,000 to work with the borough two and a half days per month.
The cost of implementing the plan, and paying Ilgenfritz, will be covered by a $3,000 grant the borough received from the Department of Environmental Protection to kick off the forestry management plan. "There is really no money laid out by the borough," said Tanelli.
The borough wants to ensure it does not cut down healthy trees, said Wall. "It seems like everybody’s taking trees down randomly without any real purpose," said Tanelli. "Not every tree that people complain about needs to be cut down."
Half of the block where Tanelli lives has trees, while the other half of the block has had many chopped down, creating a noticeable difference in temperature in the warmer months. The borough will use Ilgenfritz’s expertise to check trees before they are cut down.
The New Jersey Community Forestry program was developed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection eight years ago to preserve trees in downtowns across the state. According to the DEP, neglect and an urban environment shorten the average life span of downtown trees to 10 years.
With proper care, the trees live longer, look nicer and increase in value and without, they become health issues and liabilities, according to the DEP.
