The Borough of Trees is now a Tree City, according to the Arbor Day Foundation. The official award will be presented to the borough at the April 29 meeting of the mayor and council.

The Arbor Day Foundation has four requirements for a community to become a tree city: a town must have a tree board or department, it must have an ordinance regulating the care of trees, it must have a community forestry program with a budget of at least two dollars per capita and it must observe Arbor Day. The borough has long had the first of the four requirements and has taken steps in the past year to meet the other three.

Last September the mayor and council reinstated the Shade Tree Committee. In July 2007 the council adopted a Community Forestry Management Plan spelling out the borough’s goals for tree maintenance over the next five years. The plan indicated that current DPW spending on trees is sufficient to meet the "two dollars per capita" requirement of the Arbor Day Foundation, and further Green Communities Grants will supplement that amount.

"It’s sort of a Master Plan for trees," said Shade Tree Committee Chairman Steve Savitsky about the plan. Reinstating the Shade Tree Committee and earning the Tree City USA designation were both part of the plan’s goals.

The borough’s designation as a "Tree City USA" will open up new opportunities for state grants. The borough is already planning to receive about 50 saplings and 200 tube seedlings from the state for programs in the upcoming year.

Savitsky said the Committee is also planning on starting a fenced off tree nursery at Memorial Field. The New Jersey State Forestry Management Program is donating about 50 saplings for the Committee and volunteers to plant at the field, in order to raise them before re-planting them in other locations around the borough. The initial planting will take place on April 25.

In addition, about 200 tube seedlings are going to be donated by the state for the borough’s schools. Savitsky said borough elementary school classes will get a chance to see and care for these trees during their earliest stage of development before they’re transferred to the nursery.

Last week on April 15, members of the DPW, the Shade Tree Committee and the Board of Aesthetic Review as well as the mayor and other borough officials planted a new crab apple tree in Lincoln Park to celebrate Arbor Day and to commemorate former Board of Aesthetic Review Chairwoman Helen Mathies. Additional events are planned for Lincoln and Washington Schools as well as Wall Field and the Meadowlands Museum on April 26.

The Shade Tree Committee, along with assistance from the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, is currently working on a project to map all of the borough’s trees with GPS technology, according to Michael Schmeding, the Rutherford DPW’s tree supervisor. Members of the Shade Tree Committee and other volunteers will be cataloguing the roughly 8,000 trees on public land, indicating their GPS position, their species and, when possible, the date they were planted and when they were last maintained.

"The ultimate goal is a complete catalogue of all the trees and their types," said Savitsky. The survey will also provide an opportunity for the borough to remove any harmful or invasive species and replace any trees that are too damaged.

3,216 municipalities across the country have earned the designation. The Arbor Day Foundation lists 145 other Tree Cities in New Jersey with 30 of them in Bergen County including nearby towns such as Leonia, Wallington, Hackensack and Paramus.