Photo: Denise Buttacavoli
“The Clearwater City Council put a hold on its city tree ordinance after 4,000 healthy trees were tagged for removal.”
“When Denise Buttacavoli left for work that morning, her front yard was fully shaded. When she returned home, she discovered that the city had cut down every tree in her front yard.
Patricia Kirby, a 20-year resident of Clearwater, confessed that she broke into tears when she returned home from work and saw the condition of her neighbor’s yard.
That morning, Denise Buttacavoli’s front yard at 1660 Magnolia Ave. was filled with mature, healthy camphor trees that provided a canopy of shade and sheltered a host of wild critters.
When Kirby returned home that night, she said Buttacavoli’s yard was a barren wasteland. Every shade tree in the yard had been cut down by city of Clearwater tree service contractors.
A former federal park ranger, federal forest ranger and an independent contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency for more than 20 years, Kirby said she’s spent her career trying to protect the environment and the wildlife that call it home.
‘This kind of thing hurts my heart,’ she said.
Kirby displayed before and after photos of Buttacavoli’s front yard on the overhead screen at the Clearwater City Council meeting Thursday night.
There was an audible gasp from the audience when Kirby showed the photo of Buttacavoli’s yard after the trees had been cut down…
She said the problem with the city’s tree ordinance, as outlined by Dan Mirabile, director of the city’s public works department, at Tuesday’s city council work session is that the ordinance doesn’t take a tree’s health into consideration.
Mirabile said the city is divided into five zones and each zone is inventoried every six years by an arborist at a cost of $30,000 a year.
This year the arborist tagged 4,000 of the 20,000 trees in that zone for removal using a rating system from 0 to 6.
He said trees are rated based on their species, diameter, health, whether power lines are overhead and whether they’re home to nesting birds and other wildlife.
Under that rating system, said Mirabile, if a tree is rated a 3 or below, it is subject to removal. As a result, he told council members, the city has needlessly cut down healthy trees.
‘I lost 100 percent (of trees) — 100 percent of the natural beauty, 100 percent of the wildlife connection, 100 percent shade and comfort and 100 percent of the joy,’ Buccavoli said.
She urged the city to amend its tree ordinance and ‘model your new policy after a city who’s doing the right thing.’
At the very least, said Kim Begay, vice president of the Clearwater Audubon Society, property owners should be notified in writing before the city cuts down a tree on right of way in front of their property so the residents can challenge the decision to cut it down…
Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard said the council already agreed following the work session to put a hold on enforcing the tree ordinance until it can be reviewed.
‘We have completely stopped the program and are going to reexamine it,’ he said.”
— D’Ann Lawrence White, Patch