Trees For A Greener Parma Meet With Councilman And CPP Commissioner

One of the trees not properly pruned. Stump should be trimmed back to parent branch or trunk.

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Kris Harsh, Ward 13 councilman, at his monthly meeting in November talked about complaints from residents extending from Pearl to Memphis. The mature trees had added beauty and defined this Old Brooklyn Neighborhood for decades. Residents were upset about the radical and poor trimming Cleveland Public Power did along their street. What resulted was injured trees due to lack of formal arborist knowledge provided by a contractor hired by the City of Cleveland.

The damage was brought to the crew leader’s attention as residents had gathered asking Vancuren Tree Trimming Co. to cease their work. Those concerned sent pictures and made frantic calls to Vancuren to halt the work. Yet Vancuren continued despite pleas from residents

Though damage had occurred, residents had gathered asking Vancuren Tree Trimming Co. to cease their work. They failed in their attempt to save the trees yet uncut. Vancuren continued the damage despite being notified.

Sharon Stahurski emailed Kris Harsh Friday, October 25th, saying “I contacted your office yesterday concerning the “’trimming’ that was done yesterday by the Vancuren Tree Company contracted through Cleveland Public Power… Are you able to meet at the site about the trees?”  Kris responded the same afternoon, “Yes and furious doesn’t describe my mood…The Commissioner of CPP and Urban Forestry are meeting at Ira and Fulton Monday Morning at 10am.”

Sharon Stahurski, head of Trees For A Greener Parma, has never seen a response that quick from a public official.

Councilman Harsh at his November meeting, after seeing the trees said, “It looks horrible. There's no way to say it. It's ugly. They cut these trees back because of power lines, but some of the trees look like they were just basically cut in half. Some of the trees there look weird, like a field goal type thing and some neighbors, for a good reason, were furious about this and reached out to me. They did it on Northcliff as well.” He asked, “Has anyone had seen the tree trimming that happened along Fulton Rd. Down by William Cullen Bryant?”

Monday morning, October 28th, Sharon from Parma for Greener Trees; myself, Greg Cznadel, tree steward of Old Brooklyn; concerned residents Paula and Paul Hanse and Cyndi Rice representing councilman Harsh, met with Jennifer Kipp, manager of Urban Forestry and Ammon Danielson, Commissioner of Cleveland Public Power.

Explanation of Pruning

As we gathered along Fulton Road, the damage was obvious.

Commissioner Danielson explained the two tiers of four wires each. “The four on top are electrical and are maintained by the crew from the power company responsible for those wires. Those are the high-voltage wires. The mid-tier and upper-tier are generally the electric lines. Generally speaking, the higher you go on the pole, the higher the voltage there is. The closest ones that you see here, near the ground, are going to be Telecom, AT&T, Spectrum, whatever. You see the streetlight? That is electrical and powered by us as well,” Danielson said. 

“See the branches hanging over your house? They did no trimming there,” she added. “See where it comes into your house, that's 240 watts. The thing with that, it's not very high. If that bumps up against something, there's not a significant safety concern.

“The two things that you trim for is not just to maintain space, but also the national guidelines that say to shape them away from the wires.”  

As to the question of why VanCuren Tree Service, the service contracted by CPP, can’t just trim branches two feet away from the wires instead of taking whole branches? Danielson explained, “The reason you can't just go along with the saw and cut exactly 2 feet is you need the tree to be healthy to the degree that you can. Which means when you cut it back you must go to the parent stem (parent branch or stem - the tree trunk or the larger limb from which lateral branches are growing). So that is why such large cuts are made, for the health of the tree.”

Stahurski noted, and the representatives agreed, several branches were not cut back to the parent stem. Also, it appeared that many of the lateral branches running parallel to the wires were unnecessarily cut. If these fell, they would not have fallen directly on the power lines.

Harsh noted at the meeting that after residents complained, Cleveland Public Power did go back and correctly prune the improperly cut stubs back to the parent branch.

Certification

When Ms. Stahurski first saw the workers from the Vancuren Tree Service crew, she asked what certification they had. She asked them if they had an arborist certification. They said no. They talked about the years of experience that they had with other tree trimming companies.

When Mary DiGeronimo, customer care at Vancuren, was questioned, she replied: “We always have a certified arborist on site with the crew. Our crews are also line clearance certified. I am not sure why some branches were not cut all of the way. One possibility is that residents were watching and criticizing our crew’s cuts.”

Kipp explained, “The line clearance qualification is separate from a certified arborist qualification so it's like that's not part of the requirement.”

When a crew from the Ohio Department of Transportation was out trimming branches from around the Jennings Road sound barrier behind my house, I asked about this. The crew chief said he was studying to get an arborist certification similar to his boss.

From the Office of Ohio’s Consumers’ Counsel: “Electric companies use modern techniques specified by standards developed by the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA) and the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) using Certified Arborists to plan and perform the work safely and minimize the need for future trimming. Crews attempt to cut trees in ways that reduce stress and lessen the likelihood of disease and decay.” Harsh asked the Commissioner of Public Power to send him the manual they use for tree trimming around power lines. He said this was important to him as a lot of “our neighbors said they don't cut trees like this outside the city.”  He went on, “It shows pictures from our suburban neighbors of the exact same thing happening to their trees as well as the manual that dictates how to cut trees.” 

He continued, “As a matter of fact, if they made a mistake, it was that they didn't cut some of the branches back far enough to cut all the way back to the trunk, and they left some orphaned branches. They then went back and properly trimmed or removed them.”

“I think part of the solution is what Greg and the Tree Stewards are doing, which is encouraging people to plant trees in their front yards in their backyards because there is more room in your front and back for trees to grow without intertwining with overhead wires, not just for the roots and the sidewalk situation.”

This is through the Reforestation Program, the free tree give away program at Old Brooklyn.  If in Old Brooklyn contact Brittney Hooper at treestewawrds@oldbrooklyn.com or visit www.oldbrooklyn.com/tree.

Thanks for the work Sharon Stahurski is doing in Parma. As Harsh mentioned, “You know, you go down the street with no trees and you wonder why this looks so weird and like oh, there's no trees, right? A lot of Parma is like that, right?” If interested in learning more about Trees For a Greener Parma, contact Sharon Stahurski at s.stahurski@yahoo.com or visit Parma for Greener Trees in Facebook.