Town working to maintain Tree City USA status
SATISH MOHAN Amherst Supervisor
Iwrote to you about my tree management plan last month. I realize that your trees are very dear to you: they add to the value of your homes, create a pleasant environment and provide climate control. I want to, therefore, continue dialogue with you and update you on the current status.

The town has hired a contractor through Erie County to fell only 1,063 of the 7,995 trees that were identified as damaged by a county arborist, and the felling is in progress. As of Monday noon, 357 trees have been felled. All of these 1,063 trees have been graded in the high- to severe-risk category and are either dead or in critical condition. It is possible that a few of the trees look relatively healthy and could have waited for one more year and perhaps survived, but the risk of public safety made the town decide to fell them.

This week, the town is hiring a professional arborist to re-evaluate 10 percent of the 6,932 remaining trees and rank them in the order of public safety risk and chance of survival. I will keep you apprised of his/her findings. Very soon we will contract out the grinding of the stumps and start replanting the trees close to the locations of felled trees. In the meantime, please be careful not to walk or let your children and others walk along the felled tree stumps to avoid falling.

In whatever we do for regreening the town, I invite your participation. At this time, I need your input on the following:

• Please let us know if you see any problem with the felling of the 1,063 trees, if any are on your property. This work is in progress.

• Please let us know if there are any other trees on the public right-of-way along your property that are either dead or hazardous and you want them taken out.

• Also, please look at the remaining 6,932 trees, if they fall along your property, and write or call us on your evaluation of those trees.

For viewing the 1,063 trees with severe to high risk, please go to the town's Web site: www.amherst.ny.us, and click on "report" to see the street address of each tree, and then click on "map" to see the location of each tree. Use the zoom-in icon to select your area and to view the tree locations along your property.

For viewing all of the damaged trees, please go to the "Buffalo News Information" link on the town's Web site.

Telephones of the individuals you may need to contact are given below: Supervisor Satish B. Mohan - 631-7034; Secretary to the Supervisor Sharon Colasanti - 631-7032; Highway Superintendent Robert Anderson - 631-7117; and Erie County Supervisor Curtis Ostrowski - 812-9412.

We are the Tree City USA, and I will keep working to maintain that status for Amherst.