Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements”

I’ve never given much thought to the City of Cape Girardeau’s Transportation Tax Fund. The program seemed to make sense. It is a half-cent sales tax that voters have renewed every few years since 1995 to repair city streets.

And then I came home for lunch a few weeks ago and found an orange X spray-painted on the side of the healthy 20-year old hackberry tree in front of my house by the street.

For those who don’t know what that means, it is how a tree which has been designated by the city to be removed is marked. The X makes it easier for the tree death squad to find.

However, since the tree is healthy, but no one from the city had bothered to contact me, I contacted them.

Three phone calls later, I finally discovered that my block of 200 S. Louisiana -- along with the 300 block -- had been chosen for “concrete repair” work using monies from the TTF. The tree in front of my house is apparently guilty of two sins.

First, it elected to sprout in the median between the public sidewalk and the street, a figurative dead-man’s zone since it falls into the city’s right-of-way. Secondly, the tree’s roots have partially lifted a slab of sidewalk creating a slight trip hazard. I was told, by the city that whenever they do “extensive street repairs,” sidewalks must be brought up to code per the American Disabilities Act.

I found the phrase “extensive street repairs” interesting.

The actual street on my block is in solid shape with the exception of perhaps four spots. Three of those are pretty minor and have been patched with asphalt. The worst place on my block is an area where the pavement has sunk following a water line repair done by the city about 20 years ago. That project was also responsible for breaking 4 or 5 slabs of the adjacent sidewalk.

Note to city: backhoes should not usually be parked on sidewalks. It tends to damage them.

Anyhow, I also didn’t feel that the sidewalks on my block were in all that bad of shape. I audited the approximately 150 slabs of concrete and 5 driveway / alley entrances that are on my block. About 13% of the slabs could use work due to slight lifting, sinking or heavy cracking. Some of the problem areas could use whole slabs replaced while some minor lifting could be remedied by grinding them down.

But then I checked some of the streets that are currently undergoing “concrete repair” per the TTF. None of them appear even close to being repairs, but complete replacements.

I can’t say I looked at these particular streets before the contractor’s excavator moved in and tore them apart, but as a taxpayer I seriously question the need for tearing out entire streets and their adjacent sidewalks when actual concrete repairs would suffice. I know that the ½ cent sales tax money is just burning a hole in the city’s pocket, but perhaps it could be better spent than ripping out perfectly functional concrete.

For instance, consider the highly ironic issue of sidewalks in town. I live near Good Hope. There is at least 10 times the pedestrian traffic that travels that street versus Louisiana, and yet public sidewalks on Good Hope west of West End Boulevard are practically non-existent. Just this past Sunday I saw an older gentleman riding his Rascal on Good Hope because there are no sidewalks. Considering some of the speed demons who race down that street I'm sure that's really safe. Why doesn't the city take some of that TTF windfall and spend it there?

Or what about the numerous pot holes on William Street? How about fixing them? I’m fairly certain some of those holes have been there for two years and possibly longer. How many thousands of cars travel William Street daily? Yet the city is right now tearing out several effectively dead-end streets that border Route 74 and have less than minimal traffic. Is that really being fiscally responsible?

Or how about the block of College Hill between the Dempster Circle and North Pacific? Half the curbs are missing in that block and the pothole close to the intersection is more like a pot gorge. Is it on the TTF repair list? I didn't see it.

But instead of using those funds productively, the city wants to tear up my street and cut down my tree on the pretense that it happens to be causing an ADA issue. There are a lot of potential ADA issues with sidewalks in town.

A lot.

An ADA sidewalk trip hazard is considered anything greater than a quarter inch change in vertical elevation at a joint or crack. Frankly, that’s a pretty low bar. I could easily document several hundred violations in just the downtown with little effort if I was so inclined or had the desire to fill out that federal complaint form I have bookmarked on my computer.

Even the sidewalk directly in front of City Hall is in violation of the ADA and it was replaced in November 2009.

I counted six places on the south side of the 400 block of Independence that are out of compliance. The cause? Roots from the trees in the city’s right of way, of course.

***

Since my tree can’t speak for itself, I did attend the City Tree Board meeting on April 6 to plead its case. No vote has yet been taken at the time of this writing (or one that the results have been shared with me). One other tree has been marked with an orange X on my block along with a tree stump. Somehow another tree where the sidewalk experiences an elevation change of about 2 inches was overlooked by whoever reviewed my block.