Neighbors Incensed as Washington School Trees Come Down

Residents near Washington Avenue School had their Monday morning interrupted by the surprising sound of chainsaws at work bringing down nine trees in front of the school.

Brian Becker, a resident of Orchard Street, said he came outside and spoke to the men taking down the trees. "They said they're putting in a parking lot," Becker said. "I called the school administrator, and he said it was a line item in the budget."

"I read the budget," Benson Hawk, a Washington Avenue resident, said. "If it was there, I didn't see it."

The borough has strict laws about trees coming down, especially trees that are of a rare species, over 150 years old, of extraordinary height or trunk diameter, or provides an important function to the borough, including "erosion control."

Becker and Hawk said the trees in front of Washington Avenue School help control erosion and that the wooded area, just to the right of the school's front entrance along Washington Avenue, provide "a valuable soak area for rain," Hawk said. "What is this going to do to everyone's basement in this area?"

Hawk said he contacted the borough's Department of Public Works to ask if they knew about trees coming down Monday. "According to the DPW, they didn't know," he said. 

Nine trees were down by 1 p.m. Monday. Several others had marks in red paint, either X's or dots.

Tree removals require a permit from Vincent J. DeNave, who serves as the borough's engineer and construction official. DeNave did not respond to phone calls or emails requesting interviews for this article as to whether the Board of Education, as a public agency, needed to apply or did apply for a permit to remove trees.

Becker said the neighborhood went before the Board of Education about a decade ago. "They wanted a parking lot here [in front of the school], and we asked 'What is this doing to the neighborhood?' So they decided to put teacher parking up off of Watchung Avenue," he said. "They agreed to have a setback of green grass here [along Washington Avenue] so it would go along with the houses along here."

Now, he said, that setback is to be turned into parking.

"No letters, no phone calls, they just went ahead and did it," Hawk said. "They're just inviting every parent to drive and park to school every day. It's really shocking."

Becker said the school has an enclosed creek with a culvert running behind the bushes at the edge of the soccer field at Washington Avenue School, only a few feet from where two trees were cut down Monday. Now, he said, he does not know if that culvert will be affected. "This neighborhood already gets a tremendous amount of water. Where will this water go? If it's not being taken back into the earth and it's not going down the culvert, where is it going to go?"

That's not the only question he wants answered. When it comes to the lines of traffic for St. Patrick School and Washington Avenue School in the mornings and afternoons during the school year, traffic that can stretch all the way down Washington Avenue and onto Main Street as far back as Lafayette Avenue, Becker wants to know: "Why aren't they walking? This is supposed to be a neighborhood school. Why can't the kids walk from Main Street?"

Hawk thinks he knows why. "Every parent that wants to drop their child off at school only wants it to be at the one spot," namely right in front of the school doors. The problem with building a lot in front of the school is, "it assumes the parents will willingly come in here and basically make a U-turn while they wait for their kids."

For Becker, "this is an environmental thing." He wants more review and a publicized plan for how the Board of Education plans to deal with the environmental impact of putting a parking lot into the area.

For Hawk, it's about making the plans public and transparent. "What I don't like is the summer surprise," he said. "Wouldn't it have been amazingly civil to get a letter?"

Some of the tree trunks showed core rot, but that in itself does not make the tree structurally unstable. Other trunks appeared to be perfectly healthy.

Peter Daquila, business administrator for the School District of the Chathams, was not immediately available for comment on whether an arborist inspected the trees or whether an environmental impact report was done.