from Jamie Francomano, Department of Planning and Development
Thanks to a $15,000 grant award from the Maine Forest Service program known as “Project Canopy,” the downtown area is about to see 20 new street trees planted on Main Street. Additional trees are going into Riverside Park to replace the existing shrubs. The city is providing a one-to-one match through in-kind services (primarily the manpower and machines of the Public Works Department) for a total project value of just over $34,000. Randy Martin of the King’s Gardener, who also prepared a management plan required for the grant, will be providing the trees and is responsible for their care for one year under contract as the city’s arborist.
That is the good news, and those of us involved with the Downtown Revitalization Committee, and people from all over the county who have been on Main Street Presque Isle lately to enjoy the bustling shops, restaurants and the newly renovated Braden Theater, are obviously grateful to have received this award. The city’s Development Specialist George Howe deserves our thanks for reeling this money in with a well-written grant application, and the same goes for the Public Works Department who will be making everything happen over the coming weeks.
Now here’s the not so good news. Most of the trees being planted with the 2008 Project Canopy award are replacing existing trees that are either diseased or have been damaged by city equipment over the last several years, and a few that were apparently topped off by untrained private individuals, instead of being cared for exclusively by the city’s professional arborist. The visibility of our storefronts and signs is important to us, but not as important as a healthy street tree that only needed a few more years to grow ABOVE the signs to form a very valuable urban tree canopy for everyone to enjoy.
Street trees are the common property of everyone in Presque Isle and residents have a right to know what the city is doing to ensure we get a good return on the investment, by finding ways of protecting street trees from snow plows, persuading our fellow business owners and tenants to give the trees the time and space they need to grow, and doing a better job of warding off disease. And above all, they are to be cared for only by the city’s arborist. (For the curious tree fans out there, the hardier, more disease resistant species selected by the arborist for the 2008 Project Canopy award include Ash, Littleleaf Linden, Native Red Maple and Discovery Elm).
Aside from their natural beauty, the key to the value offered to us by street trees is in the shade provided on sidewalks and parking areas that make any warm weather visit downtown more enjoyable. Business owners see this value show up on their bottom lines due to increased foot traffic, and it is not too big of a stretch to say that property values downtown will also rise, along with city revenues at tax time, all as a result of a more pedestrian-friendly Main Street.
The dollars and cents of street trees goes beyond sun and shade. According to a study commissioned by the City of Boulder, Colorado, the average street tree intercepts 1,271 gallons of rainfall per year, providing a buffer for absorption into the city’s drainage system and helping avoid substantial costs that would otherwise be necessary to increase storm water management capacity. That famously snowy city decided this was a fair trade for being extra careful with the snowplows where needed in wintertime and dealing with leaf collection in the fall. Even the most conservative estimates for actual dollar values of existing street trees are a few hundred dollars per year, per tree. Others place the value much higher. Either way, it does add up!
Maintenance issues here in the Crown of Maine may go beyond what is experienced in other places, and we know there are limits to what can be done to look after these downtown trees, even if we succeed in getting more people to see them as the breadwinners they really are. Not all of the new trees are going to make it to maturity. The point we would like to make is that it is worth a try. We have been told that the city is looking into protective grates and/or sleeves for the street trees when the snow flies. We applaud these and any other common sense approaches to protect this investment in more pedestrian-friendly Main Street.
The Star-Herald articles from the summer of 1993 and particularly a photo by John Begin in the July 14th edition reflect the hard work and the pride that Star City folks put into planting street trees. Among those pictured 15 years ago is Roberta Griffiths, who along with Ann Wight is STILL leading the charge to beautify Main Street, most recently with our highly successful flower buckets around town. The 1993 article tells the story of a grant from the Maine Forest Service and in-kind services from city departments. It even talks about the need for better-designed protective grates to replace ones that did not lie flush with the sidewalk and “weren’t designed for those particular bases,” and which evidently were discarded soon after.
Is history doomed to repeat itself? Are we throwing good money after bad? Are downtown’s loyal volunteers wasting their time? Leafy green trees contribute a great deal to the increasingly pedestrian-friendly feeling of Main Street that business owners, tenants and visitors from all over have told us they are so happy about this season and we hope that every effort will be made to get a better return on the investment this time around. Ultimately this means we have to work together to ensure that the trees on Main Street are looked on as important working assets that are held in common for all of us, and that these assets are encouraged to grow and pay dividends for the long term.
We welcome your thoughts and opinions. It’s your city. We need your input in order to make it better. You can e-mail us at pidrc@yahoo.com or write us at: The Presque Isle Downtown Revitalization Committee, 411 Main St., Presque Isle, Maine 04769.
For more information about the PIDRC, e-mail us at pidrc@yahoo.com or call Sandy Gauvin (764-0876), Cathy Beaulieu at Wilder’s Jewelry Store (764-0309), or Patty LeBlanc (769-7731), or you can contact us at the address listed above.
We meet at the Presque Isle Area Chamber of Commerce on the Houlton Road at 7:30 a.m. on the last Thursday of each month. Please join in our efforts to help our wonderful city.
The Presque Isle Downtown Revitalization Committee is an official committee established by ordinance by the Presque Isle City Council and serves as a citizen advisory board to the council
