PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia has a backlog of nearly 30,000 trees in need of pruning or removal and that number is growing faster than crews can do the work. Philadelphia will never get caught up on its tree work. That’s what parks officials told city council during budget hearings last week.
Erica Smith-Fichman is the City Forester, a job that was created two years ago to oversee the city’s tree canopy. She told council that it will take years to address the trees the city has identified as needing attention and by that time, more will have become hazardous.
“The backlog, the list of trees that need to be worked on is constantly growing, so we will never eliminate it 100 percent,” she said.
Smith-Fichman says the cost to take care of all those trees will total about $8 million but even if council were to budget that much next year, the backlog would remain.
“The capacity that our team has and our contractors have, we do need to give them more than one year to increase. We spend about a million dollars on tree work each year. To multiply it by eight times would take multiple years,” Smith-Fichman said.
Council members were not happy with the assessment. Anthony Phillips said the Department should come up with a plan to speed up the work. Jaime Gauthier noted that it’s a public safety issue. Last year, two people were killed by falling trees in the city and six were injured.
Park officials said Philadelphia will never get caught up on its tree work.
