It's hard to imagine...

 

..just how the City of Surrey managed to wangle its recently-announced designation as a "Tree City" as when I look around I see small forests and big trees coming down, down, down.  

One of the most reliable spokespersons for the trees -- for years now -- is a woman named Deb Jack. When she speaks, our know-it-all mayor offers his usual lip service and then votes in a way that shows he's yet again ignoring the things she says.  

The photo above shows one of a batch of trees that bordered the edge of a property where a little old house was torn down, no doubt to be replaced by a giganto, absurdly big one. 

I'd have thought that trees that close to the property line would not have had to be chopped, as there are some limits (too small, but they're officially there) as to how much clearance there needs to be between the building and the line. Besides, the next door 'neighbour' is an elementary school, so the 'natural fence' provided by trees would have meant shade, privacy, and a cushion from the noisy play outside of a school.

The "Tree City" designation requires a city to show a plan for evaluating specific trees, for having a policy that requires replacement of trees that have been removed -- and yes, Surrey has these, but they're plans as thin as the paper they're written on. They're often ignored, and as for replacements -- huh? How does a 3-foot cedar shrubbery replace a tree that's over 50 years old. 

I'm not the only one who feels our Council's approval of trees falling everywhere is unacceptable, but with the current 'representatives' sitting, neither we nor the trees seem to stand a chance. 

Surrey: good for making promises as hollow as a tree gone rotten with disease.