When President Bush declared western New York a federal disaster area following last October’s freak snowstorm, he opened up the prospect of FEMA money to help municipalities recover from the effects of the storm. With that he touched off an urban logging operation in Buffalo, paid for by federal dollars and benefiting only a few private contractors.

This alarming news may be a case of too little information too late, though. Currently, all but a few hundred of the nearly 4,000 trees scheduled for removal in the City of Buffalo this summer have been chopped down, and only their stumps have been left behind with no plan or money for removal. As we move into the final phase of this operation, let’s take a moment to reflect on what has occurred and, perhaps more importantly, what’s not being said.

GOLD THAT GROWS

Let’s start with the wood. How did the city give up ownership of all that wood? It all comes down to a contract. The city, short a forestry department to manage this resource, instead accepted the terms of a bid contract that gave away lumber rights to its own valuable trees—many with hardwood trunks measuring up to four-feet across—just for the convenience of having them all go away. To add to the absurdity, the low-bidder who won the contract was Dreamco Development Corporation, a Cheektowaga company that has never taken part in a widespread tree-removal, or in tree removal at all, as far as we can tell. Dreamco, which was given a $1,508,430 contract, simply subcontracted the Ohio-based disaster recovery company Arborturf to come in, cut down the trees, and as the contract stipulates “remove all debris”.

Arborturf removes the “debris” (ie. truckloads of logs) to various locations like the one at 1070 Seneca Street behind the city garage, on property leased by another Cheektowaga company called Custom Topsoil Incorporated. The “debris” is dumped there into huge piles. In the timber business, they call this a “concentration yard”.

I phoned Custom Topsoil to ask how the wood came to be there. The receptionist told me that Custom Topsoil had been contracted last fall by the county to assist in storm recovery. But since I wasn’t calling about the county’s fall clean up, pressed for more info.

Here’s an interesting aside. When I asked for more details, like who was actually paying Custom Topsoil for the use of their property, the receptionist there told me that I would have to talk to the owners of the land that they lease at 1070 Seneca street if I wanted to know anything further about the mountains of wood being stored there. I said, “OK, who is the owner of the land?” “I don’t know,” she replied. “You don’t know who you lease it from?” “No.”

The assistant to the publisher here at Artvoice was happy to do a little checking. Turns out the owners of the property at 1070 Seneca street go by the business name of 1070 Seneca Street, Incorporated. The owners’ names weren’t immediately available from the county, so I left a message with the law firm of Gresens & Gillen LLP—who filed their papers with the county––seeking to find out who the owners of 1070 Seneca Street are—both the property and the corporation named after that addres. I have not heard back from Gresens & Gillen, as of yet.

It came to light through other channels, however, that the Chairman or Chief Executive Officer of the entity known as 1070 Seneca St., Inc., is Michael Fronckowiak, who also happens to be the head of Custom Topsoil Incorporated––the receptionist’s boss. So apparently Fronckowiak leases the land from himself. Or to himself, depending on how you look at it. A fairly common corporate practice, but why the unnecessary run-around? I put in another call to Custom Topsoil and was told that Fronckowiak had left for the day. I explained that I’d been told that he was the CEO of the corporation that owns the land that his other company leases. At press time he had not yet called to explain how that all works, and more to the point, how all that wood came to be on his property.

A PRIVATE CITIZEN

After trying many times to reach Dreamco president Rosanne Lettieri at her office, I was finally told by the receptionist that all of my questions would be answered by her lawyer. I wasn’t given the name of the lawyer, and was told that he would be contacting me. After a week I called back to the Dreamco office and asked for the lawyer’s name and phone number so I could get a statement from him or her. The receptionist told me she couldn’t give me the name of the lawyer, but she would again tell Rosanne that I’d called.

Then on June 29, I received a call from Lettieri. She told me that I shouldn’t have written such nasty stuff about her in my previous article (STUMPED, Artvoice v6n24). She told me she is a private citizen and that she is just doing her job. “I don’t write the contract, I don’t put out the description of the contract, I have nothing to do with that. It was publicly advertised. I pick up the plans, I pick up the specifications, I read them, I put my number in and if I’m the low bidder I get the job. If I’m not, I don’t,” She said.

I explained that I was trying to understand how the contract was worded, and if “removal of all debris” meant that the wood was hers to sell. After a long pause she replied: “It’s my wood, it’s my responsibility, pursuant to the contract. Again, I didn’t write the contract. It’s my responsibility to remove the trees, pursuant to the contract, and then to finish the contract as the contract was worded by the City of Buffalo.” So, do you sell the wood or not? “I have no comment. That wood is my wood. I have no comment.”

She went on to say that she didn’t know why I was attacking her.

I’m not attacking Lettieri. I’d have to ask the same questions of anybody who’d won the public contract to remove the city’s trees at taxpayer’s expense, and then sells the wood. Especially if that company is not in the tree removal business. That’s part of my job. And I empathize with her loss of anonymity over this whole affair. But it can be argued that Rosanne Lettieri went public when she signed a $1.5 million contract with the city, whether she happens to be county executive Joel Giambra’s sister-in-law or not, which, in fact, she is.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

The mountains of wood may be clearly visible from Seneca street, but don’t get the idea that the city might at least be able to sell some of it as lumber, firewood, mulch or pulp to recoup some money to put toward stump removal or new plantings. No. For stump removal, the plan is to go back to FEMA asking for more Federal money. To our good fortune, Senators Clinton and Schumer are currently going to bat for the entire region by urging the agency to come through with additional money to remove the stumps.

But it must be a tough sell for Schumer and Clinton when you consider that Art Traver from Wendell-Duchscherer, the architecture and engineering firm contracted by the city to help fill the role of forester, told me that FEMA had crossed off stump removal from the original RFP regarding the removal of trees. This was echoed by Sam Rosania of the independent environmental engineering consultant firm Malcolm Pirnie, who helped craft the bid request for the city. I spoke with him from his cell phone in Tampa, Florida. It appears to have been widely understood that FEMA would not pay for stump removal, but here we are six months later with our fingers crossed.

This whole process is a frustrating glimpse at what happens as a city does away with municipal services like a forestry department and relies instead on the private sector to step into the role that had traditionally been performed by the city itself. It’s frustrating because it’s virtually impossible to know who’s in charge of anything. Without a clear-cut leader, the privatization of Buffalo’s forestry department has placed the municipality in a vulnerable position. In this case, its best hope for stump removal is to appear as pathetic and helpless as possible in the hope that the federal government will come to the rescue once again. Turns out that all the city did by cutting down trees it defined as a public safety concern was trade one set of hazards for another. But the creation of stumps is decidedly not an act of God. An act of greed might be more accurate.

David Colligan is a local lawyer and landlord who serves as co-chairman of Re-Tree WNY and was recently named Chairman of the Board at the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy. He is also one of the authors of the Buffalo Urban Forest Master Plan. Including the trees that were removed immediately following the October storm, Buffalo will be left with over 7,000 stumps at the end of the summer. Colligan explained to me that in order to remove tree stumps on a grand scale, they should be done in group contracts. If you do them on a stump-by-stump basis the cost is tripled. In his words, city officials are “wired” to appear as victims. “The reason they have no idea what they’re gonna do [with regard to stump removal] is because they’re not gonna let the senators and the congressmen off the hook from trying to get them [FEMA] money.” According to Colligan, if they did that, the fight to get the FEMA money would be over. “And I’m on the phone with the Clinton and Schumer offices telling them ‘Nobody can do anything, this is terrible, people are tripping’—you probably saw the article in the paper where they quoted me about the stumps and the tripping hazard. ‘Cause you gotta build some hype on this. What possible incentive does a legislator have to use political capital to get us money?”

But the level of helplessness doesn’t end there. For new plantings, residents are urged to make charitable donations to initiatives like Re-Tree WNY, or the Green Leaf Campaign, instituted by The Buffalo News. Incredibly last week, the city announced a $50,000 donation to Re-Tree WNY. The control board must be encouraged to see that the city is now in a financial position to make charitable contributions. The strange gesture also puts Buffalo in the embarrassing position of donating money to itself.

And what of the new trees that are being planted at various locations around town? Planted in the middle of a hot, dry summer, the task of watering falls to the homeowner who gets the city tree planted in the right-of-way in front of his house. Art Traver of Wendell Duchscherer says residents are routinely asked to water these trees for at least the first year. Quick math says that there may eventually be over 7,000 residents turning on their hoses to water newly planted trees, and paying American Water Services, another private company that manages the operations of the city’s water department, who should be grateful. But that’s another story.

STAY THE COURSE

Based on conversations with the mayor’s spokesman, Peter Cutler, there’s also an astounding lack of communication within city hall. On June 20, the Common Council unanimously approved a resolution put forth by Delaware District council member Michael LoCurto requesting that FEMA extend its funding deadline for the removal of trees damaged by the October 2006 storm until after the spring of 2008—thereby granting more time for trees to recover. As LoCurto’s letter to the mayor states, “The October 2007 deadline forces the City to prematurely cut down trees simply because the money is available. This strategy is penny wise and pound foolish.” Yet on Monday, July 9, when asked about it, Cutler told me it was the first he’d heard of the resolution. Two and a half weeks and the mayor is totally unaware of a time-sensitive, unanimously approved Common Council resolution. Cutler also told me there is no plan to slow down the removal process and that only a few hundred targeted trees remain.

It could be that the wording of the contract with Dreamco rules out the possibility of an injunction. I can’t say because I’ve been unable to procure a copy of the actual contract. Rosanne Lettieri told me she doesn’t have a copy––although she seemed able to quote from it verbatim. Art Traver told me his copy was “out in the field.” Dan Kreuz told me I’d have to file a Fredom of Information Law request to receive a copy. Meanwhile, I’ve still not received the FOIL information I filed for on June 8, detailing how much the city pays Wendell-Duchscherer to fill the role of our defunct forestry department.

What I did get my hands on was a single page communication to the Common Council from Dan Kreuz, Acting Commissioner of Public Works, dated January 17, 2007. It’s a report of bids for post-storm tree removal listing five bidders. They were Byrd Brothers, Inc, of Wilson, North Carolina; Titan Development, Inc, of Gasport, NY; Terry Tree Service, LLC, of Rochester, NY; T.E.R. Enterprises, Inc, of Leader, Texas; and Dreamco Development Corporation of Cheektowaga, NY—who entered the lowest bid and won the contract. Dreamco also stands out in the pack as a company that’s not ordinarily in the tree-removal business—that’s how we wound up with the Ohio sub-contractor Arborturf to cut down the trees and stack up all the wood for Dreamco to sell.

PEELING BACK THE VENEER

I left messages with Interim Public Works Commissioner Dan Kreuz for a week after “STUMPED” was published, and when he finally accepted a call from me two weeks later on June 27, I asked him what we were going to do about the tree in front of my house. His reply was “I want to cut it down.” He also told me that he wasn’t very happy with my article. If I’d gotten things wrong, I said I’d be happy to correct those mistakes or print a retraction. He said it didn’t matter and he just wanted to move forward and get this process over with.

I then asked Kreuz what happens to the trees once they are cut down. “It’s the same contractor. Part of their contract is to get rid of the wood however they see fit. So some of it is being logged, some of it’s being chipped, we really don’t get into those specifics with them. You’d have to talk to Rosanne (Lettieri). Like I said, she’s been selling some of the logs to people—she’s obviously trying to maximize her profits like anybody would, you know? Some of it’ll go for firewood, some of it’ll go for lumber, some of it is not worth anything. We leave that entirely up to her. That’s the way all of our contracts are. So I mean there’s markets out there for people that burn wood, they turn it into some bio-diesel...you know, it’s up to her to find markets for the waste and do what she has to do to get rid of it.” Kreuz said.

“She’s got some of these sculptors getting tree trunks from her to do artwork. I’m sure she’s got feelers out there everywhere, trying to do the best for her company (Dreamco Development Corporation). And I know she’s taking some of the stuff that’s not any good, she’s taking it to that site down Route 5 that the county has, I think. Down on Route 5 near the Bethlehem site.”

MAKING LEMONS OUT

OF LEMONADE

Therese Forton-Barnes is the driving force behind Carvings for a Cause, a community-wide fundraising initiative in support of Re-Tree WNY, the group that has a five-year goal to replace 30,000 trees in Western New York that were damaged or destroyed during the October 2006 snowstorm. I asked her how she gets the tree trunks that artist Rick Pratt has been carving into representations of famous local figures or symbols. “It’s been a pain. They’re coming from a lot of bugging, and a lot of pleading, and a lot of phone calling to the city and the county. And maybe I’ve gotten a few from Olmsted Parks, too. In the city, I’ve been working through Dan Kreuz and Rosanne somebody from Dreamco. We go to a site where they dump trees at 1110 Seneca Street. I don’t follow that part of it, but if you could help me get the stumps that would be great because people are reluctant almost to give them to us. I don’t know why. You know why? Because they go and sell the tree trunks. Some of these people make money off the trunks.”

Had she paid for any of the trunks? “No, but you know what? I’m almost at the point where I want to go in there and buy them for money which is absolutely absurd and I think the county executive and the mayor would probably yell at me for doing that—but it’s just that I’m waiting.” Then she recalled, “I did have to pay $500 for the first truckload. I paid $500 for the first truckload with my own money, which I hope to get reimbursed someday...but that was back, I’m going back to November. Then the second truckload...I called the county executive and told him what had happened and he said ‘Don’t do that, I will have another truckload brought to you.’ And he made a call and they jumped.”

AFTER THE GOLD RUSH

Nine months after the storm, the trees are almost done falling in Buffalo. As I write this, I’m getting reports of cutting crews on Delaware Avenue, North Street, and Richmond Avenue. Of course everyone involved in the tree removal process proclaims it a success quicker than a lumberjack can yell “Tim-ber!” But now, as the sawdust starts to settle, it’s a good time to look back and take stock of what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost.

To help measure, I’ll cite an article published in March 2004 in the Journal of Arborculture with the catchy title: “An Assessment of Management History of Damaged and Undamaged Trees Eight Years After the Ice Storm in Rochester, New York, US”. In Rochester, after their terrific ice storm of March 4,1991, the city used 75% crown loss as one criterion for tree removal, and even some of these were left standing at the request of residents. In Buffalo, we used 50% crown loss as the cut-off point for removal. And we held firm in all but a precious few instances.

As this story goes to press, the big Norway maple in front of my house is still one of those instances. On July 9 Peter Cutler had this to say to me: “There are five or six people, yourself included, that have questioned the cutting down of their tree. OK. If you wanna do something about it, you can do it. You had a second opinion taken, and if you feel as though you can come up with the financial resources to save the tree, you’re welcome to do it.” I was stunned. It was the first I’d ever heard that option coming from the city. I told him I’d been going back and forth between Dan Kreuz, Art Traver, and (arborist) Jeff Brett. He said that he’d just spoken with them that day, and that’s the current offer. I sent Cutler an email that I’d received from Jeff Brett indicating that he would reverse his initial diagnosis and agree with independent arborist Greg Haskell—provided I, or the city, pay to have Haskell’s recommended repairs performed. I added that while I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary to save the tree, it still seems to be the city’s responsibility, both legally and morally, in light of Brett’s reversed opinion.

In Rochester, because “it was recognized that crown loss does not adequately predict tree response and survival, the remaining trees (with between 50%-70% crown loss) were re-evaluated using a more detailed risk evaluation based on species, individual tree condition and age, and site location.” Damaged trees with less than 50% crown loss received corrective pruning and “were not removed because it was believed that they were not hazardous, would survive with minimal maintenance, and provide benefits to city residents.” In conclusion: “Analysis of management requirements from the March 1991 ice storm in Rochester indicate that crown damage, although a good indicator of future performance, needs to be combined with species type and tree size before an effective decision on removal can be made.”

That is the kind of thoughtful determination that comes when a city has a forestry department. In lieu of a forestry department that, according to Art Traver, employed 125 people at the height of the Dutch Elm disease problem in the 1960s, Buffalo currently has nothing. How things got to that state can be explained by a series of fiscal crises provoked by a shrinking tax base as residents left the city for the suburbs or other states. The responsibility for responding to last October’s storm fell, probably unfairly, to the city’s department of public works—ill equipped to manage the city’s urban forest. Desperate, the city decided to sacrifice trees that it saw no way to care for in the future, especially while the Feds were picking up the tab.

Dan Cray writes in the July 2 issue of TIME magazine that urban trees everywhere are in decline. United States Department of Agriculture guidelines call for cities east of the Mississippi to have a 40% tree canopy cover. According to the June 2003 study entitled Urban Ecosystem Analysis Buffalo-Lackawanna Area Erie County New York, our city had just a 13% tree canopy cover before the storm. Removing five percent of our trees hasn’t helped correct this sad statistic.

Equally troubling in terms of our air quality, the TIME article quotes David Nowak, Project Leader with the US Forest Service’s Northern Research Station as saying that “A big tree does 60 to 70 times the pollution removal of a small tree.” Following that metric, the city would have to immediately plant about half a million small trees to make up for the over 7,000 mature ones that have come down since the storm—that is, if we are to enjoy the same benefits including carbon dioxide absorption, air particulate filtration and temperature control. If we even could plant 7,000 young trees today, it would still take decades of growth to return us to pre-storm levels.

MONUMENTS

The monuments to the storm recovery are now scattered all around the city, barely six inches tall and circular, although some are about four feet across. They’re situated on virtually every street, in every section of town. Some residents have attempted to beautify them by hollowing them out and planting flowers, the way people will decorate a spot at the side of the highway where a loved one slipped away.

These dangerous stumps are vivid reminders not only of the harsh snowstorm we all lived through, but also of the shortsighted and greedy response that was provoked by the lure of free money from FEMA. Now that private companies have made off with federal money plus the timber value of 7,000 trees, we have exchanged the possible risks associated with damaged trees for the certain risks associated with rock-hard stumps. And those remaining stumps will block our wishes to replant on countless stretches of city right-of-way as long as they remain.

Many of these can’t be removed without tearing up sidewalks and sewer lines, water and gas lines, curbs and driveways. “Location” is the dirty little word that nobody likes to talk about. We may be able to replant 7,000 trees eventually through charitable organizations like Re-Tree, but we probably won’t be able to put them where they were. Our tree-lined streets are likely to hold the empty spaces created by this recovery for decades to come. Long after the crews have rolled away, and after the various players have moved on.

Year after year, as people look at those stumps, the legend will grow. People will visit and remark about all the stumps. And even though Buffalo is no longer included in the list of thousands of municipalities that have earned the distinction Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation—a distinction we lost with the final demise of our forestry department in 2004—we may still earn the nickname Stump City USA.

Unless, of course, FEMA comes through for Buffalo once again. At which point, I just might put in a bid for the stump removal contract myself—now that I see how it all works and that you don’t need any work experience to grab a quick million in government contracts. The government is estimating $1.4 million to remove 7,000 stumps at $200 a pop. If I can get the bid for $1.4 million, all I have to do is find somebody who can do it for $100 a stump and I’ll clear $700,000. Minus insurance and the rental of a big field to use as a concentration yard. Plus the value of the wood, of course.

This year’s city budget includes $1,000,000 to hire a city forester and help pay for some tree-care services. While that sounds encouraging, Art Traver at Wendell Duchscherer told me a more appropriate number would be along the lines of $20 million to deal with the various setbacks the city’s urban forest has suffered.