“When I drive up the tree-lined and heavily-canopied winding road that is 327, I always know I’m coming home….”
One who commented to the Enfield Town Board on Rockwell Road pruning, June 26.
Reporting and commentary by Robert Lynch; July 14, 2024
Personal preference: I like driving Pennsylvania’s back roads. There’s an undisturbed, understated quality to the experience. Many of their surfaces remain gravel, with ruts and potholes graded away once yearly by equipment pulled from the 1950’s. Roads seldom run straight. Intersections become anyone’s guess. And most notably, the trees and stone fences crowd incredibly close to the driving lanes. Take it slow and you’ll be OK. The roads may fall short of what New York highway engineers at a Cornell School for Highway Superintendents would call “state standard.” But, then again, the Keystone State is not the Empire State.
Nor, apparently, is it the Town of Enfield.
Since mid-June, residents of our town’s Rockwell Road have voiced concerns about the overly-aggressive tree-pruning policies of the Enfield Highway Department, headed by Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins. The Town Board authorized Rockwell and adjoining Porter Hill Roads to receive “Permanent Improvements” earlier this year, and did so at Rollins’ request. The Superintendent views tree management as essential to the improvements he’s making.
“This is my job, and I put my heart and soul and family in it,” Rollins told a roomful of residents at a quickly-convened emergency Town Board meeting June 26th, a session prompted by impassioned emails to Board members urging Highway staff halt their aggressive pruning.
What bothered residents most was that Rollins’ policy would remove any “canopy” that roadside trees extend to overshadow the roadway. Rockwell was being given a “buzz cut,” its right-of-way opened brightly to the sky.
“I think it was over-pruned,” John Friedeborn of Enfield’s Bostwick Road, informed the Board. “I’ve never seen pruning like that,” Friedeborn maintained. “Bad pruning results in decay and problems down the road.” (He intended no pun.)
John Friedeborn ought to know. He’s the former owner of Cascadilla Tree Care and a one-time City Forester for Ithaca.
“The basic rule of thumb is 20-25 per cent is about the max that you would prune in terms of foliage on a given tree,” Friedeborn said his experience has taught him. Removing a greater proportion would weaken the tree and more likely kill it.
But to Superintendent Rollins, a roadside tree deserves less concern that does the safety of the driving public, and to some extent, the convenience of his maintenance crews.
“I’m sorry, but it’s a public road; it’s not a private road,” Rollins told one woman that night, in her case responding to concerns about major excavation of Van Ostrand Road by Enfield crews in recent weeks. “And that’s what I’m gonna’ do,” Rollins said, “is make them (the roads) safe for the public, over all public.”
“It only takes one tree and one limb to come down on a car or a person; it only takes one tree to lay across the road for somebody to run into it,” Rollins told the meeting.
Rollins’ policy regarding trees, the Superintendent said, is to clear the right-of-way; both at roadside and overhead. The state grants towns a 49.5-foot right-of-way, he said. So when his department renovates a road, crews measure 24 feet each way from the centerline, mark the distance, and cut just about anything that stands inside the marker, both on the ground and above.
State law may permit such a rigid, no-exceptions approach. But just because you can do something, does it also mean you must? That’s the central question dividing the Superintendent from his critics.
“When I drive up the tree-lined and heavily-canopied winding road of (NY Route) 327, I always know I’m coming home, and I mean home in the greater sense of the word,” Rockwell Road resident Julie Magura read into the meeting’s record. “As soon as I make a right turn onto Rockwell, I am always blown away by the dappling light coming through the maples when the sun is setting to the west,” Magura continued. “It’s striking, like something you would see in an old New England calendar.”
Many of those maples Magura loves on Rockwell’s eastern end may meet their fate, falling to the chain saw, if Rollins’ strategy prevails.
Northern Porter Hill Road has already received the Rollins clean-cut treatment. Magura doesn’t like it.
“When I drove down Porter Hill… I was absolutely stunned,” Magura stated. “To me, it feels like a massacre.”
About 14 people, aside from Rollins, spoke at the Town Board’s meeting. Most were critical of the Superintendent’s by-the-book policy. One or two were neutral. Only Dennis Hubbell, President of the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC), endorsed current practice. Hubbell said his company’s 13-foot-high fire trucks need clearance.
“When we’re going on a call, we’re not really looking at those tree branches hanging out,” Hubbell cautioned. Worst case, he said, a truck’s driver could have a “knee-jerk reaction,” heading toward the shoulder with a massive fire engine lying “up on the ditch flopped over and people hurt.”
But Hubbell’s was clearly the minority opinion. Concern for bucolic beauty prevailed.
“We just moved up here in February,” Hines Road resident newcomer—yet long-term Ithaca visitor—Andrea Sutton told the Board, “and I’ve always loved it because of the trees.” Trees form a “beautiful canopy” that blankets Hines at her house, Sutton said, and she volunteered to clean up any debris that may fall.
“It scares me to see Porter Hill and Rockwell,” Sutton said.
At present, Porter Hill Road has been trimmed at its lower section, but not its upper portion. Rockwell’s pruning has just begun, mainly on its western end. Rollins said cutting toward the east may commence in the fall.
Rockwell Road’s Charlie Elrod and his wife, Lori, also brought their concerns to the meeting. Charlie shared a PowerPoint.
“This is one of the most beautiful and enchanting places, the Town of Enfield,” Charlie Elrod stated. “I’ve traveled the world around, and this is the place I come home to; it’s just an incredible place,” he added.
Elrod had met with Superintendent Rollins days before the meeting. The resident expressed his concerns. He said the meeting did not go well.
“He said he is legally required to clear the roads in the manner that they do,” Elrod reported Rollins as saying. “He said he can do whatever he wants to.”
“The idea that there is no authority, no accountability from an elected Town official is quite distressing,” Charlie Elrod remarked.
And from a legal standpoint, there lies the problem. State law grants an elected Highway Superintendent sweeping authority over the maintenance of Town roads. Aside from the power of the purse, granted through its annual appropriation, a Town Board holds minimal operational oversight. Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond made that point clear at the meeting’s start. Most complaining residents acknowledged the limitation. They just regret they can do little to change it.
“In other places, the folks who do the actual work are accountable to somebody,” former Ithaca forester John Friedeborn remarked.
But Friedeborn may be thinking of Ithaca, not Enfield. Ithaca has a Department of Public Works, accountable to an elected Common Council, rather than a Superintendent who’s independently elected.
In 2020, former Enfield Supervisor Beth McGee sought to place her Town’s Highway Department under direct Town Board control and appoint a Superintendent. Amid cries of “Keep Enfield Elected,” (words that this Councilperson had echoed), McGee’s initiative, put to a referendum, lost badly.
Then there’s the question of advance warning. Some who complained at the meeting said they weren’t given sufficient notice until their trees were already gone.
In the Ithaca City, workers nail notices onto trees prior to cutting. Some towns spray colored dots onto tree trunks. Rollins has said he often doesn’t do that for fear it incurs municipal liability.
“It feels like this isn’t my road, it’s somebody else’s” the complainant from Van Ostrand Road (later identified as Madonna Stallmann) told Rollins. “You work for us. Why can’t we all talk and get these things resolved before the damage is done?” she asked.
Rollins said he does talk.
He claimed he contacts property owners in advance of cutting. Highway Department crews start early, but end
at mid-afternoon. The Superintendent
maintained he stops by some homes after-hours.
“No one came to our house,” one woman interrupted.
A heated exchange ensued, one that reopened old wounds. Its accusations are best confined to the audio archives. It’s “all your way or no way,” the complainant described Rollins’ attitude.
The session’s second hour proved less combative than its first. Complaints still aired; but constructive dialogue began. Charlie Elrod said Rollins had earlier warned that he’d abandon the Rockwell Road improvement if he couldn’t cut the trees. I polled attendees. They said they wanted improvements done.
John Friedeborn suggested the Town retain an arborist to guide Rollins chain saw on future projects. The Board made no promises, but Redmond said the idea warranted consideration during budget time this fall. I’d suggested Enfield create a conservation advisory committee to recommend best pruning practices. Those in the room and others on the Town Board expressed interest.
Perhaps most importantly, Rollins and Rockwell’s residents agreed to talk more openly and frequently before additional trees get cut.
One of the reasons Rollins cited for his aggressive tree pruning is to hasten snow removal. Tree canopies, he maintained, keep sunlight from reaching the pavement and melting the snow and ice that’s accumulated.
“The ideal… procedure is cutting out everything over the road, even the higher limbs,” Rollins said.
“There will be sun on the road; there’s no leaves on the trees in winter,” Gray Road’s Thomas Reyer rebutted.
Rollins disagreed. He said bare branches do impede sunlight.
“Well so what?” Reyer shot back. “Just because it melts a little faster, that’s no reason to destroy a whole canopy… That’s destructive and insane to destroy nature like that… That’s crazy talk.”
The Van Ostrand excavations also drew concern. “It is just shocking,” Madonna Stallmann complained. “It’s not only trees that were taken out, fully healthy trees that were holding the roadside… the soil was removed, truckloads and truckloads and truckloads, days and days and days of soil pulled away….”
Van Ostrand’s “a single-lane road and it’s a traffic hazard,” Rollins answered her. “A road is supposed to be 20-feet wide… water was always washing that hill down.”
For what it’s worth, the Van Ostrand Road hog-out was never listed among the “permanent improvements” the Enfield Town Board funded back in January.
Our Town’s 2020-adopted Comprehensive Plan states, “Enfield residents value and wish to maintain the rural character of the Town.” In that same paragraph, the Plan discourages changes that would “adversely affect Enfield visually or otherwise degrade the Town’s rural nature.”
And maybe those words get to the heart of what June’s meeting was all about. To many, Enfield should cling to its “backroads Pennsylvania” character, canopy and all.
One of Enfield’s two state highways, NY Route 327, retains its canopy. Rollins told the meeting that its canopy remains only because New York State lacks time and resources to prune it back. But I question that explanation. Rt. 327 serves as the gateway to Robert H. Treman State Park. I have to believe there’s support shared among persons of influence to keep the road park-friendly.
In my opinion, a pruned-back Rockwell Road looks ugly and bald. By contrast, the road’s untouched canopied portion remains inviting. Residents have valid reasons to be concerned. Highway Superintendent Rollins’ opinions warrant consideration; his authority deserves respect. Yet still, in the final analysis, public consensus should prevail. That’s the democracy Enfield deserves.
“Now when I drive through Enfield, all I can wonder when I see a beautiful maple, walnut, oak or other hardwood tree is when is that one going to be cut,” Julie Magura worried aloud to our Town Board that night in June. Come to think of it, I’m having the same thought myself.
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