Village Board Looks Into New Tree Removal Service

The Rockville Centre board of trustees discussed a new tree removal service, along with a few other topics, at their briefing sessions Tuesday night at village hall.

Superintendent of Public Works Harry Weed said that the public works department is looking into a tree removal system similar to the one that Hempstead Town currently has in place.

The town provides services for residents to remove unhealthy street trees on their property for a $450 fee. This service saves residents from having to hire a private contractor to come in and do the removal.

In the event that a resident wants to remove a healthy tree, the resident is required to take out a permit and make plans to plant a new tree in place of the old one, meaning that the resident has to pay a permit fee and a planting fee on top of the removal fee.

If Rockville Centre was to adopt such a plan, Weed said that the determination on whether a tree is considered healthy or unhealthy would be made by the public works department. If the decision was not obvious, the public works department could use the village’s landscape consultant Bob Schenone or utilize Garden City’s arborist for guidance.

Mayor Francis Murray said that the use of an outside arborist would have to be included in the cost of the permit.

Weed also said that the normal winter tree planting is going to be postponed until the spring because the tree lists were lost when the public work department's computers crashed. As of Tuesday, the computers were back up and running and the lists will be manually recreated.

Also discussed at the meeting was the building department's decision to go green with their plans. Building Department Superintendent Daniel Casella said that the exterior design review and the board of appeals will reduce the size of their plans that they distribute, saving applicants about 50 percent of paperwork that would just be thrown away or recycled.

“You can still read them and make them out, but they are not going to be oversized and/or cumbersome,” Casella said. “It will definitely save the applicant 50 percent.”

Senior Services Coordinator Cyd Beth Charrow also reminded the board that the senior center will be closed between Christmas day and New Years.

The board of trustees will meet again on Monday night at 7 p.m. for their December meeting at Village Hall.