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Employees chart new course for city's trees
(by Sue Reid - March 11, 2010)
Employees chart new course for city's trees
By SUE REID
Solon Service Department employees Joseph Markiewicz and David Papes will help the City of Solon take its tree program to the next level.
As recent graduates of the Tree Mission Academy offered through the Ohio Division of Forestry, both Mr. Markiewicz and Mr. Papes will work with the city to develop a master plan for trees. That will involve a total tree inventory for the city as well as an identification of all the hazard trees and available planting sites.
Mr. Markiewicz and Mr. Papes were the first employees with the department to complete the program, which involved 50 hours of class work.
"It's really going to help the whole tree division," Service Department Director Thomas Bandiera said of them graduating from this program.
Mr. Papes, a laborer with the department for 12 years and a tree specialist, said the course was instrumental in allowing him and Mr. Markiewicz to take the city's tree program to a higher level. The course was more advanced then the majority of classes they previously had taken, Mr. Papes, a resident of Northfield Center Township, said.
"The course taught us how to manage the urban forestry, which is very important for us," Mr. Papes said. "Trees are a very important part of the city's infrastructure."
There are approximately 7,000 street trees in Solon. The information they obtained through the program also will help the city get on a five-year pruning cycle.
"As far as inventory, you have to know what you have so you can move forward with all the other facets of the master plan," Mr. Papes said. "That will be our top priority now." They also will work to come up with a spring and fall planting list, Mr. Papes said.
Mr. Markiewicz, a resident of Newbury Township who has worked as manager of city streets for Solon for 33 years, said there is a great deal involved with planting a tree on a tree lawn.
"Working with the city trees as long as we have, we never had a master plan," Mr. Markiewicz said. "We wanted to educate ourselves so we could make the proper decisions for the long-term benefits of the city."
One of those decisions involves how to have a more diverse selection of trees, Mr. Markiewicz and Mr. Papes said.
"Diversity is key with the master plan," Mr. Papes said. "It's something we haven't had in the city for some time." Usually in Solon, most trees are pear, maple and crab apple.
"We want to expand our planting to be more diverse," Mr. Papes said.
Along with diversity is establishing a tree inventory, Mr. Markiewicz said. "We want to know what trees are in what subdivisions and what their ages are and their condition.
"We want to develop a five-year pruning cycle for mature trees," Mr. Markiewicz said.
A master plan will allow the city to "really have a footprint of where we are going to go from here," Mr. Bandiera said.
Mr. Papes, who has been in the tree business for 20 years, said the master plan will be completed this year.
"It is a short term goal for us and in many ways it is a long term goal," he said.
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