Warren official sows seeds for re-establishing arbor commission

Staff report

WARREN

With the city demolishing 130 houses last year and planning to do the same in 2011, it’s an especially good time to re-establish Warren’s arbor commission, Councilman John Brown says.

“We need to look at urban forestation. We need to make Warren a place where you want to live, not a place where you have to live,” Brown said.

Brown and Councilman Al Novak had a meeting in City Council chambers Thursday to hear from people with knowledge of trees.

Alan Siewert, an urban forester with the Middlefield office of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, said using vacant lots for tree planting is a good idea, but he noted that many people make a lot of mistakes when they plant trees — by planting the wrong kind or by failing to maintain them.

“We need to consider them [trees] pets, not wild animals,” Siewert said of citizen efforts to plant trees, especially those in tree lawns.

Planting scores of trees and then leaving them to fend for themselves is likely to result in a lot of dead trees that will require even more work to remove, Siewert cautioned.

Participating in the discussion was Jean Engle of the Youngstown organization Treez Please, a nonprofit formed in 2007 that’s dedicated to addressing the need for a greener town.

Her organization’s goal is to reforest Youngstown — mainly working with vacant lot beautification.