Centerville City officials are considering a change which would prohibit the planting of trees in park strips. On May 7 City Attorney Lisa Romney outlined for the city council many of the issues the city is experiencing with the trees.

Most of Centerville has narrow park strips at 4 feet, Romney said and within that strip several utility companies bury their lines. This leaves very little room for growing trees that over time would fill the area with their roots, often causing sidewalks to buckle, she said. Another challenge is how many utility companies bury their lines in the park strip, she added.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, every time we drive down the street, they’re putting in new fiber, new air, everything’s going in the park strips,” she said. “We had one company come through and then three months later, we’ve got another company coming through and I’m just thinking, ‘how much room is left in those park strips?’ Some of our water meters are in there. We have our culinary water laterals or sewer laterals, irrigation water laterals, and then we have a lot of the telecommunications coming through.”

In 2016 former city recorder Mackenzie Wood who was then an intern with the city conducted a survey of all of Centerville’s sidewalks and determined that the city had over 8,000 vertical faults in its sidewalks. That number has now increased to more than 11,000, Romney said.

Since the city is responsible for the safety of its residents, Centerville can be held liable for “displacement of like a quarter of an inch or a half an inch, and somebody trips on that if we knew or should have known, and we didn’t mark it,” she said.

In recent years the city has allocated $100,000 per year to address this problem; last year 16 sidewalks were fixed and in every case the tree had to be removed, Romney said.

“The data shows you that as the tree ages it is damaging our infrastructure,” she said. “And so what was happening is we were putting a lot of money into fixing our sidewalks.”

For the past several years the city has offered a voucher program where for every tree it removed from the park strip it would give the homeowner the funds to purchase another tree and plant it as long as it was 10 feet or more from the sidewalk. 

In its first years, the program was voluntary but now as the problem has intensified, when the city rebuilds roads “we’ve just told the residents, that we’re removing the trees due to the damage to the infrastructure,” Streets Supervisor Marc Marchant, said. “This year, we didn’t give the residents an option, whether they kept their tree or not, if they’re to damage the sidewalk or not. We just said we’re removing the trees from the park strip, and the city will issue the voucher and the tree needs to be planted 10 feet behind the sidewalk.”

Despite these efforts, the problem has only gotten worse as trees throughout the city mature and now something permanent needs to be done about it, Romney said. “What we would like to do is actually finally codify this and say, as a matter of policy in our municipal ordinance that we do not allow trees in the park strip.” 

Much of the problem has occurred because when developers are focused on selling their project, they put in trees that are attractive initially and do not worry that the trees may be too big for the area in 20 years, City Manager Brant Hanson said. City personnel try to educate and work with developers in those instances but it’s an uphill battle, he said.

City staff will now present the draft ordinance to the city tree board for review and input. They will incorporate any recommendations from the tree board and bring an updated package back to city council after which public hearings will be scheduled on the proposed ordinance.

If the ordinance is approved, the streets department will not go through the city and remove all the trees in 4-foot park strips, Romney said. 

Instead, “We’re going to do it piecemeal in conjunction with street projects,” she said. “So when we go in and do a complete street reconstruction, or we’re working in the area [with] ADA ramps, that’s when we’re going to take care of the trees and we replace the sidewalk, or if we decide we want to focus on an area of very large trees that need to come out. Really, it’s with those street projects … we’re already there, we’re already opening up these places, so it’s cost effective as well to do it that way.”

The city also plans on increasing its outreach through the city website and other media to educate the public on the tree planting restrictions and sidewalk replacement program.