Neighborhoods that plant together, stay together, Kris Sainsbury observed. It happened in City Point — and it will now happen citywide.
As the mayor set an ambitious new tree-planting goal for New Haven, City Point activist Sainsbury (pictured in plaid shirt at a tree planting last year) offered reasons for neighborhoods to support it.
Mayor John Destefano’s announcement came at a Monday night City Point fundraiser for the Urban Resources Initiative (URI), the local non-profit responsible for much of the tree planting that takes place in New Haven. Under the advisement of URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning, Destefano announced a five-year commitment to planting 2,000 trees per year.
The initiative will have a “double bottom line,” he said: It will not only make the city greener and more beautiful, but it will bring neighborhoods together around the common goals of planting and maintaining new trees.
That’s what has happened in City Point, as Sainsbury described it during a pre-fundraiser tour of the neighborhood. She told URI board members and supporters that the City Point community has been transformed by jointly planting trees and gardens. Neighbors feel a new sense of local togetherness and pride, she said. They come together to organize community events.
Monday night’s fundraiser was held at City Point’s Sage restaurant, where attendees were treated to a sumptuous spread of hors d’euvres, wine, and beer in exchange for their $50 entrance fee. At 5:30, as the evening was getting underway, guests boarded three mini-buses to see what URI has been up to locally.
The first stop was City Point’s Bayview Park, where Sainsbury was waiting to extol the virtues of URI, armed with a table full of snapshots of the neighborhood. She stood not far from where she helped to plant an American Liberty Elm over a year ago.
Sainsbury said URI has worked with the neighborhood to put in trees and gardens on public and private property in City Point, to the benefit of everyone involved. Planting trees has been shown to cut down on crime, Sainsbury said. It also can “make people more friendly and happier,” she said.
Bayview Park used to be dirty and littered with drug paraphernalia, Sainsbury said. People didn’t want to go there. With URI’s help, the neighborhood cleaned up the park and put new trees and shrubs in the ground. Then people started using the greenspace. They began to hold an annual celebration of the park, chanting, “Whose park is this? It’s ours!”
This year, for the first time ever, neighbors held an autumn festival in the park for local kids. “Many children had never carved or drawn on a pumpkin before,” Sainsbury said.
Less than an hour later, Mayor DeStefano echoed Sainsbury’s sentiments when he stood to address dozens of tree enthusiasts in the second floor bar area at Sage.
Community organizing develops differently from how it used to 11 years ago, he said. Back then, it was block-by-block, and neighbors would get together against something they didn’t like. Now, he said, people are organizing for things: to plant trees, to put in community gardens.
Often the result is “less about gardens and more about community,” DeStefano said.
“It’s amazing, it’s strong, and it’s strengthening the fabric of this great little city.”
Before announcing his ambitious new arbor agenda, DeStefano gave a little background. “Colleen [Murphy-Dunning] came to see me three months ago,” he said. “She pointed out we were losing more trees than we’re planting.” The city plants 300 to 400 trees per year, but it has to remove about 500 each year, he said. Trees are also suffering because of the way the city builds its sidewalks, he explained.
DeStefano said Murphy-Dunning later came back to his office with a number: 2,000. That’s how many trees she proposed the city plant each year.
Addressing an applauding crowd on Monday night, the mayor announced that he aims to have 2,000 trees planted each year for the next five years. He said his budget for next year will include money for 1,000 trees, to be planted by URI. The other 1,000 will be paid for by private partners. The mayor mentioned an unnamed local university he hopes will take on tree planting as a priority.
“The city is going to increase by six times” its budget for trees, DeStefano said. He promised to increase annual arbor money from $50,000 to $300,000. He later said the money would come out of the capital budget. The mayor’s proposal will need the approval of the Board of Aldermen.
After his remarks to the room, DeStefano said a new city tree initiative will have a “double bottom line” of increased community integration and a healthful municipal tree canopy. He predicted the plan would find the support of aldermen. “As I recall, these trees are planted in neighborhoods they represent,” he said.
“I’m pretty excited,” said Murphy-Dunning, after the speeches were over. “We’ve been working toward this for a long time.”
Murphy-Dunning (pictured) has been director of URI since 1995. Along with Chris Ozyck, she’s one of two employees at the organization, and the only full-timer. That may have to change if URI is to quintuple the amount of trees it plants, she acknowledged.
“It will be a major challenge,” she said. “I truly do wake up worrying about it.” But it’s important to set goals that make you stretch, she said.
Not only does URI need to plant more trees, but it needs to find private citizens and institutions to plant trees on their property. She said she plans to approach Yale and the Housing Authority of New Haven to ask them to buy trees for their property. URI will also be approaching regular city residents, to see if they will be willing to put trees in their backyards.
To create an army of tree planters, URI will rely on volunteers and expand its seasonal employment programs for teens and others, Murphy-Dunning said. “Teens are going to be the main focus, with other vulnerable populations,” she said. URI is looking into working with re-entry programs to hire released prisoners to plant trees, she said.
URI will be planting some 35 different species of trees, she said. The organization will be concentrating on putting trees in the neighborhoods need them the most.
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What recession?