Yes, Vernon has a Tree Warden

It's one of those things that could make you do a double-take when looking at the accounts on Wednesday's Town Council budget deliberation agenda.

The tree warden.

Yes, Vernon has a tree warden. So does every other town, State law requires it.

Locally, it is an uncompensated position, held by Jeffrey Schambach, a highway foreman at the Department of Public Works. Vernon has two other DPW supervisors certified as tree wardens.

The account totals just $12,150, barely a drop in the $81 million bucket that is the proposed budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year. Most of the money is designated for equipment rental, if needed.

The position, though, has its share of responsibility. The tree warden is in charge of every tree that is on, threatens or hangs over any public right-of-way.

"If it's near the limits of a public road, I probably have looked at the tree," said Schambach, who has been the town's tree warden since 2004. 

Schambach said a lot of the time, it is a simple matter of inspecting a problem tree, determining if it is within the limits of a town road, and dealing with the obstruction.

But things can get complicated, like the case of the huge tree in front of the gray colonial home at the midway point of Center Road, near the intersection of Crestridge Drive. A few years ago, during a project to improve Center Road and install modern sidewalks, the roots of the tree were damaged while a catch basin was being installed, Schambach said.

The tree is dying a slow death, despite an effort to save it through deep-root fertilization, Schambach said. It was determined that the tree was not on the right-of-way.

But …

"Because the tree was damaged during a town-bonded project, we are trying to be pro-active," he said. Schambach said the October snowstorm threw his crew's scheduled off over the past five months, but he discussed the matter with a contractor (it's way too big for the town to handle it) and said it should be down in about two weeks.

"Trust me, we want it down," Schambach said.

Concurrently, Schambach has been supervising the latest phase of cleanup related to the October storm - along the Rails to Trails system and cleaning up the area around the upper fields at Vernon Center Middle School, also left a mess by the impolite storm.