By LINDA MOSS
moss@montclairlocal.news
Roughly 40 years ago Zorina Weber watched as a now-majestic maple tree was planted across the street from her house on South Fullerton Avenue. Today she and her neighbors are fighting to stop the township from cutting it down.
Weber and another resident have gathered about 60 names on petitions asking the municipality not to fell the tree, which stands in front of a house owned by Andrzej Kuhl and his wife Hilary Shank-Kuhl.
The tree’s trunk has two small signs tacked onto it, one from Weber and the second a hand-written letter by a child. Both implore the township to spare the tree, and residents actually came out to the street last Wednesday, Dec. 5, to stop a township contractor from removing it, even as two police cars responded to the scene.
“The tree is beautiful,” Weber said. “There is nothing wrong with it other than the sidewalk is raised a little.”
The municipality has notified a number of residents, including the Kuhls, around Montclair that they need to repair the broken slate sidewalks in front of their houses. The sidewalk by the Kuhl’s has been torn up by the roots of the large maple tree, making the path uneven and potentially dangerous to pedestrians.
The Kuhls received their notice in May, and in November they retained a contractor to do the work. The contractor took up the slate, and seeing the exposed roots Andrzej Kuhl said that he wanted a determination by township officials if just a portion of the roots could be pruned, or if the slate could be positioned around them so that the tree didn’t have to be removed.
“I think we can creatively figure out how we can maybe raise the blue stone a little bit or maybe move it away from the tree a little bit and still keep the tree,” Kuhl said.
He contacted Township Arborist Stephen Schuckman, but initially got no response. The arborist did respond to a second email, and he told Kuhl that he wanted to get input from a township foreman about the tree before making any decisions.
Then early last Wednesday morning both Weber and Kuhl were surprised when several large trucks, owned by a contractor working for the municipality, pulled up to the maple tree and got ready to cut it down.
“So that’s when I went out and told them they’re not taking it down,” Weber said. “We got in an argument. They said they were. I told them they weren’t. And then my other neighbor came out and we all stopped it. And then the forester came.”
The contractor told Kuhl and Weber that the township had directed him and his crew to cut down the tree, according to Kuhl.
Then the contractor called Schuckman and gave the phone to Kuhl to speak to the arborist, who said he would send a foreman over. The foreman did arrive on South Fullerton, as did two police cars, Kuhl said.
Finally, the foreman said he would come back to South Fullerton with Schuckman Wednesday, two days ago, to look at the maple tree and its roots but neither one of the men showed up, according to Kuhl.
”I have no idea of what they’re [the township] planning to do and what’s so particularly irritating is the treatment,” Kuhl said. “It’s just rude.”
Schuckman has looked at the tree and determined that the maple’s so-called “buttress” root is one of the roots that’s raising the sidewalk slab and it would have to be pruned to make way for the sidewalk as it is, according to Katya Wowk, the township communications director. But cutting that root would destabilized the tree, creating a safety hazard, she said.
The tree could be saved by rerouting the sidewalk around the buttress root, but to do that the hedges in front of the Kuhl house would have to be removed, Wowk said. The arborist is going to talk to Kuhl about the options for the tree, according to Wowk.
But according to Kuhl he was never told his hedges would have to be removed to rescue the maple. In an email to Schuckman this week Kuhl said that he suggested three options – pruning three smaller roots, elevating the blue stone by two inches, or moving the blue stone six to eight inches closer to his hedge and away from the tree.
“Your foreman thought this combination could work, but wanted you to inspect the site and discuss with us the specific detail,” Kuhl wrote. “Your visit was supposed to take place last Wednesday. My contractor just called me to say that this is really the last week he could do the work, as the ground will soon be frozen.”
The petitions have been delivered to Schuckman’s office on North Fullerton Avenue, according to Weber.
“It’s one of the most beautiful trees on the block and it’s really reached its peak,” she said. “I watched them put that in about 40 years ago.”