Pusillanimous prioritization? Nickels and dimes later, it remains that we need HUNDREDS of trees planted yearly, not a few dozen.

This is what the two Rogers are talking about.

Let's pop the champagne -- the trees have been cleared!

Wait ... two Rogers?

Really?

So it seems. Meet this other Roger, who has written an excellent letter to the otherwise somnolent newspaper.

Need more green space, not less

Have you driven by the Clarksville Municipal Center property facing Veterans Parkway? It is sad to see the destruction of all the lawnscape and trees. We need to have more green space, not less. It is an unobstructed view of blight by our elected politicians in selling public domain land paid for by the taxpayers. Our politicians seem to chase the “almighty dollar.”

I have several questions. Did they have the right to sell the property? Why wasn’t the public better informed of this sale? Should we start to worry about other lands, Lapping Park, the golf courses, the area around the swimming pool? All of these properties supposedly belong to “all of us.”

What kind of absolute power have we given these politicians? I will express my displeasure with this event next time at the ballot box.

— Roger Cross, Clarksville

For a very long, I've been curious how many trees are planted in New Albany annually, and what role (if any) an obviously under-funded Tree Board plays in any of it.

Team Gahan has clear-cut virtually the entire city, so it's the perfect time to begin pretending the junta cares about trees.

Surely not since the founding Scribners set out to clear land for the civic forerunner of present-day New Gahania have so many trees fallen as during the reign of Jeffrey I.

He insists more trees have been planted than cut, though the documentary evidence of such remains hidden safely within the labyrinthine bowels of Lawyer Gibson's Information Protection Program.

Witness the information I asked of the Tree Board in April of 2016. Sixteen months later it presumably reposes on a shelf in Gibson's bookless study, gathering dust, right there next to the remaining Bicentennial coffee table tomes that Bob Caesar insists were sold out to an eager public at $50 a pop, later to be handed out like lollipops at ribbon cuttings even as Caesar and associates denies the existence of any records pertaining to the Bicentennial Commission's activities.

Recent city council budget hearings provide an answer.

Mr. Streips stated they (Tree Board) have planted around 70-75 trees around town and their goal by the end of the year is 100 new plantings.

Mr. McLaughlin asked if they could do anything like a "buy a tree" fundraiser.

There it is, in a nutshell. The city needs hundreds of trees planted, not a few dozen, and confronted with this fact, the city council president can think of nothing more relevant to suggest than a bake sale.

Presumably we can hold this nickel-and dime event in July amid the urban heat island. Or, we might fund the Tree Board to succeed -- and if city officials ever stepped outside their air conditioned cars and walked a few blocks, they might grasp the need.