Earth to Gahan: Street trees increase home prices, shade trees reduce household energy use, and these effects can be measured and expressed in dollars.

Following up on Saturday's post ...

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

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.

... our friend W found two informative links. First, what it costs to plant trees.

Tree Planting Costs

Tree planting is a special task that can add to property value and increase curb appeal of the property, and may also serve to better separate your property from neighbors.

Average cost of a 4’ - 6’ tree, planted (about $ 106 each)

Then, how to determine what these trees are worth in cold, hard cash value.

Calculating the Green in Green: What's an Urban Tree Worth?

For urban dwellers, trees soften a city’s hard edges and surfaces, shade homes and streets, enhance neighborhood beauty, filter the air, mitigate storm runoff, and absorb carbon dioxide. Trees may even reduce crime and improve human health. However, these benefits have not been well quantified, making it difficult for urban planners and property owners to weigh their costs and benefits or assess tree cover against competing land uses.

New research from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station demonstrates that street trees increase home prices in Portland, Oregon, that shade trees reduce household energy use in Sacramento, California, and that these effects can be measured and expressed in dollars.

A study led by economist Geoffrey Donovan, research forester with the PNW Research Station, determined that trees planted on the south and west sides of Sacramento houses reduced summertime electricity bills by an average of $25.16. In a second study in Portland, Donovan’s team found that street trees growing in front of or near a house added an average $8,870 to its sale price and reduced its time on the market by nearly 2 days. These economic benefits spilled over to neighboring properties: a neighborhood tree growing along the public right¬of-way added an average of $12,828 to the combined value of all the houses within 100 feet.

The simple fact is we've all become numb to Jeff Gahan's signature Shade Eradication Program.

What Judge Cody wants, Judge Cody gets -- with valet efficiency. The remainder of us wait years for our stumps to be ground and replantings to occur.

Meanwhile, Gahan's shadeless semi-walkability proceeds apace. It's an exquisitely banal dictatorship ... but it's our exquisitely banal dictatorship, with anchor cuff links and everything.

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 labyrinthic bowels of Lawyer Gibson's Information Protection Program.

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 labyrinthic 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.

Our last comprehensive survey of Gahan's urban canopy impotence came on March 7 of this year.

ASK THE BORED: You can't always get tree stumps zapped when you want, but if you're a V.I.P. -- well, you get what you need.

(Always) bear in mind that even as Jeff Gahan's "parks and recreation" fetish -- which always was more about power than production -- has occupied a disproportionate place in his agenda, hundreds of trees outside the boundaries of his suburban-flavored parks have fallen. Some were dead, others living.

A huge number were brought down for the noble cause of making a Greenway auto-friendly.

During a time of enhanced urban heat island effect, and as the mayor plays his oblivious daily shell game about "walk-ability," which can be translated as "drive-ability," seeing as he hasn't once grasped what it really means, these (shade) trees generally have not been replanted until the cost can be shifted elsewhere, as with grandiose street reconstruction projects financed by the federal government.

In short, under Gahan, the urban tree canopy has received far more contempt than scant attention.

Naturally, with mayor pattern baldness now prevalent throughout the city, the time has come to unleash the propaganda commissariat to issue stirring declarations of victory amid the stumps.

City Receives Grant for Tree Inventory to Promote Long-Term Urban Canopy Strategy

In January of 2017, the City of New Albany received a $20,000 matching grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry, as part of the 2016 Community and Urban Forestry Assistance grant project.

Meanwhile, proof again that books don't line any of their shelves.

Scientists Discover Yet Another Reason Cities Need More Trees, by Katharine Schwab (Co.Design)

Using a computer model, scientists quantified how trees impact local weather and save energy.

Trees make neighborhoods look beautiful and feel safe. They can also play a key role in reducing the impact of wind in cities.

That might seem inconsequential at first. But wind can affect things like humidity, temperature, how pleasant it is to walk around outside, and even the pressure gradient between the interior and exterior of buildings. When there’s a larger gradient, more air from outside will enter a building through small gaps and openings, requiring greater energy consumption to heat or cool the building. Researchers from the University of British Columbia created a computer model showing that when there are no trees in a neighborhood, that pressure gradient goes up by a factor of four. Because wind pressure can be the root cause for about a third of a building’s energy consumption, the finding means that if there are no trees around, the cost to maintain a building’s temperature can rise. The researchers estimate that trees in the Vancouver neighborhood they modeled save 15% on your energy bill in the summer and 10% in the winter.

Here's your bibliography.

Got any readers down there in the Down Low Bunker?

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A SELECTION OF PREVIOUS ARTICLES

ASK THE BORED: Years and years later, finally those stumps in the verge have been pulped.

Unheard of in New Albany: "Going forward, I will be more sensitive to the spectrum of concerns regarding trees."

At least this time Pinocchio felled his OWN tree.

"Eventually there'll be a plan to replant" the clear-cut tree cover, but of course no one can say what or when that might be.

Politics, good judgment, social media, and why I refrained from voting in the Floyd Circuit Judge race.

2016 council budget hearing: Money for the Tree Board to cut trees, or plant them?

Placing a dollar value on the services that street trees perform.

Unlike New Albany, "The people of Somerville, Massachusetts really, really care about trees."

New Albany's Tree Board -- statute, staff and board members.

Whatever happened to the Tree Board, anyway?