Chapel Hill celebrates Arbor Day with award

Students and town officials gathered Friday to plant a tree and celebrate Chapel Hill’s award-winning management of its canopies.

Second-grade students joined Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and others to plant a Bald Cypress tree at Homestead Aquatic Center to celebrate both Arbor Day and Chapel Hill’s receiving the “Tree City USA” award for the 11th year in a row.

Chapel Hill is one of 71 municipalities in North Carolina and one of more than 3,000 across the nation to receive the recognition by the national Arbor Day Foundation.

Every year, the town plants a tree on Arbor Day and invites a local second grade class.

“When I become to be a man, if I see that tree that I planted today, I can remember my friends and what I did,” said Hyunwoo Kwon, a second-grade student at Seawell Elementary School who helped plant the tree.

Kleinschmidt received the award on behalf of the town and urged all town residents to celebrate Arbor Day and to support efforts to protect trees and woodlands.

“Over the year Chapel Hill has really committed itself to the tree preservation, and I think it is because we recognize the value of a healthy tree canopy,” Kleinschmidt said.

“Not only because it really enhances our quality of life to have, and to live, but also because of the environmental benefit that trees provide in our country, as well our town.”

To win the award, Chapel Hill had to meet four requirements: a Tree Protection Ordinance, a department in charge of tree conservation, a community forestry program with an annual expenditure of at least $2 per capita and an annual Arbor Day observance and proclamation.

“We spent something like $3.66 per person, and it is over $200,000 annually on trees, tree care and salaries for the people that take care of the trees,” said Emily Cameron, a landscape architect for the public works department.

Local arborist Adam Smith said three people in the tree conservancy department handle tree maintenance daily, including an urban forester who plans out different kinds of landscaping and a landscape architect who orders trees and decides where they go.

Workers go around trees to remove dead wood and prune them, as well as remove limbs that might get in the way of vehicles.

With many construction and development projects in Chapel Hill, the town always tells developers protecting trees is the priority, Kleinschmidt said.

The Chapel Hill Town Council also plans to review potential changes to the tree protection ordinance at a Dec. 6 meeting.

The proposed changes would create what some say is a more balanced statute to protect Chapel Hill’s trees without overregulation of residential properties and property owners.

The current ordinance requires a permit to remove trees in an area of more than 5,000 square feet.

“We really hope to be able to accommodate the development proposals that also are expected to accommodate our interests in tree preservation,” Kleinschmidt said.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.