by Don Haslett

Created on: April 04, 2009   Last Updated: April 06, 2009

Being the Property Manager of a low income, government subsidized housing co-op in Brooklyn, NY, I am always looking for ways to make improvements to the property at the lowest cost possible. I recently invited New York Restoration Project, who in conjunction with the Parks Department's Million Trees NYC initiative, was prepared to provide a remarkable amount of planted trees for my grounds at no cost. I spent a couple mornings walking the site with the project Horticulturist, marking spots that are off limits for planting due to buried utilities, potential areas for materials storage for our upcoming facade project, and areas adjacent to existing parking lots that could conceivably be expanded in the future. This left a good deal of open acreage to work with and several days later I had a proposal, which I happily brought to the Co-op Board.

"I am very pleased to present a proposal that will benefit and beautify our 26 acres with the addition of 160 planted trees, as shown on the accompanying color aerial photographs. As you can see there is a nice distribution of both flowering species as well as evergreens, so the enhancements will be year round. This entire project can be accomplished in less than two weeks, and it is absolutely, positively free of charge!"

Truth be told, before the meeting I had noted with some apprehension that the ceiling height in the Board room is only the standard eight feet. I wondered if this might be a problem when ecstatic Board members hoist me on their collective shoulders to march me around the room like a conquering hero. With this in mind you can imagine how unprepared I was to have the proposal met with utter silence. If not for the howl of the wind blowing across our unbroken tundra and the tap, tap, tap background noise of sandy particles blowing against the window panes, I might have thought that I'd been struck deaf.

Then the President rose to speak; "Though we appreciate your work on this project, we must say no. You see, in the future we may wish to cut down all of these trees to build more parking lots in our open areas. Parking lots are better than trees."

I pointed out that in anticipation of this I had left ample open space for potential expansion of each of our existing five parking lots. I suggested that while 160 free trees were proposed, they might find 100 to be more suitable. Or perhaps only fifty lightly scattered throughout the grounds? May I tell the Horticulturist that we can only accept an even dozen specimen plantings to line the easement road that runs through the middle of the property?

Stunned by the enormity of this unexpected total rejection I left the meeting with words from a Joni Mitchell song running through my head; "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? And they paved Paradise and they put up a parking lot."

Learn more about this author, Don Haslett.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.