In the summer of 2006, as part of the mitigation process for the Pinnacle Park mixed-use development in southern Dallas, 200 trees were delivered to Samuell Farm, once a working farm on the border of Mesquite and Sunnyvale. The farm had an ignominious history of animal cruelty and mismanagement; in 2004, Friends of the Farm took over management of the property from the city, attempting to revive it by building hiking trails, refurbishing historic buildings and generally tidying up.
When the nonprofit took delivery of the trees, says Brooks, they "showed signs of heat stress and insufficient watering." With his farm's volunteers caring for them, he began to wonder: Why not keep all the city's reforestation trees in one place? At 340 acres, Samuell Farm was big enough to house 7,500 trees, and caring for them would provide work for volunteers and an educational opportunity for visitors. It would cut down on water use and help monitor whether developers had fulfilled their mitigation requirements. There could be a wood-composting site that would provide mulch to aid in tree planting. Brooks secured funding for the project from the Simmons Foundation and asked a city irrigator, Howard Saucier, to draw up plans for the tree farm. In the fall of 2007, he presented them to the Park and Recreation Department.
Mark Graham
A plastic fence separates shady, wooded yards from a once-forested lot that developers of Grady Niblo Estates clear-cut to make room for a new subdivision (above). Trees, apparently, weren’t on the list of things the developers wanted to preserve in the development, which neighbors describe as a moonscape.
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The response was less than favorable, he says. Not only was the Park Department not interested in a tree farm, it also sought to reassert its control over Samuell Farm, says Brooks. Faced with these roadblocks, Brooks decided to go straight to the city council with his proposal. Anticipating a meeting with the mayor, last April he requested information about the reforestation fund from the Park Department's assistant director, Carolyn McKnight-Bray.
"We have more than enough trees," McKnight-Bray replied in an e-mail. "We have so many trees we do not need a tree farm to support the Park system." McKnight-Bray added that the problem was maintenance—the city felt it did not have the resources to irrigate and care for more trees.
"That is precisely the dilemma that our proposed Tree Farm will address," Brooks fired back a week later. He had the funding, and the farm could use court-ordered community service volunteers to provide tree maintenance.
McKnight-Bray had told Brooks that the city was keeping its reforestation trees in a "tree bank," which Brooks asked to see. In a subsequent e-mail, McKnight-Bray revealed that the bank was actually a collection of tree purchases in several nurseries across the metroplex.
"Saying they have trees in a tree bank is like saying I have a Ford in every dealership," Brooks says, still frustrated. "They're vapor trees."
McKnight-Bray also told the Observer what she told Brooks—that the city has a tree bank, but that it can't handle a tree farm. Michael Hellmann, the Park Department's manager of planning and acquisitions, says the current mitigation "tree bank" has around 1,000 trees—far short of the 7,500 trees proposed by Brooks.
After two weeks of e-mail correspondence between Brooks and McKnight-Bray, the Park Department issued its "official position": There would be no reforestation tree farm at Samuell Farm.
The city's reforestation fund has also had its own set of problems, which became evident after a 2003 audit revealed not only that $40,000 was lost or missing but also that the fund's accounting system was so disordered that checks that should have made it into the fund ended up in the city's general fund or were never accounted for at all. And when it came to actual tree donations, city auditor Thomas Taylor wrote in a March 2003 memo that "there is no follow-up by the arborists or any report from [Park and Recreation Department] staff back to the arborists verifying actual delivery and planting." In other words, there was no proof that developers and other landowners were, in fact, making the donations required under the tree ordinance.
After the audit, says city arborist Erwin, "the error was detected and immediately remedied. There's been no problems since...If anything, the process became more efficient." Erwin says he doesn't handle reforestation fund money—that it goes directly to the accounting division—but he was aware that the 2007 cash balance of the reforestation fund, around $1.2 million, "has gone up considerably since then, but [is] well under $2 million."
So where does that money go? Neighborhood planting projects and Park Department tree and property purchases, Erwin says.
And for now, none of it seems to be coming Houser's way.
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In late January, Houser appeared before the city council's Quality of Life Committee and presented his ideas for the city to establish an office of urban forestry. He had done his homework, lobbying each committee member over the past year and preparing a PowerPoint presentation filled with colorful photographs of inspiring treescapes. In one of his final slides, he appealed to the city's new green consciousness: "As part of Dallas' leadership in the green movement, it is imperative that we properly manage our green infrastructure to attract business."
In the end, Houser suffered a setback: The committee decided to postpone its decision until its scheduled March briefing on the Texas Trees Foundation's Road Map. But things didn't look good.
