Augusta leaders defended the removal of dozens of large oaks from Greene Street and fielded questions about the city’s commitment to the environment, safety and quality of life at a Thursday town hall meeting in Olde Town.
Residents learned that a budget shortfall will likely limit tree removals on the upper end of Greene, while Mayor Garnett Johnson said the episode showed the city’s need to hire an arborist.
Commissioner Jordan Johnson, who organized the meeting at Heritage Academy, said the associated streetscape project will address longstanding flooding downtown that has affected many, including himself.
While working as a younger man for the Boys and Girls Club then headquartered at Heritage, Johnson said he went to retrieve an item from his parked car during a downpour.
The water level reached his parked car’s door, and he got further drenched when he was splashed by a sheriff’s deputy driving by.
“This issue of flooding touched me personally, when it got me from head to toe,” Johnson said.
Today, the Transportation Investment Act sales tax project “touches so many issues that this neighborhood has been asking former commissioners for for decades,” Johnson said.
Augusta has six downtown streetscape projects funded by the 10-year, 1% sales tax either ongoing or about to start. A project website at augustadtp.com provides brief updates about road closures and detours associated with the project.
City Traffic Engineer John Ussery said while no one on city staff is a tree expert, contracted experts assured them the trees had to come out, either for safety, to make room for new infrastructure, or both.
Stumps make way for school crosswalk
The city is installing a raised crosswalk, basically a speed hump with a flat top, to connect Heritage Academy facilities on located on both sides of Greene, Ussery said.
Motorists need to be able to see the children or adults as they enter the crosswalk, and some of the trees had obscured that view. Other trees were certain to be killed when new underground drainage structures damaged their root systems, he said.
“Is there an overarching scheme for the tree replacement?” asked Dan Funsch, one of about 40 to attend the meeting.
Ussery said the plan for replacing trees and shrubs “should have a uniformity to it.” He said the final product is expected to resemble the Georgia Department of Transportation intersection upgrades at Greene and James Brown Boulevard.
A co-leader of Augusta Run Club, Kirstyn Denney asked if the city engaged in “thorough thought and discussion” about making the upgrades without removing trees.
“Many of our runs, which happen almost every single day, make use of all these streets… Many of these trees that will come down are one of the few things that actually provide us shade while we’re exercising,” she said. “I know very well that we are not the only people who use those areas for walking or exercising, etc.”
Ussery said an earlier plan called for removing nearly all the trees on Greene.
“The trees that we are going to plant won’t grow as big, but should grow to a sufficient height where they look nice and should provide some shade,” he said.
Budget shortfall said to limit future tree removal
Downtown activist Kevin de l’Aigle asked about Phase 2 of the Greene Street project. Originally intended to run from East Boundary to 13th Street, its $12 million budget now covers only Greene between East Boundary and Fifth Street.
The upper end of Greene will actually see fewer tree removals due to the budget crunch, Ussery said.
“In the last set of plans I saw about two weeks ago, most of the landscaping went from, ‘We’re just going to remove trees and replant them’ to ‘we’re going to try to reshape a lot of the trees that are there,’” he said.
Another resident asked if the city would attempt to mitigate speeding anywhere besides in front of Heritage Academy.
Ussery said the raised crosswalk is possible because Heritage is in a school zone. The project’s other streets are not considered residential streets eligible for speed bumps.
Plans call to narrow the roadways at intersections. That tends to slow motorists down and shortens the length of pedestrian crosswalks, he said.
Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson, who attended the town hall “as a spectator,” said afterward the mass-removal of old trees would never have happened in cities such as Savannah and Charleston.
“We need a city arborist. I think that from a cities’ perspective we should have had an on-site, on staff expert to provide some guidance regarding how these trees are being cut,” he said. “Augusta is Georgia’s second-oldest city, and it’s incumbent on us to make sure of that.”
