Parks Dept Says 3-5 Year Wait for Tree Repairs

All of the trees in Queens are leading to a ton of problems lately. First the decision to chop down a 600-year-old tree nearly tore a community apart, then trees were falling on top of houses during the great wind storm of early October, and now MyFoxNY reports that a group of angry homeowners in the borough are up in arms about a tree stump.

Over the summer a fallen tree caused major sidewalk damage, and when crews chopped it up and carted it off they left the stump and damaged sidewalk behind. After a local called 3-1-1, the city told residents that it could take 3 to 5 years to fix... possibly longer! Why so long? The city said they only had one functional stump-grinding machine (if that is a real machine) — even though they really have several. Fox says shame on the Parks Department, and finds out that if this wasn't a city-owned tree, the tree's owner would have had 45 days to pay for and repair the sidewalk... and let's be real, regular folks don't just have stump-grinding machines lying around.