Newton Cemetery & Arboretum requests exemption from Newton’s Tree Preservation Ordinance

In October, the Newton Cemetery & Arboretum (NC&A) sent a letter to the City Council’s Programs & Services Committee requesting exemption from Newton’s Tree Preservation Ordinance (TPO) – both in the current form of the ordinance and under either of two proposed revisions to it (one by the City Council and one by the Mayor’s Office). To further explain its position, NC&A invited the Programs and Services Committee to come for a site visit, which occurred on November 19.

In its letter and presentation during that site visit, the NC&A’s management explained that:

• NC&A has long-term obligations to serve as a burial ground for the City of Newton and to provide perpetual care of burial plots.
• NC&A also serves as a public park and arboretum — and is accredited as a Level II Arboretum by the Arbnet professional arboretum network. This certification requires “employing a staff of professional arborists, offering public educational programs, and maintaining an arboretum plan to ensure appropriate care of the tree canopy.”
• Within the next three or four decades, NC&A will run out of space for burial plots to sell, so it is planning now to prepare an endowment that will make NC&A financially sustainable for the long term, after there is no revenue from sale of burial plots.
• To help fund this endowment, NC&A is currently developing The Knoll, the last of its land that is available for burial plots. (As part of this development, NC&A removed around 200 trees two weeks ago.)
• In general, the TPO requires that — within 18 months following tree removals — the cumulative diameter of any trees removed must be replaced with the equivalent cumulative diameter of new trees, or else fines will be assessed (see pages 11-18 of this document). (NC&A’s plans for full compliance with the TPO would call for planting about 650 trees, since the replacement trees would be smaller than the trees removed.)
• NC&A believes that the replacement of trees in accordance with the TPO does not align with horticultural best practices. NC&A provided excerpts of its Horticultural Master Plan, which says it aims to increase tree canopy, improve species diversity, expand native plantings, and ensure tree health. NC&A is planting 50-60 trees per year on a regular basis, not triggered by tree removals. NC&A prefers to plant smaller trees, since they have a higher success rate, but the requirements of the TPO push it toward planting larger trees to achieve the required total cumulative diameter. Planting all the replacement trees within 18 months would strain NC&A’s capacity for planting and would result in a large cohort of trees all the same age, which decreases resilience.
• NC&A believes that 18 months is far too short a timespan for planting the replacement trees required by the TPO. NC&A had requested the Mayor to include in its count of replacement trees the trees that NC&A had planted in the past five years plus the trees that NC&A plans to plant over the next ten years. In a compromise agreement, the Mayor accepted the ten-years-in-future trees as replacement trees but not the five-years-in-past trees. That agreement specifies annual requirements for NC&A — in both number of trees planted and total diameter of trees planted — for each of the next ten years and requires NC&A to report annually for the City’s tree warden to confirm requirements are being met.
• NC&A claims that the TPO also presents a financial hardship for NC&A — due to the cost of replacement trees and/or potential fines — as NC&A strives to build its endowment for long-term financial sustainability.

During the site visit, there was some discussion among Councilors about how an exemption could be included in the TPO with criteria to limit it to, for instance, certified arboretums with horticultural plans that align with the objectives of the TPO.

City Councilor Emily Norton, who did not attend the site visit, expressed concern about the loss of tree canopy: “Trees cool the air, clean the air, mitigate against flooding, provide habitat for wildlife, and improve mental health. Newton is losing tree canopy, at a time when climate change is bringing more extreme heat and more flooding, so we need trees more than ever. With this backdrop, it is completely illogical that we would exempt the Newton Cemetery from our Tree Ordinance. They just removed 200 mature healthy trees, thereby causing more heat, air pollution and risk of flooding to abutting neighbors. So we should incentivize them to do more tree cutting? That makes no sense to me.” 

Mary Ann Buras, president of NC&A, said, “NC&A’s goals are not that different from the Tree Ordinance  — caring for our trees. NC&A has a long-term view and has been working since 1855 to maintain a diverse, mature tree canopy. Our request for an exemption from the Tree Ordinance is separate from our agreement with the Mayor regarding the Knoll Project. We had asked the Mayor for a five-year look-back in accounting for our plantings because we have been planting all along, not just in response to tree removals. That look-back was denied, unfortunately, so the planting we did over the last five years — 600 inches in total tree diameter — doesn’t count. We’ll have to make up for it with even more plantings over the next ten years. In counting replacement trees, we also get no credit for our work on meadow areas, pollinator gardens, shrubs, perennials, and grasses, which are environmentally beneficial.”

Councilor Josh Krintzman, chair of the Programs & Services Committee, said, “Through our review and re-write of this ordinance, I am hopeful that the committee will send a recommendation to the full council that strengthens our tree ordinance and ensures that any future tree removal makes sense and is appropriately mitigated. I understand the Cemetery’s position. As a Level II arboretum, the Cemetery has made it clear that their employees are responsible for a significant number of trees and must already engage in management practices in line with an approved maintenance plan. It makes me think that maybe, through the revised ordinance, rather than requiring the arboretum to act like everyone else, we should encourage everyone else to act like an arboretum.”