(Seguin) — The city of Seguin is responding to some concerns that have been raised about trees that are scheduled to be removed from the city’s Starcke Park Golf Course. Golf Course General Manager Bruce Allen recently provided the Seguin City Council with an update on the plan. Allen says the trees are being removed as part of the total overhaul of the golf course. Allen says the city’s Golf Advisory Board met and reviewed the tree removal plan. He says the board agreed that most of those trees needed to come down for a variety of reasons.
“The board reviewed every single tree that is on the list and they unanimously agreed to remove all the trees that were declared a safety hazard. They agreed to remove all of the trees where the new irrigation lake is going to go. The five trees that the architects wanted to accommodate some design changes, they unanimously agreed that the palm trees along River Drive West were a little bit out of place and so they are going to be taken up and then we had eight trees that the architects were concerned about shade issues. So, we looked at them and discussed each one and we are going to keep six of those eight and give them a chance. Some of them, if we have to take them down, they are in areas where we won’t destroy too much turf doing it which helps too,” said Allen.
Based on reports that the city received from arborists who examined them, some of the trees are not in good shape, but some others needed to come down because they would interfere with play at the redesigned Starcke Park Golf Course.
“The final category were some that the architects decided that they kind of interfered with the play and we decided to keep five of those six. The big one that is going to give a lot of heartache is the one on 13 but it is going to block the Tee shot. It will block about a third of the green and we would have had to pay to move the Tee box over and put a new cart path in and the board unanimously agreed to remove that,” said Allen.
More than 50 trees are expected to be removed as part of this plan. Allen says the city does have a plan to replace some of those trees, but those new trees would not necessarily end up on the golf course. The tree replacement is part of the city code, and Allen says they will abide by those rules. He says they want to look at the best placement for the trees, which will represent the best overall value for the community.
“We have a tree trust fund. We will be paying into that and it can be used to plant trees anywhere and there are places in the golf course that we can put those but the problem is the code also requires you to irrigate them — keep them alive. So, if we planted 40 trees, we would have to put those big bags around them for a year or so would mean hiring a part-timer just to keep them full and then we would need to run irrigation over to those things which would be like $1,500 per tree and if we put 40 trees in, two-thirds of the money will go to irrigation,” said Allen.
Assistant City Manager Rick Cortes explained the tree replacement rules. He says it’s not a tree-for-tree requirement.
Planting a young sapling to replace a healthy, mature tree would not be a fair replacement for those existing trees.
“We actually go by caliper inch of the tree so it won’t be tree for tree. It won’t be a one inch caliper tree replacing a 20 inch tree so we would have to go by the number of inches,” said Cortes.
This means a much larger number of new trees will need to be planted to replace the trees being removed from the golf course. Again, those trees don’t have to be planted on the course. The city could find other places where the trees would provide better benefits for the entire community.
Allen says they are bringing tree experts back out to take another look at some of the trees. Once that’s done, they’ll have a better idea of how much money will be available in the Tree Trust Fund, which will pay for the installation of the new trees.
“Right now, I’m estimating between $65,000 and $75,000 but we are having the arborists come out in a couple of weeks and go back and review all of them because I think there might be one or two they deemed a safety hazard and they are not but there might be two or three others that were deemed safe but they are not because they had three different arborists our there so they are going to come and document every single one. So, it’s somewhere in that range and there’s three at the end of the driving range that are dead so we will take them out,” said Allen.
The city is currently developing a plan that will spell out where the new trees should be planted. The golf course designer has suggested that they not be added to areas of play on the course, but the staff is looking at other areas near the course outside of the area of play. They are also looking at other areas in town that could benefit from planting new trees.