Sean C. Morgan
This year is the 30th in a row in which the City of Sweet Home has been honored with Tree City status.
Lena Tucker, Oregon Department of Forestry Private Forests Division chief, presented an award commemorating the achievement to the City Council during its regular meeting on April 25.
“On behalf of the Arbor Day Foundation and our Oregon State Forester Peter Daugherty, I am pleased to present your 30-year Tree City USA Award,” Tucker said.
“I am here tonight to congratulate Sweet Home as being recognized as a Tree City USA for your tree-related activities in 2016. This is an accomplishment that only 60 other Oregon communities and about 5,500 other communities nationwide share.
“You have hit the milestone as 2016 is 30 years as a Tree City USA. There are only 10 other Oregon cities in the 30 and over club. That is a huge milestone.”
As part of the process, Mayor Greg Mahler proclaimed April 28 Arbor Day.
In 1872, Mahler noted, J. Sterling Morton proposed to the Nebraska Board of Agriculture that a special day be set aside for planting trees.
The holiday, called Arbor Day, was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska.
The event is now observed throughout the world, Mahler said in the proclamation.
The Tree City USA Award Program is sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and it is administered by the ODF, Tucker said.
“Tree City USA was designed to encourage better care of the nation’s community forests by awarding recognition to communities such as ours that meet the four basic standards of a good tree program.”
First, Sweet Home has a Tree Commission, said Tucker, who lives in Sweet Home and serves as chairwoman of the commission.
“We have a very robust, although small, group of volunteers that do that work with our forest here.”
Sweet Home also has a tree care ordinance, she said, and a community forest program with an annual budget of at least $2 per capita.
Fourth, the city officially participates in Arbor Day, with the mayor proclaiming it a special day in Sweet Home.
“We hold an annual poster contest for our elementary schools and our junior high school, and the posters are on display in the city library,” Tucker said. “The community votes on the winners.”
Children in the first through third grade at Foster and Oak Heights, fourth- through sixth-graders at Oak Heights and a junior high student were winners, Tucker said. Tree plantings were held Wednesday at Oak Heights and Thursday at Foster.
“The trees right outside our doors and windows provide critical benefits to the benefits to the people of Sweet Home, and open the next 15 years, urban areas are projected to increase substantially, so the role of trees for our environmental, our economic and our social well being will become even more critical.”
Trees can reduce erosion of precious topsoil by wind and water, Mahler observed, as part of the formal proclamation. They can cut cooling and heating costs, moderate temperatures, clean the air, produce life-giving oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife.
Trees are a renewable resource that provides paper, wood for homes, fuel for fires and countless other wood products, he said.
Trees in the city increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of business areas and beautify the community.
“Wherever trees are planted they are a source of joy and spiritual renewal,” he said.