Tree Sprouts Up At Council

Bus stops, rats, and one pesky dead tree marked the Cambridge City Council’s return to its regular meeting schedule yesterday evening, following a one-week break to attend the National League of Cities conference in Washington, D.C.

Harvard found its way to the center of several debates during the meeting, including the perpetually recurring row over a white ash tree toppled by Harvard construction crews while building graduate housing at Cowperthwaite and Grant Streets last September.

On Jan. 22, the council instructed City Manager Robert W. Healy to form a policy to “protect street trees that are in the path of construction.” In a letter delivered yesterday, Healy said such concerns already fall under a Massachusetts law allowing city governments to charge an assailant who “wantonly injures, defaces or destroys a shrub, plant, [or] tree” with a $500 fine and the cost of the defaced shrubbery.

Commissioner of Public Works Lisa Peterson defended the state law last night as “satisfactory.” Though Healy said the city had never fined a private contractor, Peterson said Cambridge had halted public construction projects because of inadequate tree protection “plenty of times.”

But Councillors Craig A. Kelley and Henrietta Davis said that the Grant Street ash cast a pall on the claim that the city’s tree safety measures were working.

“I don’t believe Harvard did follow the tree protection plan in this case, [and] it leaves a foul taste on the whole affair,” Kelley said.

“There are those that wonder, if it had been protected, would it have survived?” Davis said.

In addition to the tree hubub, the council discussed a proposed shelter at the MBTA Bus Route 69 Stop outside Johnson Gate.

Healy wrote that while sheltering commuters at the stops would be “desirable,” the shelter “would not leave adequate space for the heavy pedestrian traffic.”

Kelley again disagreed with Healy’s reasoning, advocating that the city “step in and make it as convenient and safe and comfortable as possible” to use the bus. The issue remains on hold for later discussion.

Though no residents commented on trees or buses, several asked the council to establish a task force to exterminate or extradite Cambridge rats.

Minka Van Beuzekom, who described herself as a member of the Area 4 Neighborhood Coalition Rodent Committee (A4NCRC), said the presence of rats could “only be solved by, dare I say it, a holistic approach,” including educating schoolchildren on the perils of littering and increasing fines for improper trash disposal.

Should the city fail to take action, Van Beuzekom told the council she would return and “bring my hobby with me, which is rat-catching.” Van Beuzekom said this would involve a “rat trap” with “a live rat inside, to show you they do indeed exist.”

—Staff writer Nicholas K. Tabor can be reached at ntabor@fas.harvard.edu.