The stump of a royal palm tree on one side of Federal Highway with four healthy ones on the other side of the road. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By John Pacenti
Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney sees the ghosts of dead palm trees. But Carney is not the kid in The Sixth Sense. Everyone else can see the stumps, as well.
Carney said residents have grown so used to his complaining about the cut-down royal palm trees on Federal Highway and Atlantic Avenue that they started calling it his “stump speech.”
The city on Sept. 4 planned to begin the process of replacing the eyesores. The first step is for a crew to grind down the stumps and remove the root balls of some 30 trees, Parks Director Sam Metott said.
The palm trees were cut down over the years because they were dying from disease or just old age. Some got hit by cars, Metott said.
“This is something that the mayor really was pushing,” Metott said. “It’s just taken us some time to get the budget allocated and then the purchasing process completed with quotes and bids from the vendors.”
Metott said the stump-grinding will cost taxpayers $25,000.
The issue of the tree stumps bubbled up during public comments at the Aug. 19 City Commission meeting when Mary McCarty, a former Delray Beach and Palm Beach County commissioner, said she has been “nagging” Carney since he came into office about the stumps.
“It sends a message that we don’t care about our town,” McCarty said.
Carney and McCarty said that diseased stumps are just as contagious as diseased trees.
Florida’s palms — not just royals — have been besieged by a bacterial disease for more than a decade, spread by tiny, winged insects commonly known as treehoppers.
McCarty urged the city to employ an arborist so that when the trees are replaced, they are properly taken care of.
City Manager Terrence Moore said in his Aug. 30 newsletter that the city will “develop a landscape plan that will offer specific guidance for palm tree care, removal, and replacement.”
McCarty urged the elected officials and the city manager not to be cheap with the replacements.
“We need to have them replaced with real royal palms,” she said. “I know they’re expensive, but you got … to put it in the budget, four or five of them a year, or some kind of plan.”
Metott couldn’t quote a dollar figure on how much it would cost to replace 30 royal palms. Homeguide.com puts the average price of a fully grown royal palm at between $450 and $650 — with installation extra — but McCarty said the city might be able to get a bulk deal.
The royal palm — Roystonea regia — is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful and is a cultural icon in Cuba and the namesake of a village in Palm Beach County.
Another option would be to plant baby or juvenile royal palms — but Metott said municipalities have learned residents aren’t fans of that plan. It takes 20 years for a royal palm to reach maturity.
“People don’t like putting in the smaller ones because it looks small and not grand and it takes years, but it’s very hard and very expensive to plant fully grown royal palms,” he said.
Comments