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Date: 12/16/2020
WESTFIELD – As a part of Massachusetts’ Greening the Gateway Cities program, Westfield’s downtown area will become vibrant and green with trees set to be planted over the next three years.
Westfield City Councilor Bridget Matthews-Kane said she initially reached out to the program back in May to see if Westfield could be incorporated into the program.
“It’s been running for several years and Westfield has not been included. I had heard about the program and reached out in May of this year to advocate that we be included,” she said.
With a planned rollout of 2,400 trees, Matthews-Kane said new trees will be a benefit to Westfield.
“One of the main interests is the energy conservation, it shades the neighborhood in the summers to lower cooling bills, it helps mitigate the heat effect in our urban areas, and it also breaks the wind in the winter, therefore it helps with heating,” she said.
In order to reap all the benefits of additional trees, they need to be planted densely.
“They need to plant the trees as densely as possible so it wouldn’t have the same affect if it was spread throughout the city, so they picked a tree planting area, which for the most part is in our downtown area,” she said.
Matthews-Kane explained that the project is entirely resident-driven, and they must reach out to the program by logging onto maurbancanopy.org.
“The business owner or resident has to initiate the process. You have to go to the website and sign up or call. Eventually they will reach out to you, an urban forester will come to your property, discuss the options with you, and then at some point a planting crew will come back,” she said.
Once the tree is planted the resident or business owner signs a contract that they will continue to water the trees.
While she is encouraging residents to sign up now, Matthews-Kane said they might not hear back until the spring.
“I’m not only in the zone, I wanted to test it and I signed up a couple weeks ago. I have not heard from them yet, they said they are still setting up the program, but they said there is no problem with people signing up now. They may not hear back until the spring but signing up now is a great idea to get them to the top of the list.
Once the signups are finalized, Matthews-Kane said the trees will be planted over the course of the next three years.
“Our goal is to plant 2,400 trees total, they want to do 800 per year and 400 per planting season, so those would be in the fall and the spring,” she said.
Along with creating a more vibrant downtown Westfield, Matthews-Kane said she and fellow City Councilor Ralph Figy are having a friendly competition to see who can plant the most trees in their ward.
“I had always heard about those governors having competitions when there is a Super Bowl to make it a little more fun. It’s a very friendly competition. If Ward 3 plants more trees I’ll get a delicacy from Ward 2 and if Ward 3 plants more trees, they’ll get a delicacy. We’re going to do it annually so by the end of the fall planting season we should have our first number,” she said.
Matthews-Kane said she was excited to see a greener downtown Westfield.
“I’m really excited about this program, I obviously live in Ward 3, but I walk and jog through these downtown neighborhoods all the time and I can see what a need there is and I’m really thrilled we’re going to be able to take advantage of this state program,” she said.