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Austin Whitman has the unusual distinction of serving on a non-existent town committee.
“I ran into I-Ching Scott [former Planning Board member] who introduced me to David Miller, who was on the Conservation Committee,” he says. “Miller told me that the Permanent Street Tree Committee had gone dormant.”
Still, Whitman says it seemed like a unique opportunity to help with Winchester as the town approaches management of its tree canopy.
“We take trees for granted,” he says. “And the way people plan their housebuilding projects is to cut down all the trees, then plant new ones, leading to environmentally, ecologically and aesthetically poor results.”
The Lorena Road resident moved to Winchester 10 years ago for the public schools. The founder of a climate action non-profit called Change Climate, Whitman has a masters degree in environmental management from Yale’s Forestry School, as well as a Yale MBA.
“I didn’t spend as much time in forests as my peers,” he admits, “but I always had an interest in the outdoors. I ended up working in an institutional investment firm, in their timber and real physical assets department and I toured timberlands in the Southeast.”
When he and his family moved to Winchester, “we moved to a neighborhood which is being trashed. There’s constant blasting and we’re running out of trees to cut down.
“Winchester is a unique town,” he adds. “We have a lot of old trees, and tree-lined streets. Woburn, for instance, doesn’t have that.”
Given Whitman’s interest in trees, he was happy to learn that his house was owned by a couple who had a connection to the Arnold Arboretum.
“The property has an incredible bunch of trees,” he says, “including a dawn redwood that’s over 100 years old.”
Winchester, he points out, has no bylaws similar to nearby towns requiring trees to be replaced when building. (See Arlington’s tree bylaws.)
“Technically, I’m not on the Street Tree Committee because there isn’t one. The town changed the bylaw [to reinstate it] but the state has to approve the change,” he says. “ A group of us is regrouping and we’re en-route to getting things back on track. We hope to get tree funding back on the town budget.
“Winchester has the $20,000 VanAken fund for tree-related activities and our goals are two-fold. One is to use the interest of about $500 a year for such activities,” he adds. “Last year, we got a grant to do the tree canopy survey using a technical survey method called GIS. Our second goal is to get a recurring line item in the Department of Public Works (DPW) budget to buy and plant trees. Right now, they have 45 trees, but it’s hard to get them planted because of the staff’s availability and locations to plant them.
“We also hope to build a solid relationship with the DPW,” he says. “Right now we have no idea when the DPW cuts down a tree. And we want to do a physical inventory, counting the trees, including the species, the age, the location. This will give us a baseline so when something changes, it can be quantified.
“We’re just trying to keep up with other towns,” he says.,” he says. “We’re not trying to impose martial law on homeowners’ ability to do landscaping.”
Winchester resident Joyce Westner is one of the founders of Winchester News. She holds a degree in English and journalism from Northeastern University. If you have a suggestion for either a Meet the Artist or Helpers Among Us resident, email editor@winchesternews.org.
