Blind River council isn’t prepared to remove a tree based on a recommendation from its health and safety committee that came to council at its meeting Tuesday evening.
The committee called on the removal of a tree at the entry to the community centre based on safety concerns.
Councillor HP Roy rejected the recommendation saying he could not support any tree removal.
“I’m not in agreement with taking out a tree,” he said. “That’s our quick fix for everything is take the tree out, knock it down, cut it down.”
“We’re doing this on a regular basis,” Coun. Roy added. ‘I don’t want to take out that tree, I want to preserve it.”
Coun. Paula Summer agreed. “I think in this day and age when we want to keep as much green as we can it would be easier to try and work with it instead of taking the tree out,” she said.
Coun. Jim Dunbar estimated the tree to be 30 years old and was planted around the same time the community centre was built. “I hate personally myself to see a perfectly good tree be destroyed because maybe a single root was causing a problem,” he said.
He suggested the solution could be to do work on a root if it proves to be the source of the problem.
Coun. Steve Wells also supported leaving the tree up along with Coun. Betty Ann Dunbar. “I think we should try and save the tree if we possibly can,” she said. “Save the tree.”
The recommendation for removal was defeated unanimously.