LYNNFIELD — The massive pine tree has been overlooking the town common for decades now. It’s seen better days, but still stands strong after all this time — and for that reason, despite a few local groans, John Tomasz has always left it be.
Tomasz prefers to work with property owners to get trees trimmed or cut down rather than turn to town regulations to enforce tree safety standards.
Tree Warden is just one of the town government hats Tomasz wears. He is also Lynnfield’s public works (DPW) director, and his warden duties put him in charge of maintaining trees on public ground.
“Some towns, like a city like Cambridge, will have an arborist who is their tree warden,” said Tomasz, who worked in the cities of Cambridge and Salem’s public works departments before landing in town five years ago.
“In most towns it kind of falls upon the DPW director. They’re assumed to be the tree warden until otherwise told. This happened to be the case here.”
That hasn’t always been the smartest way to do things, but a six-week class sponsored by the state’s Department of Conservation & Recreation has made the whole job a lot easier for officials like Tomasz.
“The state recognized a couple of years ago that you’re essentially appointing DPW directors to do a job where they might not know a whole lot about trees,” he said. “So they started offering this course where they teach people like me how to recognize defects in trees and types of trees just to protect the public.”
That course is all about — you guessed it — trees. More specifically, it’s about identifying defects and spotting trees that are on the way out and could pose a risk.
“It’s easy to see a tree that’s rotted,” Tomasz said. “But in a lot of cases you’d say a tree looks pretty healthy and then, when it comes down to it, you don’t realize how bad it really was. Since I’ve been here, the interesting part is seeing trees come down that you can’t believe they did and others where you can’t believe they’re still standing.”
The town common happens to be the public work of which Tomasz is most proud. Today on the common you’ll see plenty of new trees — and plenty of tree diversity. That’s no accident.
“We recently took down some (defected) trees in the common and planted four more,” Tomasz said. “Whenever we take down trees we try to put down new trees. Of course, what happens in a lot of these old towns in the old days is they planted 2,000 of the same trees. Now you have 2,000 trees that are all the same age and have the same diseases and go down around the same time. We try to be more diverse now.”
That diversity in greenery also gives areas around town a more colorful look, too. The DPW manages five cemeteries, parks at every school — even the turf fields — playgrounds and other areas around town.
The experience so far has been a positive one for Tomasz and his crew.
“I’ve been able to get a lot done here that I couldn’t have in other places because the support has been so good,” Tomasz said. “From the selectmen to the town administrator, finance committee and the residents. It’s been great.”
