The Parks Department is stumped when it comes to the city’s street trees — paying contractors for phantom prunings and failing to trim trees that need it, an audit by city Comptroller Scott Stringer reveals.
The findings, to be announced today, show the city is bungling the maintenance of its 650,000 street trees and creating a public-safety hazard, as every borough but Queens had trimmed the wrong timber.
“When we don’t maintain our trees, bad things happen,” Stringer told The Post. “Tax dollars are wasted, property is damaged and worst of all, people are sometimes injured or killed. Falling limbs make the city liable.”
The Parks Department’s Forestry Service hires contractors to prune trees 5 inches or more in diameter. But Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island failed to provide the private pruners accurate tree lists or prove that the agency even reviewed invoices to ensure contractors pruned the right trees, the audit found.
“There is an increased risk that trees requiring pruning will not receive it . . . [and] of property damage and personal injury from falling limbs,” the report claimed.
The audit, based on documents from July 2012 to November 2013, rooted out the following problems:
n In Manhattan and Staten Island, $2,206 of $10,970 in payments to contractors — 20 percent — went for trees that didn’t appear to have been pruned or shouldn’t have been pruned because they were too small.
n Of 105 trees in Manhattan that taxpayers paid to be pruned, 23 were undersized and shouldn’t have been, and six were big enough to be pruned but weren’t. Of 90 such trees in Staten Island, 12 were undersized and seven were not pruned.
n The two boroughs failed to provide detailed lists showing which trees to trim and failed to document post-pruning inspections.
n Manhattan does not track the streets where trees are pruned, while the other boroughs use color-coded and numbered maps.
n Brooklyn and The Bronx identified trees as 5 inches in diameter, but a comptroller review found 35 of 190 trees in Brooklyn and 36 of 257 trees in The Bronx were actually smaller.
n The Bronx paid for 243 of 1,928 prunings without checking the work. The agency also provided a list of 743 trees but a contractor billed taxpayers for an extra 11 trees.
n Of 642 trees pruned in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island, 106 were undersized. The $4,230 spent could have gone to 51 to 112 additional prunings.
The audit does not mention problems with the Queens forestry office, which the comptroller said “could be used as a guide to assist the other four borough offices.”
Tragedies involving falling tree branches in city parks have made headlines in recent years, but advocates say street trees are as dangerous. Last week, a cop was hospitalized after a branch fell on his head in Bay Ridge.
A Parks Department spokesman said the agency has overhauled its pruning operations due to the comptroller’s recommendations and is now tracking and documenting contractor work. The agency is attempting to recoup payments.
Meanwhile Parks’ budget for fiscal year 2015 is adding $1 million to the $4.5 million slated for pruning to “help ensure trees are pruned on a more frequent basis,” he said.