Around 60 Kalamazoo residents turned out to a county road commission meeting Tuesday. Most were there to protest the planned removal of about 8,000 trees throughout the county.
The removals would be a part of the county's Safe Streets for All project, a road-safety initiative funded by a federal grant.
Over 30 residents took to the podium to express their opposition to the plan during the first public comments section of the Road Commission of Kalamazoo County meeting. Other attendees made comments virtually, and more people spoke during a final public comment section.
County resident Jindalee Cathers-Epley was one of them. She said she found out about the removals after returning home from college.
"I was shocked and horrified and devastated to find red x's on just about every tree lining our road. And then to find out that that meant they were going to be cut down, just clear cut, was horrifying."
Cathers-Epley said removing the trees would not only take away a beautiful tree canopy on her road, but also impact the environment.
"It's decisions like these that are made every day on small-scale individual places that that incrementally chip away at the integrity of our planet and our climate and the world that I am going to have to live in, that everyone has to live in," Cathers-Epley said.
"I think it's high time that we pay a hell of a lot more attention to that in the decisions that we're making."
David Pawloski is the chair of the road commission. He said the commission was open to the input it received.
"We continue to take feedback from residents and township officials as well and then accordingly we'll adjust our policies that going forward as we get more feedback," Pawloski said.
"We have no problem adjusting things as we hear more things."
Commission spokesperson Mark Worden echoed this, saying that there is "lots of time to work this out between now and October," when work on the safe streets project is tentatively scheduled to begin.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
