The Gingko Hits the Fan

As a follow-up to my July 8th “Urban Forestry Administrator Doesn’t Care About Our Gingko Hell“: A week after the below email (and several others) DDoT Urban Forester Caldwell “stepped down”, suddenly. I don’t know if I had anything to do with that but I hope so. CM Schwartz’s staff said they’d get back to me and hasn’t.

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Administrator Caldwell – Thanks you. James Briskow (sp?) did call July 13th to say he inspected some of the trees in the neighborhood. Were you out of the office since May 17th? (I’m answering this from the beach, and I’m a volunteer.) May 17 is the day I reported the spraying had not worked (and many times since then). That’s almost 2 months on a season-critical complaint. Everyone I know who works in the private sector would get fired for managing a customer service request as you did.

Mr. Briskow (sp?) reports that by the time you assigned him to inspect the trees, it was too late in the season to re-spray and that the trees were poorly sprayed in early May (if at all). He said he would have a crew come around to shovel up the gingko berries. He also said he thinks the gun sprayer doesn’t work and that you should go back to the fan sprayer.

Director Tangherlini – you’ve been CCed on all these emails. You are ultimately responsible for customer service. This is an all-too-typical encounter with DDoT. Why do you run your department this way?

CM Schwartz – I watched all your oversight hearings and I testified that DDoT typically operates this way. What have you done in your oversight role to stop DDoT from abusing its customers?

I suggest the entire senior staff at DDoT sweep ginkgos to smell what your mismanagement is putting us through.

Rob Halligan
Dupont ANC
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