{"id":2244,"date":"2007-03-28T07:40:50","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T15:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/03\/and_on_your_left_a_four-year-old_davis-bacon_tree_is_starting_to_bear_fruit.html"},"modified":"2007-03-28T07:40:50","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T15:40:50","slug":"and_on_your_lef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/03\/and_on_your_lef.html","title":{"rendered":"And On Your Left, A Four-Year-Old Davis-Bacon Tree Is Starting To Bear Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sun explains why it costs $1,100 to plant a tree<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The high cost can be attributed in large part to an increase in labor costs, which date to a 2003 decision by the city comptroller, William Thompson, to raise the pay of tree planters more than threefold. Today, tree planters make about $55 an hour, up from the $15 hourly wage they were paid before the change. Prior to that decision, the price of planting a tree was about $700.<\/p>\n

“That seems like a lot,” the current commissioner for the parks department in Westchester County, Mitchell Tutoni, said when told of the $1,100 price tag in the city.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

In addition to rising wage costs, one contractor, Angelo DeBartoli, said a second change in the contracts contributes to the high price of planting a tree in New York City. A new rule requires contractors to replant trees that are felled by vandalism within two years of their planting, he said in a telephone interview. Mr. DeBartoli, the owner of Robert Bello Landscaping, said it was “insane” that contractors had to guarantee the trees against vandalism once the plantings were finished.<\/p>\n

Still, Mr. DeBartoli said the sudden rise in cost was largely caused by the required wage increase for tree planters.<\/p>\n

The decision to raise the wages came as the comptroller’s office reclassified the job of planting trees to labor from gardening.<\/p>\n

But that classification is in question today, as it was when it was made.<\/p>\n

“We got lumped into the laborer category, but we’re landscapers,” Mr. DeBartoli said. “We don’t come out with cranes and all kinds of fancy equipment. We come out and dig a hole and plant a tree and put stones around it.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sun explains why it costs $1,100 to plant a tree: The high cost can be attributed in large part to an increase in labor costs, which date to a 2003 decision by the city comptroller, William Thompson, to raise the pay of tree planters more than threefold. Today, tree planters make about $55 an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}