It’s tree-mendous that the city of Bend and the Bend Park & Recreation District are partnering to maintain a Tree City USA certification.

Nobody is saying Bend shouldn’t love trees, but what’s the chance that without the Tree City honorific Bend would become the Ebola of cities and be anti-tree? Probably the same chance that beneath Pilot Butte is the secret lair of an evil genius bent on world domination.

So why the fuss? One argument is that being a Tree City allows the city and the park district to show their commitment to trees. But there’s really no evidence that they are not.

In 2017, the city and the park district planted 340 trees, pruned 350 and removed 140, for a total of $334,285.90 spent on community forestry. That is spending more than the $2 per capita that the Arbor Foundation requires for Tree Cities. Could they do more? Sure. What budget gets trimmed to do it?

Another argument for the Tree City is that the community could use the Tree City plan and create an advisory board to help create more pro-tree regulations. Of course, regulations can happen already without a Tree City designation. Some supporters have even wanted the city to create tough regulations to prohibit people from cutting down some trees on their own property. That would likely achieve the wrong signal to noise ratio. The signal supporters want to send is to convince people of the importance of trees. But the noise that would greet them might be sawing in the night.

Unless you are really, really a close follower of city government, you may not remember that Bend City Manager Eric King tried to tell councilors that going through the motions of chasing a Tree City designation was not worth it.

“We’ve really been trying to prioritize and focus on street preservation work,” King said a few years ago. And with the amount of staff time applying and going through the Tree City process “there just wasn’t that return on investment.”

But councilors, notably driven by some Bend residents, wanted the city to get the Tree City certification. And so here we are: Running on a hamster wheel to chase a designation to prove to a tree city that it is a Tree City.