A city program meant to plant trees in Spokane’s poorest neighborhoods is being used to subsidize downtown property owners who frequently delayed or ignored calls to replace the trees.

Some of these trees were a legacy of public investment, with downtown tree wells dug, irrigated and planted ahead of Expo ’74.

City law requires that property owners maintain the health of street trees on their land, and to replace the trees if necessary. In recent years, dozens of downtown trees have succumbed for various reasons, whether to vandalism, choked out as they overgrew their well or, in at least one case, after a drunken driver crashed into them.

But most often, the trees have died because they weren’t being irrigated, according to city officials.

Those dead trees were frequently ignored, som

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