Turns out that Commissioner Jerry NeSmith need not have worried — too much, anyway — about the mistletoe infesting the trees on the edges of the City Hall campus.

In one of the more interesting asides at an Athens-Clarke County Commission meeting, NeSmith took time Tuesday night to warn that the parasitic plants infesting the oak trees along the edges of the City Hall campus could threaten the lives of the trees, and to urge some quick action to address the infestation.

NeSmith went as far as suggesting that the Athens Downtown Development Authority, which works to revitalize the downtown area and boost economic development, should consider funding an effort to get rid of the mistletoe. The ADDA gets its revenue from a special 1-mill property tax levy on downtown business properties, and from a share of downtown parking revenue.

"What I was trying to do was call attention to it," NeSmith said Thursday, explaining that at Tuesday’s meeting, he was relaying a concern from a constituent — former Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Carl Jordan — about the City Hall trees.

NeSmith said the concerns he expressed Tuesday included some sense of urgency because as spring arrives and the leaves return to the trees, it will be more difficult to determine where the mistletoe infestations are located.

As a result of NeSmith’s mention of the mistletoe infestation, Rita Brown, administrator of the county government’s Landscape Management Division, was working Thursday on a report for commissioners and county government management on her division’s maintenance practices.

"Mistletoe is not something that we just let go," Brown said. "We try to take care of it as best we can."

According to Brown, getting rid of mistletoe is a tricky proposition. The invading plants, which take water and other nutrients from the host tree, can’t simply be clipped off of the tree limbs. Instead, getting rid of mistletoe requires the removal of the entire limb where the parasitic plant, or plants, are located, she said.

Complicating the prospects for removal of the mistletoe from the City Hall trees is that some of those trees have already lost a number of limbs in previous efforts to get rid of the parasitic plants. And, Brown said, the fact that this area of the state has been, and will likely continue to be, in a drought for some time is creating another health challenge for the trees.

Also, according to Brown, the fact that the infested trees are in an urban environment — surrounded by sidewalks and pavement that restrict water flow to the roots, and that radiate heat into the trees — means that they are not as healthy as they would be in a more natural environment.

"It’s very difficult to grow a tree to its full potential" in an urban environment, Brown explained. "Over time, you’re going to see the decline of these trees."

Finally, Brown said, because mistletoe seeds are transmitted through bird feces, urban trees like the City Hall oaks are more susceptible to the parasite because they provide some of the few roosting spots available to birds in the downtown area.

"It’s a balancing act" to determine a strategy for dealing with mistletoe infestation in the trees on the City Hall campus and elsewhere in the downtown area, Brown said.

The county won’t cut down any mistletoe-infested trees, or other problematic trees, until they become a clear hazard for falling, Brown said. But, she added, it’s possible that in assessing which infested trees should be addressed, the county might opt against treating an older infested tree in favor of saving a younger tree. And, Brown said, the Landscape Management Division, like other parts of county government, faces budgetary realities dictating that the county might not be able to do all that it wants to do to address mistletoe infestations.

"Sometimes we have to pick and choose," Brown said, adding that mistletoe removal is "extremely expensive."

Nonetheless, the infested City Hall trees have not escaped the notice of the Landscape Management Division, Brown said.

"We were already making plans to address that mistletoe," she said. The county forester, Billy Paugh, has already looked at the trees with a contractor, and the county is hoping "to get the worst of them done this year," Brown said.