Tree Warden

The Tree Warden is the town officer in charge of public shade trees under the Massachusetts tree warden act of 1899 (Chapter 330 of the Acts of 1899). Billerica first elected a Tree Warden at the March 1900 annual meeting, and the office was filled by annual election until 1932. From 1905 the Tree Warden was usually also the local Moth Superintendent, in charge of suppressing the gypsy and brown-tail moths, and the town reports list the two offices together as "Tree Warden and Moth Supt." from 1912.

In 1932 the town accepted Chapter 221 of the Special Acts of 1930, and the Selectmen, acting as the Board of Public Works, took over the powers of the Tree Warden. Francis J. Dolan continued to run the tree work as foreman of the Tree Department and, from 1939, as the Board's appointed supervisor of trees (in 1936 the Board also designated selectman Frank A. Kelley as Tree Warden). After Dolan's death in 1942 the Board appointed Alfred Lyons, and from then on the Tree Warden was an appointed, civil service position combined with Moth Superintendent and later Park Superintendent ("Tree Warden and Moth and Park Superintendent"). Under the Department of Public Works the Tree Warden has been the head of the Parks and Trees (later Cemetery, Parks and Trees) Division.

John W. Bostwick, Tree Warden 1915-1917, was later Highway Superintendent.