Cindy Liggett, whose husband Russell was killed on September 14 when the ute he was driving was struck by a falling poplar tree, made the comment last night, when told it would take weeks for the council to find a contractor to remove the decayed trees.
Despite calls from Mrs Liggett for the poplars' immediate removal and her description of driving on the road as like "Russian roulette", the council could not say yesterday when action would be taken.
Council network operations engineer Ian Marshall said a "register of interest" was an option to enable the tender to be mailed directly to interested contractors, instead of waiting for them to respond to advertisements.
Mr Marshall said he expected the tender to be issued within a week and have a deadline of five working days.
However, when the poplars would be removed would depend on contractor availability.
"Excuses, excuses," Mrs Liggett said.
"I'm sure there must be other contractors around outside the district who can come sooner. There must be some contractors they can pick up at a price. Why should it take a week to get a tender out?
"It'll be a minimum of a month [before the trees are removed]."
Mrs Liggett said she did not feel she was being ignored by the council, but believed it was hoping she would go away, allowing it to remove the trees in its own time.
Council chief executive Duncan Field said while he agreed many members of the community wanted to see the council take immediate action , it would now be calling for tenders for the trees to be cut down.
There was no-one qualified to do the job in-house and removing 67 mature poplar trees had not been attempted before by the council.
The tendering process would find the best-value contractor, who might have an end use for the timber.
The council was now going through a "risk-based process" of examining other trees in the district, beginning with high-traffic roads.
