And while no child had been struck, Palairet said, the school was not going to wait until that happened before they acted.
"The secondary concern was potentially being hit by a falling frond or organic matter falling from the tree and the smell and general unhygienic conditions that those trees created around them, but those reasons are secondary to the risks that they created due to impairing the visibility of drivers," Palairet said.
On Monday a council spokesperson said the school board had written to it this year with health and safety concerns, listing dead pigeons, rats, faecal matter, falling fronds and visibility issues at the pedestrian crossing.
Palairet said that whilst there were no surprises over the emotion and passion from those who wanted to keep the trees, there was a large number of supporters.
"We understand that it was more of a majority of people in nearby residences and affected parties who actually supported the removing of the trees."
Taradale Primary School principal Marty Hantz said the health and safety of the school's students was paramount.
"There is a huge potential around the fact that something could go wrong and of course we would be negligent if we didn't look at that as a potential hazard.
"For us the biggest part of our lives in a lot of ways is we've got 500 children at school and we have got to make sure they are in a safe environment.
"We don't want to cut down trees, it is not a cool thing to do, but when it comes down to health and safety sometimes you don't have an option."
He noted that on about four occasions, fronds had fallen off some of the palms at the front of the school and on two occasions they had dropped during after-school pick-up time not far from where a child or car could have been.
"It has become increasingly difficult to have a good visual sighting of the cars coming left and right, particularly on the left-hand side as you are facing away from the school, because of the size of the trees."
Hantz said several parents had also voiced their concerns regarding the amount of guano and kernels scattered on the footpath.
For the past six years, the school's caretakers had been instructed to clean the gutters out, clean the base of the trees and to blow as much of the kernels off the footpath as possible each fortnight.
He said he admired the fact that people had fought for what they believed in, but acknowledged those who had realised why they needed the palms to be cut down.
"From our perspective we have been pretty transparent once we found out from the council what was going on and if people were really anti it we would have had a barrage of emails and calls and we haven't had that."
Church Rd resident Jan Dearing was sad to see phoenix palm trees felled outside the school yesterday.
"There needed to be a better reason than the possible risk that they might fall and hit someone when they haven't for the 80 years to my knowledge."
The hardest thing about the situation was that they were talking about the "potentials," Hantz said.
"What if something does happen, are you going to be the person ringing that parent and saying that your child has been hit by the car, and are you going to deal with the fallout from the children involved with that child in the class and the teachers and the wider community if that happens?
"They're not, that's our job and we don't want to be there."
