[Bluestrike2]

A bit of common sense and understanding would go a long way to eliminating half the complaints you hear about HOAs.

If you know the tree is going to immediately start dying, you're just going to find the cheapest, least healthy sapling at the nursery. Had they let you wait until the tree is more likely to survive, there's a better chance you'd be willing to spend a bit more to buy an older/larger sapling that'll look better and provide more shade from the start. Plus, the temporary tree slowly dying would probably be less visually appealing than an empty spot for a few months.

There are reasons why we plant street trees: improved aesthetics, increased home value, shade along the street and sidewalks, traffic calming effects, etc. By ignoring the reason behind them and just focusing on checking the box, your HOA was just begging for some malicious compliance that undermined the benefits of the replacement tree.