TREESAVERS CALL FOR A TREE COMMISSION

TREESAVERS CALL FOR A TREE COMMISSION
BY MELODY HANATANI
Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL With the current ficus fiasco in Downtown Santa Monica and now a dispute over the removal of 300 carob trees, environmental activists are calling on the City Council to create a commission that would advise on urban forestry matters.

The Santa Monica Treesavers last week requested the City Council initiate a process to establish a tree commission. Jerry Rubin, one of the leaders of the Treesavers, filed a written communications request to place a discussion item on a future council agenda.
Such commissions have been formed in municipalities across the state, including San Francisco’s Urban Forest Council and the Tree Commission in the city of Davis.
“We think it’s so important for the community to open up cooperative dialogue,” Rubin said in an interview on Tuesday. “We feel a Santa Monica urban forestry commission or tree commission would be a very appropriate thing and a long overdue needed advisory commission.”

City Hall has generated headlines in the past year because of a controversial plan to remove and relocate several dozen ficus trees from Downtown Santa Monica as part of a beautification project. The legality of the plan, which the Treesavers argued lacked a public input process, remains in the California Court of Appeals.
Santa Monica city officials counter that the project, which had been in the works for years, included a thorough public input process, with numerous workshops and City Council hearings, including most recently last summer when the beautification project was approved.
Among the arguments by city officials is that the Treesavers were too late in challenging the tree removal portion of the project whose statute of limitations expired 180 days after it was ruled exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act in 2005.

Those concerns with public process arose once again last week when residents in the north of Montana Avenue neighborhood learned of a plan to remove 300 carob trees citywide. The project was scheduled to go before the City Council last Tuesday for funding but was postponed to give the public more time to review a study by HortScience which found many of the carob trees had a high probability of failing.

City officials pointed to the risk in keeping such carob trees in place, which appear healthy on the outside but lack structurally on the inside. A limb from a carob tree fell on a car on 12th Street a few weeks ago and a whole tree uprooted and recently fell over. There were no reported injuries in either tree incidents.
Kate Vernez, the assistant to the city manager on governmental relations, said that there will be community outreach efforts for the carob tree project, starting with a meeting on the evening of May 7 at the Civic Center.

The meeting will include an overview of the carob tree report and a panel discussion on urban forest management in Santa Monica. Confirmed panelists include Jim Clark of HortScience, George Gonzalez, the chief forester in the city of Los Angeles and Gordon Mann with the Sacramento Tree Foundation. Rubin said the proposed commission would add an extra layer to the public process, giving the community another means to express their opinions about tree removal proposals.
“It would help the urban forester and the staff working on the issues, it would help the neighbors to feel they have a voice, ”Rubin said. City officials say they are open to exploring a possible tree commission, stressing that it wouldn’t be formed overnight.
“Before we form another commission, which costs money and staff, I think we should look at it, ”Mayor Herb Katz said on Tuesday. “We might be able to fold it into one of our existing commissions.”

Elaine Polachek, the director of the community maintenance department, said she is researching other city tree commissions, how they were formed and the roles they serve in urban forest management.
“If an advisory body were formed to deal with the tree issues ... it will create a process where we review things together and bring the community in,” Polachek said. “It would be a good avenue in our perspective.”
In Davis, the Tree Commission, which became a formal body in the 1970s when the city joined the Tree City USA, reviews street tree removal requests and refers recommendations to the City Council.
“They make sure that the trees in Davis are taken care of,” Robert Cain, the urban forest manager for the city of Davis, said on Tuesday. “Davis is very protective of their trees and proud of the tree canopy they have.”
The seven-member commission is appointed by the City Council and consists of an arborist, a parks expert and residents, who are not necessarily required to have tree expertise.

The Urban Forest Council in San Francisco serves as a coordinating body for the various city and county agencies that deal with trees. The 15-member council also oversees the city’s tree landmarking ordinance, according to Kelly Quirke, the committee’s vice chairman and executive director of the Friends of the Urban Forest, a non-profit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“It gives a voice to the public,” Quirke said. “It gives a way for people to come and talk about whatever their concerns are.”