HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/7/2021 Item 7b, Schmidt
Delgado, Adriana
From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com>
Sent:Monday, September
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Item 7a Westmont
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Westmont Subdivision
Dear Council,
Please do not approve this project until it is redesigned to SAVE THE TREES.
1. City Policy: 15,000 New Trees or 15,000 Stumps?
The best way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere is in trees. Recognizing this, the council wisely included tree
sequestration as a carbon policy in its Climate Action Plan. That policy also calls for adding 15,000 new trees (though that
is too few to make much carbon difference).
Project after project, however, the city approves removal of mature trees because developers are too lazy or too
environmentally hostile to try to save them. In just the last few years, thousands of mature trees have been “legally”
removed, their carbon no longer sequestered, but going straight into the atmosphere. Replanting twigs to replace these
trees is a carbon joke: it will be a good 50 years before they recapture the quantity of carbon cutting mature trees has
released, and only then will they begin to sequester additional carbon. We don’t have 50 years to get a handle on
atmospheric GHG.
The city is well on its way to 15,000 stumps.
2. Design is always multi-dimensional; these trees can all be saved.
The story these trees must go away because of this reason or that reason is BUNK. Wearing my designer/architect hat,
let me assure that any project has many, many potential solutions, some of which can solve any solvable problem. This
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little subdivision has many, many potential layouts, and IT CAN BE DESIGNED TO SAVE ALL THE TREES. It
simply is not the developer’s priority to do so -- and that’s the only reason why it’s not being done.
If the Council tells the developer the trees must be saved to get approval, somebody with creative intelligence can figure it
out – and the project will be the better because of the saved trees. SAVING THESE TREES CAN, AND MUST, BE
DONE.
3. What should shape our community’s future: Environmental Ethics or Ecoporn?
Not so long ago our city had a fine eco-ethic it could be proud of, and which made it the place so many love. Trees were
seriously protected, creeks were not only protected but given a generous buffer (setback), and the earth itself was
protected from excessive grading and other development abuse. We had a unique, loved, and much-admired eco-Shangri
La.
No more. Today we as a city practice Anyplace USA lack of protection of such features, all the while proclaiming the
highest of standards and the grandest of results – a contrast between fact and claim plainly visible and the source of
much angst and cynicism among the governed.
The wholesale removal of mature trees of value (even redwoods and oaks, for goodness sake!) proposed with this project
would never have been entertained in the recent past. But today, staff gets behind it. There is no longer a serious
ecological ethic in this city’s operation. Instead we have the ecopornography of shouting we’re great when we’re actually
awful.
So, the council needs to step up and fix this situation. You must be more protective of what we have.
Westmont’s a good place to start because of the undisputed value of what’s proposed for destruction.
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt
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