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Home My WebLink About2/3/2026 Item 5g, Schmidt Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com> Sent:Monday, February To:E-mail Council Website Subject:Agenda Item 5g Agenda Item 5g, removal of huge native oak for SLOREP Feb. 2, 2026 Dear Mayor and Council, Please do NOT approve this tree removal. To approve its removal would be an obscenity, and proof positive that the city’s development process lacks integrity and ethics. A deal was made: the tree was to remain and be incorporated into the project. SLOREP is breaking that agreement. Let me remind you that this tree is on public property. It belongs to we the people, not to SLOREP. I assure you that we the people will be most annoyed if this removal proceeds. Let me assure you also that as an architect, I’d have given my eye teeth for the privilege to design a public facility that incorporated this wonderful tree into its design and purpose. Too bad the SLOREP architect is apparently the sort who design things to damage public resources like this tree. This simply demonstrates the low value SLOREP puts on honoring its word (that the tree would be preserved) and the fabric and Nature of our wonderful place as it imposes its edifice upon us. If the project now needs some redesign to save the tree, so be it. They should have thought of that consequence prior to proceeding with this tree-killing design. Their directive was always clear — preserve the tree! As for the council’s position, approving removal would signal your approval for the wholesale denigration of public respect which now characterizes our community development processes. It would be a public act of hypocrisy to approve this while still posturing that this city stands for good things and for protecting the environment in general and fighting global warming in particular. What kind of arboricultural regime brings about the sort of recommendation that’s before you? To me it appears there have been increasing problems since urban forestry moved from public works to the CDD. Which makes sense. CDD has a built-in bias to development, PW does not. We’re also seeing an overturning of long-time emphasis on increasing natives within the city since natives support local ecosystems while exotics generally do not. Furthermore, natives are fit for thriving in our locale, and “look” like they belong here, which exotics like coral trees do not. There are ways to demonstrate what’s being lost in ecosystem support. The SLOREP native oak is to be replaced by an exotic, a South African coral tree. One shorthand way to demonstrate what’s being lost is provided by the Xerces Society’s list of caterpillars that inhabit various tree species. Why are caterpillars important? Caterpillars are part of the food web’s invertebrate foundation that supports all of Nature, including humans. Would you believe that native oaks support 275 species of caterpillars? It’s unclear how many, if any, species the coral tree will support, but nothing close to a native since many caterpillars have evolved to need specific trees to live on (just as Monarch butterfly caterpillars need milkweed to live). In an ecosystem, tree species are not interchangeable. Our arboricultural regime seems either ignorant of things like this, or simply indifferent. 1 The SLOREP oak, being across the street from a riparian corridor full of willows (which support a whopping 328 caterpillar species) and other riparian natives, could be expected (absent current construction disruption) to be full of songbirds going back and forth to the willows hunting for food. Songbirds are a “species of local concern” here because their numbers are declining. Why would we take moves that further diminish their chances of survival? There are also practical issues with replacing the SLOREP oak with a coral, including: • Corals are highly frost sensitive. What happens when we have another winter with temps dipping to 17 degrees as they did not too long ago? The oak could take that, the coral not. • Corals have sprawling surface roots that make the area beneath useless for human activity and challenging to landscape. Oak roots can be covered with permeable pavers to create useable space. • Corals drop seed pods that are filled with poisonous seeds. Why would one plant something so dangerous in a public place where children and dogs could be poisoned? • Corals are popular in Santa Barbara. But SLO is not Santa Barbara — we have a different climate and a different ecology. The coral belongs in South Africa, not in SLO. The supposition that using such trees makes our urban forest more resilient to climate change is just that — a supposition. It is not a fact. It is also not a fact that we know our local natives will be done in by climate change. Undercutting our natives, and their ecological necessity, seems a foolish way to “prepare” for the unknown future. In all likelihood it will simply make future ecological havoc even worse than if we’d stuck with natives. What’s going on with the destruction of our urban forest, of which this requested tree removal is a part? First they came for the eucs. Once people got used to that, they came for our pines, redwoods and oaks. Now everything is on the table, nothing is worthy of preservation. This scheme became public when the city told us the eucalyptus grove at SLO Ranch would be “thinned” to clear out “dead and dying” trees. Good cover story. But a funny thing happened: as the public watched, this “thinning” turned into a clearcut of a huge grove numbering in the high hundreds of trees. Not to worry about the disappearing heron rookery and buzzard roosts provided in those trees, we were told, since the eucs along Prefumo Creek would remain and provide those natural services to our wildlife. Then the cutting of the eucs along Prefumo Creek got city approval, so today the large rookeries and roosts are history. But hey, the city said, they’re just eucs. Eucs are bad. Nobody likes eucs. They’re also exotics, not natives, so are no good for the environment. I think it interesting how these hypocrisies piled up. I mean really, if the original grove was to be cleared for apartment construction, why the initial lie about thinning dead and dying trees? The developer’s intent, well known to the city if not to the rest of us, meant this clearing had nothing at all to do with tree health. (One has to love that this same tree health malarkey is being trotted out regarding the SLOREP oak. With municipal overuse, rationalizations like this become transparent to all who can see the emperor’s clothes.) With projects like the Westmont subdivision, the same mendacious approach was used to remove mature natives, like oaks, sycamores and redwoods. Removal of the trees along a riparian corridor was “necessary” because the acreage was being subdivided. Well, in times past the city would have said to redesign the subdivision to accommodate the trees, but today it says let’s remove the trees to accommodate the subdivision. Even when, as in this case, there were design options that could have saved trees. Now the city comes after one of its own, this splendid live oak at the SLOREP site, armed with all the rationalizations it has practiced since its assault on the urban forest began. For shame. One must note that the city talks out of both sides of its mouth about trees: on the one hand that they are an essential tool to fight global heating, on the other that the city has never seen a tree not worth removing. You can’t have it both ways. Our “tree city” moniker has become something of a joke. We don’t behave the way a tree city should behave. One also must note that our urban forest PRIOR to the city’s assault on trees which has resulted in the removal of thousands in the last few years, was never anything special when considering percentage of tree cover. Our 16% tree cover ranks far lower than Santa Barbara. Who ever thought of Santa Barbara as a city with lots of trees? We had about 2 2/3 Santa Barbara’s tree cover. Paso has more cover, so do San Jose and Monterey. Even New York City — the great hardscape metropolis of NYC, for goodness sake — has about 25% MORE tree cover than SLO. So we have little superiority to brag about. And remember, our percentage of cover cited above was prior to the city’s massive assault on its trees. So let’s draw the line at Monterey Street. No SLOREP oak removal, and let’s get our tree program back on an ecological and climate-sensitive track, and quit the double talk about trees. Richard Schmidt 3