[ACT] Tell the Pasadena City Council what you think...

Mon Feb 23 10:53:09 PST 2009

Lori-

My dear Friend, I too love trees. I also love safe sidewalks and I really hate it when trees fall on parked cars it gives us tree huggers a bad name. Can't cut unsafe trees down because of some treaty? Oh come on! This is the kind of statement lacking in reason and any sense of practicality that makes many people want to run when they see environmental legislation.

I don't care what the general plan has to say, the Mexican Fan Palm is the correct historic Pasadena Street tree. It is a major part of our local CULTURE. Political correctness, once again, be damned! It's the right tree for marking the streets from a distance and has been so since the teens. Its a hell of a lot more native than those parrots that are now protected native song birds! (But I do like the parrots and the parrots like the Mexican Fan Palms, since afterall they are adapted via evolution to them.......

The City of Pasadena, in their defense, and you know how painful it is for me to defend them, is probably looking at the 11 trees and considering how many more times aside from just this one, will they have to fix the sidewalk. Naturally they pick now to consider the long term costs as opposed to when the trees are being planted. I never said I was happy about any of this.

Lets have them take out the trees that were incorrectly planted in the understory during the 70's and 80's and do the job correctly once and for all for the next 140 or so years. I'd like to suggest Citrus myself, since there is a history to it and in hard times the People can eat the frui, or the city could have a fruit plantation and perhaps a local business to employ young people of making marmalade, I'm serious.We could also plant trees in the understory that have value as furniture lumber and use those in a plantation system for income. Furniture species woods will be very expensive in 100 years and rather than go to the chipper, the trees would become economically sustainable over time. I know it isn't politically correct because Citrus and say maple of jatoba are not native, but neither are streets, sidewalks. parking spaces, businesses or western homes. And yes, as they age and die, lets replant for the upper story the proud Pasadena Mexican Fan
 Palm.

Steve

--- On Mon, 2/23/09, Gaboon <gaboon at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
From: Gaboon <gaboon at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [ACT] Tell the Pasadena City Council what you think...
To: steve_lamb57 at sbcglobal.net
Cc: "Bill Bogaard" <bbogaard at ci.pasadena.ca.us>, "larry wilson" <larry.wilson at sgvn.com>, "Kevin Urich" <kevinu at pasadenaweekly.com>, Meb787 at aol.com, eti at fourpalms.org, act at fourpalms.org, "DFA" <sangabrielvalley4democracy at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Monday, February 23, 2009, 10:26 AM

Steve,
With due respect, while we agree on some of the history, I do NOT believe there is any need to cut down the old, mature, beautiful trees. Other mitigations are available for the approx. 11 trees on Colorado Blvd. (number provided by Pasadena staff) that have varying degrees of sidewalk lift or other problems. Those solutions cost less than tree removal and preserve a lovely old tree canopy and urban bird habitat. There is NO excuse for cutting the trees on Colorado during nesting season, in violation of the International Migratory Bird Treaty Act, either.
That said, would I plant more Indian Laurel Fig or Carrotwood trees today? No, of course not. But neither are gingkoes and MEXICAN fan palms from a 13 year outdated plan acceptable replacement trees.
RE: "Washingtonia palms," that is a genus, not a species. The Mexican fan palm ( Washingtonia robusta ) in the Pasadena plan is now considered a non-native and invasive species that is not only to be avoided in landscaping, several agencies and botanical organizations recommend that these palms gradually be removed. http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/management/plant_profiles/Washingtonia_robusta.phpSo, why is Pasadena planting this species? 
The palm you want is also a Washingtonia genus palm, but it is our own, drought resistant, California native fan palm ( Washingtonia filifera ), which has been widely planted all around S. California since the late 1800s. See photos below. http://www.livingdesert.org/plants/california_fan_palm.asp
Pasadena couldn't even get the palm species correct!
And, while I don't object to California's only native palm species being planted in the future, or to native Pasadena oaks for that matter, I do oppose chopping down the current mature trees with all their myriad environmental benefits in favor of the 1996, lame "screetscape plan."
Botanical Regards,Lori
- - -California native fan palms as a street tree:
Native CA palms with intact "skirts" as they can still be seen "in the wild" (S. Mojave and Sonoran deserts of California) near canyon springs:
- - -
On Feb 23, 2009, at 9:53 AM, SSL wrote:
Lisa-

Perhaps a little history would be helpful to you. First of all the Washingtonia Palm is the traditional Pasadena street tree for major streets. Has been since 1918 or so. In the 1970's a group of us do gooder civic design types had the idea that we wanted to make Colorado and other commercial streets in Pasadena more walkable, and more like the commercial streets of a European city. Like Paris, Utrecht, or Amsterdam with thier canopy of street trees.

We sought to keep the historic Washingtonias as a overstory and use other trees as a understory for shade. Several businesses funded the study and elevation drawings INCLUDING VROMANS (be nice to Joel) and for many years copies of the elevations hung gathering support at Barney's LTD. 

We had specific detailed well studied recomendations for the type of tree to be planted ahd how they should be planted to ensure very little sidewalk damage and that we got healthy long lived trees. Some business owners, Jim Plotkin in particular,who was involved at the time with the Old town Merchants Association and a major landlord in old town, were rabily against the trees we selected because they were slow growing and would cover their signs for too long. The City of Pasadena being a political creature compromised and put in faster growing less hardy healthy trees and then because so much time had lapsed and costs had gone up, didnt put them in correctly. Those of us whose idea this was protested and were either ignored, or told to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, a refrain one often hears in Pasadena from the government except when one is attempting to get say a zoning or building permit...

Anyhow, this mess was inevitable, because the City of Pasadena screwed it up from the begining. So now that the cheap trees have their canopies finally above the signs, they are eating the sidewalk and /or dieing and must be cut down to protect the public. 

They should be cut down. Trees with long lifespans and properly planted should be planted for an understory. Sadly, even if we start in the morning, I wiull not live long enough to see them as mature civic shade trees, but part of being civic minded is leaving a better world for the next generation. 

Let us attempt to have Pasadena City Hall take the correct lessons from this:

1 .Some questions can or should not properly be answered with compromise
2. The good is the enemy of the perfect, and of the future
3. It doesnt do any good to "save" 15% today if it will cost you 150% in twenty five years.

And of course, 
4. People will defend things, even if done incorrectly, that improve the humaneness of their existence.

Steve Lamb

P.S. Sadly what I take away from this, Devils Gate and Lincoln Crossing, is that visionaries need to never and I mean never, share any idea with any governmental agency because they are, in my wretched experience, completely incapable of ever carrying through without destroying the whole purpose of the original idea. I guess if they were capable of being visionary or carrying a visionary idea, they wouldnt be bueracrates in the first place. This miserable lesson, that they are just incapable of implimentation without destruction, has been a painful one that has taken me most of my life to learn, because at first I could just not believe the levels of mendacity, sloth and corruption. I see much more clearly now, sadly.

--- On Sun, 2/22/09, Lisa Hastings <rumberalisa at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Lisa Hastings <rumberalisa at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ACT] Tell the Pasadena City Council what you think...
To: Meb787 at aol.com
Cc: act at fourpalms.org, eti at fourpalms.org
Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 9:15 PM

Who started this tree destruction program anyway? First on Arroyo Parkway, then Holly Street going toward city hall.  Now, Colorado. Why in the world does Pasadena want palm trees? The ones on Arroyo Parkway look terrible and Holly Street going toward city hall looks so barren now! Palm trees aren't trees anyway. They're classified as grasses! And they're not native, either! What is going on? Is this part of all the new development? Tear everything down and put up high density population development?

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 7:02 PM,  <Meb787 at aol.com> wrote:
  From Larry Wilson's column today in the Star News: A protest against the downing of the stately ficus scheduled for Saturday morning in front of Vroman's and the Laemmle in the Playhouse District instead turned into a wake as dozens of people bemoaned the loss of one of the city's most prominent and useful trees, buzz-sawed overnight without notice. Tree-huggers now ask two things: For a big turnout Monday at 6:30 p.m., City Council Chambers, 100 N. Garfield Ave., Pasadena, during Public Comment. And for an immediate moratorium on the removal of all (safe) street trees until a real forestation plan is put in place. Even the LA Times had a story today on the midnight massacre of the trees on Colorado Blvd - probably because Pasadena is a Tree City USA!    February 22, 2009
  PASADENA

Residents protest city's removal of ficus trees

 Before organizers could mount a planned protest Saturday, Pasadena public works crews moved in Friday night to cut down about 15 ficus trees along Colorado Boulevard, famed across America as the Rose Parade route. The mature ficus trees had been the focus of much community debate after merchants demanded their removal because the trees were obscuring signs, wrecking sidewalks and damaging plumbing.

Ficus supporters say that the trees provide shade and beauty and that the problems could be dealt with in other ways, such as installing rubberized sidewalks to help accommodate root growth and keeping the trees trimmed. 

"We should rename Colorado 'Bleak Street,' " said resident Christle Balvin. "We've lost our shade canopy. If I were a business owner, I would no longer want to locate on this strip. . . . It just looks awful."

 The city plans in coming weeks to replace 38 mature ficus and carrotwood trees with palm and ginkgo trees. Many of the cut trees had been in front of Vroman's bookstore, a city institution. Vroman's employees released a statement criticizing the decision to remove the trees.

The protest went on as planned Saturday, with organizer Branislav Kecman, a Caltech physicist, gathering signatures on a petition to save the remaining trees.

City officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

-- Martha Groves EL CAJON

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