City doesn’t budge on trees
CITY HALL City officials contend that they did not violated state environmental regulations or hid behind any bushes in pushing forward a controversial tree plan that has kept City Hall and the Santa Monica Treesavers battling for months.
The arguments were laid out in a 39-page-response City Hall filed on Friday, a rebuttal to a Treesaver appeal of a court ruling that the environmental group was years too late in legally challenging the tree removal plan.
The Treesavers earlier this month appealed the decision, with the court extending a temporary restraining order halting the removal of the ficus trees.
The source of controversy lies in a beautification project for Second and Fourth streets in Downtown Santa Monica, calling for the destruction or transplantation of 54 ficus trees — 23 of which have been identified as structurally deficient. The bulk of the streetscape project includes widening and repairing sidewalks and enhancing lighting along the two commercial corridors. The tree removal aspect of the plan includes replacing each empty ficus plot with two ginkgo biloba trees.
City officials essentially maintain the same position that they have held in previous court hearings, arguing that the statute of limitations during which the project could be challenged expired 180 days after the project was ruled exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act in 2005. The city had ruled on the environmental elements of the project, not once, but twice, the response states. The Downtown Urban Design Plan, of which the beautification street plan is a part, was first analyzed under CEQA and approved in 1997 and City Hall was not mandated to rule it CEQA exempt in 2005, the response states. “Taken as a whole petitioners’ filing cannot be read without concluding that this challenge is at its core about something else, a political dispute, that if petitioners had their way, they would make different decisions,” the response states.
“And so they might,” it continues. The Treesavers, represented by Santa Monica attorney Tom Nitti, will have seven days to respond, after which time the Court of Appeal will either hold a hearing, decide in favor of City Hall and remove the temporary stay or refer the case back to the Superior Court. Nitti believes that if the case is referred back to the lower court, the stay would remain in place.
Nitti could not comment on the substance of City Hall’s response on Friday, saying that he has not had time to review the document.
“I’ll tell you this, the city is making the Treesavers do a lot of work,” he joked.
Meanwhile the Treesavers plan to stage yet another demonstration Saturday afternoon from 2-4 at the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Broadway.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 22, 2008. Read the original PDF.