By John E. Farrell Santa Monica
Please accept my personal gratitude for (the Daily Press’) efforts to inform and alert the residents of this city to what is going on.
As most already know, the city of Santa Monica and its development company — The Bayside District Corp. — are planning to remove the mature (big, old, beautiful) ficus trees on Fourth and Second streets. They are of the opinion that the trees are blocking the view of the businesses. I live on Fourth Street and drive by the businesses and trees daily, and that notion is patently absurd.
I read a related article in your archives (“Shedding light,” May 22) and another open letter to the City Council (“Deflowering of town continues,” May 31, letters). Your brave publication motivated me to raise my voice and denounce the expenditure of thousands of the taxpayer dollars to “deflower” Santa Monica.
I have been a resident in Santa Monica for 19 years and the trees have been here much longer than that. The trees provide shade, they clean the air, they counteract global warming, they enhance the aesthetic of our city immeasurably. The trees are residents of the city that provide as many (if not more) benefits than the retailers on the streets where they live. These trees are living organisms which make a significant contribution to all our lives and ask in return, far less; compared with the demands the retailers place on the city and its’ environment (I will forgo a laundry list detailing the environmental impact of even one business on Fourth and Second streets).
There is still time for the citizens of Santa Monica to stop this atrocity, this outrage, this inhumanity.
The citizens of Santa Monica are not savages waiting for death to come and all the rest of it. Bayside can still be disposed to virtue and be effective in domains other than destruction.
We are not yet dying for lack of trees … Not yet anyway.
Please consider any and all alternatives to the proposed removal of the ficus trees on Fourth and Second streets.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 8, 2007. Read the original PDF.