Never doubt that a small group of toughtful and committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.

Margaret Mead

On behalf of the trees of downtown Winslow

On Thursday evening, October 8 2003 Philippe Boucher addressed the Planning Commission.
Here are his notes.
They do not correspond to what he actually said word by word but that's what he meant.

Our main concern is the endangered situation of the trees in downtown Winslow.

This will come as no surprise to Chair Luria since we have seen in the previous minutes of the Commission's meetings that he has been mentioning several times the disappearance of trees downtown.

Our assessment is the main culprits are the code and the comprehensive plan.

They have to be modified to protect downtown trees and this change has to be as quick as possible otherwise most of the "significant" trees will be gone.

Our first immediate request is for the Planning Commission to ask the Planning Department to provide the community with a State of the downtown trees report, that is a compilation of all the Tree Retention Plans since the year 2000 so we can see how many trees have been lost and where.

This cumulative impact assessment is indispensable to have a global view of what is happening. It is not something difficult or costly to do so I expect that it can be done very quickly (before the end of October).

Our second request is that the whole information procedure be transformed to really engage the public instead of pretending to do it. What we have now that is a few letters to the immediate neighbors and the posting of a very small notice on the site: this is totally inappropriate in terms of community information.

We suggest that the notice posted on the site be much bigger and include in a very prominent way the proposed tree retention plan.

We suggest that the City starts using the internet tools to share the information instead of relying exclusively on time consuming visits to City Hall: that means posting the information on the city website in a userfriendly and userefficiently format plus the creation of a listserv so that people interested can directly receive the information and send their comments.

As far as using the internet is concerned, the Planning Commission should accept questions sent via email and the answers should be posted and archived on the site.

We also suggest that the title of the minutes be more detailed, ie include the main items of the agenda. The date by itself is not that helpful.

About the public works department and the trees.

The public works department should be asked to provide a tally of the significant trees they cut down.
We have been shocked by the way the department was considering cutting down the Willow tree on the Hoskinson House plot just because it was on the way of the sidewalk!
The Willow tree has been saved because of the architect but there was no one to prevent the public works department to cut down a beautiful Madrona tree that was in the way of the sidewalk being built on Ericksen.
Despite the promises made to Olaf Ribeiro that this Madrona would be protected. This type of behavior makes us extremely suspicious of the way the public works department considers trees: maybe the only good trees are cut down trees?
Promoting sidewalks should not mean cutting down significant trees.

Beside informing the public when they intend to cut a significant tree and instead of going ahead without any warning, the PWD should not cut any significant tree without prior notice to the community.
The department should also provide a report on the trees they plant, where and how they are doing. There is a concern that some of the trees newly planted don't survive very long. If so, we should know about it.
In fact this should be the job of a certified arborist within the City. We have been told there is at least one person who is a certified arborist within the public works department but she is not used in this capacity. We think the City should have such an in-house arborist to take care of our community trees.
When too many trees have been cut down it seems fair to try to find some sort of compensation for such a loss.
Looking at the projected parks and pocket parks for Winslow we have the impression very little has been done in that regard.
The plan for the creation of new neighborhood parks downtown should be updated and funding provided for land acquisitions giving a priority to the downtown neighborhoods that have lost the highest number of trees.
Another issue to consider is the undergrounding of utility lines.
Protecting aerial utility lines has contributed to considerable damages to our community trees. When many significant trees are cut the utility poles and the wires become the main landmarks (along with the parking lots):
Is that the type of landscape we want for Winslow?
We need a precise undergrounding plan that takes into account the loss of significant trees.
New developments should systematically be required to underground the utility lines.
We think those are simple decisions City Officials can take immediately to protect our community trees and the quality of our urban life.
As far as citizens are concerned we think they have to get organized to constantly monitor what is happening and act as public advocates for the trees.
We have started this effort by initiating individual contacts to build a coalition.
We have created a website http://www.orgsites.com/wa/friends-of-the-trees/
and we are planning a first public meeting on saturday October 25 to raise the awareness about those issues and the appropriate solutions and decisions.

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