Posts Tagged ‘ Emeryville City Council ’

  (RE Oct. 16, 2012 Letter to the Editor from Eric Gascoyne: Cut Spending, Save the Trees at Temescal Creek Park) To the Editor: Thanks (to Eric Gascoyne) for writing his letter. I went to the City Council meeting and spoke on behalf of the trees and the hawks. I’m glad we have saved them for now. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the park project has made a park with lots of potential into an ugly “inner city”-looking park. They paved over the entire grassy area, giving ample room for vandals to break glass, urinate, and tag on the abundant hard surfaces. If you urinate on grass or on a tree, nature will deal with it, this is not the case for man-made materials. Will Emeryville parents really want their kids riding trikes through busted glass and human urine, passing by swear words tagged all over the play structures? Do you remember who actually hung out on the former play structures? Usually they were not children. This combined with Emeryville taking over the Oakland school on Adeline and 53rd Street, sending waves of high schoolers up 53rd – littering, loitering, selling drugs and even trying to steal my cell phone, has

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Attention all interested residents! Preservation of the trees at Parkside will be discussed at tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting. Anyone wanting to make a public comment on the matter should attend the meeting. Public comment on the tree issue will begin at approximately 8 pm. ___________________________ In recommending the removal of all the trees in the Parkside park, Archstone, the developer, and the city staff tried to pull one over on the City Council and the residents of Emeryville. The City Planning Division has finally revealed the real motivation for the tree removal: Archstone needed the space as a temporary staging area for construction equipment, and for a temporary parking lot for PRC, the medical facility across the road. This information can be found in the attached staff report (see section entitled “Southwest Quadrant”). The big question is, has this temporary parking lot been approved by anybody other than Planning Director Charles Bryant? Was it ever put before the planning commission or the City Council? I’ve seen no evidence of that. It just suddenly appeared in this staff report. And this is no minor project after all: it involves the removal of a dozen trees, the leveling of grades, the

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Council Member Jac Asher has put on the agenda for the next City Council meeting (Oct. 16th) a discussion of whether the city should change the design of the Parkside park to include some or all of the existing trees. Council Member Asher’s willingness to do this shows her commitment to transparent government. It shows that she wants the freedom to cast her votes on the basis of complete information, not partial information cherry-picked by city staff. It shows that she values the right of Emeryville’s residents to receive proper notification (i.e. signs posted on the trees) when the city is contemplating the removal of its trees. Her actions have already yielded results. In response, Charles Bryant, Planning Director for the City of Emeryville, has issued a staff report which finally reveals the real motivation behind the removal of these trees. It has nothing to do with landscape design. It has nothing to do with drip lines and root damage and berms and “maintaining open spaces in the park.” Here is what the report says: “Most of these trees will need to be removed to accommodate the temporary PRC parking lot during construction of their permanent lot at the eastern

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City Staff Manipulated City Council and Citizens, Resident Adrian McGilly Says Below is the short video of a statement by Adrian McGilly, husband of Emeryville Mayor Jennifer West, to the City Council at its last regular meeting Tuesday, Oct. 2. He is addressing the controversy over the planned cutting of 33 mature street trees to make way for a park. McGilly  has written to the City Council asking that at least some of the trees be preserved. His letter revealed that city staff deleted two key sections of the arborist report before sending it to the City Council to decide whether or not to cut the trees. (To comment or to view the comments of others, click on the headline to go to the story page and then scroll to the bottom).

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      Open letter to City Council says staff instructed “Parkside” developer to delete portions of arborist’s report City Council Members: Attached is the Staff Report you all received prior to voting to authorize the removal of 33 mature trees along Stanford.  It includes the arborist report commissioned by Archstone and produced by Hortscience Inc., which recommends the destruction of those trees. As you know, I find it sad and misguided that mature trees will be destroyed on a site that is being turned into a public park. I find this decision so repulsive that I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how it happened. I want to share with you some of my findings. As Mayor Jennifer West recently pointed out in her blog, before sending that arborist report to you, the city staff directed Archstone to remove two important sections from the arborist report. Those sections were entitled: “Guidelines for tree preservation during the design, construction and maintenance phases of development” and “The appraised value of the trees.” I find it very disturbing that the city’s planning department would instruct a private developer to change their report in a way that draws attention away from tree preservation

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