Santa Monica Observer - Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words

To the Editor: I’m hoping that this brief email get’s to the correct people in the city government and that it doesn’t fall on deaf ears.

As a 16 year resident of Sunset Park, and a business owner, I’ve built my family and business in our lovely city. In particular, I purchased my home on Maple Street because of the beauty and shade the mature ficus trees offered.

Tree coverage is the once thing you cannot really buy - only time and patience will provide.

Maple Street in Santa Monica from Google Earth

So you will understand that I was horrified when I noticed that the city was removing trees in the neighborhood, as opposed to maintaining them consistently. It seems once a tree is ’sick’, it isn’t pruned to preserve it, but only removed once the ’sickness’ is too far advanced, which seems like a very shortsighted vision for the city planners to assume.

Areas all around Sunset Park that have had the trees removed are understandably worse for having it done, not to mention the added electricity use for the home owners once the shade is removed.

My question is this - what is being down to prune the trees so this doesn’t happen throughout the neighborhood? What protections do the current Ficus Trees (and homeowners) have from future removal? What is the city doing to preserve the beauty (and home value) of the ficus trees still alive?

Jason Cornwell, Maple Street Resident