A dozen years ago the idea of green roofs was a novel one and the first pictures I collected were of humble dwellings and simple homes. These are still favored images and closer to what I'll be installing this year (or next). Today it is becoming more and more acceptable in the architectural community and with planners to consider on a large urban scale. See last May's Tell-A-Vision for concept to heal the blight that is the big box, Wal-to-Wal, El Camino Real corridor aka car storage and large truck magnet.
Plants make life possible. This is the introduction to this video clip. One of San Diego's own, Jim Mumford, gives a TED Talk to inspire us all to think of green roofs, green walls and other living elements as a part of our built environment. The time has come. This week is California Arbor Week, March 7-14. Let's hug us some trees and fondle some foliage, folks.
Here is a vision for tomorrow. No, really, tomorrow as in Wednesday, October 24th, the last Encinitas City Council Meeting before the election for a new city council. Even though activists are usually working on researching the agenda packet to be prepared to speak, another approach just might be timely.
What about our preferred council candidates Lisa Shaffer and Tony Kranz speaking at Oral Communications about the overwhelming support for change in the council members? After more than a year of meet-ups, events, canvassing, flyer handouts and campaign writing, filming and every day spontaneous testimonials from voters - they have so many stories to tell. Picture council commissions filled with some of the best-qualified and most council interactive dialogs.
Similarly, our regular council-viewing community have their own stories from others to share. In three minutes each can give the idea of the sheer numbers of people contacted listened to, written about and befriended during this election year.
See, the council majority has proven over the last 12 years that Jerome Stocks is not only immune to fact-based criticism, he thrives on retaliation and revenge. Muir is the weighted right hand and Bond is over. Without these players, Gaspar is . . . alone and pettiness or petulance won't be indulged.
What about describing the long silenced minority running the show? Give examples of innovative ideas - like bioremediation of the contaminated soils - and how a transparent, interested council might treat the subject. Share your daydream of how the city manager might be effective in removing obstacles and challenging the staff to provide more and better support.
How would a council without fear of public discussion of financial strategies and risks envisioned to move back room, highly complex subjects into a series of intelligible forums. There are so many business friendly ideas and insights Lisa and Tony have to share.
All kinds of people have stories they've gathered of an active general population craving more support for walkable streets, more open space enhancement, community gardens, healthy air / oceans / wetlands and our urban forest. Just standing and reciting lists of things like this - with a big broad smile (and maybe even a blub or two) would bring a glad hearted feeling to the many, many people who are watching from home.
Update: At end
Encinitas citizens! It looks like it's showing up in real numbers with clarity of purpose that matters right now. The Crest Drive neighborhood's more than 2 dozen speakers, the well prepared organization of Kevin Farrell's diligent application, and organizing from several groups, a petition drive with hundreds of signatures and familiar faces from other neighborhoods all contributed to a successful appeal.
The following clips capture most all of the public speakers, grouped with 3 or 4 each. Pass them around the city, send them to organizations you belong to with this optimistic sense of power to the people. This first one begins with Appellant Kevin Farrell, Architect for the proposed Backus Residence.
Rick Backus, owner of 1794 Crest Drive property, Boone Hellmann UCSD campus architect who lives in Cardiff (punched holes in staff report compliance imperatives) and Ron Grimes who heads the Palomares Heights Association gave history of threats to Crest Drive since 1982.
Debbie Barley, Elizabeth Cotton, Charles Smith and Alan Aberhothe (?) all question what is going on with the city staff's lack of service to community. What can't be shown at a council meeting are the months and months of struggling with staff. Only through testimonials like this is a bright light shown on the behind the scenes city processes.
Appellant Kevin Farrell's daughter, L Farrell (?), Jennifer Lutz with her dad, John Lutz and Kyle Malloy speak out. Public Hearing of the appeal of Engineering conditions for public improvements adjacent to 1794 Crest Drive. What a good sign for Encinitas when younger people show up at the city council meeting ready to speak.
Just when you think you have heard all from these activists, they provide more insight into the community. Within the 15 minutes that these regulars activists participated in this one hour long public hearing. Several captured here are Mark Wisniewski, Delores Welty & Sheila Cameron.
Lastly, the issue of costs. Speakers like David (last name unclear), Ted Goldberg and Jennifer Hewitson raised the issue of the exhorbant costs. Ellen Speert spoke about Nature Deficit Disorder while many simply shared their stories of moving from somewhere else and Crest Drive was a place they love. Sandra Goldberg, Elizabeth Gilpin, Jerry Louis, Helen Konig and Mark Scoular.
kevin farrell
10:03 am on Monday, August 20, 2012
As a follow up to my accomplishment for this particular case on Crest, the mandate from the city engineering department for drainage swale, curbs and sidewalks in all parts of encinitas will now change. It is up to all builders, owners and design professionals to question and scrutinize the forced ROW (right of way) items from this engineering department. All old encinitas areas are effected by our 5-0 City Council vote. I would like to thank this City Council and all whom assisted in this
8 month endeavor. My goal is to keep our Community Character in our control, not an overbearing engineer's.
Kevin Farrell, Architect
Tamara Backus
6:13 pm on Monday, August 20, 2012
Thanks you's to everyone who came and spoke at the City Counsel meeting last week! Kevin Farrell put together an incredible petition drive and appeal, and we will be forever grateful! We were so heartened by the number of passionate Crest Dr. and non-Crest Dr. residents who came out and patiently waited for their time to speak in support of this appeal. Crest Dr. is a magical street that should never be changed, and we are so pleased that our Mayor and City Counsel came to that conclusion, as well!
Again, Thank You to all who signed the petition and came to support us in our appeal!
Warmly,
Rick and Tammy Backus
Update below . . .
"Tonight's City Council meeting went past 11:00 pm but it showed the potential for good governance. With 30 public speakers, all in agreement, the Council upheld an appeal from Crest Drive to use common sense and respect for the beauty and uniqueness of the community instead of blindly applying inappropriate and destructive city ordinances."
"Power to the People, where it should belong! Thanks to everyone who took the time to speak." [editor emphasis]
Councilwoman Teresa Barth had this exchange with Shaffer,
"Lisa thanks for staying for the entire council meeting. You have the right stuff!"
Shaffer replied, "Thanks. I also chose not to take time to make statements on the various agenda items in light of the number of other speakers. Clearly there are opportunities to bring the staff and their "customer service" training into closer alignment with the citizens they purport to serve..."
Note: The many new faces and fine speakers from the Crest Drive neighborhood who spoke at this Wed., August 15 council meeting will be captured in video clips and available later today.
Update: Most public speakers for the Crest Drive appeal have been captured in video clips now posted on encinitasyouneedus YouTube Channel.
In the film students in the award-winning Pace University course "Producing the Documentary" highlight the unseen issues within the cork industry in Portugal. The students wrote, filmed and produced the entire project, traveling to Porto, Coruche & Lisbon to research and film.
The film makes the connection between cork harvested for wine bottles, a source of livelihood for 100,000 people, and the forests that are repositories for wildlife across Southern Europe and parts of North Africa.
When someone tries to tell you the latest far right fringe propaganda that sustainability is some sort of subversive word, let this person know how dead wrong that idea is. Even with technology, scientific advancement incorporated into this ancient industry - the basics remain as a viable means to make a living, to provide a population with a resilient industry.
Contrast this as an economic strategy with the Wal-to-Wal El Camino strip, where from Walgreens to Walmart, Encinitas business means job offerings of minimum wage exploitation of desperate workers. The few businesses that are locally owned may be the exception to the rule. But all businesses suffer when having to compete with the corporate chains.
This campaign season, let's ask our candidates to offer better alternatives for economic resilience.
The North County Times article speaks to our city's real problem (from residents point of view and from an sound ecosystem point of view) with the aggressive butchering of trees to achieve ill-defined, questionably justified planning goals and parks and recreation practices(separate but equally destructive for trees).
This article contains a list of all of the 82 Special Status Streets that were given exemptions from mandatory widths dictated by codes. Nothing has been allowed this exemption since 1993 or since the current city council majority has been in power.
It's time to redefine what these roadway codes are and why they take precedence over all of the people who live along these streets, like the Crest Drive neighbors and the Wotan Drive neighbors in the article who are petitioning the city.
More than a decade of relying on developer deals to run a city in a piecemeal fashion for a revenue stream or infrastructure improvements, insensitive to safe and sustainable living for the children, the people, wildlife and the trees (always working 24/7 though far older than most residents) is blind to reality.
This isn't a simplistic challenge. This is a giant connect the dots with vision and intelligence. It demands the kind of coordination between traffic, housing, public health, environmental limits, economic changes and other criteria within our General Plan. The need for the status quo to be revisited is the very reason the update to our General Plan was needed and why discarding and / or disallowing diverse voices now is a big mistake.
This week one council agenda item will be to discuss the study findings for widening a portion of Manchester Avenue. Those neighbors spoke out with the same concerns of these people in the article above, so we are all connected.
Something to help envision other ways of thinking. Trees healing the ravages of climate upheavals. The following has been a real thing in the real world for well over a decade. Yet one seldom hears an ideas like this in our media, our council chambers. Changing weather and weathering change are intrinsically tied.
Let's start allowing known facts and experiences in the natural world
inform our conversations, our decisions about the present and the
future. All problems of the world solved in the garden, the man says. Beats starting another war for no apparent reason or drilling for oil in the tar sands, national park or the Arctic.
World Water Day was yesterday, making this clip and the updates that followed relevant for now.
Encinitas is a community that loves its trees. It has taken some real dedication on the part of citizens to keep after the public works department, park and recreation, the newer environmental commission to implement a comprehensive Urban Forest Management Plan. It was initiated some time in 2008.
If you watched some of the clips with this week's marathon of past protests at Orpheus Park and realize that only recently word came of the Tree City USA designation, you'll see that the Urban Forest plan has moved very, very slowly through the departmental channels, through staff writing and research and the public attempt to get it on the city council agenda. Tony Kranz, an abiding advocate for an urban forest ordinance, leads off in the 2010 clip below.
To go back to the timeline of the video clips that follow, six months following the Orpheus tree cutting debacle, city staff presented what they called an Urban Forest Management Plan.
The public, the council questions followed. Again, some facts about Encinitas urban forest are very often more informative than staff presentations. Here's a taste.
It really was something to behold. Three years ago a neighborhood mobilized around an outrage a violation and this anger and hurt grew organically, it escalated. To be fair, like our experience with the Surfing Madonna, Encinitas was put on the map through the press carrying the story of 11 trees being cut down in Leucadia's Orpheus Park.
A host of these community members follow in these clips and each brings information worth hearing. A lawyer, a teacher, an arborist, a scientist, a chief treehugger, former mayors and more to be featured another day. If you see them on the street, please tell them you watched the clips. Let's acknowledge each other when we act with engagement. It's encouraging. Courage isn't a trait of many, but millions of us are able to encourage. It's easy but surprisingly all too rare.
If you want to take this (approximately 38 minutes) in smaller doses, simply come back another time and type "trees" in the "search this blog" box in the right hand column or click on "trees" in the list of labels. All posts related to this week of trees (and this will be true for future tree stories) will be brought to the front of the line.
Tuesday is Dues-day. The dues are schooling yourself on how our local governance is organized, who are the players, what are the screw-ups, where is the money and what things get reported?
You’re a citizen, an advocate for democracy with this first step, paying attention. Today is the first day of Spring, last week was Arbor week and Encinitas has recently been officially designated a Tree City, USA. All of this warrants today's Citizen Tip = Trees.
“To use something as elegant as a tree. . . Imagine this design assignment: design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. Then say, why don’t we knock that down and write on it.” - William McDonough
McDonough, author of Cradle to Cradle, has stated the wealth that a tree represents in the above quote. In city within a culture within a country that disallows many conversations about anything that isn’t a commodity or in some way monetized according to economics from the past, trees can be a marginal subject at best or a smug hippy reference at worst. But anticipating our 21st century needs and stressors requires deeping conversations and alternative ways of framing our problems here in Encinitas. Trees having worth beyond their value as merely commodities, view or root obstructions or lawn ornaments begs public exposure, community knowledge.
Oh, and the 2009 cutting down 12 trees (one with a tree sitter) in Leucadia's Orpheus Park that overlooks Paul Ecke Central Elementary School represents one of the biggest screw-ups ever by the council majority of Dan Dalager, Jerome Stocks and Jim Bond. Last week's Sunshine Ordinance posts touched on their public relations nightmare here, here andhere. Sunshine and trees and the misuse of email are all intertwined in this political stew. It's a good story to know and filled with facts unknown to many outside of Leucadia.
Both Dadla Ponizil and Elizabeth Taylor were Environment Commission members at the time of this Orpheus Park incident. Chris Hazeltine, mentioned in this clip, was the Parks and Recreation head. He has since moved on to Carlsbad where he's still cutting down trees.
Encinitas favorite tree expert, Mark Wisniewski, ran out of time and had to return the next week to complete his talk. The videographer did a very poor job of capturing the video monitor where Mark's slides illustrated what he was saying.
In honor of all the people who went to city hall to stand up at city council for the sake of the trees, this theme will be central to a dozen clips this week.
Leucadia residents in particular will remember three years ago when 11 trees were cut down by the city at Orpheus Park and the mean spirited emails about Teresa Barth, Paul Ecke Central Elementary School teachers by Dalager, Stocks and Bond to staff and the outside world from their city computer accounts. These councilmen chose to take little to no responsibility.
Conversely, Councilor Barth remained consistent in attempting to serve the residents' best interests. She was treated very badly, yet chose to take responsibility as a public official for the despicable failure the city demonstrated.
