Letter: Thoughts on Downtown News

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I attended the Planning Commission meeting on March 4 from 6 p.m. until 10:45 p.m. I was surprised by what the Indy didn’t cover from that meeting about the public’s response to SWA’s downtown action plan (DAP).

1. The majority of people who showed up were disturbed by the plan to remove tall, mature trees, particularly on Forest Avenue, and replace them with new trees in order to lay new, brick sidewalks. Many indicated that this was their first time attending the meeting, including a high school hipster, a woman who drove from Los Angeles to speak, and a young girl.

2. Some were disturbed by the DAP proposed costs of $1.9 million for the Forest Avenue and Broadway phase 1 option when a 10% resident tax increase is being proposed for repairing the sewer lines. One speaker asked why the residents’ taxes are being used for new sidewalks, lighting, tree removal and replacement, but not the sewer lines, if we have $2 million to work with?

3. A woman presented the Planning Commissioners with a petition of 2,400 names to keep the downtown mature, healthy trees. The names consisted of both visitors and residents.

Editor’s Note: More than 3,800 people supported the change.org petition as of deadline.

4. Someone cited the SWA report, which lists that 92% of the downtown trees are in fair to very good health. The 8% that are in poor health was due in part to city maintenance problems with not watering and/or topping the trees.

5. The SWA consultants explained that the proposed new tree wells will cost between $8,000 and $12,000 each and are needed to encourage root growth and tree support for the 151 new trees. SWA’s plan describes how the new tree wells could be used on existing trees. Both tree well options require the city set up a watering system, which isn’t specified in the plan, or issues with tree health will happen again.

Deborah Laughton, Laguna Beach

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1 COMMENT

  1. Deborah, maybe you should be more transparent and say your last name is actually “Weiss” and that George Weiss, the founder of Laguna Residents First, is actually your husband. He also just so happens to have been the man responsible for all the misinformation that went around town saying all the trees were going to be cut down, and failed to mentioned the ones getting removed are mostly diseased and will be replaced, plus there will be over 150 MORE trees than we have currently that will be planted in the Downtown. So to be clear, those people you are mentioning came down to speak based upon inaccurate information your group fed them.

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