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From:peghall To:publiccomment Subject:irreplaceable trees Date:Tuesday, July 30, 2024 4:24:17 PM [You don't often get email from mahalloran@yahoo.com. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] Dear City who Cares (I hope), Hello. You’ve done a wonderful job creating more housing, much of which is near the train station. I believe the reasoning was to facilitate reduced traffic thus benefiting the environment. The environment and specifically climate change is my concern, as well as the general ascetic of our city. It doesn’t seem as though the heating of our city is being well considered as we move forward with all these plans for growth. Large (and especially old growth heritage) trees are of immense benefit in the fight against global warming. The more concrete, large buildings and fewer trees and green spaces in a city, the hotter it is. I applaud the plans for more parks, and yet I was appalled that cutting down the redwoods by the library would even have been considered. Totally counter productive. "Smart” growth includes maintaining canopies over our streets from large trees. They help to cool our city, and are necessary, especially as you are now expecting more people to walk to downtown. Too many of these are being cut down to make way for new buildings and often just because it’s more convenient for someone. Planting replacement trees is not the solution- A small tree takes decades or longer to replace a large, old tree, and many of them are so close to the building that they will end up being cut down when they get to a nice medium size. We do not have decades. I do see successes: The large redwoods planted at Kaiser are wonderful, (although they look like they are struggling- I hope they get enough water) The side walk was moved to accommodate the magnificent Sequoia on Birch in front of the meditation center. A Huge Thank you for these and others that I haven’t noticed. We used to have an ordinance against cutting Heritage Trees, which made it much more difficult. Please re-instate that ordinance. Every season, I see fewer trees in our neighborhoods- it is not very appealing. Just some examples- Many trees were recently cut down in front of Hawes baseball field. The trees along the railroad tracks were cut down years ago and replacements were promised- they have not materialized. Many others have been cut down as well. Again, I ask you please please reinstate some sort of ordinance to make it more difficult to cut down large trees. Thank you, Peggy Halloran