Its a Halloween WELCOME to you. October Country is a place in your head where the breezy days die down, there is a crunch to your steps, and long sleeves fill the days. We are changing seasons and lives, thoughts, and the future. It is magic, and more haunting than anything I could imagine.
Trees. There is a great poem by Joyce Kilmer that most people barely know how to quote that talks about their beauty : I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
She was right you know. It takes forever to really make a *tree*. Not just some shade sapling, but some mighty, deeply rooted living organisms that brings oxygen, shelters houses from heat, gives space for wildlife homes, and creates and ecosystem that we humans envy.
There is, however, another quote that is much more apt. for San Jose these days:
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen." ~Henry David Thoreau
Within my neighborhood, we have found that enterprising citizens are many, and they are very good at creating profit for themselves. They are creative, cunning, fast, smart, rich, and lethal to what most of their fellow citizens want. We have wanted our trees.
This summer, I had first hand knowledge of just what true weasels can do when they see money in front of them, and how *no* amount of money is too small for them to ignore, nor no act to aggressive if there is wealth that is possible. I do not use the term "weasel" lightly. A person has got to have the integrity of a snake to deliberately flaunt the law, and to do it to the people you have lived next to for over a decade is the act of a true and well trained weasel. The city of San Jose, like most in America, has laws about construction designed to give the city some control over the clear cutting of land, and to give citizens some input when their neighborhoods are going to be changed profoundly. Within the construction rules for housing are clauses for creating permits, approval of plans, neighborhood notifications, legal setbacks, mandatory requirements to mitigate neighborhood suffering, and requirements for safety and security. They are all there for a reason.
The city of San Jose has, notoriously, and for decades, used the contractors as their "partners" in government, and has given those who build on a regular basis lots of perks, including kickbacks of costs, discounts of fees, waiving permits, and even outright payments and free property. Often, this was under the guise of the "redevelopment" agency, and when Frank Taylor was running that area, the graft and greed got so bad that they began to dismantle the historic district of downtown San Jose before anyone could stop them. When a new mayor was elected, the entire Sr. staff of that group "resigned", and major changes occurred (although no one will ever admit they were *needed*).
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. " ~John Muir
But our developers are not a timid lot, and none of them left town. They just kept on keepin' on. San Jose has some wonderful ways of giving developers CRAZY leeway. The fines for failures to comply with the building codes for developers are painfully low. They drain the public coffers of much needed revenue even while the Police are working overtime to make it up in tickets. There are those who say they have set them at the rates they have so that "citizen builders" (homeowners) can remodel without fear of bankruptcy over fines. The have apparently not heard of a two-tiered system for fines relating to violations, nor will they even discuss the fact that professionals with licenses, years of experience working in SJ, and millions of dollars to gain are in a totally different league than the casual homeowner with $200,000.00 equity and no free time who is remodeling his attic on winter weekends. The city would like to treat both with equal fairness- which is, of course, inequitable. For decades, citizens have watched as heritage tree after heritage tree has been "accidentally" removed. The worst of all offenses happened almost 2 decades ago in South San Jose at old Monterey Road on land that was the historic stage coach stop. It had the largest tree of it's kind west of the Mississippi on the property, and the ladies that had owned it for decades spent a lot of time in court trying to undo their own losses after the land passed to the lawyer and then on to a developer (as I heard the story- please feel free to check the Mercury records).
The developer wanted the entire site for a major new shopping center. There was LOTS of land, and the location was ripe for the new housing going in all over that area. But that tree-- it stood right in the middle of the land and would require not being able to "fully develop" the site.
"The groves were God's first temples. " ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"
Permits were rejected, protests were made, and everyone involved, from the historical society to the new owners of homes nearby were in agreement that the lot was more than large enough to hold all the development *and* the tree. One weekend day, the bulldozing crew "accidentally" took it down. By the time the city was notified and anyone could take action, there was nothing to be done. The fine for the "accident" was not even the equivalent of a full days pay for the work crew. That story has been a pattern in SJ for 20 years, and we are tired of it. The pattern is so simple that it is insulting. 1- Do not get a permit for the tree removal. That would draw attention and would show you knew about said tree.2- Do not have any pictures of the tree, even if every other section of the lot has been painstakingly documented.3- Hire a small crew to work on a Sat. or Sunday. There is no code enforcement on those days, and the police dept. has an extremely spotty record on how - or even if- they will respond to tree calls.4- Look shocked when you are notified your crew took down a big tree that just happens to be right where you were going to put a building (yes, we know you do it-- for your plans show where the new stuff is going, or are conveniently *changed* once a tree has been accidentally taken).5- Dig deep into your pocket and pull out your small change purse to pay whatever fine they slap you with. The MILLIONS that you will earn from this deal makes a tree fine not worth your effort to even take off the taxes.6- If you are a TRUE weasel, you will first go in to the City and apply *retroactively* for a permit to take down the tree that is long gone. When this occurred during this summer, I was APPALLED that the city allowed weasels to come in after the fact of taking down heritage trees and get the original permit, thereby giving permission for acts that the citizens never had a chance to protest.
A super weasel owns his house and is also ALREADY a professional developer- and is using the "owner option" to change the lot into lots of homes- and gets to work nights, weekends, and holidays. Super weasels do this repeatedly. The city loves superweasels. They have recently allowed a Superweasel and his partner to develop first his own home site into 3 houses this way, and then they bought the lot behind them and the *partner* is claiming he will live in one of the 3 new houses they are putting up there- so they get to use this ploy TWICE. I don't feel bad for developers at *all*. Trees under 30" diameter are not heritage and can be torn down without all that trauma. That's 95% of all the trees in the city. Heritage tree permit processes are in place so that the neighbors can, should they desire, protect the neighborhood, the shade to their houses, and the atmosphere that often directly affects their housing values. Trees in WG are part and parcel of what makes us desirable for homes, and why our resale values are so high. Some have speculated that every tree that goes down within view of a house lowers that home property values by $5,000.00.
The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert
The weasels of SJ development have gotten away with the "replacement" clause as well. Their low fines have included giving back trees to the city. Small trees. Trees that cost them next to nothing to buy and install on public lands. Trees that will take decades to be anywhere near as large and important and useful as the counterparts that have been taken down. If the city was *really* into stopping this,they would require them to replace the tree EXACTLY. Yes, there are places where you can buy a full grown, 100 year old redwood. Pricey, but available. Any adult mature tree is available if you are willing to pay for it. Ask Hollywood, mansion developers, and resort owners. No hurricane can destroy anything that cannot be replanted *exactly* by the following spring.
There are quite a few things that SJ could do if they cared, and wanted to really show anything other than contempt for citizens and the protection of our trees. Many fear that the city, in it's zeal to grow and have projects done quickly, has become complicit with the developers, sitting fatly in their back pockets. These reforms would change that view.
Have every permit for every tree available on line, instantly, to every cop and city worker, citizen and stranger. It takes about 3 min to enter into the computers of the on line permits section of the city already being used.
Have SOMEONE from Code enforcement work on the weekends- or make sure every darned cop (and the dispatchers that argue with citizens) aware that they are responsible to uphold TREE laws and that they must respond.
Make it illegal to remove trees on weekends. Period. If you send a crew out on a weekend with a bulldozer, you better damned well make sure they know not to touch the trees.
Make all 3d party (non-homeowner) construction illegal on weekends- that takes care of having the PD involved, makes it easy to see who is trying to skirt the laws, and lets everyone sleep in on the weekends (right now that is NOT the case. I personally spent 4th of July unable to get the nail guns to stop).
make the crime cost some real money. Sunnyvale apparently takes this seriously, and is fining people 5 THOUSAND dollars for the FIRST time, and TEN THOUSAND for the second. It goes up from there. I wish they would make that cumulative for the life of the contractor.
Make it not worth any amount- refuse to allow building. If the city approves a permit where a building is going over the location of a tree, and yet there is no tree permit, it shows a blatant preplanning. When the developers bring in "plan A", then "accidentally" kill the big tree, and then REVISE their plans to put buildings where that pesky tree used to be- that's the sign of a TRUE weasel. Deny it. Make that land move irrelevant and impossible. If a tree has been illegally removed, no further changes of any structural kind or additions can go on that land for 20 years. Period. Even if a fire wipes it all out. Even if Aliens land. Period.
Compensate the neighbors with some respect. I am so tired of us doing the work we pay "Code Enforcement" for, and then not even getting a Thank you. That stinks. It shows the same lack of respect that started this whole thing.
Developers should not have more rights, more options, and more access to city hall than the neighbors.Businessmen that repeatedly fall back on "I didn't know" as their excuse shouldn't be allowed to do business in SJ. We have plenty of developers that are willing to come here and follow the rules. We do not need to encourage the weasels.
