Broadway trees on the chopping block

That leafy green approach to the Sonoma Plaza up the final block of Broadway may look idyllic this time of year, but it’s fraught with controversy, expense and even injury.

The Sonoma City Council got an earful of all of the above the Monday before Arbor Day as it considered possible action on the removal and replanting of the Broadway Street trees, at the request of the city Tree Committee.

A subset of the Community Services and Environment Commission, the nine-member Tree Committee met several times in the past few months to consider requests from Broadway property owners to remove one or more of the trees from Broadway. Their complaints: the trees’ growing roots are infiltrating sewer lines and uplifting sidewalks, people are tripping and suing, and the landowners are being stuck with the repair bill.

About six months ago, the owner of the building at 561 Broadway, Jack Monroe, asked for permission to remove two trees in front of the business there, Century 21. He had earlier been given notice from the city requiring him to repair the damaged sidewalk, damage he maintained was caused by the red oak trees.

In January 2015, the owner of the building at 525-527 Broadway, John Powers, also filed for removal of a tree, this one in front of Top That Frozen Yogurt.

But it was the December 2014 request from Melissa Detert Redmond, owner of several buildings along the east side of the avenue, to remove all 17 trees from 520-578 Broadway that pushed the issue onto the desk of Public Works Director Dan Takasugi, and from there onto the City Council agenda.

The story of how 40 red oaks came to line Broadway is both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. According to Larry Barnett’s slide show presentation to the City Council, prior to 1990 that final block of Broadway was anything but hospitable to foot traffic, or business. “It was a hot, barren streetscape,” he said, “a wasteland.”

Powers’ memories are somewhat different. “It was perfect,” he said. “There was nothing wrong with it. In fact, what we should have done was put in diagonal parking, then we would have had more parking and nobody would have complained.”

In 1988 a citizens group presented a “Broadway/City Hall Forecourt Study,’ recommending a comprehensive design treatment from MacArthur up to and including City Hall. The council at the time endorsed the idea, but in 1991 cancelled it when funding was unavailable.

The Sonoma Plaza Foundation, which had been created to help raise money for the Plaza, changed its focus, according to founder Suzanne Brangham. The owner of MacArthur Place led three charity Red and White Balls, sold naming rights of 40 trees to individual donors, and added her own contribution to come up with the $300,000 to redesign the street and plant the trees. The names of those 40 “generous citizens of Sonoma,” as Brangham still calls them, can be found on a plaque on the Union Bank building on the northeast corner of Broadway, across from the Plaza.

Somewhere between the initial streetscape plan and the planting, the trees changed – from the first recommendation of sycamores, to a later iteration of ginko bilobas, then to pin oaks, and finally to the 40 red oaks that arborist James MacNair remembers planting in 1999.

“I’m not sure why it was changed,” he said recently. “It may have been strictly availability. Ginkos in that time period were often very hard to get.” Ginkos are sometimes called “autumn gold,” for their eruption into yellow foilage at summer’s end – which leaves a golden carpet when they fall.

Brangham recalls lobbying for pin oaks, and isn’t sure why red oaks were planted. “My understanding is that we were to get a tree that was deep rooted, that didn’t have surface roots,” she said. “And that’s why I thought the pin oaks were decided upon, because viewing the older trees at the Sonoma Developmental Center, they didn’t disrupt sidewalks.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” said Catherine Sevenau, manager of the Century 21 brokerage at 561 Broadway. Even though she and other business people appreciate the evenly-spaced, stately trees that now help define historic Sonoma, they are adamant that they should not bear the financial burden for maintaining the sidewalk, or the damaged sewer laterals, or even removal of the trees themselves.

But those expenses are undoubtedly their legal responsibility, according to Takasugi, an obligation that is rooted not only in municipal code but state law. That includes not only the sewer lateral clean-out and the tree itself, but the sidewalk and any personal damages from a trip hazard, “no matter who planted the tree,” said Takasugi.

Redmond isn’t buying it. “The bottom line is how much can a person afford for liability,” she told the Index-Tribune in a telephone conversation. “I didn’t ask for the trees. I didn’t ask to plant the trees. I didn’t ask for anything. It’s just that one day (the city says): now here’s a couple hundred thousand dollars of responsibility.”

Powers voiced a similar complaint. “Now they’ve admitted they were the wrong trees,” he said. “So the recommendation is, which to me is totally foolish, take them all out, replace them with a tree that is not invasive to the concrete, all of it being paid for by the owner of the property.”

“I want to be clear that staff is recommending that no red oak trees will be allowed to be removed until a replanting plan is approved by the Council,” said Takasugi. “Some have misinterpreted the current issue as a removal approval with no plans to replant, and that is not correct.”

Yet the specter of wholesale removal of the corridor of red oaks casts a shadow on the issue, unfortunately on the eve of Arbor Day, as naturalist Tom Rusert pointed out in his comments before the council. “I’m here to speak on behalf of birds and trees,” he said. “There’s birds in those trees. This is habitat.”

“I think it would be terrible if they pull these trees out – they’re beautiful and just beginning to come into their own,” said Barnett. “As envisioned, they promise a stately entryway to the most historic plaza in America.”

“If a tree is problematic and it needs to be removed, it would be a dagger to my heart,” said Brangham when reached by phone the next day, “but it would not be as severe as taking all the trees down. That’s not anything that I can agree with at all.”

But Sevenau voiced her position at the meeting, speaking for the absent Monroe. “Our first concern is safety. We see a face plant three or four times a year – people trip there all the time. Our second is, we don’t want to pay for something that was done without a great deal of (forethought).”

Whether or not there was adequate planning in the design and planting of the red oaks, those are the trees there now. If replacement were to become necessary, Sevenau suggested doing it strategically, taking out the biggest trees and replacing them with less root-aggressive ones as they become a problem. Arborist MacNair speculated that a flowering pear, a smaller maple hybrid, or an Oklahoma redbud might be a better choice at this point.

The Tree Committee’s recommendation to council was that “property owners be granted permission to remove any of the red oak trees along Broadway between Napa Street and Patten Street pending development of a re-planting plan and obtaining Caltrans permission.”

But as the council explored the issue on Monday it became clear they weren’t willing to go along without further investigation. “It does seem like there’s more information to be found,” Councilmember Rachel Hundley said, noting the issues of lawsuits, property damage, even birds, and she wondered how many of the 38 trees listed were actually causing problems.

Every councilmember who understood the complexity of the issue expressed discomfort with casting a vote to remove any of the trees; and at the end of discussion voted 5-0 to refer the matter back to staff for a tree damage assessment inventory, to determine how many of the trees are causing sufficient damage to be considered for removal.

Takasugi estimated an arborist would charge about $10,000 to perform the inventory, and said they’d probably take competitive quotes. But, he added, “Amongst the dozens of other priority projects, we may not get to this for another few months.”