There are a few things that need to be said before I try and report on last night and one of them is, it seemed as if there is an air of two sides opposing sides. I would like to clear that air and say this is not high school football. This is not a competition between "The Beacon Sidewalks" and "The Beacon Trees". I feel that it needs to be made clear that the people that are interested in saving the trees are a group comprised of reasonable individuals that want safe sidewalks too. A good example is right here. The writer of this blog is a shopkeeper and identifies with that sort of responsibility. I would hate for someone to fall down in front of my shop.
The other thing I would like to say is: we need our City Council meetings to be moderated in a format that is more easily heard and understood. This goes for all city meetings including architectural and planning meetings. The council and the mayor seem to talk amongst themselves and the public would appreciate being addressed and given clarification as to what is going on.
That being said, I will do my best to report on actually what happened:
The council was very strict with the time they gave everyone to speak. They were also strict with the way in which we spoke. Our first citizen, Shelley Sweeney (sp?) was reprimanded for being confrontational for speaking passionately and looking the party she was speaking to in the eye[s]. She was also accused of judging personality, when she wanted to state a fact about what we, as the public was told. Everyone was given a minute to speak with the exception of Lou Sebesta.
It's ironic, Lou said he's been giving the city advice for 10 years and it seems as if they finally started to listen last night. He spoke about the the poor selection of new trees, stating the species chosen would fail in more ways than one; including, but not limited to, poor shade canopy when these new trees mature (if they mature, see below) and some of the species chosen would uproot sidewalks far sooner than the trees we just removed.
Lou also pointed out that the specifications for the new plantings would cause the trees to fail including, but not limited to, the matter in which the trees are specified to be planted in. Lou made us all aware that the specifications call for particles of construction debris as some , if not all of the matter in which the trees will be planted in. This means our new trees will be planted in gravel dust and other junk.
On the note of how construction is being carried out Megan Sheramata's list of threats to the trees was read (click here to read for yourself)and hard copies of that list were handed to the council. This list was supposed to draw the City Council's attention to the how poor a job is being done by the contractor and the city. As of last night, our new trees were not watered yet and they've been in the ground about a week.
After this list was read a citizen followed up with the thought, that if the work they are doing is faulty, then this could be reason enough to terminate the contract. Another citizen mentioned
that he would never have signed a contract that bound him to pay $8400/day for every day that work is stopped.
The council was also made aware that the citizens have made a foil request for the contract and it will be read and understood by the people and what we can't understand we will be untangled by a lawyer.
Two building owners also spoke and made their concern about their sidewalks and dangerous trees known.
Again, we (the people who want to save the tree) want that safety too. Not everything is black and white, Republican or Democrat, pro or against, love or hate. If the world had a little more grey, Independents, open-mindedness and compassion, we would have far fewer problems than we actually have. This little note is addressed to all the people that grumbled any time we said something in favor of the trees--I hope you're reading this, this blog is for you too. My wish is that we can all come to an understanding and build a beautiful city and future together. As sappy as that sounds, that's what we should have. We deserve it.
No comments:
Post a Comment