Shoreline is supposed to be a place that cares about trees. We need a "stand-alone, independent tree board" that represents all of Shoreline not just one neighborhood and we need to truly enhance our urban forest canopy.
Conifer within the Right of Way
The Shoreline Community Vision is about a place that values trees
and the benefits they provide.
- Create a Tree Board composed of citizen volunteers with forestry experience/expertise with a mission to protect our environment by protecting the trees in all our neighborhoods.
- Establish a list of "approved trees" that reflects the character of neighborhoods, including conifers; "Right Tree, Right Place"(http://www.arborday.org/trees/righttreeandplace/size.cfm)
- Use a SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) Review to assess the potential risks of the proposed code changes.
- Create a tree ordinance that truly enhances our urban forest and effectively promotes tree protection.
Shoreline should be about more than cutting trees for views.
We the undersigned are people who care about Shoreline, our community and especially about our trees and Urban Forest. Our trees are what give our community its unique character and value, and we believe we should protect our urban canopy in order to protect the health of our citizens, improve commerce, our air and water quality, wildlife habitat and quality of life.
We suggest a SEPA review be undertaken before implementing the tree management ordinance (#617 and #627) that is proposed, to ascertain the actual environmental impacts of the plan and all multiple planned other tree related activities.
The proposal for a Tree City USA designation, is only worthwhile if a Tree Board is empowered to protect trees and enhance our tree canopy. We believe the tree board should undertake a comprehensive inventory, an urban forestry plan and create a street tree list that reflects our community, including conifers, natives and the existing street trees.
We also believe that creating a permit system to benefit the demands of one neighborhood, should not be the main reason to create a tree board and permitting system. The goal of a tree management system should be improving our environment and the well being of our citizens, our children and grandchildren.
We urge the City Council to follow the precautionary principal and "First do no harm", when creating a tree management policy and create a stand alone, independent tree board that can help enhance our urban forest with policies that increase the health our urban forest canopy and quality of life.
We the undersigned request to be parties of record in this matter and request notice of all future actions or meetings that pertain to it.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful analysis in consideration of our Urban Forest.
