Stepping on toes in handing over palms

Ventura College instructor Jim Downer noticed something unusual when workers pruned and inspected palms on campus just after the start of the school year.

“It struck me as odd,” said Downer, a University of California extension plant pathologist who has taught at the college for 20 years. “They just don’t keep up with tree trimming here.”

A few days later, his worst fears were realized. He saw giant palm trees removed, swung by a crane onto a flatbed truck and wrapped for shipment to destinations unknown.

But these weren’t ordinary palm trees. Horticulture experts say some of the plants, including Mediterranean fan palms and Chilean wine palms, are worth up to $25,000 apiece and are often used for oasis-style landscaping in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Now, tree lovers are coming out of the woodwork because they suspect something shady. They say Ventura College administrators have not given a full explanation about why the trees were removed instead of replanted, who removed them and what became of them. Critics, including some scientists, say that at a minimum, horticulturists should have been consulted before the college acted.

“Those are some really rare trees. That’s a lot of money going out the door,” Downer said. “I suspect the college didn’t know what the value of those trees was.”

Further, critics charge that some of the palms were planted decades ago as part of a widely recognized botanical collection honoring the late John Tallman, a college administrator who ended his career as a member of the Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees. Instructors say that they used the trees as part of their curriculum, assigning students to study them.

“The public has lost a valuable asset at the college,” Donald Hodel, environmental horticulturist for the UC extension program and a member of the International Palm Society, said in a Nov. 2 e-mail. He described the palm removal as “an inappropriate disposal of college property.”

Ventura College trustees received an oral report about the landscaping changes during a public meeting last month and supported the plan.

Officials said the palms were removed as part of a landscaping project for a $10.5-million renovation of the school’s sports complex.

College President Robin Calote said some palms were traded, with new ones planted for the old ones that were uprooted. She does not know if there was an attempt to compare the value of the new trees with the ones that were removed.

“It’s a valid concern,” said Calote, who was out of the country when the decision was made. “The people involved were well intentioned.”

She said some trees were abandoned potted palms that could not be sold and were planted along a fence so they wouldn’t die. Others were mislabeled, not of sufficient pedigree or had grown too tall to be marketable.

“There are trees all over this campus planted by John Tallman,” Calote said. “There is nothing unique about this row, as compared to the ones we have all over.”

Bob Forest, director of campus maintenance and operations, maintains the campus grounds and has worked at Ventura College for 32 years.

He said he merely switched out trees as part of the sports complex project. “I have not shopped prices, I just wanted to swap trees,” Forest said. “It’s just a brokered deal to get the landscaping done.... There’s nothing nefarious or evil.”

At issue are 20 palms that were removed beginning in September.

They were uprooted from near a baseball field at the northwest corner of the 112-acre campus. Among the trees were eight Chilean wine palms, which take about 50 years to mature and are worth up to $25,000 each.

As replacements, the college plans to plant 29 palms, more uniform in size, to complement landscaping at the sports center. The new trees will include the same number of Chilean wine palms, according to an official.

Forest says he made a good deal, adding that he received quotes that it would cost at least $70,000 to purchase eight mature Canary Island date palms included among the 29 trees being acquired.

The college paid no money for the trees it received, he said, and the deal includes the cost of labor to transport, prune and replant some of the trees.

But critics are upset that the college didn’t assess or disclose the value of the plants before they were removed.

“They should have had an inventory of these palms, their size, their general health and estimated value. It’s at least negligence not to do that. They’re trading away government property, and there’s no assessed value,” Hodel said. “Who knows? They may have been worth twice what the college thought they were. It seems to me to be a rather shoddy way to operate.”

Calote said the college is discussing the possibility of designating the campus as an official botanical garden or arboretum, a concept included in the master plan for the campus as far back as the 1950s.

greg.griggs@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Gary Polakovic contributed to this report.