Let’s Hope It Doesn’t Rain Before Christmas

Last year the City of Carlsbad purchased an $800, 35-foot sequoia from an Orange County nursery to serve as a municipal Christmas tree. It was planted in Rotary Park in downtown Carlsbad, and a beautiful Christmas tree decorating ceremony was held.

But the ho-hos turned to uh-ohs this year when the tree started turning brown, apparently the result of transplant trauma.

“It was looking pretty sad. Our park people say it will survive and that it’s bouncing back, but for a while it looked like a Charlie Brown tree,” said Chris Salomone, the city’s redevelopment director.

The tree will be decorated on Wednesday and the official tree-lighting ceremony will be held Sunday afternoon. But the most important face lift has already occurred.

Park crews the other day, using a biodegradeable solution, quietly painted the brown tree green.

To Sea or Not to Sea

Speaking of trees, our friends in Del Mar--who love their trees as much as they love their ocean vistas--are on the branches of a dilemma.

Seems that a bunch of folks have complained to City Hall that those small, inconspicuous trees of years ago have grown into towering, bushy monsters that are blocking those expensive ocean views.

And it’s not just trees at fault. There’s the complaint circulating around City Hall about the fellow who let his small hedge grow into a 20-foot-tall wall of green. Not only can his neighbors not see into his yard, but they can’t see the ocean behind it.

So the City Council set up--get this--an ad-hoc Vegetation View Blockage Abatement Committee to discuss the problem. And the people on this committee--who thankfully changed the name to the View Enhancement Committee--studied view ordinances all around California to see if one could be adopted locally.

They think they have the solution--one that has worked in Tiburon, Calif., in case you’ve been there recently and like their trees. The idea is for neighbors to discuss the matter first among themselves. (Good luck!) If they can’t resolve what to prune or cut down altogether, the complaining party can file a grievance at City Hall--at a cost of $200--and have someone else arbitrate the matter.

That arbitration committee, perhaps the city’s Design Review Board--which probably never thought it would be in the business of reviewing Mother Nature’s design work--would weigh two basic factors: To what degree is the offending tree decreasing the property value of the view-deprived homeowner, versus to what degree the pruning or removal of the tree would decrease the value of the tree owner’s property. It would then make a decision as to how much, if any, of the tree should be trimmed, and at whose expense.

The proposed ordinance is being reviewed by the city attorney and the Design Review Board before the City Council acts on it.

“I still have a pretty good view, but it’s getting smaller as the years go by,” said Jane Wright, a member of the view committee. “The problem is, people plant eucalyptus seedlings and no one pays any attention to it. But they grow six feet a year and pretty soon they’ll block your view.”

Junk Mail Finds Its Way

Speaking of eucalyptus, pity the poor postal patrons who live in the 2100 block of Eucalyptus Avenue in Escondido. It turns out there are two 2100 blocks of Eucalyptus Avenue in Escondido, sharing the same ZIP code, and if you don’t think that’s messing up mail delivery. . . .

The initial 2100 block of Eucalyptus was developed just outside the city limits more than 10 years ago, and the house numbers were assigned to it by the county planning people.

Then, earlier this year, a new housing development not too far away--Rancho Verde--was built within the city limits of Escondido. The tract’s main street is also Eucalyptus Avenue because it aligns with the existing Eucalyptus and the two may someday be joined. For now, they are half a mile apart as the air mail flies, separated by a big hill.

But city planners, referring to their own grid map of street numbers, assigned the 2100 block to it as well, without first checking the numbers on the county’s Eucalyptus.

The city’s planners say they are looking into the problem to see how it can be resolved, and the post office folks say they are doing their best to get the mail delivered, but are confounded because the new Eucalyptus does not have a permanent carrier yet and not all the part-time carriers are aware that if a particular home isn’t in his 2100 block, it may be in the other 2100 block.

But that hasn’t prevented the junk mail from getting delivered to both blocks.

Right to the Point

Finally, in our Say-What? Department, these closing items:

- A sign being held high at the San Diego Aztec-Brigham Young University football game on Saturday: “Aztecs Say, ‘Hi Mom’; Cougars Say, ‘Hi Moms.’ ”

- And under “Services Offered” in the San Diego Union on Sunday was this classified ad for one-on-one teaching--we think. It began: “Tudoring for Children.”

Obviously not English tudoring.