Up a Tree : Squabble Over Downed Oaks Puts Solution Out on a Limb

While Dick Blakeslee is busy building a 25-home subdivision in Fallbrook, neighbors are angrily pounding their fists over the loss of a stand of mature live oaks, and county bureaucrats are wondering if and when something went wrong. Blakeslee’s development is called, perhaps ironically, Pala Mesa Oaks--even though he has by his own admission destroyed 37 oak trees, and a neighbor contends Blakeslee has ripped out 84.

Whatever the true number, both Blakeslee and his critics are wagging their fingers at county government.

At issue is a condition placed on the property’s original developer in 1979 that no more than 10 oaks be removed for development. The 11-acre parcel was studded, according to at least one count, with as many as 100 trees, some of them more than 100 years old and up to 5 feet in diameter.

But the condition limiting the number of trees to be removed was dropped mysteriously from the county permit in 1980. When Blakeslee arrived on the scene two years ago to build his project, he said--and county officials sheepishly agree--he was allowed to remove as many trees as necessary, with the exception of a small stand of oaks halfway up the hill. The stand is midway between two terraces of proposed houses, along Tecalote Lane at the Pala Mesa Resort.

“We can’t determine when or why the (maximum 10-tree removal) condition was taken out, but it was,” sighed county Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district includes Fallbrook. “But the guy who bought the property is now operating under a legal permit, and it’s unfortunate. The developer has a legal permit. Somebody screwed up.

“As far as the trees that have been cut down . . . well, we can’t bring back trees that have already been cut,” he said.

“This town loves its oak trees, and those oak trees have disappeared,” bemoaned Wallace Tucker, president of the Fallbrook Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that he says is dedicated to the preservation of Fallbrook’s rural charm.

“I’m appalled that the planning process--or an abortion of that process--would allow such an insult against nature,” he said.

The slow-growing live oak, native to San Diego’s landscape, is especially prized for its beauty, drought resistance and long area history.

The case has frustrated Jerry Jamriska, county assistant planning director who has spearheaded the investigation into the history of the subdivision’s approval process, with only partial success.

He says there are any number of possible scenarios that could have resulted in the tree-removal condition being deleted.

The Board of Supervisors itself, when it amended the special-use permit in 1980 for other reasons, may have decided to strike the condition--but there are no minutes to indicate they did, and the audiotape of the meeting has since been erased, he said.

Moreover, the condition, even with strike-out marks that are used to show when something is deliberately deleted, is not present in the amended 1980 permit.

It is possible that a clerk, in retyping the permit, inadvertently deleted the one-sentence condition.

Or it is possible that, when the permit was retyped in 1980, the clerk used for reference the 1979 conditions drafted by the staff before the original tree requirement was added orally by county supervisors.

“I can’t say there was a clerical error, nor can I say there was a deliberate attempt by the Board of Supervisors to delete it,” Jamriska said. “All I can say is that it was deleted.”

He added: “If that project were submitted today for the first time, we would take a very pro-active position for the preservation of the oak trees.”

Ten years ago, 100 oak trees were on the lot, according to an inventory at the time. Of those, 84 have since been cut down, according to Alan Clark, who lives with his elderly parents in a house immediately next to the property. It was his father, Donald Clark, who, among others, first proposed the subdivision in 1979.

But that partnership encountered financial woes in 1985, the property was foreclosed and Blakeslee purchased it in 1988 through a court-appointed trustee.

The Clark home was also lost in the bankruptcy, to satisfy bank loans; but Blakeslee bought it, too, and then sold it back to the Clarks at what he said was his cost, as a sort of favor to the elderly couple.

Blakeslee maintains he is building essentially the same project that was first pitched by Donald Clark--and insists that Clark would have had to remove just as many trees for the development.

Blakeslee said there were only 70 trees on the property when he took ownership in 1988, and that he has removed 43 of them because of grading requirements to make the property buildable.

The remaining trees are those halfway up the hill, and others along the periphery of the property.

The fact that the two men can’t even agree on the number of trees that were on the property--or remain there today--is indicative of their soured relationship.

The acrimony hasn’t been lost on county bureaucrats. Yet another meeting between Blakeslee, Clark and county staff members is planned for June 20 to try to figure out how, if at all, the tree situation--among other problems between the two men--can be resolved.

But Jamriska is not sure how productive it will be.

“It’s my desire to accomplish a communication, an understanding, and a solution,” Jamriska said.

“But that’s very optimistic. The parties do not want to solve it. They prefer to create problems for each other, and they’ll just point to the county to find a solution. . . . Well, I’m the umpire, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”

Indeed, neither Blakeslee nor Clark is talking compromise.

Blakeslee insists he never knew of a condition that no more than 10 trees could be removed; after all, he says, when he bought the property, the condition didn’t exist.

To validate his point, he shows a letter he sent the county asking if the permit he had in hand--one that was without the tree condition--was the valid, operative permit. Yes, the county answered.

Clark insists that Blakeslee was told about the condition’s one-time existence and blithely ignored it because it had disappeared by the time he arrived on the scene.

“If that condition was there, I simply wouldn’t have bought the property,” Blakeslee responded. “The trees simply couldn’t have stayed,” because of requirements that the property level be dropped up to 15 feet in some places to get to appropriate soil for building, then raised again with new, imported soil. “I would have had to suspend the trees from balloons,” he said.

And Blakeslee says he has no regrets about the tree removal. “I didn’t have any problem at all. None at all. I’m perfectly happy with this project.”

Answers Clark: “It’s beyond my belief that this has not only happened, but that the county is allowing it to continue, and nobody’s doing anything about it. When I tell people what’s happening up here, they say somebody must be on the take. But I don’t think so, because there are so many people involved, and so many levels of government.”

Tom Tousley, a neighbor, said, “We’re absolutely dumbfounded that anyone could have performed such a rape of the land.”

Jim Russell, chairman of the Fallbrook Planning Group, an advisory panel to the board of supervisors, calls the situation “a tragedy,” and suggests that a county clerk in fact held veto power over a Board of Supervisors’ decision because of the error.

In a letter to the supervisors, Russell argued that Blakeslee had a moral, if not legal, obligation to abide by the original condition, and asks that the board order Blakeslee to plant new, specimen-size oak trees.

“They want me to put in five new trees for each one I took out,” Blakeslee said. “Well, that would be 200 trees, and I’m putting in 687. I’m going overboard, because this project is my pride and joy.”

But Blakeslee is not putting in oaks. Instead, he’s planting pine, eucalyptus and acacia.

The tree debate is the biggest, but by no means the only, flash point between Blakeslee and Clark.

Clark, for instance, is angry that Blakeslee, in grading a private road through his project along the easement that Clark shares, cut off part of the Clark driveway.

Blakeslee said he was simply following the grading plans that Donald Clark himself proposed 11 years ago, when the project was his.

Clark is angry, too, that Blakeslee collapsed a septic tank that serves the Clark house. Blakeslee said he didn’t know it was there, on Blakeslee’s own property. In fact, both men agree the county Department of Health must have erred in allowing a lot split where one man’s septic tank ended up on another man’s property.

Meanwhile, the two men are bickering about whose responsibility it is to have the septic tank regularly pumped out.

The complaints between the two men go on and on in a classic case of feuding neighbors. Lawsuits already have been filed; others are in preparation.

Clark says it is inevitable that the county will be sued, too.

“If the county doesn’t change Blakeslee’s requirements and have him put in new oaks, we’ll sue them,” he promises. “But I think the county is worried that, if it changes Blakeslee’s requirements, then he will sue them, and the county will end up paying even bigger damages to a developer.

In a memo to county supervisors, county Chief Administrative Officer Norman W. Hickey noted that still more permits are required of Blakeslee before he completes the project.

“It is possible that, as part of the review of this discretionary permit, a condition addressing some sort of restoration could be included in the final approval,” Hickey said.

He concluded: “It appears that both parties are seeking to use the county offices to settle their differences.”

Clark disagrees: “I call it ‘Cover-Up Time.’ ”