Some Folks Who Fought City Hall--and Won

Many people in Huntington Beach now call her “the Tree Lady.” I call her that too, and she laughs appreciatively.

The Tree Lady is Jerri Hesprich, and she’s one of many interesting people who have popped into the news--and into my life as a newspaper reporter--because of a very democratic institution called “public comments.”

My beat is Huntington Beach--a very nice assignment since it’s also the city I’ve lived in the past 12 years. As part of my beat I cover the biweekly meetings of the City Council. The Huntington Beach City Council, like most city-governing bodies in the county, dedicates part of its meeting to “public comments.” This means allowing anybody to speak to the City Council. The only restriction is that a person must fill out a simple request sheet--mainly to tell who he or she is--and limit the talk to three minutes.

Hesprich and her husband, Glen, came to a City Council meeting last November. She was desperate, she later told me. “The city staff told me I had to cut down all my beautiful Italian cypress trees, and I’d tried everything, unsuccessfully, to try to change their minds,” Hesprich said. “Someone told me I could speak to the City Council (during “public comments”), and so I decided to do that. I was very nervous.”

Hesprich, in her three-minute talk, told the City Council that a quirk in city law made it illegal for trees bordering a neighbor’s property to be taller than six feet. The Hespriches’ trees soared to 20 feet and more.

A city bureaucrat had informed the Hespriches that the “offending” trees had to be sawed down to six feet, or removed. A tree specialist had told the Hespriches that trimming the cypresses to six feet would kill them.

It turned out that the City Council knew nothing about the obscure tall-tree law.

“It’s ridiculous,” fumed Councilman Don MacAllister. “We’d have to be cutting trees down all over the city.” Subsequently, the council voted to change the law.

“I’m very grateful,” Hesprich said. “I’d always heard that you can’t fight City Hall, but now I know that the City Council will listen to you. Many trees throughout the city are going to be saved because of this.”

The Hespriches’ tree victory is one of several average-person triumphs I’ve seen while covering the public comments section of council meetings.

One Huntington Beach resident, Dr. Gerald Chapman, a dentist, found oil from abandoned wells oozing onto the ground of a new subdivision. City staff officials weren’t interested, he said.

“I started calling around in the city to find out who is responsible in such things, and who is supposed to be looking out for this, and I never could get a full answer,” said Chapman. So, as a last resort, he took the issue--complete with color photos--to the public comments portion of the City Council meeting. The council listened--and demanded cleanup action and better monitoring of inland oil spills.

A Huntington Beach High School parent wanted to get the City Council interested in Grad Nite--the drug- and alcohol-free graduation parties held at the city’s four high schools. That parent, Trudee Christensen, spoke during public comments. The council responded by voting to give $1,000 to each high school to help finance Grad Nite--plus a proclamation honoring the event.

In recent weeks, a young Huntington Beach father, Tom Duchene, spoke during public comments about the plight of the Ocean View Little League. The young baseball players are losing the field they played on, he said. Duchene then urged the City Council to devote a part of Central Park as a “youth sports complex” for baseball and soccer. The council responded by voting to dedicate part of the parkland for such youth sports. City financing has not been ironed out, but the council indicated strong interest in building what Duchene called “a field of dreams.”

Can one person really affect a city government? Yes. It happens. A major change can take place because one person speaks out.

President Andrew Jackson said it best: “One man with courage makes a majority.”