It’s a Nightmare on Elm Street : Lifestyles: The haves and the have-mores are at odds over the tree-maintenance policy in Palos Verdes Estates. Property values are at the center of the debate.
With its lush hillsides, magazine-cover homes and ocean vistas, the Lower Malaga Cove neighborhood in Palos Verdes Estates seems an unlikely place for a street fight.
But a street fight of sorts is taking place--over the pruning of several dozen city-owned elms.
Residents of the street lined by the elms, Via Media, say the city’s annual trimming is destroying the beloved trees, which once created an enchanting canopy of leaves over the road.
But residents of Via Almar, a street just up the hill from Via Media, have been paying the city for years to prune the trees. They say that without the annual cropping, the trees grow too large and block their ocean views.
The longstanding dispute pits the rich against the very rich, the haves against the have-mores. The debating is less about trees than it is about property values.
On one side are residents who live in million-dollar homes in some of the choicest real estate in Southern California. On the other are those who live in even pricier homes with sweeping vistas of Santa Monica Bay visible from their living room windows.
Last year, residents on both sides believed the controversy was headed toward resolution. The city had passed a new tree management policy that sets down guidelines for when and how residents can pay to have publicly owned trees cut back or even removed.
But any hopes of a cease-fire were dashed last week with the whir of chain saws as the city’s spring pruning program got underway. And with it came a resumption of the neighborhood bickering. Said Councilwoman Ruth Gralow: “It’s one of our annual rites of spring here.”
Bob Valentine, an aerospace executive who has lived on Via Media for the past four years, is among those who counts himself a “victim” in the controversy. Valentine says he moved into the neighborhood specifically because he was charmed by the appearance of the stately elm trees along the street. But the tree-trimming policy, he says, has harmed the trees--and consequently the value of his property.
“They’ve just been mutilated,” he asserts, pointing to the scarred limbs of several trees. “You see where they just absolutely hacked that?”
Valerie Gorsuch, a resident of Via Media since 1975, agrees: “I can’t tell you the feeling I get when I hear chain saws now. I think, ‘Oh no, they’re coming to kill our trees again.’ ”
But Ken Heron, who has lived above Gorsuch and Valentine on Via Almar for the past 27 years, has little patience for his neighbors’ assertions.
“These are people who do not have views,” Heron said. “If they want trees, they can go to the tree section of Palos Verdes Estates.”
In the past several years, Heron says, large chunks of his ocean view have been blocked by his neighbors’ trees. He argues that the trimming of the publicly owned elms, which he says simply keeps them at their current height, helps to prevent further obliteration of ocean views.
And if anyone’s property values have been hurt, he adds, it is his.
“We paid money to buy this view and we would like to preserve it,” he said.
Such arguments are hardly new. According to former city forester Walter Warriner, the controversy dates back at least to the late 1970s, when the city, strapped for funds, stopped trimming the elms on Via Media.
To the delight of Via Media residents, the trees began to grow, forming a canopy of green over their street. But ill will also took root as their neighbors on Via Almar found their ocean views blocked by the burgeoning trees.
At that time, there were “attempts to kill the trees by girdling trunks, tree spikes and poisoning,” Warriner wrote in a 1991 letter to Valentine. In 1986, the city began a program in which residents could pay the city to trim the elms blocking their views.
Via Media residents fought the tree-trimming program. City committees were convened to deal with the problem. At one point, city officials proposed replacing the elms as they die with palm trees. But Via Media residents fought to designate the liquidambar--which is more akin to an elm--as the replacement tree. So far no final decision has been made.
Finally, the City Council last year approved a tree management policy designed to resolve tree disputes. Under the policy, residents who claim their views are being blocked by city trees can file a petition with the city to have them trimmed, topped or even removed.
The policy requires city officials to notify residents who live near the targeted trees. The Parklands Committee is then required to take testimony on the issue and consider a city-paid analysis of how the tree is affecting the view before making a final tree-trimming recommendation to the council.
Via Media residents thought the provision for public testimony would give them a chance to oppose the trimming of elms on their block. But last month, they were shocked to learn that the city planned to trim the trees on their street without giving them a hearing.
In mid-March, a letter containing the signatures of about 40 residents was sent to Mayor Rosemary Humphrey asking that city officials suspend the cutting. The request went unheeded, and this week city workers were out with their chain saws.
Humphrey says the city did not respond to the letter because Via Media residents are specifically exempted from the tree management policy by a pre-existing agreement between residents of Via Media and Via Almar. The agreement, she says, provides for annual tree trimming on Via Media at the expense of Via Almar residents.
That came as a surprise to Valentine and many other residents.
“It’s hogwash,” Valentine fumed. “In all these meetings we attended, this agreement was never brought up before.”
John Bates, president of the Malaga Cove Homeowners Assn., which represents about 600 homes in the area, said he was also unaware of any agreement but that he was looking into the matter.
“I was under the impression everything had been taken care of,” Bates said.
