Tree Panel Uprooted After Bitter Dispute

Sierra Madre takes its trees seriously.

Where else but a place labeled “Tree City USA” could a flap over arboreal supervision fell an entire city commission? How else to explain the air of scandal hovering over the town--replete with charges of pilfered paperwork, menacing messages and attempted bribery--all because of trees?

Allegations of conflict of interest against past and present members of the city’s Tree Preservation Commission--a panel that has included several professional tree trimmers--have prompted a state inquiry.

The affair, which one activist dubbed “Treegate,” has unleashed venomous political feuding in the suburban foothill community.

The turmoil came to a head Tuesday night, when the City Council decided to settle the matter with an ax: It toppled the entire five-member commission by repealing the ordinance that gave Sierra Madre its eligibility for “Tree City” standing.

“This thing has turned into a real bad paperback that I wouldn’t buy,” Councilman Doug Hayes said, expressing disgust at the poisonous tone of the charges.

The charges were made in a complaint filed with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Tuesday’s action capped months of internal squabbling on the 4-year-old tree commission, whose job was to regulate the cutting of city-owned trees and decide how many trees private developers could fell to make way for their projects.

Probably because the commission’s decisions require a knowledge of trees, most appointees have been tree specialists and landscapers. And that’s where some of the trouble began.

Some commissioners have accused others of having a conflict of interest for voting on projects and then being hired to cut the trees or do other work for the developers. The controversy has split the town into opposing camps.

At the heart of the controversy is a conflict-of-interest complaint filed by a local attorney against Commissioner Gary Anderson and two former commissioners. Attorney Linda Thornton said Anderson had a conflict because he helped decide which city-owned trees could be cut down or trimmed and also bid on those jobs. Anderson countered that he has been advised by city officials on how to avoid conflict of interest. Sometimes Anderson does the tree work for free, he said.

“I’m not a politician. I am a tree trimmer,” Anderson said.

The charges against a former commissioner, Lew Watanabe, date back three years. Watanabe, a landscaper who resigned his seat on the panel this summer, is accused of having a conflict because he went to work in 1994 for a developer whose project he had been inspecting as a commission member.

Thornton also charged that the developer had cut down more trees than he was authorized to remove.

Watanabe, the city’s Citizen of the Year in 1995, acknowledges that he went to work for developer Brion Costa in December 1994, a month after inspecting the four-acre estate that Costa was turning into a housing development.

But Watanabe said he cleared his employment with the mayor at the time and excused himself from the commission’s consideration of Costa’s projects after that.

Watanabe labeled the allegations of conflict of interest false and hurtful, and Costa denied cutting down too many trees on the property.

Costa’s name came up in another allegation by two tree commissioners who said he had offered them consultant jobs. In sworn statements attached to the FPPC complaint, Commissioners Mark Beirich and Steve Dreher said they viewed the offer as an attempted bribe. Beirich is an arborist and Dreher is a landscape designer.

Costa denied offering any bribes, saying that he met with the pair and discussed the commission’s issuance of a mailer advising residents on tree maintenance. He said he was the target of anti-growth forces in Sierra Madre.

The developer also has denied a charge in a police report filed by tree Commissioner Lorayne Russman that he threatened her political career in a telephone message in July. He said his comments in the message were not intended as a threat.

Russman, who acknowledges doing work as a real estate broker for Costa’s company last year, has joined Thornton as one of the most vocal critics of Watanabe and Costa. She said her work for Costa was not a conflict because it occurred nearly two years after his project was before the tree commission.

Adding mystery to the tumult, tree commission records before 1995 have disappeared from City Hall amid suggestions that meeting minutes were destroyed as part of a cover-up by unidentified parties.

“We have everything but sex and drugs here,” said Thornton, who has compiled an inch-thick binder of documents relating to the commission and given it to state officials.

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In abolishing the commission Tuesday, City Council members argued that the 4-year-old tree ordinance governing the panel wasn’t working. But Dreher said the council’s drastic action was aimed at avoiding “a nasty discussion.” Russman expressed “shock, dismay and sadness” at the decision.

Mayor James Hester made no apologies for axing the commission. “We had been told if we removed an individual, they would sue us,” Hester said. “So we removed them all.”

The controversy has caused painful rifts in the town of 11,000. Although previous debates sizzled over drive-through restaurants and whether unmarried couples constitute a family, the brouhaha over the tree commission has taken an uncommonly personal slant, council members said. Hester said the city was suffering a form of “McCarthyism” at the hands of Thornton, Russman and their allies.

“Can we have a truce?” Councilman Bart Doyle asked plaintively.

A representative of the Fair Political Practices Commission plans to meet with City Hall staffers and members of city boards and commissions to discuss conflict-of-interest guidelines and the state’s public meetings law.

While the town waits for the dust to settle, tree preservationists needn’t worry about an open season on the oaks and pines that line the city’s streets. The council passed an emergency law that will prevent cutting for 90 days until a new law is passed.

“The trees are more important than the tree commission,” Hester said.