In March at La Jolla Parks and Beaches, Inc. the topic of the day was trees. More specifically, who\u2019s responsible for maintaining them, \u00a0
\nThe community parks planning group also vetted a proposal to rehabilitate dying trees, along with upgrading Scripps Park picnic area.
\nCity arborist Brian Widener explained the City is tasked with “managing all the trees on public property and along streets including trimming palms.”
\nThe arborist noted the city has planted approximately 1,800 trees along public streets and an additional 400 to 500 trees in parks.
\n“I oversee the urban forestry program,” Widener said, adding tree management citywide is handled through two different departments, Transportation and Stormwater and Parks.
\n“Stormwater trimmed 30,000-plus trees last year, and parks did a smaller number, about 800,” Widener said offering this caveat, “We have a lot of paper streets and we get a lot of requests to trim trees that are not directly on the street (in City\u2019s jurisdiction).”\u00a0
\nIn that case, the arborist noted a determination must be made as to whether the trees in question are in stormwater\u2019s or park\u2019s purview. He added the responsibility for trimming trees on private property technically falls to their property owners.
\nAdded Widener, “Trees in unimproved areas of the city, we\u2019re (City\u2019s) not required to maintain those trees unless they\u2019re an imminent threat, or they present some kind of hazardous situation.”
\nWidener advised that the best way to request a tree trimming in the City\u2019s jurisdiction is to do so on the City\u2019s Get It Done App. Scripps Park Eric Holtsmark gave a slideshow presentation\u00a0proposing rehabilitating Scripps Park\u2019s picnic area. Of special interest are a handful of picnic benches in the area, none of which have memorial plaques on them, a program LJPB is interested in reviving.
\nLJPB president Ann Dynes noted the parks group has formed its own foundation adding, “I think the park foundation could create an endowment to provide some good plaques for the picnic tables. The City won\u2019t do plaques because it has no system of maintaining or replacing them.”
\nHoltsmark suggested the picnic area could be terraced and that seating in the area could be upgraded.
\n“The main concern of course is water running off the bluffs eroding the bluffs,” said Holtsmark, who advocated “running it all into a swale and putting that into the stormwater system.”
\n“It (picnic area) definitely needs help, it would be an improvement,” said board member Judy Halter.
\n“How many table are you suggesting?” asked board member Sally Miller.
\n“Six is about the right number,” responded Holtsmark. “There are three or four now.”
\nHoltsmark noted there are sickly Australian tea trees that made need to be replaced.
\n“If you replace the tea trees, you\u2019re going to lose shade, that\u2019s very important down there,” said board member Dr. Jane Relden.
\n“We have a list of 15 possible trees that could be used,” replied Holtsmark. In other action:
\n\u2022 Board member Melinda Merryweather called on the group to write a letter to the City calling for better water testing of Children\u2019s Pool and La Jolla Cove, contending both sites “are more polluted than the current testing says it is.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In March at La Jolla Parks and Beaches, Inc. the topic of the day was trees. More specifically, who\u2019s responsible for maintaining them, \u00a0 The community parks planning group also vetted a proposal to rehabilitate dying trees, along with upgrading Scripps Park picnic area. City arborist Brian Widener explained the City is tasked with “managing […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":282844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"La Jolla Parks and Beaches discusses maintaining trees","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}