Being a writer, I'm used to rejection notices. But this one hurt more than usual.
Because the cause I had written about was saving the last two beautiful US Bank trees in downtown Salem, which are on the chopping block after the City of Salem granted the bank's request to cut down five marvelous Zelkova trees.
The City's Shade Tree Committee said no, no, no to the request. Three times. The City's urban forester and independent arborists said any problems with the trees could be addressed by pruning, not killing them.
Download Shade Tree Committee minutes
Yet Peter Fernandez, Salem Public Works Director, approved the tree removals anyway.
This was after the regional president of US Bank, Ryan Allbritton, reminded Fernandez that three years ago he had promised Allbritton the trees would be removed — leaving aside the inconvenient fact that the City's tree ordinance requires that removal requests in the downtown Historic District go through the Shade Tree Committee, not be approved via Imperial Fiat by Fernandez.
The whole affair reflects very poorly on the City of Salem and US Bank.
But Carole Smith, a downtown businesswoman and resident, and I hold out hope that the city and bank can salvage some good will from the psyches of appropriately outraged tree-loving citizens by letting the last two trees remain.
(They apparently are still standing only because migrating birds, which seem to have more legal rights than trees, are sheltering in the Zelkovas; when the birds go, so do the last two trees.)
Wanting the public to be as informed as possible about the injustices being inflicted on both the trees and Salem residents who value them, I wrote a 500 word guest opinion, got an OK from co-submitter Carole, and sent it off to the Statesman Journal a few days ago.
Here it is. (I'll also include it as a continuation to this post.)
Download Opinion piece – US Bank trees
Last night an editorial page staffer said that our piece had been rejected for the print edition. I fired off an intense email asking why. Our guest opinion was timely, factual, well written (in my non-humble opinion), provocative, and indicative of broader problems with how City of Salem staff function, or not, as public servants.
I was told by editorial page editor Dick Hughes that with the Oregon legislature in session, the Statesman Journal has gotten quite a few guest opinion submissions. In response, I again appealed to Hughes and executive editor Michael Davis that a timely local subject of interest to the Salem community deserves space on the paper's opinion pages.
Maybe the Statesman Journal will put our guest opinion online. Maybe Carole and I will be able to have letters to the editor published.
[Update: later today Dick Hughes emailed me that our piece was online at the Statesman Journal web site. Of course, it also would have been if the newspaper had chosen to publish it in the print edition. So Carole and I are thankful. But not that thankful. Links to other stories and letters to the editor about the removal of the US Bank trees can be found here.]
And maybe those last two trees will be cut down before people in Salem are aware of what a horrible decision it was to remove the five US Bank trees rather than prune them, as tree experts recommended.
Years ago Peter Fernandez made a promise to Ryan Allbritton that he would accede to the incoming President of the Salem Chamber of Commerce's request to cut down the trees. Well, I've made my own promise: to the two remaining trees that I will do what I can to save them.
Bad public policy decisions are more difficult to carry out when the public is broadly aware of them. Thus Carole and I want to make as many people as possible in Salem aware of how unnecessary and unjust the death-sentencing of five beautiful downtown trees is.
Pass on the word. Legally we may not be able to stop the remaining trees from being cut down. However, as we say in the opinion piece:
Nothing will bring back the three wonderful trees that have been reduced to stumps. However, at the moment two equally beautiful trees remain at the corner of State and Commercial.
Since there was no good reason to cut down any of the five trees, that no-good-reason has been reduced by 60% with the destruction of three trees. Some good will for the City of Salem and US Bank can be salvaged if they belatedly acknowledge this.
Please, Peter Fernandez, City Public Works Director, and Ryan Allbritton, US Bank regional president: save the remaining trees.
If they too are cut down for no good reason, their absence will speak volumes about how solid facts, expert advice, and public testimony mean next to nothing in how the City of Salem operates these days.
[Update: Ryan Albritton can be contacted at james.allbritton@usbank.com; Peter Fernandez at pfernandez@cityofsalem.net]
Read on for the rest of our guest opinion…
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