Lights Out!
By Susan Hartley
The tree up-lighting, as well as the entire 2nd and 4th Street so-called Pedestrian and Streetscape Improvement Projects, are an abomination.
Apparently for “light show art,” atmosphere or for providing a cohesiveness to the area, the tree up-lighting wastes electricity, does not illuminate the narrow, dangerous sidewalks and obfuscates the natural beauty of the Ficuses’ majestic, graceful silhouettes. (The pole lights adjacent to the trees provide sufficient lighting.) Wounding the trees by screwing lighting apparatus into them exposes the trees to the newly discovered disease, Nattrassia, a fungal infection, and a related disease called Sooty Canker. These diseases are already killing Ficus trees in Santa Monica because of the city’s longstanding improper and excessive branch and root pruning practices. And if that’s not enough, the tree up-lights, like the entire project, is hideous. The only cohesive factor they provide is ugliness.
If you want to get angry, check out 2nd and 4th Streets. Our City killed 23 Ficus trees, crucified the rest with ugly tree up-lights that are superfluous, planted Gingko trees that are sticks half the year, and put in sidewalks that are unnavigable. That’s at least $8.2 million of our tax dollars at work, not including the value of the killed Ficus trees appraised at approximately $750,000 and the salaries of all the City Hall employees involved!
The tree up-lights should be removed and the wounds to the trees sealed, for aesthetic reasons, for protecting our valuable urban forest, and for lessening the $25,300 budgeted annually for utility costs and bulb and pole replacement.
It is ironic that had the City’s original streetscape design plan been implemented, the one in which every other ficus tree was to be removed, that now the City would have fewer ficus trees for this lighting project! I find the imposition of the lighting equipment in the trees offensive. Why do we have to injure trees for our amusement? Will the City injure the ficus trees to the extent that they become “structurally unsound” and then announce that they have to be cut down?
So tacky.
Here’s the Daily Press quoting the urban forester:
“You see some God awful things poking
out of people’s heads and cheeks and they
seem to be tolerating it,” Warriner said,using
the piercing analogy. “We worked with the
design team to develop the least invasive
method to attach the lights.”
Wow, for a second there I thought Mr. Warriner was talking about
members of City Council. Things poking out of their heads, and
minimally-invasive lights–now THAT would certainly attract nighttime
shoppers and barhoppers to the downtown district!
Bayside directors– are you listening?
At least council members would have a say on the matter. Unlike the
fine trees downtown, under constant, and increasingly destructive
pressure.
Dan Jansenson