Residents in Los Altos are pulling out all the stops to try to prevent the city from removing a hundreds-of-years-old coast oak tree on Rinconada Court.
A group led by Rinoconada Court resident Atossa Leffert started a website, saveoakie.org/, and a petition,tinyurl.com/RinconadaTree, to receive donations and build up supporters to save the tree slated to be removed as soon as the city finds a replacement tree. And on Sept. 9, the group gathered on Rinconada Court to hold a rally in hopes the city will hear them out in their plea to preserve the 200-year-old tree.
“We want to let the public be aware that mature oak trees are being destroyed in Los Altos,” Leffert said when asked about the impetus for starting the sites and holding a rally. “(And) that residents do not have any ability to have a say in how the city manages trees.”
Leffert said that through verbal and electronic correspondence with neighbors, they believe “the city manager (Gabe Engeland) will not do anything different than removal.”
“The appeal we submitted was returned as invalid,” Leffert said. “The ordinance is not applicable to city-owned trees that are deemed hazardous and the city council meeting had no result from our one-minute non-agenda item.”
Leffert said the residents at Rinoconada Court paid for an arborist to investigate the tree after the city had two separate arborist reports – one that recommended a Level 3 assessment, or aerial, report, and the second assessment that deemed the tree should be removed. Read the full report attinyurl.com/oaktreereports.
“The master arborist stated his finding is that the tree is of ‘low risk,’” Leffert said of the resident-hired arborist report. “The city manager refused to use any other report but theirs.”
Leffert said that donations made through the SaveOakie site are to pay for any tree mitigations needed or fees associated with saving the tree.
“Once this is resolved, any extra will either be returned to donors or donated to a charity related to saving oak trees,” Leffert said.
