Mailbag

Tree ordinance was wrong from the start

I addressed the City Council the evening when the council members all voted to approve the new city tree ordinance (“Council revisits ordinance,” May 29). I told them that what should constitute a savable tree was not in this new ordinance. I told them that savable trees should be at least 50 years old and not a seedling since oak trees, for example, can live for 400 years.

And what about the rights of adjoining neighbors who do not want oak trees or sycamore tree branches on their property? And why can’t a homeowner cut a branch more than 1 inch thick without getting a permit from the city? The City Council adopted the law with the help of the city attorney’s office, vague as possible, so that the city bureaucrats could interpret the laws as they saw fit and collect fines to support their departments.

The large fines the city has recently levied on the Collards and other citizens and have now been rescinded because of public backlash. I hope the Collards sue the city for all the trouble it has caused them. I recently approached Councilman Bob Yousefian. I told him that I would like to volunteer my time and services to rewrite the tree ordinance to be homeowner-friendly and not a bureaucratic nightmare.

MIKE MOHILL

Glendale

Headline, first line were misleading

The front-page News-Press article entitled “Group ire stops hillside project,” Nov. 27, was well written and, in general, gave a very accurate account of the Board of Zoning Appeals hearing. However, I believe the title and first paragraph of the article did not give a fair or true representation of the real reasons the appeal was denied and the project was stopped.

In reading the title and first paragraph, you are given the perception that it was the action of a group of Glenoaks Canyon residents that halted the project. While it is certainly true that the Glenoaks residents appealed the initial granting of the conditional use permit, it was solely the action of the property owner, by failing to comply with the Hillside Design Guidelines and to adequately address the slope stability issues, that caused the project to be stopped.