Trees

Another day working at the home office, this time as the tree contractors removed the large limb that fell on my shed. While they were at it, they also removed a dead hickory and tulip poplar, and cut down several dead branches off of other, otherwise healthy trees. It took them pretty much the whole day, and I eventually had to leave for yet another after-hours meeting with yet-another community group while they were still running fallen trees into the wood chipper.

This evening's meeting was for the neighborhood park work group. Long-time readers might recall that we have been engaged in a dispute with the City over plans to run a concrete trail through our local park - the only greenspace in the neighborhood and a significant historical Civil War battlefield. We eventually reached a compromise solution with the City to have the trail run not through the park's central meadow, thus bisecting and in our opinion ruining the park, but on the west side of a creek, where not only would the trail be more scenic and shady, but also out of sight of the historic battlefield meadow.

All seemed to be going well until a year ago, when the City decided that the west-side option was "impractical." We disagreed, and several contentious meetings later the City finally came back around to agreeing to the West Side route. All seemed well until recently, when the trail's construction permit specified that the City was going to virtually clear-cut the west side of the park for the convenience of the equipment contractor. We appealed to the city's Tree Commission and got a generally favorable ruling; however, enforcement of the ruling was assigned to the Parks Department, the very department that had approved the clear-cut permit, and they indicated that they were not going to take any action to enforce the Tree Commission's ruling on the trail contractors.

It was at that point that we felt we had no choice but to litigate. Several neighbors, myself included, each contributed $500 to a legal fund, and we retained an attorney to file a motion to stop the construction until the Tree Commission's ruling could be enforced. Not surprisingly, the City did not view our action favorably, and have offered to negotiate our request if we would drop the suit.

So our meeting tonight was to discuss the pros and cons of dropping the suit and entering into yet another round of negotiations with the City on this contentious issue. Since all of this revolves around current litigation, I can't discuss our proposed strategy here, other than to state how frustrating it is to have to fight time and time again over this issue, and now we're in the almost Kafka-esque position of suing the City to force it to enforce its own rulings.

More controversy, more meetings. After Monday night zazen, I had two separate Tuesday night meetings, one for the Beltline advisory board and another for the alliance of local neighborhoods. Many of the same people from the latter were at tonight's park meeting. During the days, not only am I trying to maintain a challenging and demanding career in environmental consultancy, but also get bids and oversee removal of dangerous deadwood from around the house.

If not for the time-out for zazen, all this could get overwhelming.