The sidwalk is falling; the sidewalk is falling!

In the end, last night, the Miami HEP Board (Historic and Environmental Preservation Board) voted 6-0 in favor of denying TreeWatch's appeal on removing the select trees on Florida Avenue as part of the street scape improvement project. Liliana Dones, who basically was fighting on her own as co-chair of TreeWatch had an uphill battle, her co-chair of TreeWatch, David Collins, head of the BID, was the one pushing for the removal of the trees. It's crazy and mixed up but that's the way it is.

The BID machine worked as it usually does. People who would never have shown up or spoke at a meeting did show up and spoke in favor of the BID's position of removing the trees. The BID flooded the area with "the sky is falling," messages, that actually were saying "the sidewalks are falling," claiming that the world would come to an end if the sidewalks didn't get changed out now and that the trees had to get changed out with them.

It's true, the sidewalks are a mess in Coconut Grove and many people have fallen and gotten injured. I know there are lawsuits with businesses and the city over this, but so many people still felt that there should have been a way to save the trees while fixing the sidewalks. But of course, no one else was brought in ever to try to come up with a different system than the overpriced Silva Cells. What started off as a simple sidewalk renovation, ended up being a massive over-priced project. No one ever questions the costs of things and that is why the City of Miami is broke.

Ron Silver, of the BID, tried to stop the whole meeting, claiming that since TreeWatch is an offshoot of the Village Council, that it wasn't legal somehow, but the City Attorney agreed to have the meeting go on and for two hours, people spoke in favor and against the tree removal project, which is part of the sidewalk improvement project.

I knew the appeal would be denied when the city clerk read one of the criteria for the Board to deny the appeal, which was #2 under 17.5 in the code, which states that if there are diseased, dangerous or damaged trees that are being discussed, then the Board can deny the appeal to save the trees. All arborists that were part of the project, those paid and those that were not paid, agreed that the trees were dangerous and diseased and in the end, no matter who said what to the Board at the podium, this was the bottom line and so the project will proceed.

The Florida Avenue trees (11 of them) will be removed and hopefully replaced. Lynn Lewis, who is on the HEP Board, suggested that the BID and TreeWatch work together to find the proper sized mitigation trees and have a non-partial Arborist hired as part of that, the BID project manager refused to pay for the Arborist and Liliana Dones claimed that TreeWatch had no money to pay for that, so that idea was scrapped.

Alyn Pruett, who as present, said it was time for "Succession Planting," maybe it is. Either way, the law says it is now.

How do I feel? Well aside from the BID's constant bullying tactics, I don't know, ask me in 30 or 40 years when the new trees are mature.