voice of bainbridge

The city could/should regulate the presence of trees in parking lots via a green ordinance for urban sustainability

Thinking about what happened to the trees at the ferry terminal parking I wondered about existing city regulations elsewhere. Just google parking lots and trees: here comes the regulation adopted by the city of Sacramento. It is about shading trees but it makes perfect sense to require the presence/planting/maintenance of trees on parking lots. Looks like the city is going to hire a consultant...and as usual such regulations already exist.

Who is responsible for the disastrous "pruning" of the trees in the parking at the ferry terminal?

Reading the February 20 issue of the Bainbridge Review we don't learn what firm was responsible for this job. A manager for Diamond Parking does not provide any specific information nor apologize for anything wrong. The City acquiesces by saying nothing inherently wrong (illegal) was done and we get the usual argument about private property. Diamond Parking is a big corporation, they claim to be the biggest private parking company in the world (and I bet they are). It is not clear that they were in charge of this "pruning" as they could only be in charge of operating the parking while the property is owned by somebody else. This somebody else could be an entity called Winslow Marine LLC but the property tax map does not provide any clue about who they are, but for the address of an accounting firm in Bellevue. I think the people deemed "responsible" should publicly say so and offer a compensation to our community or explain to us why all is well. What type of compensation? They could plant more/new trees in this parking lot and/or provide money for trees to be planted. They should come up with internal guidelines to avoid such bad practices in the future.

It's parking day (although not on Bainbridge)

PARK(ing) Day is today. This event that first began when Rebar, a San Francisco collective, transformed a metered parking spot into a park almost two years ago. The impetus: More than 70 percent of most cities' outdoor space is dedicated to automobiles, but only a fraction of that land is available as open space for people.

To discover what public art projects and street interventions are going on in your neck of the woods, visit the Web sites of PARK(ing) Day and The Trust for Public Land. Source: Treehugger