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Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, whose district includes the Oakland hills, said she had spent hours meeting with Bernard, Warner, city arborists and other concerned neighbors. She urged colleagues to uphold the full fine, arguing that anything less would undermine enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is offensive that wildfire prevention is being used as an excuse to cut down trees \u2026 healthy oaks are fire resistant,\u201d Ramachandran said. \u201cI understand that this is a challenging environment and place to be a newcomer to this city and this country and be able to develop property on your own, but that is no excuse for cutting down 38 trees in a blatant violation and disrespect for our laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Other members, however, emphasized the challenges of development and the need for a more flexible approach.<\/p>\n
Rowena Brown, the at-large councilmember, said she sympathized with homeowners having to figure out the complex permitting process.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that there is a developmental permit that\u2019s been submitted \u2026 what does it look like to replant some of those trees and move forward in a more equitable and just manner?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Council Member Ken Houston said he was worried that if the city levied too heavy of a penalty, Bernard and Warner might not have enough money to build their new home.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shouldn\u2019t have cut those trees down, and he knew better too,\u201d Houston said. \u201cBut then we got a vacant property that he has to develop \u2026 so I don\u2019t want to bury him and drown him.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Council Member Carroll Fife said that she also wanted to make sure that the property is developed, now that \u201cthere\u2019s no oak trees to prevent against fire hazards.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Matthew]()
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Matthew Bernard and his domestic partner Lynn Warner pose for a portrait on their property on Claremont Ave. in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, December 19, 2025. Bernard is accused of cutting down trees on his property just north of the Claremont Hotel. The couple, who are owners of a parcel on Claremont Avenue, could be fined $915,000 penalty for illegal removal of 38 protected trees.<\/p>\n
Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
An initial vote over whether to levy a fine ended in a tie, with Ramachandran, Kevin Jenkins, Charlene Wang and Zac Unger voting in favor, and Fife, Brown and Houston voting against. Noel Gallo, who was absent, counted as a no vote. In Oakland, the mayor is usually brought in to break a tied vote, but a representative for Mayor Barbara Lee told the council that she was declining to do so.<\/p>\n
In a final appeal, Ramachandran urged colleagues to reconsider.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about the precedent this will continue to set for people who continue to treat our land like trash,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to make it clear to anyone who wants to cut a tree down without a permit, to cut an oak tree down in this land \u2026 is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But Fife pushed back, raising concerns about fairness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to express my confusion about how a Black man should be the first to receive consequences for things that white people have been doing for centuries,\u201d Fife said. \u201cThe hills were built up for white Oaklanders, that nobody else had access to\u00a0\u2014\u00a0not Asians, not Mexicans, not Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council weighed whether to impose a smaller fine of $411,000. The vote came down along the same lines\u00a0\u2014\u00a0with those who had voted for the full fine refusing to approve the smaller amount.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With no consensus, the council agreed to continue the matter at the May 5 council meeting, marking the second time the council has deferred the decision since the matter was first brought before council in December.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rendering of Matthew Bernard and his domestic partner Lynn Warner\u2019s home photographed in Oakland, Calif. on Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,7,332,643,143,145,144,13],"class_list":["post-268349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-east-bay","tag-environment","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}