April 14 meeting<\/a>, a motion to impose the maximum fine did not pass after councilmembers Fife, Brown and Houston voted no, and Gallo\u2019s absence was recorded as a no vote.<\/p>\nIn the run-up to today\u2019s meeting, environmental advocates flooded the councilmembers\u2019 inboxes with messages supporting the fine.<\/p>\n
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Some spoke at the meeting, saying they were concerned that if the city didn\u2019t fine Bernard and Warner, it would send a message to developers and other property owners that they could chop down trees with impunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not simply an environmental issue,\u201d said Arash Daneshzadeh, director of programs at the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation. \u201cIt\u2019s a civic, public safety and equity issue. When violations, particularly in egregious cases like this, go unpenalized, it sends a clear message that compliance is optional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before today\u2019s vote, Bernard made his case to the council, arguing he had tried in good faith to follow the city\u2019s process. He also claimed that some of the 38 trees were already cut down or diseased and dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe dispute there were 38 trees removed,\u201d he said. \u201cSome trees fell prior to our purchase, others fell during storms.\u201d<\/p>\n
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City staff said they gathered extensive evidence of the violations and included in materials submitted to the council were photographs of the lot before and after the trees were cut, photos of people cutting trees on the property and detailed reports by Oakland\u2019s arborist staff. Police also took reports when they responded to the property while Bernard and others were cutting trees.<\/p>\n
Bernard asked the council to resolve the matter by waiving the fine and allowing him and Warner to replant new trees after they built their home.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers Brown and Fife wanted to find a solution more favorable to Bernard. Brown called Oakland\u2019s protected tree ordinance \u201coutdated\u201d and said it felt unfair to impose such a large fine on the property owners for chopping down trees the city would likely have permitted removal of anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe a truly equitable approach requires us to distinguish between preventable loss and inevitable removal,\u201d she said. She tried to get her colleagues to vote for a roughly $300,000 reduction in the fine.<\/p>\n
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Fife railed against what she said were racially inequitable policies, making comparisons with the drug war, mass incarceration and colonization, while noting that Bernard is Black and his property is located in an area where people of color were prohibited from living in the early 20th century. She supported Brown\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n
In the end, a majority of the council embraced the notion that laws matter and the city shouldn\u2019t be making excuses for people who violate them.<\/p>\n
Ramachandran said Oakland needs \u201cto be crystal clear to anyone who wants to come into our city and trash our city, and violate our laws, and think you can get away with it: \u2026You are going to be fined.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, Jenkins said Oakland needs to restore the confidence among residents that it will uphold its laws. Appealing to Gallo and Houston \u2014 both of whom frequently complain during council meetings about their frustrations with the perception that Oakland is lawless \u2014 Jenkins asked them to support the fine.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAre we going to enforce the laws? Do they mean anything?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published by The Oaklandside<\/a> and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hillside lot where Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner cut down trees in violation of the city’s environmental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,22371,14795,8550,127749,8551,143,145,144,127886,2391,3263,2386,22375],"class_list":["post-303384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-charlene-wang","tag-ken-houston","tag-kevin-jenkins","tag-matthew-bernard","tag-noel-gallo","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-protected-trees-cut-down-fine","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30031-ap-california-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-zac-unger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303384","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=303384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}