Fort Lauderdale wants to increase the number of trees to clean the air, cool the streets and create spaces where life flourishes.
Well, here’s a suggestion: Start by leaving the trees on Las Olas. They provide shade for pedestrians (and for artists during the annual Las Olas Art Fair).
The Arbor Day Foundation has a Tree Cities of the World program that aligns with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) GreenCities Initiative to connect municipalities with global networks of urban forestry professionals, supporting canopy growth and community forest management (visit arborday.org/power-of-trees).
The Trust for Public Land provides tools such as ParkServe (tpl.org/parkserve). Or the city could start a program to invite residents to purchase a tree to dedicate to a specific individual such as a loved one.
Karen Lassman, Weston
Get rid of cars, not trees
It’s too bad your paper doesn’t provide online reader comments (big mistake).
But as to Las Olas Boulevard (and its doomed trees), the powers-that-be do not understand what makes this street what it is. Without the trees, Las Olas becomes just another commercial thoroughfare.
Kiss charm goodbye. Fort Lauderdale will literally pave paradise to put up a parking lot.
I would recommend going in the complete opposite direction.
Our cities and neighborhoods have already sacrificed so much of their humanity to the primacy of the automobile. To really have something special within the brain-killing visual sameness of South Florida, keep the trees and dump the cars.
Las Olas would be a much bigger draw as a pedestrian mall. They have the skilled engineers to reconfigure traffic and, chances are, the rerouting will probably be more efficient. The city will regret this decision.
Richard Sussman, Delray Beach
Suspend the midterms?
It appears abundantly clear that the goal of the Trump administration is to declare martial law and suspend the 2026 midterm election, because President Trump can see how his own approval ratings have tanked.
He’s using brutal thugs to round up not only peaceful, working undocumented residents but also U.S. citizens of color. The Supreme Court unbelievably gave this president immunity from any prosecution while performing the duties of president! That is what dictators have: total immunity.
The complicit Congress is invisible, lacking the courage to hold the Trump administration in check and to follow the U.S. Constitution that they were sworn to uphold.
The blatant alienation of our NATO allies is a very dangerous precedent and has worldwide implications that are too numerous to list here. This country had better wake up fast.
Sanford Shuster, Boynton Beach
Don’t like Trump? Move
The editorial board just proved how biased they are (“Weakened and weary: America a year later,” editorial, Jan. 20). What a joke your team is. Stand up for your leader, your one and only president for the next three years. Or maybe you should all move to California.
David Bigwood, Fort Lauderdale
Displeased by Pett’s artwork
I was extremely disappointed in your editorial decision to publish the latest cartoon by Joel Pett.
The four pictures and captions contain the most anti-capitalist, anti-Israel, antisemitic dog whistles I have ever seen in so compressed a space. For that accomplishment, I suppose congratulations are in order.
Passing the buck to a wire service or citing Pett’s prior awards are not excuses.
Laz L. Schneider, Fort Lauderdale
(Editor’s Note: Joel Pett is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist who won the award for editorial cartooning in 2000.)
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