My family has lived since the 50s in south Willow Glen, one of the nicest old suburbs of San Jose, California , and i was talking with a neighbor about the drastic decline in city property,city parking strip trees, especially on our street compared to other nearby streets. Houses here still sell for $700,000 to over a $million. We both agreed that more and more trees were dying , being removed, and NOT REPLACED with a city government that did not seem to care, unless you filed an individual complaint. The next block looks so much better and more livable than ours , just because it has most of its parking strip 2 trees per lot. And obviously the residents on the next block appreciate the increase in home and neighborhood real estate value !!
So i called the city Arborist, in the Transportation dept., a strange place to have an Arborist city office. Not very enthusiastic, which is so very sad when we need more oxygen creating, and carbon dioxide absorbing trees here in summer very smogy Silicon Valley, NOT LESS! The city manager's office and the mayor's office were not very encouraging either, basically telling me it was the property owner's responsibility to pay for the removal of dead trees in the parking strip and also the planting of replacement trees.
Now that is a POLICY DESIGNED TO FAIL,,,and notice how many ranch house owners have paved over the city-owned parking strip, with the CITY OF SAN JOSE DOING LITTLE OR NOTHING ABOUT IT !? Isn't it strange that ,i seem to remember, the city winning some kind of a tree award,,,a few years back,,,AND NOW SAN JOSE IS TURNING ITS BACK ON HAVING AS MANY TREES AS POSSIBLE FOR CITY BEAUTIFICATION, OUR COLLECTIVE HEALTH(cough cough tear tear cough cough), AND A BIG INCREASE IN PROPERTY VALUES ??
