CRITICAL mtg Tonight! 10/16 6:30 @Montrose Center 401 Branard St. 

This is it people!  We need a show of force for the trees at the TIRZ meeting tonight.  Come to speak or just come hold up a green Save Montrose Live Oaks flyer to show your support for pausing this project until a tree-saving design can be developed.   

If you speak you will have at most 3 minutes.  We will all need to make the most of that time.

Key points we want to make:

Implications for the rest of Montrose Blvd

• Since the sidewalk design for segment 1 requires cutting down ALL of the trees on the sides of the street, how will segments 2 and 3 be any different?  
• How many trees do you estimate will be cut down on the rest of Montrose based on your current design?
• The only schematics and streetscape cross-sections on your website that show what happens beyond W Clay indicate that a very large percentage of the trees will be removed bc they conflict w the design. If there are newer updated, tree-saving designs could you please show them to us? 

City-ordinance protected trees

• Is it true that 50-53 city ordinance protected trees will be cut down just in segment 1?  
• Have you received the required variances from the city to remove these trees? 

Heathy vs. Unhealthy trees

• How can you possibly claim that every single tree on the sides of Montrose between Allen Pkwy and W Clay are “unhealthy”?  What are the odds that 100% of the trees that are in the way of your sidewalk design just so happen to be unhealthy?
• If you acknowledge that some of the 27 live oak trees (57 total trees) coming down are not actually unhealthy, then why did state “no healthy lives oaks will be removed or replaced” in your most recent project memo. Isn’t that in fact untrue? Why should we trust you?

Median questions 

• You will be taking 5 feet off each side of the medians, which requires you to butcher the canopies of the few live oaks you have decided to keep in segment 1.  Why should we believe those trees will survive that damage in the long run?  Isn’t this just a way to pacify the public so you can make falsely reassuring claims like “no median trees will be removed”?  
• When you move onto to segment 2 does this mean 10’ will also be taken off the median in front of Niko Niko?  Will the canopies of those gorgeous live oak trees also be chopped off to make space for wider sidewalks?

Input and notification questions 

• How can you say we had a chance for input when you never informed anyone of the impact this project would have to the trees until the plans were 90% complete?  We demand a pause to the project and a change to this outrageous tree-design.
• How could an average resident have known what you were planning when you all you provided to civic clubs were sugar-coated stories about better sidewalks, bike access and safer school crossings without EVER revealing the true impact? 

Traffic safety

• · Where are the traffic studies that show the impact to the small residential streets parallel to Montrose which will now bear the brunt of additional traffic - what one of your engineers told us would be 500 additional cars per day?  
• With all the focus on school children crossing Montrose Blvd, was any concern given to children playing safely in their own small residential neighborhoods? 

Rational bike and pedestrian access

• Have we learned nothing from other places where shared use paths leave both pedestrians and cyclists dodging each other?  Other than the cycling extremists and cycling lobbying groups, who in the rational common-sense biking community has had input to this plan?
• We have recently built protected bike lanes on Waugh.  Who decided we so desperately needed a shared use path on Montrose as to be worth the destruction of so many trees, so many iconic live oaks?