Please come to the Montrose TIRZ public meeting this coming Monday 1/29 (rescheduled from 1/22) at 6:30pm at the Havens Center, St. Stephens Episcopal Church on W Alabama. The Havens Center is in the back facing Sul Ross.
When you sign in you can choose whether you wish to speak during the public commentary portion of the meeting. 3 mins max.
Save Montrose Live Oaks supporters will be there along with board-certified arborist Matt Latham to once again refute inaccurate info and ask for design changes to save at least some of the trees of the sides of Montrose. Matt has used i-Tree, an industry leading simulation app, that shows how the canopy on Montrose will take 30+ years to grow back to what we have today, not the laughable 10 year figure that Barry Ward of Trees for Houston has publicly thrown out. We will show it at the Monday meeting or you can see it on our website www.SaveMontroseLiveOaks.com
It is worth noting that Mr. Ward is not a currently certified arborist, he’s a professional non-profit executive. He seems to do a great job at fund raising and last year he proudly held a ribbon-cutting at the expensive new HQ building for TFH (for which many mature trees were cut down). His support of this tree-destroying project leaves us scratching our heads.
Does Trees for Houston care anymore about protecting existing mature trees? Or do they just want the bragging rights (and fund-raising ease) of planting and giving away thousand of saplings? That strategy certainly makes for a big number of “trees” for them to tell their corporate donors that they’ve planted each year, but what are they doing to protect mature trees and to invest in our maintaining our existing green infrastructure?
Research shows that almost 70 per cent of all the carbon stored in trees is accumulated in the last half of their lives. If we keep cutting trees down that are 10 to 20 years old to plant small new ones in a different spot because our placement preferences keep changing, we will never have beautiful old live oaks with all the environmental benefits they bring. The only way to get more of the enormous, beneficial century old oaks that you see around Rice University, River Oaks, the Woodlands… is to NOT cut down the younger oaks! Let them grow!
Has Trees for Houston made any effort to get the city of Houston to adopt a meaningful tree protection ordinance like Austin or San Antonio have in place? We would love to join forces with Trees for Houston to demand some real protection for Houston’s mature trees.