'Fearing for Kids' Lives,' Mission to Uproot Trees

Concerned that two tall eucalyptuses infected with fungus will fall and injure the school children who picnic below, plans to uproot the trees.

But the proposal sparked a sharp back-and-forth with the city's Planning Commission Tuesday night when commissioners suggested the mission is taking a "fragmented approach" to ripping out trees without any plan to replant.

The suggestion irked Director Mechelle Lawrence-Adams who nearly withdrew the application in frustration. She said the city's heavy-handed approach to approving tree removals has at times done more harm than good.

She said two other trees have fallen while the mission waited for applications to make their way through the city's permitting process, one of them, a pepper tree, smashed into the hallowed cemetery.

"Your perception of how we’re treating trees is skewed. My No.1 concern is the children," Lawrence-Adams said.

The two eucalyptuses in question are blue gums, notorious for being unstable—and sometimes deadly.

It was a blue gum that . The city of Newport subsequently r.

The blue gum trees on the mission grounds are located at its education staging and oft-boisterous teaching area where children on field trips are corralled to keep the rest of the mission grounds peaceful for adult visitors, Lawrence-Adams said.

"Directly under these trees, hundreds of students gather daily attending education classes. The potential danger and liability of the trees as they overhang above the students is of great concern," Craig Springer, the mission's facilities manager wrote in the application to the Planning Commission.

According to the city's Director of Development Grant Taylor, an arborist this week found stress fractures on the trees branches, as well as fungus. Taylor said the arborist recommended the trees be removed, but Taylor wanted the Planning Commission's approval first.

Although heritage trees such as the blue gum eucalyptus at the mission shouldn't be uprooted without commission approval, the city's code says exceptions can be made when there's an immenient danger.

The mission has recently submitted an application to take out other trees where it will build its new gatehouse entrance, but has also been "replanting everything we can, orange trees, more native, more drought tolerant [trees], but people don’t remember that," Lawrence-Adams said.

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The commission ultimately decided Tuesday to let Taylor make his decision based on a forthcoming arborist's report, and asked city staffers to request a master plan for tree removal and replanting at the mission if more requests come through.