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On Oct. 2 the City of Berkeley butchered the big ornamental pear tree that grows in the sidewalk median in front of my house. 

The tree, formerly a prime specimen, did need to be pruned. It had grown up into the telephone lines, its lower lateral branches needed trimming, and its canopy need to be thinned out. And I knew that the City planned to prune it: Notices asking motorists to remove their cars next to the adjacent curb had been posted on the tree a few days earlier. On the morning of October 2, the City staffer who did the actual pruning—Alex or Alec, hereafter A.—came to my door and asked if I knew whose cars were parked next to the sidewalk. I told him that I didn’t, and he left. 

When I went out, perhaps an hour later, I was stunned. A. had sawed off at least two dozen lateral limbs. At least four of those limbs were 2 ? to 4 inches in diameter. This once-graceful ornamental pear now looked like one of those “lollipop” trees drawn by small children. Before, its lower branches and foliage had shaded pedestrians and screened the view from my house. No longer and nevermore: A tree this old won’t put out new lateral branches of the sort that A. had sawed off. Strangely, the uppermost branches hadn’t been touched; they still reached into the telephone lines. 

I was appalled. A. mumbled something about how residents were often unhappy when trees that had once screened their views no longer did so after having been pruned, but it couldn’t be helped. 

I went into my house and called the Parks Department. Within an hour or so, City Arborist Betsy Reeves appeared at my door. I thanked her for her prompt attention. On the phone, I’d predicted that she would vindicate her colleague. She speedily confirmed my prediction. Surveying the tree, she told me that A. had done nothing improper. She said that City rules required that trees extend no more than eight feet into the street and no more than 14 feet above the sidewalk. (The City has legal authority over trees in sidewalk medians.) 

When I asked why I hadn’t been consulted beforehand, Reeves repeatedly stated that City rules specify that only those who ask to have their trees pruned have to be consulted about the pruning. My next-door neighbor to the west had asked that the City prune the Chinese pistache trees in the sidewalk median in front of her house, and she had been consulted. After A. left and before Reeves arrived, that neighbor told me that another City employee—Tom?—had come out the week before and discussed with her the pruning of each bough of her trees. (Another strangeness: post-pruning, the highest branches of her pruned trees were still much lower than those of my mine.) Presumably Tom had decided that my tree also needed to be pruned. 

Before departing, Reeves gave me a handful of literature about street tree maintenance in the City of Berkeley. I read one of the handouts—“Tree Pruning Standards/Guidelines”—and concluded that Reeves and her team had violated three of the standards/guidelines in the “Mature Tree Pruning” section. 

Standard/Guideline #2: “Clearance of fourteen (14) feet over roadways and eight (8) feet over sidewalks should be achieved during the pruning operation to accommodate vehicle and pedestrian traffic.” 

But A. had pruned my tree to a fourteen-foot clearance over the sidewalk as well as the street. 

Standard/Guideline #3: “The least amount of foliage possible should be removed while achieving the pruning objectives. No more than 25% of a tree’s foliage should be removed at any one time. Upon completion of pruning, one-half (1/2) of the foliage should remain evenly distributed in the lower two-thirds (2/3) of the tree and individual limbs.” 

A. had removed far more than 25% of my tree’s foliage. And his pruning had left far less than half of the remaining foliage evenly distributed in the lower two-thirds of the tree. 

Standard/Guideline #12: “Consideration should also be given to the desires of the adjacent property owner. Often street trees have been pruned in such a way as to give the person living next to the tree physical and visual screening from the street. If the pruning of a street tree will drastically change the form or clearance of the tree, an attempt should be made to contact the property owner or resident to explain the purpose of the pruning.” 

In the case at hand, I was both the property owner and the resident—and for good measure, the person who many years ago planted the tree and tended it to maturity. But the City had made no attempt to contact me and explain the purpose of the proposed pruning—pruning that would eliminate the physical and visual screening from the street that the tree provided. 

There wasn’t a word in the “Tree Pruning Standard/Guidelines” about requiring the adjacent resident or property owner to call the City in order to merit a pre-pruning consultation. Either Reeves had lied to me, or she didn’t know the rules that ostensibly govern her work. 

After a good cry—I really loved that tree—I decided to file a complaint with the City. On October 13 I went to City Hall, where I delivered a letter addressed to Human Resources Director David Hodgkins and Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Director William Rogers. I told what had happened and asked them to assess the performance of Reeves and her colleagues, to explain the basis of their assessment and to describe what if any disciplinary measures they planned to take. I included post-pruning photos of the tree. 

Hodgkins and Rogers kicked my letter down to newly appointed Parks Superintendent Sue Ferrera. On November 10, Ferrera’s reply appeared in my mailbox. Another brushoff. “It is my understanding, Ferrera wrote, “that staff spoke with you prior to pruning the tree, but there was no mention of your pruning preferences in that conversation. In the future, please know that our staff is very receptive to resident feedback and preferences and they would have made every effort to accommodate your requests within the guidelines and City policies for tree trimming.” 

In other words, it was all my fault, though Ferrera never said so straight out. Using the subject-free passive voice so dear to bureaucrats—“there was no mention of your pruning preferences”—she merely but clearly implied that the failure was mine. If only I had made my preferences known beforehand, staff “would have made every effort to accommodate [them].” 

But what about the city’s official guideline stipulating that when City arborists are contemplating a drastic change to a mature tree, they are supposed to take the initiative and try to contact the property owner or resident? Quoted in full in my letter, that guideline was ignored in Ferrera’s reply. 

I called her to ask why. “We can’t talk to everyone,” she told me, about four times in a row. In turn, I repeatedly observed that I wasn’t “everyone” but rather the person who, according to the City’s own rules, was supposed to be contacted and consulted before major pruning occurred. Finally she said that she didn’t think the tree had been drastically changed. How do you know? I asked. After all, she’d never seen the tree in its pre-pruning state. She said she’d visited the tree and looked at the size of the cuts. That effectively ended our conversation. 

Since then I have learned that prior to becoming City of Berkeley Parks superintendent in Summer 2008, Ferrera was supervisor of Anthony Chabot Park—a job unlikely to have required or developed expertise in the arboriculture of residential street trees. It’s hard to imagine that Ferrera could have gained such expertise in her few months as superintendent of Berkeley’s parks. As far as I can tell, in brushing me off, she was just protecting her subordinates and appeasing her superiors. 

In a city that has 40,000 trees, the mutiliation of one may be a small thing. But official toleration, not to say defense, of staff incompetence and arbitrary behavior is a big thing indeed. City Arborist Reeves and her colleagues are still out there with their chain saws, likely citing rules that don’t exist to justify their violation of rules that do and expecting with good reason to be shielded by their bosses from angry citizens whose trees have been deformed or, as happened in one case, completely removed without any notice, much less actual consultation. 

A cheap and easy way to make our urban foresters more accountable would be to require them to photograph each tree before they prune it. Then we’d have some objective evidence about the quality of their work. How about it, Parks Commission? 

Meanwhile, Berkeley citizens: Be vigilant. Should you learn that the City has trained its sights on the sidewalk median trees in front of your house, take action. One friend and her neighbor came out and simply refused to let the City's arborists touch the trees in the sidewalk medians adjacent to their properties. Would that I had done the same. Of course in a well-run city, residents don’t have to defend themselves from the civil servants. We don’t live in such a place.