An oldie but a goodie: one of my greatest honours: banned from a chainsaw website

MEDIA RELEASE

Newcastle City Council can’t say the Laman Street trees are unsafe:

NO risk assessment is current

So what does NCC base a decision about tree removal on?

One of Newcastle council’s own experts said today that their QTRA (risk) assessment of the Laman Street trees was no longer valid as it is over twelve months since its production. This is the assessment the insurer is required to rely on.
Spokesperson for Save Our Figs (SOF) Fee Mozeley said, “I was shocked to learn that the QTRA Manual states that an assessment is only current and valid for twelve months.
‘When I heard this I decided to look into the limitations of the Matheny and Clarke method, which is the other method council used and learned that this method is also only considered reliable able for up to 12 months, though usually are only considered valid for 2 to 3 months post assessment.

“This means that in terms of risk assessment, which is what the insurer is required to rely on, there are NO current risk assessments for council to be basing its decision for tree removal on.

“Council has repeatedly positioned the community as being ‘unreasonable’ in requesting a further risk assessment. It is now clear that it should be done as a matter of course.

“Council needs to start managing these trees appropriately and do a TRANSPARENT and SCIENTIFICALLY RIGOROUS risk assessment. 

“Council reasserted its reliance on the findings of ‘four expert risk assessments ‘earlier this week in the full-page advertisement which reproduced more of its fig propaganda. We now know that there are NO current risk assessments for Council to rely on to justify their destructive agenda.

“Three of these risk assessments were conducted by using the Quantified Tree Risk Assessment Method (QTRA) and one in-house assessment conducted by Lindsay Field (City Arborist) using a visual tree assessment method known as Matheny & Clarke. The QTRA assessments were conducted on 2/09/2009, 9/03/2010 and 12/7/2010. The Matheny & Clarke assessment was conducted in September 2010.” said Ms Mozeley “Go back to the drawing board and do it properly.’

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The view next week?

bottom drawer here we come.

My issue is with the need for Council to provide GENUINE engagement with the community.

As a medical practitioner I am taught to avoid defending a position when faced with patient opposition – if I tell a patient that I know best in spite of their disagreement with my treatment, all that will happen is that their opposition and dissatisfaction will increase.

Council needs to avoid a formulaic approach to consultation and feedback.Ticking boxes, standing back and saying that consultation has taken place should have no place in local government.

As a member of a volunteer community group that has spent over two years trying to engage with Council on the matter of the Laman Street trees, I would like to start by telling you how not to engage with the public.

A Newcastle Voice survey was done on respondents’ vision for the future of Laman Street and Civic Park in early 2010. In the summary of the results, answers were grouped by vision: ie if I wanted to retain the trees, that’s how my vision was characterised; if I wanted to replace the trees, similarly my vision was called ‘replace’. Disappointingly one only had to mention the word ‘replace’ to be characterised as a ‘replace’ vision. I said in my submission ‘If the trees truly have to be replaced then I would like a staged replacement policy’ or similar. My vision was called ‘replace’. This could not have been a simple mistake.

A charrette was held about the Laman Street trees in March 2010: council management failed the community by appearing to broaden the scope of the workshop/community consultation process so that it was about Laman Street as well as Civic Park. I believe elected councillors were misled by staff to agree to this.

All this did was allow less time to talk about the most controversial issue, ie the future and alleged danger of the trees. There was no flexibility at the charrette to widen or indeed narrow the discussion; the days were tightly managed, possibly in order to avoid discussion on the most important issues, people were separated from the colleagues they arrived with, and they were kept busy filling in sticky notes. The end result was a document that closely resembled the 2005 Civic Park vision produced years before.

The information provided at the charrette was skewed and referred to almost any tree but the Laman Street trees: photographs produced were of other tree failures and no evidence was produced about Laman Street.

A friend attended a community consultation session about National Park recently and felt that important issues such as the plan of management were glossed over by the consultant running the evening.

In the two years since the Laman St issue began, no one in council was proactive in trying to engage with those opposed to destroying the Laman Street streetscape. I believe there’s a line in the sustainability review that says council should avoid engaging with the’ vocal minority’ – men are the vocal minority; anyone who engages with council is by definition the vocal minority. This is a culture that is toxic to community engagement.

I do believe encouraging the community to give feedback is important but the feedback needs to be dealt with meaningfully. There should be a requirement for the staff member contacted to reply to communications, even if it is to say that the email was passed onto another part of council to deal with. I have on numerous occasions received no response to emails.

It’s one thing to say you will use ‘best practice consultation techniques‘, it’s another to carry this out. If NCC is simply going to keep doing what it has done on Laman St and employ expensive consultants to shut people up, you will fail – and wastefully.

I believe that one of the most common reasons for residents to phone council with a complaint is when trees are felled. NCC needs a tree notification page and a long enough period of time to alert residents that trees are being removed so they can give feedback to council.  The page should contain enough information to inform the public about the reasons why the trees are being removed; it would be helpful and ideal to upload arborists’ reports on this page.

Marrickville Council  is an example of a council that has such a page. Other councils look to Newcastle for many aspects of tree management and it would be a move we could as a city be proud of.

I can see no reason to ‘regularly promote and celebrate the achievements of Council and the local community’. How much money do we have to spend on PR? I suspect Council spend enough on moves that bolster staff morale – there’s certainly more food at meetings than I can jump over. Management should manage positvely and humanely, so that advertising NCC’s achievements should not be something that is needed to keep the workforce happy. And let’s face it – councils are always going to be criticised so why spend ratepayer money trying to avoid this?

Yours sincerely,

Caitlin Raschke

I’ll post the update letter later – I’m off to Sips and Nibbles in Laman Street – one of the last x

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Below are some photos by Ed Glatfelter-Jones, a Newcastle expat. [ed.] Double-click to make them larger. Ed’s so clever and committed. Enjoy them. And fix your roster for Monday – there’s a respectful protest, sorry, community picket line to go to.

Good to know it’s ‘practical’ to involve the riot police to implement a Council resolution to fell healthy trees.

And thanks goodness it’s not illegal to fell these trees during flying fox and bat breeding season – just immoral.

And what a fantastically Pyrrhic victory it’s going to be for Council’s tree team to ‘win’ next week: to avoid (more) scrutiny of their QRAP advice to councillors, to vandalise this street so that a new electricity cable and new paving can be installed – one day.

Thank goodness the engineers in Council can rely on outdated technology and avoid learning something new – like drilling/boring under the street, keeping the present trees,  to put in new cables. And thank heavens we can build a Tidy area out the front of the renovated gallery, without pesky, gnarled trees – and birds to poop on people.

And thank goodness NCC will be able to ignore Australian and international experts on tree risk once the trees are gone. There’ll be no trees to tease them any more – just a row of stumps to look at for a couple of years.

There will be one good thing to come out of the felling of the Laman Street trees – some of the tree team may retire. Properly. Their mission complete.  Home

Lord Mayor John Tate will be discussing with the GM leaving the Laman St trees till the next election and taking the question of the future of the trees to the voters.

Cr Buman disagrees. Unsurprising.

He likes the idea of A Decision.

Any Decision.

Apparently it doesn’t matter if it’s the Wrong Decision. Doesn’t matter if new information comes to light.

If a decision is wrong in the beginning, it stays wrong.

Watch out for the day the community picket line forms.

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 INTERNATIONAL ARBORIST RESPONDS TO CRITICISMS BY COUNCIL

 Mike Ellison, the well-known UK arborist who recently assessed the Laman Street figs for Save Our Figs Inc, has responded angrily to a memo from Newcastle City Council’s Director of Liveable Cities about his report.

‘Newcastle City Council has once again embarrassed itself in the eyes of the arboricultural world’, said Dr Caity Raschke. ‘They continue to claim that they have proved that the Laman Street trees are dangerous, but how many people really believe this? Mr Ellison joins a long line of experts who remain unconvinced, as does most of Newcastle.’

Dr Raschke went on to say, ‘In response to Council’s bleats about ‘extensive’ investigation and ‘trenching’, which in my opinion would have to be one of the most inaccurate ways imaginable to investigate trees, and RADAR which actually showed roots but was apparently hidden by Council,  Mr Ellison has sensibly said:

‘…the Council’s assertion that the root-plates of the trees are asymmetrical is founded on a very limited investigation, which excavated to depths of just below one metre on one side of the trees only. How this investigation can be used to justify the Council’s statement that the trees have ‘severely restricted root plates’ or asymmetrical root-plates eludes me.’

Mr Ellison makes the point that ‘the Council’s ‘Case Studies’ document, … is nothing more than a record of tree failures, …and … the records have no value in informing consideration of the Laman Street trees. This document is a catalogue of assumptions.

‘…I [feel obliged to mention] the quoted statistics of historical tree failure … for no reason other than the Council might infer that I accept them. I do not. I find it disturbing that those affected by the proposed removal of the Laman Street fig trees might bebamboozled by Mr Cordingley’s interpretation of my report.’

Fee Mozeley from Save Our Figs said ’I note that Council claims an astounding number of figs has failed in recent years – this is because they are calling any tree that’s been cut down as a failure – it has to be asked if once again they are bringing  the proud profession of arboriculture into disrepute.

‘It remains impractical to remove these trees for so many reasons, but mainly because Council’s investigations would appear to have been done to justify tree removal rather than to save this city from an alleged traffic hazard – a proposal that remains bizarre and unbelievable.

‘They should take advantage of international experts’ knowledge rather than simply dismissing them.’

……………………………….

And to highlight differences in tree management approaches, read this story about Randwick Court fining a resident $19 000 for cutting a tree root. Imagine if Newcastle City Council were to take itself to court for tree root damage in Jenner Pde, Swan St, western Laman St, ?Smith St in Hamilton South, Darby Street, eastern Laman Street, Tyrrell Street – etc etc etc.

The cost of the vandalism plans for Laman Street would be paid for in no time. Home

From: Save Our Figs
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 13:55 PM
The General Manager,
Newcastle City Council.

Re: Invitation to present and discuss council findings on Laman Street trees at a community meeting.
Dear General Manager
We note that yesterday’s Newcastle Herald story on Monday night’s public meeting on the Laman St figs reported an unnamed spokeswoman for Newcastle Council as saying that “neither the council’s arborists, nor independent external experts engaged by the council, were invited to present their findings to the meeting” organised by a community fig forum committee on 17 January 2011 .
You will be aware that Save Our Figs recently issued a challenge to anyone advocating the removal of the Laman St trees  to a public debate on whether the trees need to be removed on the grounds of risk, and invited anyone who advocated removing the trees to respond. Neither council administration nor any elected councillors took up this offer. This may be why the community committee who organised the fig forum did not specifically invite any council arborist or council’s external consultants to present their findings to this week’s public meeting.
However, we are very pleased to note that the comments reported in the Herald appear to indicate that council would now be prepared to put its case for removing the trees before a public forum, in a situation in which the arguments and evidence from each side of the debate can be properly considered and discussed.
Accordingly, we invite council to nominate an appropriate set of dates, times and venues for this to occur. In consultation with council, Save Our Figs would be prepared to arrange the necessary publicity and other logistics for the event.
We propose that each side have up to three speakers, with a neutral (mutually agreed) moderator, and a strict time limit – perhaps 15 mins each for one main presenter from each side, and a shorter time (perhaps 5 to 10 minutes each) for the other two speakers from each side, followed by a moderated Q&A panel discussion involving questions from the audience. These are suggestions only at this point – we would be happy to discuss any of these arrangements with participants nominated by council.
We are sure you can appreciate the urgency of this invitation, so we would appreciate an expeditious response.
Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this matter.

Yours sincerely

Secretary
Save Our Figs Inc.

Wed, Jan 18, 2012
Subject: RE: Invitation to present and discuss council findings on Laman Street trees at a community meeting
To: Save Our Figs
Cc: Phil Pearce

Thank you for the invitation to the General Manager to present and discuss Council findings on the Laman Street trees at a community meeting.
This matter has been discussed at length in public forums, working parties and Council meetings.  Council has made a resolution for the removal of the trees and officers are now in the process of implementing that resolution. It is not appropriate for Council staff to be engaged in a public debate on this subject – the appropriate place is in the Council Chamber and this has been done.  Our comments in relation to the information provided to the Forum are now on the public record.
Therefore Council  will not be participating in a public forum on the matter.
Kind regards
Terri Freeman 
Executive Assistant to the General Manager

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As I said at the Fig Forum, there’s nothing to be gained and quite a bit to lose for arboricultural and risk experts to help Newcastle people try to preserve the Laman St trees.

I’m extremely grateful that such knowledgeable and respected experts as Mike Ellison have given us their time and advice.

I should not have been surprised that within the blink of an eye an internal memo critiquing Mr Ellison’s work appeared. I’ve reprinted the letter from Mr Ellison, with a link to the memo here. I wanted it to appear on the home page permanently, which is why it’s a page, not a post.

My favourite parts of Mr Ellison’s response are these:

‘…

the Council’s assertion that the root-plates of the trees are asymmetrical is founded on a very limited investigation, which excavated to depths of just below one metre on one side of the trees only. How this investigation can be used to justify the Council’s statement that the trees have ‘severely restricted root plates’ or asymmetrical root-plates eludes me’

and

‘It is suggested that “Council’s extensive body of evidence shows the figs pose a significant risk to life and property and, as a responsible organisation, Council cannot simply ignore this information”  If this is a reference to the Council’s ‘Case Studies’ document, this is nothing more than a record of tree failures, the causes of which are not known, but of which some possible contributing factors (such as restricted rooting) have been identified. There is no record of the magnitude or frequency of wind-loading that resulted in the recorded failures and as such the records have no value in informing consideration of the Laman Street trees. This document is a catalogue of assumptions.

‘I cannot leave the quoted statistics of historical tree failure without a mention for no reason other than the Council might infer that I accept them. I do not.

‘I find it disturbing that those affected by the proposed removal of the Laman Street fig trees might be bamboozled by Mr Cordingley’s interpretation of my report and trust that you will publish this letter on your organisation’s website by way of clarification.’

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I should have expected

The ex-row of beautiful Hill’s figs in Mayfield – do you think there was an arborist report saying they were going to fall down?

This is a media release from Save Our Figs Inc. Thanks to John Sutton and Fee Mozeley for putting this together.

NCC’s website says something about the crack it has developed being due to winds – I would be grateful if someone would tell me whether it’s possible that it’s actually due to the dreadful root amputation that was carried out in September 2010.

Here’s the post I wrote at the time. I think the root was about 5metres long and at its thickest stood about 30cm above the roadbase.

When I went down to the street to see if the doomed tree is the one with the ruined roots I ran into two Save Our Figs members. two organisers of the Fig Forum, one facebook fig friend and two older people who had driven for half an hour to see the tree since their son lives in the street. They think he’ll be devastated at the news.

This is presumably a $70 000 tree that has been destroyed. Well done. Not. Home

The first one is an internal memo that appeared first on an anti-Laman St chop page on facebook.

You can read it here: Internal Memo about Mike Ellison’s report:

The second is on NCC’s wbsite and disagrees with a lot of the Laman St Tree preservation ideas:

http://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/about_newcastle/news_and_events/media_releases/media_releases/fig_forum_light_on_facts/_nocache

Edit: NCC denies the allegations about how they handled the initial tree root radar report. On the home page close to the top are links to both the original report and the one that was released via FOI.

And here is a post I wrote at the time when I believed NCC when they told me they hadn’t received the radar report.

Cordingley memo sign of desperation and “flat-earth” Defensiveness, say Save Our Figs.

A memo released yesterday by a senior Newcastle Council Director in response to a report critical of the council’s assessment of the risk posed by the Laman St trees was a sure sign of desperation, and an excellent illustration of the council propaganda machine in action, according to Save Our Figs.

The memo, written by council’s Director Liveable City, Frank Cordingley and distributed to councillors, was responding to a report by UK arborist Mike Ellison commissioned by Save Our Figs.

“This memo is just the latest instalment in a stream of misleading and reflexively defensive memos from Mr Cordingley that illustrate how little capacity the council administration has to acknowledge that they may be mistaken about the risk posed by the Laman St trees, and how blinded some councillors have been by the propaganda from council officers,” SOF spokesperson, Ms Fee Mozeley said.

“Mr Cordingley’s response to the mounting body of expert evidence against the council’s case is reminiscent of the attempts by medieval flat-earthers to defend their position, as evidence that confirmed that the earth was round came flooding in.

“As a responsible organisation, Council cannot continue to ignore the evidence of external experts working independently of council that has comprehensively demolished the council’s case for removing the trees on the pretext that they are too risky.

“These external experts have contested or refuted the council’s arboricultural evidence and arguments, its risk assessments, and the research methodologies on which it relies on for its argument about the risk posed by the trees.

“Whatever happened to true professionalism, where mistakes are admitted as new knowledge is uncovered.

“SOF will respond in more detail to the specific matters raised in Mr Cordingley’s memo in the next few days,” Ms Mozeley said. Home