Dear Councilmembers,

This tree is a big deal. It's not just about a tree but it's about the
bigger question of who designs our cities. This is about BART, Cal
Train, 101 overpasses and all the other issues that will potentially
turn Burlingame into the next San Bruno.

Our towns are held in the grip of staff who have a narrow focus (with
much expertise aligned about that focus) but little ability to
synthesize creative solutions. Our towns are also held in the grip of
the fear of lawsuits. This fear, and the constant real threat of
litigation causes us to make a thousand little decisions that seem
harmless from the quality of life viewpoint. A tree here, a stream
there.

But that is exactly how our cities degrade; incrementally, a little
unnoticeable piece at a time.

There used to be a white rail fence and a line of plum trees along
California near Broadway . These were the first trees to blossom in
spring (they would have started showing flowers in about three weeks
from now). They were removed to make the pavement about three feet wider
and replaced with some really ugly curbs and some useless "lolli-pop"
trees that have taken forever to show any form and offer none of the
aesthetic qualities of the previous assembly.

There used to be a wall of Eucalyptus along the tracks at the Millbrae
border that gave us a huge sense of separation from the airport. They
are gone now and many people can actually see the terminal buildings
from their second floor windows.

We used to have dark skies at night, but the engineers decided that the
lights at the new soccer field had to be bright and they failed to
address the appropriate aesthetic concerns. Thus we have giant bright
lights that can be seen from any place in the hills and that actually
light up the sky for people living in the flats. These lights
permanently pollute the moon-rise from the porch of my house on Paloma.

There used to be parking spaces in front of Wells Fargo on Broadway.
These spaces were important to the street and they made the sidewalk
more comfortable to humans. They were removed to increase traffic flow
at the Broadway intersection. Now, with two lanes available, people are
more comfortable racing to get through the yellow lights. Speeds of 40
miles per hour are regularly observed and the sidewalk feels unsafe.

There used to be a stand of Euc's at the intersection of Millbrae Ave
and El Camino. These were typical of all the key intersections of hill
roads and El Camino along the peninsula. They used to occur at Sneath, San
Bruno Ave., Crystal Springs and most of the others. They help set the
character of El Camino and they defined the important intersections.
Most are gone.

In fact Burlingame is one of the few towns on the peninsula where the
large Euc's still roam free. Thus we are one of the most distinctive
towns on the peninsula in terms of visual quality and reference to the
history of land occupation on the peninsula. The tree in question
defines one of the historic drives to one of the historic estate that
were the defining settlement pattern of the peninsula. These trees,
while expensive to maintain and live with, offer enormous (and often
intangible ) value to all residents of Burlingame. They are part of our
distinction, part of our character, part of our identity.

Most residents of Burlingame could add four or five things to this list
of beloved things lost. Some of those items would be sentimental, but
most would represent substantive losses to the character of Burlingame,
losses that were unnecessary and that were replaced with either token
attempts at faking character or, in many cases, bland engineering
solutions.

In the twenty three years I lived in Burlingame, I have watched the
character of the town degrade. No matter how smugly we would like to
think of Burlingame as a wonderful place, it has become more average,
more routine, less special. It's still special, but less so.

This has occurred not by any onslaught of vandals or thieves or even
developers and speculators (often the same kind of people.) It has
occurred largely because of decisions made by Councils based on
recommendations of staff. Those recommendations are often considered in
isolation, structured around questions that is designed to deliver the
answers that staff seek. Staff are not evil, this is part of their job:
to apply their expertise where appropriate.

But the other part of their job is synthesis. They each have an
obligation to look outside of their own interest, their own expertise
and value the interests and expertise of others. At this our staff often
fail.

It is also the City Manager and the Councils responsibility to be the
captains of these processes, to look at all the concerns and weigh them
and go beyond a simple staff recommendation. When staff fail to
synthesize a proper solution, the leaders have to do it for them.

The question regarding the tree has devolved into one of safety and
cost. In isolation the tree has come to be seen by some as a death
threat, a money pit, a lawsuit looking for a place to happen. These are
extreme and somewhat hysterical views inflated in part by the frenzy of
battle.

In reality, this tree has been there a long time and none of these
things have happened.

Further, the tree likely protects the city from litigation in its
service of traffic calming. There is emerging science out there that is
beginning to link a large portion of traffic injuries and fatalities to
the basic engineering principles at play in this issues. There is
increasing evidence that the obsessive goals of moving more cars faster,
a goal that is behind the removal of this tree, is as responsible for
traffic accidents and any other single factor.

Everyone in public service has heard of the notion of traffic calming
over the last ten years. Traffic calming has gained momentum as a
planning concept in large part because of this realization.

The irony however, is that most cities are forced to go through a
realization cycle in which they spend millions of dollars to remove
obstacles from traffic flow (to speed up their roads) and then spend
millions of dollars to slow that traffic flow with artificial calming
devices such as signs, bumps circles and lots of silly striping.

Hear we have God's own means of traffic calming (How would Jesus design
your street…?) and we want to cut it down. It will then have to be
replaced with caution signs, stripes all over the pavement and,
eventually speed bumps just like the one currently caused by the roots of
the tree.

If the goal is to have a safe intersection, we already have that. If the
goals is to have a beautiful intersection, we already have that. If the
goal is to have a lawsuit proof intersection, that is impossible,
frivolous and will result, ultimately in removing all things beautiful
and poetic.

Thus we connect to a larger issue of our times: What do we sacrifice for
security. Do we give up civil rights, do we bust our Constitution, do we
imprison ourselves in our homes at our computers so that we can be safe
(and we sure ain't safe at our computers any more…)

Do we strip our lives of poetry, beauty, meaning to be safe.

We used to go to the airport to meet relatives who flew into town. Being
so close in Burlingame, it was easy to drive over, park and walk in to
meet people at the gate. The ancient celebration of arrival and
departure that fills the poems of all civilizations, was intact and
functional even in the context of the highest tech travel.

Now concerns for safety have eliminated that from our lives, replaced
with solutions designed by lawyers and engineers.

The issue surrounding our tree is not an isolated issue, it is a symptom
of a larger disease that will end us as a society if we are not careful.
It will turn us into the automatons we fear, it will remove the joy from
every day living. Ultimately it will fragment community so that no one
is trusted and no one is our neighbor.

Dramatic, yes. But the world ebbs and flows on single digit percentages
and it's little things, like this damn tree, that count. A tree here, a
corner store there, a porch removed, a street widened.

Most towns in America looked and felt like Burlingame at some time. Most
don't today… don't. None were bombed, bulldozed or otherwise
dramatically changes. Most were picked apart a little bit at a time,
unnoticeably.

Your job is to notice.

Martin Dreiling

Dreiling Terrones Bartos
Building & Land Group
(CSS Architecture)

650.696.1200

– Written by Jen