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August 25, 2020
Sign and share the Climate Coalition Petition
Join us in asking the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to include programs to educate people about how pesticides pollute the environment and harm people. To make comment on this for the VC2040 General Plan, email to Susan Curtis <[email protected]> no later than Monday, August 31, 3:30 p.m..
Petition: To support all 40 of the recommendations from the 350 Climate Coalition including these about pesticides, sign the Petition to the Supervisors: CLICK HERE
Instructions: To comment to the Supervisors during the September 1 hearing or ahead of time by email: CLICK HERE.
How can we organize better to take care of our trees and make sure new and replacement trees survive? This should be part of the policy of the General Plan. In the following programs we have added the underlined words (and deleted a few with strikethrough) to improve accountability in tree programs.
Countywide Tree Planting The County shall establish and support a countywide target for the County, cities in Ventura County, agencies, organizations, businesses, and citizens to plant two million trees throughout the county by 2040 to include species selection informed by best available science, a mapping and tracking program to report tree survival, and increasing local commercial and volunteer capacity for tree propagation by locally harvested seeds and cuttings.
RATIONALE: Added to ensure science-based decisions about species selection, accountability for tree survival, and building local jobs and volunteer capacity for propagation.
Update Tree Protection Ordinance The County shall update existing Tree Protection Regulations in the Non-Coastal Zoning Ordinance to further enhance conservation of our trees, urban forests, and trees in nearby riparian resources. and the preservation of the County’s oak woodland resources. Updates shall include incorporation of Board-adopted recommendations from the Ventura County Oak Woodlands Management Plan (2007), which include tree replacement offsets for ministerial development projects that remove protected trees, revisiting mitigation ratios for tree removal and oak woodland impacts for discretionary development projects. There must be adequate staffing for code compliance and law enforcement for unpermitted tree removal, enforcement of timely offset replacements with mapping and tracking the effectiveness of tree planting, a standard tree valuation rubric to generate revenue for support of programs that may include volunteer “Tree Watch” and public education about planting, care, protection of trees and reporting of tree abuse. There must be a reciprocal agreement with cities for code compliance and law enforcement to ensure that when a violation is reported it is stopped quickly and standard fines are levied. The update shall make use of the best available science existing protections regarding for invasive native plant selection and non-native trees and the degree to which select non-natives may provide benefits for Existing Communities. habitat for a species during critical life stages (e.g., colonial roost sites, breeding sites, etc.), In addition, the evaluation shall also include anticipated effects of climate change on the urban forest environment.
RATIONALE: Added to broaden the scope and considerations for updated tree protection ordinance based on science, and including reciprocity agreements with the cities for standard, effective code compliance and law enforcement, fines, tree valuation, and assurance of accountability.
