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| … on Safe Routes to School Conferen… | |
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Friends and Walkers,
Are you all signed up to attend the Blueprint Anniversary workshop on Friday, April 2, 2010, from 8 – 11 am at CSUS?? If not, sign up to register (you gotta register) at:
http://www.sacregionblueprint.org/implementation/anniversary5/registration/
… so that Complete Streets are in the house. The Blueprint process has helped make a lot of our success possible, so let’s be there!!
Trees were the topic of a lively discussion at WALKsacramento’s (January 27th) WALKSacramento Monthly Meeting – how to expand and protect Sacramento’s tree canopy.
Cindy Blain of the Sacramento Tree Foundation outlined the Foundation’s proposed Model Urban Forest Ordinance. She noted that the draft ordinance is back on the Foundation’s current agenda and she welcomed comments from WALKSacramento.
Some of the concerns raised at today’s meeting:
Tree canopy & sidewalks & bike lanes
The current draft is considering recommending 50-70% tree canopy coverage for the overall street but doesn’t mention the sidewalks. We’d like to see sidewalks and bike-lanes shaded to encourage both walking and bicycling. We suggested that the ordinance sets a specific objective of shading sidewalks and bike lanes.
Tree canopy and Safe Routes to School
We were excited to learn that the Tree Foundation is working with school districts to plant trees on school property (Twin Rivers is planting 1,000 trees and San Juan School District will be planting 1,500 trees in the next 5 years). We urged that the Foundation and school districts plant trees along the edges of the school particularly along sidewalks and pathways children take to get to school.
The Tree Foundation has an extensive program with SMUD to encourage homeowners to plant trees to shade their homes. We suggested that homeowners also be encouraged to plant trees to shade the routes children take past their homes to school.
Tree canopy and commercial parking lots
Commercial parking lots often have trees planted for shade but then are drastically pruned to maintain sign visibility to passing motorists. We suggested that the Tree Foundation work with shopping center owners to provide incentives to provide greater shade coverage particularly of sidewalks and pathways. There might be a way of providing LEED type credit for good practices. Perhaps parking space reduction might be provided with commitment to significant shade coverage.
Provisions for large canopy trees in higher density areas
We urged the Tree Foundation to consider requirements for large shade canopy trees for higher density neighborhoods through the use of such things as “Cornell Soil” that enable large canopy trees to be planted in smaller planters than normally recommended. Providing trees in these higher density areas and along alley’s will be important as we move toward higher density living.
Next steps:
We agreed to review some of the draft ordinance’s provisions and provide additional comments to Cindy. We invite our members to send their comments to Chris Holm and we will forward them with WALKSacramento staff’s comments to the Tree Foundation.
Sacramento Regional Transit is sending out layoff notices today… up to 300 expected:
http://cbs13.com/local/regional.transit.layoffs.2.1490263.html