Odlin Park Tree-asco

No trees were cut down today. Depending on who you believe, either the County decided to delay the cutting of trees for a couple of days in order to understand the concerns of Lopezians or the contractor who was scheduled to cut the trees told the County that he was taking today and tomorrow off because even he has reservations about cutting the trees, especially given all the public attention.

The situation is still murky, but early this morning, we learned that "the flagging on the trees marks them for inspection and removing dead/failing limbs by the contracted forester/arborist." Right now, it looks like two trees (the large Doug Fir in the photo in the previous post) and a White Fir will be shortened to 60 feet and left as snags for "habitat." Both have rot, but of course, many old growth trees have rot and stand for hundreds of years, but now these trees are hazardous to people because of the placement of the campsite.

In place of the tree(s), we are told "As a part of this project we plan to develop interpretive displays about this forest for visitors" and "If the top of the Douglas fir is in good condition once it’s down we plan to work with a local saw miller to mill and build picnic tables and other lumber for park projects."

There was a comment left on the last blogpost that appears to be speaking with authority when it says:

Work on the group campsites at Odlin is complete. The ribbons on the trees were placed by an arborist hired to check the condition of the trees and remove dead, hanging limbs. There are no plans to cut down any of the marked trees, or any of the other trees in the area. At the arborist's recommendation, one diseased, near-dead tree will be shortened to create a habitat snag, and one Douglas Fir will be shortened below severe rot damage caused by an infestation of borers. The arborist said that the tree should then survive. He said the diseased portion of the fir is threatening to fall on its own and could strike a frequently used portion of the park.

We don't know who left the comment, but it seems to correlate broadly with information from multiple sources. Right now, that's all we know.

As longtime Trojan Heron readers understand, we've been critical of the Odlin Park redesign for months for its cost and poor stakeholder involvement. The whole thing seems surreal, especially considering Lopezians are clamoring for money for their decaying shambles of a school, while they have a "new" $1 million park that no one asked for.

We first posted about Odlin in June 2012. We posted about it again in July 2012 when we showed a clip of the Council contending with a request for a budget increase from Dona Wuthnow (bringing the total Odlin project cost to just shy of $1 million). Of the 300 or so postings on this blog, that post is our most-viewed ever, and many of our readers feel the video associated with that post exemplifies everything that was wrong with the previous Council (and maybe still wrong with local government).

Spend spend spend on questionable priorities, and laugh it off. Don't worry about the cost of new regulations, just press ahead. As we said when we first put up the post originally, it shows what a circus we have become.