View KING 5 News Coverage of Save the Trees

Efforts continue to save 62 old Douglas fir and western red cedar trees at Ingraham High School in North Seattle. The trees are in a grove of about 120 trees on the west side of the high school.

The Seattle School District decided to design a new classroom addition to replace old portables on the campus without involving neighbors or others in the community. Instead Ingraham High School Principal Martin Floe selected an in house group of administrators and teachers and other school affiliated people to come up with a design. No effort was made to reach out to neighbors or the local Haller Lake Community Club to let them know the design process was going on, to ask if anyone wanted to be involved or give input from the neighborhood.

It turns out that they never priced out or looked at any other designs besides the site the architect who designed the school in 1959 suggested in 1959. Since then a large grove of 120 some trees, including 100 foot tall Douglas fir, western red cedar and madrone trees have thrived in the area and created a unique park like setting on the west side of the school.

Back on Arbor Day last month King 5 TV did a segment on the controversy. You can view it by going to KING 5 VIDEO.

Since the session aired the Seattle School District has withdrawn their original determination of non-significance and have completed a second draft of the Environmental Checklist. They will soon issue a revised draft for comment and this will represent another opportunity for neighbors and Seattle residents to question the need to cut down some 62 large Douglas fir and western red cedar trees when an alternative site exists on the North side of the school to build the new classrooms without cutting down any trees.

You can help to stop the destruction of these trees by sending an e-mail to the Seattle School Board members telling them you oppose cutting down the trees and that they should come up with an alternative design. Our tax dollars pay for the Seattle Public Schools. We have every right to demand that they spend them in an environmentally sound way and do it in a manner than protects our urban forested habitat.

In the last 30 years we have lost some 50% of our tree canopy in the city. It is absurd to keep cutting it. And the Seattle School District and Seattle School Board have a viable alternative to cutting the trees down. The Seattle School District actually shows the North site as available for possible future expansion. What a terrible lesson the Seattle School District is giving to our students.

McCain and Clinton Pandering to Voters

Give Barack Obama credit for the straight talk, not John McCain or Hillary Clinton. Obama has refused to climb aboard the crazy train of his opponents in both parties suggesting that cutting the Federal tax on gasoline this summer makes sense. It doesn't.

Gasoline usage is price sensitive. Cutting the cost for the summer by suspending the Federal tax of 18.4 cents will not lower the price because the same fixed amount will be available and oil companies will merely raise the price to take advantage of customer demand. Any decrease in prices will be very short term.

The oil companies have no qualms about raising prices. They continue to rake in record profits at the expense of American car and truck users. Republicans in Congress, and President Bush with his threatened veto power, continue to support the oil companies making record profits at the expense of the American economy and American consumers.

And the bulk of the profits raked in don't even go for producing more oil or alternative energy. For example, as Yahoo.news reports:

"Exxon posted record earnings of $40.6 billion in 2007, with revenue higher than the gross domestic profit of Turkey, the world's 17th-largest economy....
The company has been criticized by some analysts and investors for laying back on capital spending while going full bore on share buybacks.
Exxon spent $31.8 billion to buy back shares in 2007 while shelling out $20.9 billion for capital expenditures."

Exxon Mobil reported today that they raked in another $10.89 billion in first quarter profits this year.

So American consumers are shelling out their cash so that companies like Exxon can but back their stock. It's absurd. At least Hillary Clinton proposes that the oil companies be hit with an excess profits tax to pay for her proposed summer tax cut. John McCain does not even support that and says he would cut elsewhere.

Democrats tried to pass legislation to end special subsidies to oil companies but Republicans held fast and stopped legislation passing. Democrats wanted the subsidies to go for funding alternative energy programs like wind and solar, which would help to reduce global warming impacts from carbon fuels. Instead we are left with no approval of existing incentives for solar and wind energy which expire at the end of this year.

And where was John McCain when votes were taking place to pass an energy policy to reduce dependence on carbon fuels and reduce global warming. AWOL - see excellent article by Grist on McCain's missed votes in Congress, rightly pointing out McCain's professed concern about climate change action is more hot air than anything else.

see also
Dumb as we Wanna Be - New York Times
The Gas-Guzzler Gambit - New York Times editorial
Summer Fuel-ishness - Seattle Times editorial
Clinton Gas Tax Proposal Criticized - Washington Post

Seattle School Board Wins Grinch Award

"Hate those trees, sure do," said the Grinch. Reverting back to his old form and stance, the Grinch announced yesterday that he is expanding his franchise of celebrations that we can do away with. Earth Day is one of those.

And in the spirit of those who agree with him, the Grinch awarded an honorary franchise membership to Seattle Public Schools for their dogged efforts to clearcut trees from their school campuses.

Trees are a bad influence on kids said the Grinch. Especially large old trees noted the Grinch. So the Seattle Public School's efforts to remove 62 large old evergreen trees from the west side of the Ingraham High School campus in North Seattle got the Grinch's attention.

Brilliant strategy said the Grinch. Seek public money to replace grimy moldy old portables and promise new classrooms to renovate and upgrade the campus. The public supports that. But don't tell the public paying the bill that the plan is to build the new classrooms smack in the middle of one of the few large groves of old Douglas fir, Western Red Cedar and madrone trees left in Seattle. Some of these trees are now 50 years old and over 100 feet tall.

The Grinch praised Seattle Public Schools for excluding members of the public from participating in the design process. "Neighbors and other members of the public only ask embarassing questions and waste your time," said the Grinch.

Part of the strategy to decrease student support for Earth Day celebrations the Grinch noted was the consideration by Seattle Public Schools to also cut down another grove of trees on the east side of the campus by the Helene Madison Pool. In the tree report filed with the City of Seattle dated Oct 22, 2007, the Master Plan circled this grove of trees and wrote in large letters "POTENTIAL EAST PARKING EXPANSION" - 50 spaces.

"Brilliant!" said the Grinch. "The more we work to encourage students to drive to school by creating more parking spaces, the less environmental habitat there is for them to spend time in marveling and celebrating their natural environment."

The Grinch said that while the Seattle School District dropped the proposal in their current plan, they'll always be more chances to cut down the trees in the future. "And for now you can tell the public that you're not going to cut down these trees and look like environmental heroes while you move forward to decimate the grove on the west side," he gloated.

The Grinch noted that the trees in the east grove remain a real threat because teachers at Ingraham High School have actually used this area for environmental learning. "Preserving trees and native natural areas are a continuing threat to our efforts to do away with celebrating Earth Day," said the Grinch.

The Grinch praised the inaction of the Seattle School Board in responding to strong public concern about cutting down the trees. Obviously their continuing to move forward with building the addition as planned is encouraging noted the Grinch. To seriously listen to the taxpayers paying for the school renovation would be a mistake he said. Just stop up your ears he suggested, urging them not to give in to public demands to come up with an alternative design that would save the trees on the west side of the school.

The Grinch urged the Seattle School Board to remove their e-mail contact information from their website at www.seattleschools.org/area/board. "If members of the public get hold of this information, who knows how many might try to contact you, urging you to come up with a new design for the classroom addition that doesn't require cutting down the 62 large Douglas fir and western Red Cedar trees on the west side of the campus."

"And for God's sake don't tell them about the open grassy lawn on the north side of the school where you could build the new classrooms and not have to cut down any large trees." yelled the Grinch.

The Grinch was last seen dancing a jig and then running away, yelling at the top of his voice, "Cut down those trees now!" Again and again.

Neighbors Urge Seattle School Board to Redesign Ingraham H.S. Project

To: Seattle School Board
Public testimony by Steve Zemke

of Save the Trees!
Re: Ingraham High School Renovation
April 9, 2008

We am here tonight to urge the Seattle School Board to step back from its in house proposal to add new classrooms onto the west side of Ingraham High School that requires the destruction of 66 large Douglas Fir and western Red Cedar trees. The process has proceeded to the design stage and you are considering design modifications tonight to a building addition that did not undergo any public hearings or community input.

We think it is a flawed process that is in fact offending the neighborhood and the taxpayers in the city that voted to provide the $20 million dollars to add new classrooms to replace the portables. If the public had been told upfront before they voted on the bond issue what you intended to do, we don’t believe you ever would have gotten the bonds approved.

And now citizens of Seattle and taxpayers who voted to pay for the new classrooms are outraged. They are incredulous. They are in disbelief. You have lost credibility in the eyes of the public. They can’t believe you are proposing to cut down 100 foot tall trees that are 40 to 50 years old when alternative sites exist to build the new classrooms. In particular there is a large open area on the north side of the school where an addition can be built with a courtyard and probably more lighting available to the classrooms than the proposed addition.

Cutting down 2/3 of the grove of trees goes against what Mayor Nickels is asking the city to do – preserve existing trees and add significantly more new trees to re-green the city. It goes against what the State Legislature just passed in the urban forestry bill which called for preserving existing trees and planting more trees.

While no budget figures have been made available to the public and we’ve asked for the budget and for copies of alternatives that were looked at and their costs and have not gotten them, the school district has quoted to the media a figure of $1 million dollars more to move the building to the north side. For 66 trees that means you have assigned them a value of $15,000 per tree.

Meanwhile the City of Seattle is paying $9 million for 3 ½ acres to buy the North park and ride lot at Northgate and make it a park. They paid $3 million to buy a 39,000 sq foot lot in Ballard for a Park. Have you ever thought of selling the trees to the City of Seattle? They seem to be willing to pay a lot for asphalt parking lots for parks and here you have a mature forested area you’re gung ho to cut down.

Tonight we're delivering to you signed petitions collected by Ingraham High School neighbors who got other neighbors to sign asking that you develop an alternative design for Ingraham High School that does not require the cutting down of any large old trees in the grove on the west side of the school.

More than 650 citizens and Seattle neighbors signed the petition urging you to save the trees at Ingraham. Signers of the petition include King County Executive Ron Sims; State Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen; and State Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Kenney.

Other signers include Estella Leopold, Professor Emeritus in Botany at the University of Washington, Joan Thomas, a former President of the Washington Environmental Council, and Marilyn Knight, a former President of the League of Women Voters of Washington. Also signing were 4 Democratic candidates for the State Legislature – Gerald Pollet and Scott White in the 46th LD, John Burbank in the 36th LD and Tina Orwall in the 33rd LD.

We urge that you set an example for the students the public has entrusted to your care for their education by stepping back and showing wise environmental stewardship. Protect the tress at Ingraham High School and don’t cut them down.

Work with the neighborhood and Seattle taxpayers and Mayor Nickels and the Seattle City Council and the state legislature. Pick another site and design a building we can be proud of and that educates all of us in the possibility of living in harmony with our natural environment without destroying it.

Living in harmony with our environment is a priceless lesson. You can set no better example for students than to show we can do better than those in the past have and that we can live in a sustainable healthy urban environment without cutting down our green heritage.

Steve Zemke for
Save the Trees!
2131 N 132nd St
Seattle, WA 98133

King Co. Exec Ron Sims, Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen Sign Petition to Save the Trees!

Efforts to save 62 old Douglas fir and Western Red Cedar trees from being cut down at Ingraham High School are gaining momentum. Neighbors have collected over 650 signatures on a petition urging “Ingraham High School, the Seattle School District, the Seattle School Board and the School Design Team to develop an alternative design for Ingraham High School that protects the 62 large Douglas Fir and Western Cedar trees, currently being proposed to be cut down on the west side of the high school”.

Signers of the petition include King County Executive Ron Sims; State Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen; and State Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Kenney.

Other signers include Estella Leopold, Professor Emeritus in Botany at the University of Washington, Joan Thomas, a former President of the Washington Environmental Council, and Marilyn Knight, a former President of the League of Women Voters of Washington.

Also signing were 4 Democratic candidates for the State Legislature – Gerald Pollet and Scott White in the 46th LD, John Burbank in the 36th LD and Tina Orwall in the 33rd LD.

Senator Ed Murray was the prime sponsor in the Senate of the urban forestry bill for Green Cities E2SHB 2844, passed by the state legislature earlier this year that called on cities and counties to inventory existing trees and develop plans to conserve and retain existing trees.

Last week both the Community Council Federation of Seattle and the Haller Lake Community Club voted their support of the petition drive urging the school district to not cut down the trees but look at an alternative site.

The plans by the Seattle School District to cut down what has at latest count increased to 66 Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees, flies smack in the face of the efforts of the Washington State Legislature, as well as a recent order by Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, to preserve existing trees in urban areas and overall increase the number of trees in the city.

The grove of trees at Ingraham is a poster child of efforts to save trees in Seattle and the state. If we can’t stop the destruction of over 2/3 of the trees in the grove at Ingraham, then no tree in Seattle is safe.

Neighbors support the effort to renovate Ingraham High School and build new classrooms to replace the old portables being taken down but note that other locations exist on the campus where the classrooms could be built without cutting down any large or old trees. In particular there is a large grassy open space on the north side of the school that could easily accommodate the classrooms.

Copies of the petitions containing over 650 signatures were delivered to the Seattle School Board at their Board meeting on Wednesday, April 9, 2008.


Earlier in the day King TV did an evening news segment on the Save the Trees campaign.

Gregoire Signs Toxic Toys Legislation

Washington State now has the toughest toxic toy legislation in the country. See Seattle Times: Gregoire signs "toxic toys" bill, making Washington state's standards strictest in the nation.

Washington State takes a leadership role once again. Think Dino Rossi would have signed it?

Governor Gregoire made the right decision in the public interest.

If Obama or Clinton Said That, They'd be Toast

John McCain continues to get the soft touch by the media. As Frank Rich points out his Sunday New York Times piece entitled "The Republican Resurrection"

... As if to emulate Dick Cheney, who arrived in Baghdad a day behind him, he (McCain) embraced the vice president’s habit of manufacturing false links in the war on terror: Mr. McCain told reporters that Iran is training Al Qaeda operatives and sending them into Iraq.
His Sancho Panza, Joe Lieberman, whispered in his ear that a correction was in order. But this wasn’t a one-time slip, like Gerald Ford’s debate gaffe about Poland in 1976. Mr. McCain has said this repeatedly. Troubling as it is that he conflates Shiite Iran with Sunni terrorists, it’s even more bizarre that he doesn’t acknowledge the identity of Iran’s actual ally in Iraq — the American-sponsored Shiite government led by Nuri al-Maliki. Only two weeks before the Iraqi prime minister welcomed Mr. McCain to Baghdad, he played host to a bubbly state visit by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Whatever Mrs. Clinton’s or Mr. Obama’s inconsistencies about how to wind down the war, they are both models of coherence next to Mr. McCain. He keeps saying the surge is a “success,” but he can’t explain why that success keeps us trapped in Iraq indefinitely. He never says precisely what constitutes that “victory” he keeps seeing around the corner. His repeated declaration that he will only bring home the troops “with honor” is a Vietnam acid flashback recycled as a non sequitur. Our troops have already piled up more than enough honor in their five years of service under horrific circumstances. Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda proliferates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a survey by Foreign Policy magazine of 3,400 active and retired American officers finds that 88 percent believe that the Iraq war has “stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin.”

So what's the deal with the rest of the media? Not much was said critically of McCain. McCain doesn't deserve special treatment - either he knows what he's talking about or he doesn't. And it appears he doesn't. McCain is a recipe for diasaster. We can't afford a Bush clone in the White House after 8 years of Bush/Cheney.

Seattle School District Says Cutting Down 62 Evergreen Trees in City is Not Significant

The Seattle School District is proposing cutting down 62 large Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees on the west side of the Ingraham High School Campus in North Seattle. In addition they are proposing adding some 113 new parking spaces to the residential neighborhood, including on street parking.

This action is part of the proposed renovation of Ingraham High School that includes demolishing seven portables and one modular building of 7800 square feet and constructing a 2 story building addition of 14,500 square feet of classrooms on the west side of the existing high school.

Anyone else would likely characterize the cutting down of such a large number of old trees and increasing parking spaces in a residential neighborhood as having a significant environmental impact. Yet the Seattle School District has published a Notice of Determination of Non-Significance in the March edition of the Journal saying that "the proposal does not create any probable significant environmental impacts."

The responsible school official listed for this determination is Ronald J English. English was recently the center of another questionable environmental skirmish in the same Haller Lake residential neighborhood when he was involved with the proposed sale of a Seattle School District building - the former Nellie Goodhue School - located at Meridian Ave N and Roosevelt Way N. The school district initial determination would have opened the residential neighborhood to an onslaught of trucks because of a "determination" that it was zoned for a warehouse. The Haller Lake Community Club sued and the property has now been sold to be converted into 26 single family homes.

A look at the Environmental Checklist prepared by the the URS Corporation of Seattle that the Seattle School District based its decision on, reveals a number of problems that were not adequately addressed. The Environmental Checklist, for example, does not consider any alternative places on campus to construct the new classrooms or look at any other alternative building designs in their evaluation.

The checklist provides no value to the loss of open space or tree canopy as compared to other alternatives. It assigns no value to the loss old growth trees which it minimally characterizes as Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar. It does not give the age of the trees or the height or the canopy coverage but only says they are 12 to 24 inches in diameter. In reality many of the trees appear to be large mature trees matching the tallest evergreen trees in the neighborhood. I estimate them as 100 feet or more in height.

A person with the design team characterized them in a conversation as mature trees at the end of their life yet they are the same size as other trees in the neighborhood. Douglas fir trees can grow to 48 inches in diameter and cedar even larger. The "ready to die" image is how the logging industries characterizes trees to justify cutting them - is this the school district's philosophy also?

In addition, the proposal does not take into account Mayor Nickels goal for regreening the city over the next three decades -- the planting of 649,000 trees, plus keeping the tree cover we have." as written about in the Seattle PI. The article notes that:

Since the early 1970s, Seattle has lost more than half of its tree canopy as more businesses and people have moved into the city and smaller homes have given way to apartments and megahouses. Invasive ivy and blackberry bushes have smothered and killed native trees.
Nickels is looking to reverse that trend, to keep Seattle from becoming "the city formerly known as emerald." ...

Trees increasingly are being viewed as an asset to urban spaces. They clean pollution from the air and turn a key global warming gas into oxygen. They catch rainfall and slow the flow of contaminated stormwater from roadways into salmon streams....

"The city is increasingly realizing the urban forest is really part of the infrastructure of the city," Nicholas said. "It isn't just about looking pretty."
The mayor's goal is to expand the tree canopy from the current 18 percent to 30 percent over the next 30 years. Canopy is a measure of the land covered in trees, not a count of individual trees.

The current Environmental Checklist does not consider any measure of canopy replacement or any measure of global warming impact equivalency. It does propose adding new trees but most of these appear to be deciduous "street trees" maybe 15 to 20 feet tall at most.

The checklist makes no mention of Mayor Greg Nickels Executive order of Sept 6, 2005 that directs "all City departments to replace every tree that is removed from City-owned land in Seattle with two new trees." One would think that Seattle Public Schools would support this policy also for the school district.

An additional major problem with the Environment Checklist is that it relies on a parking and traffic analysis prepared for URS by Mirai Transportation and Engineering of Kirkland that makes a number of questionable assumptions.

Ingraham High School currently has some 117 parking spaces on campus and has a 50 year agreement with the Seattle Parks Department to use a lot directly east of the school and north of the Helene Madison pool on a shared basis. The school estimates that it uses some 82 of the 165 spaces available in the shared Parks Dept lot.

The Mirai study then makes an assumption that is not borne out by the existing situation. They state that the 50 year "agreement is not assumed to continue and the parking analysis assumes loss of this lot for both daily and special event use. " Yet both a call to the Parks Department and a discussion with Martin Floe, Ingraham's Principal, and also the Project manager for URS, provided no problem with the current use of the Park's Department parking lot or indicated any reason to expect it to end. No other use is planned for the existing parking lot.

But the assumption that it is not available in determining parking needs for Ingraham results in a big impact on the neighborhood, adding some 113 new parking spaces and encouraging more traffic and parking. The only justification seemed to be that the School District somehow couldn't trust the Parks Department or the City to continue the agreement in the future, even though the Athletic Fields at Ingraham are shared with the city and they don't have any problems with that.

Currently peak parking for 1200 students, faculty and staff is 185 cars. At some point the school might add 200 more students but this is not even certain. But the Mirai Parking study suggests that 200 additional students will require some 45 more parking spaces. Seattle is an urban area, yet to calculate the additional cars, Mirai uses something called "the peak trip generation for suburban high schools in the Institute for Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual.

This is almost double the current rate for students at the school. The difference represents some 22 parking spaces. How can you justify using a calculation for suburban schools for an urban school?

The deadline for responding to the Notice of Determination of Non-Significance is 4 PM on March 19, 2008. The DNS and Checklist can be viewed at the School District's website www.seattleschools.org/area/facilities/SchoolProjects/IngrahamLink.xml

Urge that they do a more thorough environmental analysis of their project that assesses the real costs of building in an urban forested area and looks at alternatives to cutting down old growth trees and that also evaluates alternatives and mitigation measures to reduce demand for parking in general at the school rather than adding new parking spaces.

Send comments to:
Ronald J English, Environmental Officer
Seattle School District No 1
PO Box 34165, MS32-151
Seattle, WA 98124
phone: 206-252-0110
fax: 206-252-0110

Seattle Public Schools is also holding a public community meeting on Tuesday March 18, 2008 from 7 PM to 9 PM in the Ingraham School Library to give a presentation of the design team for the renovation.