Woodside: Protect trees or ease building rules? Woodside: Protect trees or ease building rules? (December 07, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

In October, the Woodside Town Council made the simplification of the town's building-approval process the No. 1 priority. Hoping to mollify disgruntled residents and building professionals, Town Manager Susan George vowed to come up with recommendations for clarifying and speeding up the process of getting building plans approved, starting early in the new year.

Before that happens though, Woodside officials will likely find themselves grappling with a proposal to impose regulations that will make it harder to cut down large trees -- something that could add to the bureaucracy and delays facing residents with building plans. The Planning Commission is set to review a tree-preservation ordinance in January, according to Planning Director Hope Sullivan.

Mayor Paul Goeld said the scope of the tree removal at Tom and Stacy Siebel's Portola Road property -- where 99 eucalyptus trees were cut down this summer -- and the resulting outcry from Woodsiders has put the council in a difficult position.

He said he sees residents come to council meetings and complain about the town's overly strict building regulations, and a few minutes later stand up and complain that the town is too lax because it allowed so many trees to be chopped down.

Mr. Goeld said the Siebels' aggressive tree cutting, part of a complex site development plan, is an "outlier" -- a statistical term that describes an abnormally extreme number that skews results. Making it more costly and difficult to remove trees won't bring the eucalyptus back, but it will make life harder for average homeowners trying to cut down one or two trees.

"That's going to create a burden for the entire town," Mr. Goeld said.

Personally, he said he thinks the town will benefit from the native trees, such as redwoods and oaks, that the Siebels are planting as replacements.

He'd said he'd rather see the council make the building process simpler for residents, rather than more burdensome.

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