Wildfire prevention lawsuit settled
Mill Valley has reached a tentative agreement to settle a lawsuit brought by residents over the city's controversial vegetation management ordinance.
The ordinance, approved in 2019, bans certain plants such as acacia, bamboo, cypress and juniper in fire-prone areas of the city that fire officials categorize as highly flammable. It also asks property owners to remove overgrown vegetation within 10 feet of property lines and 30 feet of
structures and cut back tree branches that are within 10 feet of wooden decks, roofs, stovepipes and chimneys.
As part of the agreement, the city will pay Mill Valley Residents for the Protection of Wildlife, the group that filed the lawsuit in October 2019, $200,000 for attorney fees and designate $10,000 toward grants to residents to help perform vegetation management around their homes.
“We have heard loud and clear from the community that wildfire resilience remains a high priority,” said Mayor Sashi McEntee.
“Although $200,000 of our budget will now be diverted from fire prevention to cover this lawsuit, we remain committed to preventing loss of life and property from wildfire.”
City Manager Alan Piombo said the city has found middle ground with the residents who filed the suit.
“We feel that this is an acceptable compromise to end a case that has kept its vegetation management ordinance in limbo for the past 16 months,” Piombo said.
City officials also agreed to hold a public hearing to consider certain amendments to the ordinance. City attorney Inder Khalsa said a hearing is tentatively scheduled for April 19.
The amendments set for City Council review include adding language preserving historic or ornamental planting, providing the fire chief with authority to apply discretionary exemptions to species of plants named on the removal list, allowing
the property owner to request a species survey before vegetation removal, and requiring the property owner and city to agree on which hearing officer will be appointed to the case, Khalsa said.
She said the city is not obligated to approve the amendments, but staff recommends approving the changes as they are part of a compromise.
“The biggest change is the exception for the historic and ornamental planting,” Khalsa said. “But again, we felt that it still affords the chief discretion to decide whether any specific planting is going to be a hazard to adjacent
structures.”
The amendments were added at the request of residents who said the ordinance threatened wildlife, the city’s character and homeowners’ gardens, said John Overton, who filed the suit.
Overton said the plaintiffs are pleased with the settlement. He said it “stops the city’s ill-conceived plan to require widespread removal of vegetation and critical habitat from thousands of acres of land in Mill Valley.”
“It called for the indiscriminate removal and extirpation of numerous species, many of them California natives,” he said. “The
compromise allows homeowners to retain wellmaintained vegetation while preserving the city’s ability to abate hazardous conditions.”
The notion that largescale vegetation removal is the only way to prevent a disaster remains a sticking point between the city and the group, he said.
“Our fire department is now ably led and staffed, and most of all wellequipped, unlike the volunteers who nearly 100 years ago fought the 1929 fire,” he said, referring to the historic Mount Tamalpais blaze that burned some 2,500 acres and more than 100 homes.