San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Killing trees
dig up plans filed decades ago by past owners to claim exemptions from current rules.
For the lot in Pallatium Villas, a previous landowner had filed a plat to develop the property in 1995 — two years before the city enacted its first tree ordinance in 1997, and decades before Gutierrez purchased the stillvacant lot in 2018.
Gutierrez was required to obtain a tree permit before removing the tree, however — part of a process to confirm his vested rights. He failed to do so before cutting down the oak.
In January 2019, someone emailed city staff a photo of the towering oak stripped of its branches.
“I wish to report a builder cutting down a very large Heritage Oak,” wrote Chuck Lathum, chairman of the Pallatium Villas architectural control committee. “I am requesting information re compliance in regard to removing this tree? As you know, we have always strived to protect these trees and comply with the City Regulations in our subdivision.”
The complaint triggered an inspection of Gutierrez’s property. Loyd, the plans examiner, assessed Gutierrez a $2,000 penalty. But the state legislator chafed at the fine.
Gutierrez called Shannon to complain, emails obtained by the Express-News show. The director then emailed others in the department, instructing them to waive the legislator’s penalty.
“He stated he now understands that even with a (vested rights permit), he’ll need to get a separate tree (permit) in the future per our codes/process,” Shannon wrote in March 2019. “Please waive this $2,000 penalty on this project.”
Less than an hour later, an assistant city arborist, Jacob Sanchez, fired off an email to Shannon.
“It should be noted that this is not Roland Gutierrez’s first project in San Antonio,” Sanchez wrote. “I strongly feel this would initiate an unwelcomed precedence that we are not prepared for in regards to tree removal without permits and penalty fees being waived once they speak with you or upper management.
“Now because he asked, I have to follow up with Chuck Lathum,” Sanchez continued, “and explain why this political figure/builder is allowed to remove Heritage trees and not follow the same standards.”
In an interview, Shannon said Gutierrez’s political stature played no role in his decision.
“Again, I look at the project and the set of circumstances and the rules that are being applied or not applied,” he said.
“That’s what we look at when we look at the case-by-case, not who it is or who it’s for.”
Given Gutierrez’s vested rights, the missing tree permit was “just a piece of paper,” Shannon added.
“The tree ordinance, in his mind, didn’t apply,” he said.
“He would have been granted all the rights to chop down the tree on his lot, which he did. Again, (the penalty) didn’t make sense, and that isn’t the point of that $2,000 penalty.”
But consistent application of the tree ordinance matters, Cortez said.
“That was just a real burn on what we’re trying to do every day there,” the former plans examiner said. “When you give somebody who has the power and clout that (Gutierrez) does, these kind of privileges — it shows that they can just go around us. That’s the last thing you want to happen when you’re trying to implement something so important in our city.”
Shrinking canopy
In 2009, American Forests, a Washington-based consultant, found San Antonio had lost 3.4 percent of its tree canopy between 2001 and 2006, leaving the city with a 38 percent overall canopy.
The study warned that continued loss of tree cover would bring “ecological consequences,” including a drop in air and water quality. It recommended San Antonio increase its canopy at least to 40 percent, which meant adding more than 450,000 trees.
The analysis helped fuel a revision to the city’s tree ordinance in 2010. In addition to doubling the cost for developers to mitigate tree removal — funds the city would use to plant more trees — the new ordinance reduced the amount of trees that could be removed and mitigated without a variance from 90 to 80 percent.
Ten years later — despite the updated ordinance and 105,157 new trees planted using the city’s mitigation fund — the city’s tree canopy still is moving in the wrong direction.
Using 2017 data inside city limits and 2012 data for unincorporated land within 5 miles of the city’s boundaries, the Texas A&M Forest Service found San Antonio’s tree canopy had fallen to about 35 percent. The agency plans to release a more current analysis next month.
Reid, the former city arborist, was not surprised by the city’s shrinking tree cover.
“There’s no doubt that it’s decreased, especially with the increase in density in the inner urban areas,” she said. “Urban sprawl is probably the greatest impact. Still, we’re not doing a good job of preserving the trees in the inner city, which are environmentally the most important because of the heat island we create.”
The liberal approval of variances by staff is “one more nail in the coffin,” Reid added.
“And that’s a pretty important nail.”
‘Hardship’
Shannon said the development staff grants exceptions to the tree ordinance to expedite requests; otherwise, developers would be forced to wait for approval from a board or commission, and that’s “a lengthy process.”
“I think that’s the balance our tree code has,” he said. “It’s important to have that so we can make these decisions and keep these projects moving.”
Developers pay $350 to request a variance. The city follows a set of criteria, Shannon said, to ensure each exception is warranted.
“There has to be some sort of hardship. We have to make sure that we meet the spirit and intent of the code,” he said. “It can’t just be anything, like, ‘I don’t want to do it, it’s too expensive.’ There has to be some technical reason for it.”
In the past two years, staff approvals have ranged from allowing the removal of an ash tree on an East Side residential lot for construction of a carport to much more expansive authorizations. In many cases, examiners used the same language, citing “existing site conditions and design and layout constraints,” to justify granting an exception.
That was the reason, in January 2020, an assistant city arborist, an engineer and an assistant director at Development Services allowed the developers of a 233-unit apartment complex on the Northeast Side called Kitty Hawk Flats to remove all 745 caliper inches of trees — a reference to the diameter of a tree’s trunk — on the site.
The project manager explained the hardship in a letter to city staff: “All existing trees located on the interior of the site require removal based on their locations and relationship to the proposed type of development, as well as the substantial grading/earthwork required throughout the entirety of the site.”
The developers agreed to plant 145 trees to mitigate the loss.
And it was why the same assistant city arborist, engineer and assistant director in July 2020 signed off on another administrative exception allowing Lennar Homes to remove thousands of caliper inches of trees to develop a 68-acre subdivision known as Marbach Village on the far West Side.
The developer cut down more than 2,100 inches of significant trees — preserving just 1 percent of the protected trees — and all 377 inches of heritage trees “to develop and grade the site for residential development,” a city analysis stated.
Lennar Homes agreed to mitigate the loss by planting new trees. That never happened. An amended plan later required the developer to plant 144 trees on the property.
Only 17 trees were planted, city records show.
“The homeowners have been nonresponsive about letting the developer/homebuilder come in and plant trees on the properties since construction occurred,” a letter requesting another variance stated.
To make up for the lost trees, the developer paid the city $50,800.
‘Beauty of it is gone’
Esther Sell remembers when hundreds of acres of land across the road from her home in Helotes was densely wooded. It was only a few years ago.
“It was nice and quiet,” she said. “There was lots of wildlife — birds and deer and hogs and all kinds of critters. And it was quiet and very natural.”
Then the clear-cutting began. PulteGroup was building a subdivision of more than 1,000 residential lots on 243 acres known as Davis Ranch in San Antonio’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, which extends development controls 5 miles outside the city limits.
To clear the hills, the company obtained five exceptions to the city’s 2010 tree ordinance: two of them approved by the Planning Commission and three granted by staff.
For one 32-acre section of the development, an agent for PulteGroup cited “extremely steep existing topography” requiring the removal of “a large amount of excess material … to balance
the site.”
In March 2019, city staff approved the preservation of just 9 percent of significant trees on the site, allowing the developer to remove more than 6,600 caliper inches. To make up for the loss, the company agreed to plant four 3-inch trees on each of the site’s 156 lots.
Overall, PulteGroup paid $379,800 to the city’s tree mitigation fund, city officials said.
On a recent morning, Robert Kwiatkowski, a tree and landscape inspector for the city, tramped across the sprawling development with a tape measure in hand to verify that builders were adhering to agreements.
“This unit is supposed to have four 4-inch trees planted,” he said. “I just took a quick trip, and there’s going to be a lot of fails on this.”
Walking past new homes with up-close views of tree-studded hills, Kwiatkowski recalled a rapid transformation of the area from forest to streetscape.
“I’ve been here for two years, and this was my first big job,” he said. “We’re talking from the end of this drainage ditch, just solid cedars.”
In an expansion to the north, PulteGroup is in the early stages of developing another massive subdivision on more than 580 acres of land known as the McCrary Tract.
The vast property, bordered to the north and west by the Government Canyon State Natural Area, was densely forested before the cutting began early last year to clear land for nearly 2,000 lots. According to the city, the developer removed 80 percent of significant trees and about 76 percent of heritage trees — just enough to avoid requesting any variances.
The company likely will spend about $9 million mitigating the removal of so many trees, said Sean Miller, director of land acquisition for PulteGroup, and Chris Dice, executive vice president of Cude Engineers.
“We’ll spend several million dollars on tree mitigation to the city on that project,” Miller said.
The developer also has agreed to plant five trees on 381 of the lots, as well as 65 “streetscape” trees. In recent weeks, bulldozers were at work throughout the sprawling tract.
To Esther Sell, the trees that now are gone were priceless.
“Everything was there and then it wasn’t,” she said. “And now, just like so many areas around the developments, all you see is rooftops. You don’t see the trees. It’s going to take years for them to grow up to where we won’t be able to see rooftops.
“Just the beauty of it is gone.”
“Everything was there and then it wasn’t. And now, just like so many
areas around the developments, all you see is rooftops. You don’t see the trees. It’s going to take years for them to grow up to where we won’t be able to see rooftops. Just the beauty
of it is gone.”
Esther Sell, talking about missing trees