Inside a Sacramento resident’s fight to save a giant tree the city plans to cut down

Susan Christian lives in the historic Boulevard Park section of midtown. She loves trees, especially the over 100-year-old American elm that towers 70 feet with its broad canopy, defining and sheltering her house on 22nd Street.

But in August the city slapped a notice on the giant elm she adores. The city deemed the tree a safety hazard. It had to come down.

Christian, a civil rights attorney, happened to be reading a novel by Elif Shafak, “The Island of Missing Trees,” at the time. Its message resonated.

“I love the author’s view of trees as being sentient,” Christian said. “It’s exactly how I’ve always felt about them, and why I’m so sad about my dear elm. I’m not really an eccentric person, but I recognize and value life in every living thing, person, creature.”

So Christian stepped into action.

She not only appealed the decision of the city’s division of urban forestry, but hired her own expert: Gordon Mann, an arborist with 43 years of experience including as the city arborist for Redwood City.

Mann knows Sacramento trees well, having once served as the urban forest services director for the Sacramento Tree Foundation.

In his report on the American elm, Mann wrote, “the city has invested a lot in this tree over time, with sidewalk repair, pruning, and response to branch failures. The reduction pruning of this tree would cost the city less, avoid the removal of the large diameter trunk, and retain the tree shade for the property.”

Mann recommended in his assessment a fairly radical approach to save the tree: reducing the top from approximately 70 feet to 40-45 feet.

“This would result in shortening all the leveraged branches and retaining a smaller height and lesser spread elm tree at this location,” he surmised. “This reduced-size tree will still provide the desired afternoon shade for the property owner.”

Kevin Hocker respectfully disagrees. And he loves trees, too. So much that he has made it his life’s work.

Hocker is the city of Sacramento’s urban forester, a job that entails overseeing the staggering roughly 100,000 city-owned trees — in medians, near sidewalks, and in parks.

Sitting at an outside table at a local coffee shop on a bright, clear fall day, Hocker noted that the nearby shade from a sprawling tree with a giant trunk was from a walnut tree. “They do get very big and very old.”

Hocker stressed that most of the work the six arborists he oversees involves saving trees, increasingly under threat from big storms, extreme heat, and drought associated with climate change.

“In many other cities, a sidewalk is a sidewalk. If it’s damaged, it gets repaired back to its original condition. If that involves cutting the roots of the tree or damaging the tree or removing the tree, so be it,” Hocker said. “Sacramento uses a variety of techniques; shaping the roots, cutting roots selectively, and also using experimental materials such as plastic sidewalks, rubber sidewalks, metal sidewalks.”

He respects Christian’s right to appeal, and perhaps even more importantly her passion for trees.

Hocker says when a notice of removal is placed on a tree and a homeowner or resident appeals his decision that it’s time for an aging or diseased tree to be cut down, he offers to meet the person who has filed an appeal protesting his wisdom. Hocker said the appeals process helps some people through the grieving process of losing beloved trees, which many feel are like members of their family.

“And sometimes that grieving process involves anger,” Hocker said. “Sometimes that grieving process involves denial.”

Still, Hocker has a job to do and a decision to make — one he rarely rescinds.

In the seven years he has been adjudicating these decisions, Hocker told The Bee he has only reversed himself three times (he estimates he has handled about 70 such disputes). Two of the reversals he acknowledges were for sentimental reasons, including a reprieve for a 97-year-old man who had just lost his wife and was bereft at the idea of seeing her favorite tree axed.

“I agreed to let the tree stay a little longer,” Hocker said, “so that he could see the tree for the rest of his life.”

Hocker in an email to Christian said he had no choice but to order the trees removal.

“I really do appreciate everything you have done to explore ways to preserve this tree,” he wrote. “Gordon’s made solid suggestions. We considered the same options ourselves and if we thought they would work we would be doing it ourselves.”

Hocker noted that the elm had lost large limbs in the past, and in a letter accompanying his decision said, “In this particular case we have a tree that has severe defects that are capable of causing injury or death to a person if they should happen to be under the tree at the same time as a limb fails.

“After reviewing all the records, seeing the tree for myself, and hearing all objections to the removal of this tree, it is my final decision to remove this tree and replace it with a new 15-gallon size tree in the same place.”

Nevertheless, Christian hasn’t given up hope. She is now asking the city council to intervene or just hoping that Hocker changes his mind. She is picking up some supporters.

“I’m very concerned about this decision,” Kate Riley, a longtime activist with the advocacy organization Sacramento Trees, said. “Because of climate change, every large tree in Sacramento is at risk. The bottom line is we need to work to preserve our huge canopy trees.

We are seeing a crisis in what is called “charismatic mega flora” worldwide. Large trees, like the one in question on 22nd Street, is an important example of Sacramento mega flora. These trees are crucial for us to survive a hotter planet.”

Riley expressed frustration that her organization has been providing input into an updated Sacramento Urban Forest Management Plan (the city’s current plan is from 1994), since 2017.

“It was supposed to be completed by 2019,” Riley said.

One of the changes that Sacramento Trees has advocated for, most recently in an August letter to the city, is the establishment of a tree committee “with members drawn from the arborist, neighborhood, and advocate community, to advise the Council on tree canopy issues.”

Riley said she found it problematic that Hocker was ruling on appeals of his own decisions.

“It’s like he is the DA, and the judge.” She said that appeals, like Christian’s, could be handled by a tree committee made up of diverse experts.

Long-term, Riley said, “establishing structures like the tree committee are important. In the short term, it seems to me this tree could still be saved, if the council asked the arborist to take another look.”

The current city code gives Hocker the last word when it comes to ruling on appeals. Christian says that she hopes that the city council could step in and at least request that Hocker give the tree a temporary reprieve so that Mann’s proposed solution could be tried and evaluated.

For the moment, the tree is slated for removal at any time.