PORT ANGELES — A plan to cut eight-20 trees at Lincoln Park and leave 10 feet of stump of each tree for an artistic community carving project appears headed for the sawdust heap.
Port of Port Angeles commissioners are forcing the Port Angeles City Council’s hand on completely removing what has multiplied to 38 city-owned Lincoln Park trees that are obstructing the port’s Fairchild International Airport’s flight path — and 36 more trees that are inching upward toward that airspace.
Council members will consider approving the tree removal Monday at a special meeting at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St., that will include a public comment session.
The regular Tuesday meeting has been canceled due to the July Fourth holiday.
Time of the essence
Saying time was of the essence, port commissioners at a special meeting Friday unanimously granted emergency tree removal contract-award powers to Executive Director Karen Goschen.
“All of us see the urgency and the necessity to respond quickly to this in order for us not to be an impediment to any type of medevac issue that could come up at night,” Commissioner Steve Burke said.
Emergency removal of the trees would allow the port to avoid bidding requirements so the Federal Aviation Administration will lift its Notice to Airmen ban on instrument-approach night landings on William R. Fairchild International Airport’s Runway 26.
The notice has the impact of prohibiting nighttime fixed-wing medevac and commercial delivery services.
It was imposed June 15 without notice due to Lincoln Park trees growing so tall they are encroaching on the flight path and compromising safe flight path approaches.
The emergency powers allow Goschen to award $300,000 in contracts without board approval for removal of 38 encroaching trees that were cited in a recent consultant’s estimate.
She also can award further contracts to take out 36 more trees when they, too, impede the flight path, for a total of 74 doomed trees.
The trees can’t be removed without city approval.
City Manager Dan McKeen said Friday he will recommend to the council that he be authorized to work with port staff to immediately remove the 38 trees and work with port staff to remove the 36 additional trees over the next six months.
The 38 trees are about twice the eight to 20 the council had agreed could be shortened — not removed — at a meeting Tuesday, believing port officials who had said a five- to six-week delay was acceptable, McKeen said.
At the Tuesday meeting, when only eight to 20 trees were at issue, Councilwoman Sissi Bruch came up with the surprise suggestion to leave 10 feet of the tree trunks for a community carving contest “to get those trees to be a piece of artwork,” as she put it.
It could have required not only city council approval but a recommendation from the city Parks, Recreation and Beautification Commission, Parks and Recreation Director Corey Delikat said at the meeting.
But port board of commissioners Chairwoman Colleen McAleer said after Friday’s meeting that she hopes removal can begin by this Friday — assuming the council goes along with the plan.
Mayor Patrick Downie said Friday that the trees should be removed.
“We apparently don’t have the luxury to wait,” Downie said.
‘We have to do this’
Bruch said Friday she agrees all 38 trees should be completely removed.
“For the sake of the community, we have to do this,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that when they are cutting down the trees that we can’t select logs to carve for the future. Those can be set aside so the carving competition can happen later.”
Goschen said in her report to port commissioners that a consultant the port hired in early June — before the notice was issued— to analyze the tree encroachment “just finished their analysis.”
Along with the 74 trees, “they also identified an additional 31 trees that are between 5 and 10 feet below the glideslope that will need to be removed within the next couple of years,” Goschen said.
The conifers grow 2 feet to 4 feet a year, she said.
The trees that would be cut are among the approximately 400 that eventually are to be removed to eliminate flight path obstructions under an avigation easement over Lincoln Park that is being negotiated by city and port officials.
Council members and port commissioners agreed at a rare joint meeting Jan. 30 to draw up the agreement by April 30 to cut down the trees, which are growing on 2.4 acres of the 147-acre park.
The tree-cutting effort has been a source of community protest by some residents who don’t want them to be cut and council members who have urged that as many as possible should be saved.
Bruch said Friday she is disappointed by the sudden rush to cut the trees.
“We don’t have much choice,” she said. “We can’t put the community in danger. It’s completely disappointing because the fact that it’s become an emergency and that we haven’t gotten our avigation easement done, that’s a real shame.
“That’s what forced this emergency. We all knew that those trees were growing.”
Interlocal pact
Goschen said in an interview that the port and city are working on a separate interlocal agreement that would allow Goschen and McKeen to decide to remove obstructive trees as they encroach on the flight path before an avigation agreement is reached to remove all the obstructive trees.
The port will compensate the city for the value of the removed trees and the avigation easement, which Goschen said she does not expect to be completed until July 2018 as part of the master-plan process.
The port’s hope is that the FAA will help pay for the easement.
“This is not as straightforward as we thought it was going to be,” Goschen said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@ peninsuladailynews.com.
