Monterey board upholds denial of oak-removal permit at 675 Van Buren

The Monterey Appeals Hearing Board on April 28 upheld the forestry division’s denial of a permit to remove a coast live oak at 675 Van Buren Street, voting 3-0 to adopt the city’s resolution.

Camille Calendra, the appellant, argued the proposed new construction would fall within the tree’s drip line and critical root zone and said she obtained an arborist evaluation from Frank Ono that concluded the foundation work would encroach on critical roots and “negatively affect its long term stability and health.” Calendra asked the board to approve removal to avoid foreseeable decline.

City forestry staff and staff presenters recommended denial. Mike, the forestry presenter, described the subject oak as “really healthy in my professional opinion” and said the tree’s canopy showed vigorous growth with no obvious defects. He reviewed Monterey City Code Chapter 37 — the city’s tree-preservation standards — and recommended retaining the mature coast live oak to preserve canopy and community value.

Board members pressed both sides on technical points: diagrams and testimony reported the trunk or crown proximity in different ways (appellants referenced a crown-to-foundation distance of about 2 feet 6 inches; other materials and presenters described trunk distance estimates of roughly 6 feet). The appellant and an arborist cited a ‘‘100 inches’’ critical-root-zone guideline (noted in the record as a rule-of-thumb equal to about five times trunk diameter), and staff explained that excavation and foundation overcut could impinge on that zone. Forestry staff said excavation would reveal actual root sizes and that standard tree-protection measures or targeted pruning could mitigate construction impacts in some cases.

City staff also told the board the planning commission had reviewed the project plans and determined the proposed development would not detrimentally impact the tree; staff said the property is not in a very-high fire-severity zone and that pending state defensible-space rules would not apply to this parcel.

After deliberation, the board adopted the city’s recommendation to deny the removal permit. The motion to adopt the written resolution carried on a 3-0 roll call vote. The board did not require replanting as part of that decision; it instead left the forestry denial in place.

The action leaves the forester’s denial intact; any future change would require a new permit application or altered development plans that demonstrably avoid the tree’s critical root zone, or additional findings that support removal.