Palm Springs city staff apologizes for cutting down trees

Palm Springs city staff issued an apology after “an error in communication” resulted in crews chopping down palm trees today along the site of the Indian Canyon Conversion Project.

Marcus Fuller, assistant city manager & city engineer for Palm Springs, said the Indian Two-way Conversion Project required the removal of two median islands within Indian Canyon Drive. One at Alejo Road, which was constructed in 2003, and another at Camino Parocela, which had a specimen palm tree from 1960. Fuller wrote that the removal of these islands was necessary in order to make way for two-way traffic.

“Regretfully the engineer that prepared the drawings for the Indian 2 Way Conversion Project did not consider identifying relocation and transplant of the existing palm trees,” Fuller wrote.

The approved plans called for the removal of all conflicting items. The city did not discover this until prior to construction. The city engineer wanted to transplant the trees and asked staff to find out how much it would cost to accomplish this work.

According to Fuller, the contractor told staff it would cost approximately $30,000 to relocate the palm trees at Alejo Road and an additional $30,000 to relocate the older tree at Camino Parocela.

Fuller said that city staff compared how much it would cost to install a similar tree from a nursery, and after contractors could not guarantee that the trees would survive the shock of transplantation, decided not to approve the contractor’s proposal.

“This decision was made by lower-level staff and was not brought to the attention of either the City Engineer or City Manager until the trees had already been removed,” Fuller wrote.

“This demolition project should not have moved forward without adequate planning for the transplanting of these trees. An error in communication resulted in the unfortunate loss of these palm trees,” reads a statement issued on the city’s Facebook page.

As a result of this mistake, the city has implemented a new policy that will ensure any palm tree affected by a city project is called for relocation as part of the plans for construction.

“No palm tree will be removed and destroyed moving forward as part of a city project, unless the particular tree has been evaluated by an arborist who has determined the health of the tree does not warrant relocation,” Fuller wrote.

Statement by Palm Springs City Government:

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