Treesavers to File Appeal in Ficus Tree Case/title>  <META content="Santa Monica Local News and information, housing, council meetings, police, schools, rent control, business, hotels, living wage, The Lookout, santa monica news, daily online news, surfsantamonica.com, california, los angeles, beaches, housing, politics, sports, real estate, westcoast, Santa Monica pier, Pacific Ocean, tourist, promenade, Westside, entertainment, community, parks, apartments, promenade, sound studios, rent control, entertainment, shopping, surf, surfsantamonica.com, santa monica surf, movie industry, film, sound, games, bollyball, rollerblading, santa monica mountains, westwood, brentwood," name=KEYWORDS> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR> </HEAD> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#333366" alink="#000000"> <table width="801" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> 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valign="top"> <h1 align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Treesavers Files Appeal in Ficus Tree Case </font></h1></td> </tr> </table>  <p>By Jorge Casuso</p> <p><em>March 6</em> -- Treesavers asked a California Appeals Court on Thursday to halt the removal of 54 ficus trees in Downtown Santa Monica until it can take up a court decision last week to deny the group a preliminary injunction.</p> <p>If the court grants an emergency stay, which is highly unusual, Treesavers will ask the court to rule on whether the group filed its case within 180 days of the City Council’s decision to exempt the ficus trees along 2nd and 4th streets from environmental review, said Tom Nitti, Treesavers’ attorney.</p> <p>The grassroots group, which has held rallies and hunger strikes, argued that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has a special category that explicitly states that trees should not be exempted from the environmental process. </p> <p>“What the staff report says, CEQA doesn’t say at all,” Nitti said. “City staff misinformed the City Council and the public.”</p> <p>The City, Nitti argues, should not have defined the trees as small government facilities similar to a parking lot booth or curb cut, which can be exempted from CEQA review. In fact, CEQA has a special category that explicitly states that trees should not be exempted from the environmental process, he said.</p> <p>But Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones ruled last Thursday that the arguments were moot because Treesavers did not file its case within 180 days of the October 2005 City Council ruling to exempt trees from environmental review.</p> <p>Nitti contends that the City did not post its determination with the County after the council ruling and that the 180-day statute of limitations began when the council voted last August on the contract for the $8.2 million streetscape project, which includes removing the trees.</p> <p>“The City has to file with the County their reasoning for making the trees exempt,” Nitti said. “The City admits it did not post the determination.</p> <p>“When they don’t post it, the statute of limitations doesn’t start until final approval of the project,” he said. </p> <p>Assistant City Attorney Joe Lawrence said the City can choose whether to file the council’s determination with the County. The fact it did not, he said, gave Treesavers more time to file its case.</p> <p>“ If you file it (with the County) anybody who wants to file a lawsuit has 30 days,” Lawrence said. “If the City does not file, they have six months, so they are better off.</p> <p>“The filing doesn’t give them an advantage,” he said. “It’s actually a legal thing that helps governments.”</p> <p>Lawrence said he is not aware of any protocol the City follows in deciding whether to file a CEQA determination.</p> <p>“I don’t know if there is a rule we follow,” he said.</p> <p>Nitti charges that the City purposely failed to file so the public would not be alerted. But Lawrence disagrees, saying the public was well aware of the decision.</p> <p>Lawrence notes that Jerry Rubin, the leader of Treesavers, was at the October 2005 council meeting when the initial decision was made to exempt the trees from CEQA.</p> <p>Judge Jones, he added, “said Jerry Rubin was the poster child of how much the public knows. To suggest that Rubin, or any other member of the public, didn’t know has it completely upside down.”</p> <p>Nitti, who has compiled more than 8,000 pages of documents fighting the City, including 500 pages of briefs and exhibits, notes that being granted an appeals hearing is a long shot.</p> <p>“About 98 out of 100 stays are not granted,” he said. “I expect we’ll have a decision from them in a couple of days.” </p>  <p></p></td> </tr> </table> </td> <td width="200" valign="top"> <center> </center>  <table width="73" height="95" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="73" valign="top"><div align="left"><a href="http://www.readersjewelers.com/"><img src="/ssm_site/commerce/ReadersFineJewelers/ReadersFineJewery2.jpg" alt="Readers Fine Jewelers Advertisement" width="159" height="135" border="1"></a></div></td> </tr> </table>  <p align="left"> </p>  <table width="239" height="100" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="239" height="100" align="left" valign="top"> <h3 align="left"><font color="#666666" face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><em>“City staff misinformed the City Council and the public.” Tom Nitti</em></font></h3></td> </tr> </table>  <p align="left"> </p>  <table width="250" height="123" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="228" height="123" align="left" valign="top"> <h3 align="left"><font color="#666666" face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><em>"To suggest that (Jerry) Rubin, or any other member of the public, didn’t know has it completely upside down.” Joe Lawrence</em></font></h3></td> </tr> </table>  </div> <p align="left"> </p>  <table width="250" height="123" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="228" height="123" align="left" valign="top"> <h3 align="left"><font color="#666666" face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><em>“About 98 out of 100 stays are not granted.”</em></font></h3></td> </tr> </table>  <p align="left"> </p> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="700" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="691"><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"><table width="660" border="0"> <tr> <td valign="bottom" width="115" height="34"><a href="http://www.surfsantamonica.com/the_lookout.htm"><img src="/ssm_site/images/images-logos/icons-lookout.gif" alt="Lookout Logo footer image" width="115" height="26" border="0"></a> </td> <td valign="top" width="356" height="34"><font size="-1"><br> Copyright 1999-2008 surfsantamonica.com. 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