This week, the non­prof­it Inves­ti­gateWest pub­lished a lengthy expose that doc­u­ments how the Mas­ter Builders influ­enced the draft­ing and devel­op­ment of Seat­tle’s lat­est tree ordi­nance, which was recent­ly approved by the Seat­tle City Coun­cil at the request of May­or Bruce Har­rel­l’s administration.

Writ­ten by reporter Eric Scigliano, the well researched piece dis­cuss­es key aspects of the new ordi­nance in depth, as well as relay­ing the details of a cel­e­bra­to­ry event after the mea­sure passed, where the Mas­ter Builders hand­ed out awards to cel­e­brate get­ting what they want­ed out of the city. Here’s Scigliano’s opening:

On June 1, the mood was exu­ber­ant at Art Mar­ble 21, a sun­lit Seat­tle bar and meet­ing space. The event was the annu­al “mix­er” of the Seat­tle Builders Coun­cil, a divi­sion of the Mas­ter Builders Asso­ci­a­tion of King and Sno­homish Coun­ties (MBAKS), “the nation’s old­est and largest local home­builders association.”

But the occa­sion was not just social.

Nine days ear­li­er, in a 6–1 vote, the City Coun­cil had passed a long-sought, hard-fought tree pro­tec­tion ordi­nance opposed by many tree-pro­tec­tion advo­cates, neigh­bor­hood groups and the city’s own Her­itage Tree Com­mit­tee. Some oppo­nents denounced it as a “cor­rupt” give­away to devel­op­ers and a death knell for Seattle’s declin­ing urban for­est. The city’s Urban Forestry Com­mis­sion, an expert pan­el charged with advis­ing on tree pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­tions, unsuc­cess­ful­ly plead­ed to delay the vote a month so it could study the ordi­nance it com­plained it hadn’t been giv­en time to review.

The forestry com­mis­sion­ers didn’t make the mixer’s invi­ta­tion list, which includ­ed not just builders but Seat­tle City Coun­cil mem­bers and staff and offi­cials from the Mayor’s Office, City Attor­neys’ Office, Depart­ment of Con­struc­tion and Inspec­tions (SDCI), and oth­er city agencies.

Scigliano, though, was able to get in, and he wit­nessed what was said.

Aliesha Ruiz, the association’s gov­ern­ment affairs man­ag­er, dis­pensed the awards with effu­sive expres­sions of affec­tion for col­leagues and city offi­cials alike, espe­cial­ly for some­one who’d been both: Mar­co Lowe, the city’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer and May­or Bruce Harrell’s point man on hous­ing and land use, who had last held Ruiz’s job at the Mas­ter Builders.

“It’s been a long, long effort to get this leg­is­la­tion passed,” Ruiz declared. “We don’t love it —”

“Yes, we do!” a voice called out.

“We didn’t get every­thing we want­ed,” Ruiz con­tin­ued, “but it strikes a bal­ance for hous­ing and for trees.” She turned to the tree tro­phies: “These come all the way from Romania!”

“No Seat­tle trees were killed,” quipped Lowe, to loud laughter.

Ruiz bestowed tro­phies on the Mas­ter Builders offi­cers and attor­neys and city bureau­crats who’d helped shape the ordinance.

She espe­cial­ly laud­ed the Seat­tle Builders Council’s vice chair­man: “For those of you who don’t know, the 85 per­cent capac­i­ty test was Michael Pollard’s brain­child!” This key pro­vi­sion, which one vet­er­an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer calls “the sin­gle most dam­ag­ing change to the orig­i­nal draft ordi­nance,” guar­an­tees builders in low-rise mul­ti­fam­i­ly zones (allow­ing town­hous­es and small apart­ments) the right to cov­er 85 per­cent of their lots with build­ings and oth­er hard­scape, regard­less of what trees grow there.

“Don’t you have to cut down a for­est to win one of these?” some­one called from the crowd, to more laughter.

We live in a time of record heat, ram­pant defor­esta­tion, and extreme weath­er. That does­n’t seem to mat­ter to these folks. Tree loss and cli­mate dam­age are viewed as fod­der for jokes rather than as the very seri­ous prob­lems that they are. Noth­ing must get in the way of their agen­da of build­ing what they want, when they want, where they want, with as few restric­tions as possible.

Seat­tle and near­by com­mu­ni­ties do des­per­ate­ly need more attain­able and afford­able hous­ing. But our region also des­per­ate­ly needs urban forests.

Trees are not a nice to have. They are not a lux­u­ry. They are not an obsta­cle to devel­op­ment. They are essen­tial. Our new­ly housed neigh­bors deserve to live in neigh­bor­hoods with trees. They pro­vide shade, habi­tat, and pro­tec­tion from noise pol­lu­tion. But they’re unfor­tu­nate­ly not seen by most devel­op­ers as the cru­cial assets that they are. Not yet, any­way. That needs to change.

The recent tree ordi­nance adopt­ed by the city does, as Scigliano explained, make it hard­er to sim­ply chop down trees on already-devel­oped parcels. But the lot cov­er­age rule is a huge give­away to devel­op­ers who don’t care about cli­mate jus­tice or val­ue trees. They want to be able to raze lots rather than to thought­ful­ly design prop­er­ties that retain exist­ing mature trees as part of the design.

Builders can now remove even the biggest trees to get their allot­ted cov­er­age, aside from about 320 land­mark “her­itage trees” des­ig­nat­ed under a pri­or vol­un­tary pro­gram. Urban Forestry Com­mis­sion co-chair Josh Mor­ris warns that peo­ple shouldn’t “get the idea this pro­vides pro­tec­tion for a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of trees.”

By con­trast, own­ers who aren’t rede­vel­op­ing their prop­er­ty come under much stricter reg­u­la­tion than before: They can’t cut trees thick­er than 12 inch­es that aren’t haz­ardous, and they can only remove two 6 to 12-inch trees every three years.

Before, devel­op­ers would some­times demand that home­own­ers, who faced less legal scruti­ny, cut down trees before clos­ing pur­chas­es. Now the only way for home­own­ers to get rid of unwant­ed trees may be to sell to developers.

The ordi­nance includes a stinger for neigh­bors and activists oppos­ing tree removals, and a boon to devel­op­ers who resent such inter­fer­ence: They’ll no longer be able to appeal to the hear­ing exam­in­er. SDCI’s deci­sions will be final.

We are fac­ing a future of hot­ter sum­mers, worse droughts, and more intense heat waves — and not decades from now, but this decade. The cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe is already here, and we are not ready for it. We’ve talked about get­ting ready, but haven’t tak­en very much action. We can set all of the tar­gets and objec­tives we like, but they will not be attain­able unless we have strate­gies to get there.

Promis­es to devel­op such strate­gies lat­er are worth­less — we need them now.

Seat­tle’s amend­ed tree code has some new pro­vi­sions that are good, but it could be much bet­ter. Three con­sec­u­tive city­wide polls com­mis­sioned by NPI of Seat­tle vot­ers have found strong sup­port for a wide array of poli­cies to pro­tect trees.

A super­ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers sur­veyed by our poll­ster back in Jan­u­ary told us they’re con­cerned about tree and canopy loss in their neigh­bor­hood and the city as hous­ing den­si­ty increas­es to meet Seattle’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion.

“The may­or and Coun­cilmem­ber Strauss are to be com­mend­ed for putting a plan on a table,” I wrote in March. “But it needs strength­en­ing. Canopy loss is going to con­tin­ue unless the city gets seri­ous about pro­tect­ing its exist­ing trees… not just col­lect­ing mon­ey when a devel­op­er or landown­er wants to chop trees down, and not just plant­i­ng new trees that will take decades to reach maturity.”

Regret­tably, the ordi­nance was not strength­ened before it was sent to Har­rell. Strauss, who over­saw the draft­ing as the rel­e­vant com­mit­tee chair, refused to con­sid­er a num­ber of amend­ments that would have made it a lot bet­ter. It seems like it will be up to the next city coun­cil that the vot­ers elect to course correct.

Next time, the city coun­cil and May­or Har­rel­l’s office need to let their own Urban Forestry Com­mis­sion do the dri­ving, rather than the Mas­ter Builders, who have demon­strat­ed they want poli­cies that serve their inter­ests rather than the public’s.