Editor:
I say, “ask not what your city can do for you,” after 26 years at the same address on a dead-end street with an unnamed ravine beside us.
I had asked the City of White Rock what the options were for trimming some of the trees in the ravine to restore the view we once had. They asked if I had pictures through the years.
After several calls, and then telling me my spam filter was set so high they couldn’t send me the info, it arrived ‘snail mail.’
So, for $150, I can submit an application to have the city review my request to follow my suggestion on how to trim the trees, if approved by neighbours. And if I thought some should be removed and replanted, the prices range from $2,000 for a six-centimetre tree, all the way to $18,000 for a large tree.
What I wonder is the thought process that, after 26 years, I would have to prove that the trees grew, or how much they grew.
I could guess that some of the people I talked to were not quite born when we moved in, yet here we are, in one of the highest tax brackets around, paying the city for an opinion on their own trees.
Good work, White Rock!
Greg Mason, White Rock