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Richard Alles Interview, Part 2 of 2

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Title:	Richard Alles Interview, Part 2 of 2
Identifier:	alles_richard_2333
Related:	alles_richard_2332
Location:	3J453
Description:	Alles discusses the intersection of trees and urban development, grandfather exemptions for developers, the future, and his favorite places.
Country:	United States
State:	Texas
City:	San Antonio
Date:	2006-02-15
Creators:	Alles, Richard (interviewee)
	Todd, David (interviewer)
	Weisman, David (interviewer)
Source:	Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Legacy Project Records
Language:	en
Publisher:	Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
Rights:	Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
Original Format:	Mini-DV

The rich media version of this video was created by Larry Archer, February 2008. His work was made possible by the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Museum & Library Services.

Contents

Interview start

Development

Trees

Grandfathering

Future

Favorite Places

Transcript

DT: Well, lets resume and I think one question to ask you about this whole process of the meetings between the developers and the environmental community, it was mediated by a consultant working for the city, is that the city and its consultant was sort of put in a position of trying to broker a deal between two aggrieved parts of the San Antonio community rather than having a city represent, what I would presume, is the larger number of people, which would be the environmental community and the neighbors of these developers.

How do you think that came to be and what do you think the effects were?

RA: I think that's a continuation of a culture that's was established in San Antonio in the the 50s and 60s. The development industry has always had enormous power in at our local government level here. There was a group called the Good Government League that had a lot of its candidates on City Council and in the mayors office and I'm not an expert on the Good Government League. I've heard people talk about them a lot, but but they were more or less aligned with the Chambers of Commerce and the business interests.

And, you know, so throughout San Antonio's history, there's always been, I believe, an undue influence exerted on city and county government by the land development industry. And not only the the governments, but also our local community owned utilities, the electric company here in San Antonio, City Public Service and our our water company, the San Antonio Water System, are both owned by the City of San Antonio. But traditionally, those boards have been dominated by land development interests, especially San Antonio Water Systems.

DT: Is that just a kind of cultural tradition or is it because San Antonio's a big population, big media market, it takes a lot of money to run a campaign. Need to get the money from some deep pocket. What do you think the source is?

RA: Certainly, yeah. Developers are the primary funders of election campaigns here in San Antonio and have been for as long as I've been aware of the issue. So it's a ... I think candidates see that they really need to if they're going to get elected, need to get contributions from land developers, because they've, you know, had the the open pocketbooks. That said, there have been several successful candidates who weren't funded by developers.

In fact, Mayor Garza, our our the mayor before Phil Hardberger, who's our current mayor, ran against an opponent, Tim Bannwolf, who wa-- had a huge campaign chest that was funded by developers and and he won. Course, you know, they're-- it-- that might've also been due to Mayor to Ed Garza had more of a broader appeal among San Antonio voters that Tim Bannwolf couldn't overcome. He was kind of a north side guy who didn't really appeal much to the south and westsiders.

So but getting back to your question, the development industry funds candidacies and they also through, you know, their very well funded advocacy organizations, the Builders Association and the Real Estate Council, have people, you know, full time staff who who work on local political issues. And they ensure that groups like the Planning Commission and Zoning Commission and Board of Adjustment and the Board of Directors of the water system, those governing bodies are always loaded with people who are favorable to their interests.

So and there's been enormous pressure put on the city staff by the land development industry and the Chambers of Commerce. I mean, they've mounted campaigns to create a environment among the city staffers that's more customer oriented. In other words, the staff people aren't there to represent the interests of the community; they're there to serve the customer, i.e. the developer.

And we even had a instance where a the CEO of the San Antonio Water System was testifying before a Senate Legislative Committee Hearing here in San Antonio; it was when the legislature in one of the off years, they had a committee hearing here over water issues. And I was struck by one thing he said. He he was talking about our customers and to him, his customers, the customers of this publicly owned utility that that serves millions of people, were developers.

Not the the citizens who were drinking the water and paying their monthly bill, but the developers because the developers fund these infrastructure expansion projects, you know, for them to extend their water mains and and their sewage lift station and sewage infrastructure, you know, out into undeveloped areas.

To him, those were the customers that his organization was serving and and so the the Chamber of Chambers of Commerce and the builders lobbying groups have worked very hard to create this customer service attitude among city staff.

And they even-- they have renamed the department that that regulates them; it's called the Development Services Department. And the city built this multi, multi million dollar new building, that was part of the deal Howard Peak - Mayor Peak made with the developers to get this 2001 Development Code passed was that they build this magnificent new at the time, called the One Stop Center, which would consolidate all the services that the city provided for developers into this beautiful new facility that the city and taxpayers paid for.

And um, and it's called the Development and Business Service Center. So its there to service developers and and business people, not to work to protect the interests of the city.

Now I don't want to say that the that there aren't people there who do work to protect the interests of the community, there are. But I am saying that there's been a a huge push to create this developer friendly environment where, you know, we get your develop-- we stamp approved on your development plans real quickly and and cause as little hassle for you as possible. And, you know, that's all underdone under the the guise I, you know, I don't know if you'd call it guise, but under the philosophy of economic development and promoting economic development here in the city.

DT: How do you think that philosophy got reflected in the 2003 tree ordinance that I guess you're operating under now?

RA: Well, there's still a lot of what I'd call loopholes, exemptions in the ordinance. There are complaints that the ordinance is too complex, but if you look at it, most of it are different options and exemptions and loopholes to give developers flexibility. You know, instead of just saying you have to save this many trees on your project, there's all sorts of different options they can use, so.

And one of them is that instead of preserving large heritage trees, they can choose to pay a fee to the city it's called a fee in lieu or you know, some people try to characterize it as a penalty, but the money is used to-- it goes into the city's tree planting fund to plant new trees

And so while it looks like the ordinance requires developers to preserve a substantial percentage of the trees, there's a little loophole in there that says they can destroy 90 percent of the heritage of heritage and smaller trees as long as they provide what's called mitigation, of which, you know, the blood money we call it, they pay to the city is one of those options.

Another one is if they can plant smaller replacement trees to make up for the trees that were destroyed, you know, in a more convenient location on the property where its not interfering with the plans for where the building goes or what have you. There's

so that's one. Another is they're given an option of instead of protecting the tree roots in an in an area around the base of the tree, you know, keeping the bulldozers from digging up the roots in those areas. Um, that's called the root protection zone, commonly, and typically in ain a lot of cities, its the area directly underneath the tree canopy that's kind of off limits to the bulldozers to protect the shallow tree roots in that area.

Well, in our ordinance, developers can avoid that requirement completely and, you know, pave their parking lot up closer to the trunk of the tree if they warrant that the tree won't die within three years. Its called the tree warrant. And so it sounds like oh, that's good. They're even giving us a warranty on these trees, but really, you know, its a way for them to get more parking and, you know, less root protection for the tree.

And it's really a matter of territory almost, or land. You know, how much if I've got a Wal-Mart and I want to put in 25 acres of building and parking, what's the smallest piece of land I can fit that on and still meet the tree ordinance? And if you're having to preserve large root protection zone areas, obviously that's consuming land that could be used for parking cars.

So they have this option to provide a warranty in lieu of protecting the trees roots, but since it only requires that the tree stay alive for three years, its not really a good deal for the community because trees, you know, they're remarkably hardy, you know, they can live and, you know, still sprout leaves even after you've done enormous damage to them.

But is that tree going to thrive? Is it going to continue to grow and get bigger and bigger after that's happened to it? And the answer is probably no, that you've got a tree that might live but its going to be kind of like a potted plant that's going to get to a certain size and then quit growing beyond that. Kind of like a large bonsai tree or something.

DT: One of the largest exemptions that I understand has come into play is the grandfathering of large tracts. Can you talk about what grandfathering means, maybe give us some examples of how that's happened here in San Antonio?

RA: Yeah, I'd, I'd love to. Grandfathering started with a state law that was it was passed in the '80s that it was inadvertently revoked in '97, but then in '97, it was reestablished in its current form. And what the grandfathering law says -- it's a state law, as I said -- is that once a developer applies for a permit to build a development project, the regulations that are in effect on the moment he applies actually mails, drops the permit into the mail by certified mail on that instant, development regulations are frozen and there can't be any increase in regulation on that development project.

Now there can be a decrease, it only works one way. You can't increase tree preservation or aquifer protection or parks, but you can decrease them and if you decrease them, the developer can take advantage of that decrease, even though the regulations were supposedly frozen on that instant he submitted his permit.

Well, so what is a permit? It turns out under state law a permit can be any number of things. It can be a developer goes to the water system and he said Id like you to contract to provide water to my development at some point in the future and those contracts are free and, I believe at the time, they gave a developer ten years before he had to put his first penny into that contract.

A permit could've been a plat somebody filed that showed nothing more than the outline of the property and saying, you know, this is-- I've platted this lot of 25 acres or whatever.

Or it could be a development plan that-- the problem with the law is that it was retroactive. It applied to permits that were filed before the law went into effect and cities were caught with their pants down when this law went into effect because they had issued a bunch of permits to people that didn't have expiration dates on them that required very little to no-- almost no information about what the developer intended to do in his project.

And so it allowed developers who saw a new aquifer protection ordinance about to be passed by city council or a new tree ordinance and that as I explained earlier, they'll get they'll know three years ahead of time that this new ordinance is coming down the pike. And what it enabled them to do was to file these sketch plans where in a half hour, a engineer could draw up a plan for a, you know, 2000 acre chunk of land and file that with the city and say that's my first permit application and the clock stopped now. And this occurred with our aquifer protection ordinance.

The engineering firm-- the biggest engineering firm in San Antonio, Pape-Dawson, had one of its owners, Gene Dawson, Junior, as chair of the water quality committee that was writing the aquifer protection ordinance. And at the same time this committee was drafting those rules with Mister Dawson as its chair, he was als-- Dawson's firm, on behalf of big landowners was filing development plans for thousands and thousands of acres of land over the aquifer recharge zone.

So that when the ordinance went into effect, there were already I I'm I think it was around ten thousand acres that had been filed just before the ordinance went into effect. And then everything that had been filed, you know, in the years pre-1995, you know, was also exempt.

And we've had developers-- one developer filed a lawsuit against the city in 2004 claiming his grandfathering started in 1927. That was the year he'd filed a plat on this land. Now plats never expire and the grandfathering law says a city cannot shorten the duration of a permit. In other words, once you issue the permit, if it doesn't expire till, you know, the year 3000 or if it never expires, you can't you can't shorten the duration, meaning you can't put a different expiration date on it once its been issued. And that was the dilemma a lot of cities found themselves in when this grandfathering law passed.

They had rules out there that allowed developers to file, to sketch out a development on a napkin and submit it as a development plan. That-- you know, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but literally or figuratively, something that sketchy could be submitted and they had permits that had no expiration date.

Now there is a provision in the grandfathering ordinance for dormant-- what they call dormant projects that have made no progress to completion. But the threshold for making progress toward completion is very low and that's something that can easily be exploited. So that's why in fact, I heard this week in Austin, somebody was claiming grandfathering to 1910 on a plat they'd that had been submitted then.

So the city-- let me give you an another example of how it's working. The city recently was on the losing end of a judgment in district court-- a ruling in district court by Judge Andy Mireles who ruled that a developer was exempt, not only from our tree ordinance and park and open space ordinance and others, but also the city's stormwater drainage ordinance. Now that's frightening because most peoples interpretation of the grandfathering statute is that you cannot get an exemption from codes and ordinances that protect the public against imminent threats of destruction of property or injury to persons, I believe is how the statute reads.

Well, clearly that's what the drainage ordinances do, you know, they prevent flooding, which can kill people. But, you know, now we've got a ruling in district court that somebody has been grandfathered from the drainage ordinance. Now the city's appealing that and I believe it'll be overturned, but you know, that's an example of how grandfathering can work.

And so I think the intent of grandfathering was that once a developer starts his development project, it's not fair for the city to be able to go in and impose different tree preservation standards that would force him to redesign his project or maybe make the project uneconomical because there were so many trees on the property or something to that effect. And you know, that's the motivation that the people who back these grandfathering laws give for supporting them.

But in reality, the way the law is written, it requires -- there's no requirement for any actual investment to be made in the project, only filing of plans and for permits. And it's been written to favor develop-- I mean, you know, the pendulum has swung so far in developers favor on this grandfathering issue that it's really just way out of whack and that's why it's so hard for the city to enforce the aquifer protection ordinance here, which the aquifer protection ordinance has been applied to very few projects on the recharge zone. Most-- I'd say easily 90 percent of the development on the recharge zone has been exempt from the aquifer protection ordinance because of grandfathering.

Now the numbers aren't quite as bad on the tree ordinance for reasons I won't give-- it's kind of complicated. But you know, we've had the same thing with the tree ordinance. Developers see it coming in the the three years we negotiated over the 2003 tree ordinance, there were 35,000 acres of development plan of plans for development filed with the city. So we lost at least 35,000 acres in that three years we debated over the new ordinance.

DT: Can you give me some examples of the effects of some of these loopholes and exemptions in grandfathering clauses? What actually happens on the ground when the tree ordinance doesn't apply?

RA: Well, we get tree massacres. They're clear-cutting.

DT: Loopholes in the 2003 ordinance that you could point to?

RA: Yeah, the the Encino Ridge Pulte Homes project on Highway 281 North is a very visible project because its right next to a busy highway and so thousands of people see this giant hillside that was completely stripped of every shred of vegetation.

They were grandfathered from the '97 and 2003 tree ordinances both. And that was a project that Pape-Dawson got in under the wire before the aquifer protection ordinance passed. That was one of those projects that a de-- where a development plan was filed just weeks before the aquifer protection ordinance took effect

and we've got the PGA Village project. Here was a project that was immensely unpopular here in the city. There were a hundred thousand signatures gathered in a huge petition drive against the project, asking that it be put to a vote. And the-- now why would we be voting on it?

Because the PGA and the and their developer, Lumbermans Investment Company, had come to the city asking for a huge incentive package to put the PGA there on one of the most sensitive parts of the aquifer recharge zone. And that incentive package including creating a special taxing district that had eminent domain powers that would collect all the taxes, not only in the PGA Village area, but could actually extend beyond the boundaries of it. It was, you know, tax abatements that went for decades from city taxes. And now this was an area where clearly the city did not want to encourage or incentivize development.

So why were they doing this? Because the developer was grandfathered from the aquifer protection ordinance. How did he get grandfathered? Well, let me say this. We do not agree that he has a valid grandfathering claim, but regardless, he said I'm grandfathered for 100 percent impervious cover on this two approximately two thousand acres here and I can put in 9000 homes in this sensitive area if you don't play ball with me.

So in effect, it was a threat, that if you don't give us this incentive package to do this development which, you know, had a lot of environmental standards associated with it, including impervious cover limits that equaled what the aquifer protection ordinance would've provided, had it not been grandfathered. You know, that was the the tradeoff that the city leaders were given.

Now I wanted to tell you a little bit about how they got grandfathered. They had filed a very sketchy development plan before the aquifer protection ordinance passed and nothing had happened on the project. But the city had a rule that within 18 months, you had to file a plat for one of the units in within that development plan area, and a unit would be like a subdivision with 150 houses or what that's typically how development is done in ain large areas, is unit by unit.

What the developer did was he filed a plat for a one-eighth acre little segment of a road right on the corner of a property. On the overall development plan, it was just a tiny speck. And that one-eighth acre plat was what held the grandfathering on that PGA project and led eventually to what we now have, which is a 30 year tax abatement and a special taxing authority out there with powers more limited than what I described earlier, but the taxing authority is comprised entirely of people associated with the developer and with the PGA.

There-- it was an elected board of directors. It was supposedly elected by the voters of the area. Since there weren't any voters on the land, they put these people out there in trailer homes so that they would be residents and could vote in this election to establish this board of directors for the taxing authority. So that's, you know, one of the effects of grandfathering.

We've got the Indian Springs Development, which is next door to PGA, whose star has risen dramatically now that PGAs going forward. They're proceeding rapidly with development there. They were grandfathered from the aquifer protection and tree ordinance and clear-cut a huge area for a subdivision called Val Verde Village.

In addition, they removed or clear cut 600 acres in ain a separate incident, 600 acres of habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler without first getting it approved with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So that incident was in the newspapers. They've since negotiated a deal with Fish and Wildlife to provide some mitigation land to offset the destruction of the 600 acres of habitat and that land is conveniently for them located in a very isolated corner of the development that probably wouldn't get developed anyway because of its isolation and and geography or topography.

So it leads toto clear cutting, it leads to high-density development over the aquifer recharge zone. We're seeing residential subdivisions going in with up to, I think, seven houses an acre would not be unheard of. You know, development that's at such a high density that its not appropriate for such an environmentally sensitive area.

So I think, you know, the bottom line on grandfathering is it's enabling degradation of our sole source aquifer that serves 1.8 million people and its enabling, you know, environmental degradation that harms our air quality and increases storm water runoff and flooding and all the, you know, other things that trees prevent and that impervious cover facilitates.

(misc.)

DT: In the same year that the 2003 ordinance was passed, you were struck with a, I think it's called a SLAPP suit that maybe indicates the stakes that are involved in this in terms of not just the acres and numbers of trees, but also the dollars that are at risk, both from the development community and from some environmentalists who have tried to challenge these proposals. Can you talk about what happened?

RA: Well, th-- Wal-Mart was being developed by Mark Granados and his company, Hill Granados Retail Partners. And in order for that development to occur, he had to get the property rezoned by the city. And I'd been asked by the neighborhood association affected by the Wal-Mart to come in as kind of the tree expert on the development and the rezoning issue because they were negotiating with Mister Granados on what type of concessions he'd make to the neighborhood on, you know, in order to exchange for this rezoning.

And at one of the meetings, I'd-- I asked Mister Granados why-- or I'd asked him if he would consider certain development standards for tree preservation, you know, volunteering to comply with certain development standards for tree preservation and neighborhood friendly design. And he replied well, I don't have to do any of that. All I have to do is comply with the current codes. And I said well, Mister Granados, the city doesn't have to rezone your property either. That exchange there was, I think, probably the seed that started the slap suit.

Now later on in the tree effort to promote the new tree ordinance, I'd sent out a email and I'd mentioned Mister Granados project in the email because I'd been informed that he had gotten a variance from the city from the tree ordinance.

And I thought that was I noted that in my email because I remembered during those meetings that Mister Granados had promised the neighborhood that he'd comply with the tree ordinance, but then here he was getting a variance from it. So somehow that email-- and this is the dangers of email here found its way to Mister Granados and he took issue with my characterization of him because, to him, I was saying that he was being less than honest with the neighborhood.

So in and I don't know entirely what the motivation behind the the slap suit was, I'm ki-- I guess, kind of speculating here as to Mister Granados motivation. It also appeared from some of the exchanges we had during the lawsuit, he was worried that we were going to get his project stopped, you know, because at that time it was under construction.

So the day after the tree ordinance was the new strong 2003 tree ordinance was adopted, Mister Granados filed a lawsuit against me for 25 million dollars and also named the Citizens Tree Coalition and all its members in that suit and it was a defamation suit, claiming that my email was defamatory.

And at the and it in it's interesting because in his petition, he claimed that I had lied about him getting a variance from the tree ordinance, yet in an interview yet we had a letter from the city regarding the variance. And he also claimed in an interview with the newspaper that he had gotten the variance, but it was for the purpose of saving more trees.

So we were, you know, obviously distraught over the 25 the magnitude of the lawsuit and, immediately, several attorneys from San Antonio called me and offered to represent me for free in the the lawsuit. And the letters to the editor started, you know, because the the it had been in the newspaper about Mister Granados and how outrageous the lawsuit was. One of the writers dared Mister Granados to sue him.

So we were assembled a team of attorneys and had there was a hearing on a they wanted an injunction against me that ba-- would basically be a shut up order. You know, I could not say anything about Mister Granados or his project and that injunction was denied. They also asked at another hearing for us to produce the membership list of the Tree Coalition and that was denied.

And so as the lawsuit wore on and our attorneys asked for, you know, the the disclosures from the other side as part of the, you know, leading up to the trial, they asked Mister Granados for his financial records to show, you know, the 25 million dollar loss he'd suffered from the email. And at that point, Mister Granados said well, I'll drop the suit if Richard apologizes publicly apologizes to me for the email. And we said that and let me back up.

We had also filed a co-- two countersuits against Mister Granados claiming that the lawsuit was frivolous and without merit and was basically a harassment lawsuit. He agreed to drop the lawsuit if Id apologize and we declined to offer an apology and eventually decided that we would settle the lawsuit. The only stipulation was that we could not go to the press and publicize the the end of the lawsuit.

And so on September of 2003, he withdrew the lawsuit and with we withdrew our countersuit and each went our own merry ways. Now coincidentally we were having a fundraising concert that the evening after the lawsuit had been dropped and I was congratulating one of the attorneys at the the microphone about what a great job he'd done and how he got in there and and did a kick ass job.

And we got a call from Granados attorney on Monday morning saying that he heard Richard was going around all over town saying he'd kicked my ass and that he was going to hire this high profile attorney out of Houston I can't recall his name. Big name guy to sue me again. So maybe that's all I should say about the lawsuit.

DT: Well, maybe we should talk a little bit about what your experience with tree protection in general and the environment, I guess, more broadly still. What it's taught you and maybe if there's a message that you would want to pass onto younger people who would see this tape?

RA: Well, one of the things I have to keep in mind because when you're involved in an effort like I've been involved in, there are a lot of disappointments and losses and probably more than there are victories. You know, we've tried to get trees preserved, but we still see clear-cut. There was a big clear cutting for a Home Depot, the a few months ago. So that's still happening and, you know, you go to City Council and you try to get them toto vote the right way and most of the time, they don't.

But there are a lot of victories. So you have to keep in mind, you know, why you got involved in the first place and what that big passion and big goal was that you set out to accomplish and why you're doing that because if you if you cant keep that in the forefront, then I think you can get frustrated and burned out very easily.

And I also think that, for me, this is as much a spiritual quest as anything else. I've for me, it's a quest in learning how to love my fellow, you know, citizens of Earth here and, you know, at times, you know, you go to meetings and people get angry at you and you get angry and there's argumentation and rancor.

It doesn't have to be like that, but sometimes it just turns out like that and these people you vehemently disagree with, you have to deal with them still every day and so I tried to, as much as humanly possible, not get caught up in anger or even dislike for people, but try as much as I can to love them in a way and and be congenial with them and friendly with them and and keep on good terms despite our disagreements.

And I think-- you know, I grew up in San Antonio and I've seen, I think, the quality of life here, in many ways, has really declined for people. Not only in the health of the city, but just in the aesthetics and the the ability to enjoy the natural beauty San Antonio has to offer and it's very sad to see what's happened since the 1950s when, you know, I started noticing things and I-- so I feel very strongly that we need to try as hard as we can to preserve what's left. And there's still a lot left to preserve that, you know, for the future,

once a, you know, once a giant heritage tree that's 300 years old is destroyed, it'll never be replaced. There's never going to be a tree that big or that old on that site again because either because there's not room for it or just because its, you know, not going to happen in that environment as it is then, you know. When the land was natural, the environment was conducive to trees growing to huge old statures, so. It's rapidly disappearing and something I feel like doesn't have to happen the way it does and that's what I'm trying to change.

DT: And of the places that remain, is there a special natural area that you hold dear, that you go for solace or enjoyment?

RA: Well, to really, my-- the state parks in this area are the places I like to go. The Guadalupe River State Park, the Hill County State and Natural Area, Lost Maples, you know, those are the places that are special to me. Even Big Bend, when I can get out there. But you know, here in the in the city, there's a grotto at the Oblate Seminary here in town that's beautiful, has some beautiful trees in it. The San Pedro Park is another place I like to go. I don't get there as often as I'd like. And even to Eisenhower Park, which is a newer city park not far from here.

DT: Is there anything you'd like to add in the time that remains?

RA: Did you want to talk about the .. the exemptions and-- I mean, not the exemptions. There was the the issue regarding whether we should try to preserve individual trees.

DT: You could if you'd like. We have about five minutes, I think.

RA: One of the issues with the tree ordinance as it is, is that we don't have any-- still don't have any root protection for single family residential development and developers are going in and they're trying to preserve individual trees on lots, but they're getting damaged by the construction around them. So one of the things the city's trying to do is to create an incentive for them to preserve stands of trees instead of, you know, isolated trees in on lots or parking lots. And I think that's something that should be looked at.

But it's difficult sometimes to create an incentive unless you have rules that are in place at a sufficiently high level that you can create an incentive to go above those. If the-- if the rules, the threshold for preservation is set so low, all you can-- you end up giving away so much in incentives, you can't afford it.

So, you know, there has to be a balance between the carrot and the stick, I think, and I don't know that we couldn't do more on the stick side of the equation with the tree ordinance that would, I think, create an incentive in and of itself just by raising the standards and also make it easier for the city to provide incentives that don't compromise, you know, some other aspect of the environment or the environmental aspects of that particular development. (misc.)

DT: Thank you very much.

RA: You're welcome.

DT: Appreciate it.

(misc.) [End of Reel 2333] [End of Interview with Richard Alles]

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Richard Alles Interview, Part 2 of 2

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