In Caltrans We (Don’t) Trust

When you wrote the article about Caltrans tearing down the iconic trees in the Montecito median in order to expand the freeway, one of their excuses was that it would allow them to limit tearing up the landscape on the edges of the freeway. I wrote a letter questioning many of the positions Caltrans was taking (see “The Road Ahead” Montecito Journal, Letters to the Editor, November 14, 2023).

These photos show just how much anyone should trust anything Caltrans says. I’m sure this Morton Bay fig tree was planted around the same time as the fig tree at the Amtrak station, which is a community treasure. Why didn’t Caltrans explain that this 100+ year old tree would also be destroyed while they were making excuses for tearing up all the foliage in the median? 

Why do they tear these trees down at night? Do they hope we won’t notice? Are they embarrassed about their work? If they’re not, they should be, as should our City Council and any other agency that allowed this debacle to start. Destroy this tree (and so many others) and give us chain link fences. Is that what the residents of Montecito and Santa Barbara wanted? Progress? I don’t think so…

Larry Grassini