Ukee council must have thought it had died and gone to heaven at its meeting this week, when a lawsuit from those community-minded owners of the Primera development demanded that the few token trees remaining around Big Beach “Community” Park be brought down, lest any more fall upon their bloated, overpriced condo coliseum.
The lawsuit somehow failed to mention that the tree-falling would further boost Primera property values by improving their million-dollar view of the ocean (and the eyesore Black Mark construction site, which is expected to be the target of Primera’s next lawsuit).
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Councillor Russcher asked. “People are suing us to cut down trees? Not to leave them standing but to cut them down?”
The CAO confirmed that was the case, adding that in fact the district’s lawyers recommended that the offending trees be axed.
“Hot damn!” said Councillor Irving. “I got a chainsaw in the back of my truck. Let’s go!”
“Dibs on the tallest tree,” Councillor Corlazzoli shouted.
Councillor Thorp tried to raise the point that maybe the fools who built their houses under the few remaining, unbuffered trees ought to go instead, but his words were drowned out by the stampede to the door.
Donning her Kevlar pants, Mayor St. Jacques was optimistic. “I see this as an extremely hopeful development,” she said. “Maybe, as the town’s demographics undergo a complete overhaul in coming years, our new residents will demand that we log off our mountain viewscape again, and raze our community forest to the ground, as we began last summer. I believe it’s a sign that clear-cuts are becoming cool again. We can have both industrial logging and industrial tourism.”
