4th Warder

News and Notes for Residents of South Euclid's Ward 4 from Councilwoman Jane Goodman.

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Location: South Euclid, Ohio

Friday, May 26, 2006

Fire pics



























In case you missed the excitement, on May 22 the South Euclid Fire Department had a training session, using a house on Green Road to practice their skills. The house at 2032 S. Green, was donated by Dr. Shelly Senders, who will be building his new pediatric facility on the site. Crews from Lyndhurst and University Heights also took part in the training. It was pretty darn impressive.

Spring Green

Hi, all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I promise to do better in the future.

It's been that kind of month. I always think of May as the month when everything changes: the colors change from brown to green and all the colors of the rainbow, the air changes from dry to wet and cool to warm, the ground changes from soil to grass and, too quickly, weeds. Kids rush to finish school. Parents rush to arrange their summer schedules. Workers rush to schedule vacations. Things seem to accelerate from hibernation to full speed in an instant.

This year, city council has been in overdrive as well. We've had so many new developments and new initiatives to study and process, it's as if the city's suddenly awakening from a long sleep. We've always known that South Euclid's location makes it a wonderful place to live, now others are realizing the same thing.

We're in the process of updating our comprehensive plan, the document that looks at the layout of our city, describes which areas are zoned for what, identifies where we'll put new businesses and homes, and suggests how we'll revitalize existing neighborhoods. It's the map of our present and the directions we'll use to travel to our future.

The plan shows where we'll focus new mixed housing and commercial developments – Cedar Center, Mayfield-Green, Monticello-Green. It indicates where we'll put new homes and residential development clusters (the easy stuff). It also marks the older neighborhoods where we'll buy the most deteriorated homes and open their lots for neighbors to expand their homes, add an office to the garage, or leave green pockets for breathing space (the harder stuff).

What the plan doesn't include at this time is a vision for our greenspace. That's about to change. As a part of the update, we're including a mission to develop a greenspace/openspace plan. Just as we decide where buildings should go, it's critical that we also define where buildings should NOT go, and how we might do a better job of fitting human space into the natural infrastructure – letting the natural systems that are already in place manage the way water flows, for example. As more and more developments consume more and more green space, we need to take a moment now, before all the open space is built upon, to say how much of our community will remain green. Whether the space remains forest or field, park or shrub-filled wild, we need to recognize the value of these spaces and plan for their management.

Much of what makes South Euclid a pleasant place to live is the green that surrounds us. It's our proximity to Euclid Creek and the abundant flora that surrounds it. It's the canopy of trees that arches over our streets, shades our homes, cools the ground, sucks up the waters, provides homes for birds and habitat for wildlife, and pleases our senses. Before we "pave paradise and put up a parking lot," as Joni Mitchell sang, we as a community need to decide how we'll keep our community as green as it is today, and what kind of spaces we'll leave to future residents.

First, we need to respect the health value of greenspace and trees. Aside from the basic fact that green plants are our only source of oxygen, and the only things that remove carbon dioxide from the air, studies have shown that surgery patients who could see a grove of deciduous trees recuperated faster and required less pain-killing medicine than matched patients who viewed only brick walls. And prisoners with cells overlooking green landscapes used prison health facilities significantly less than prisoners whose cells provided views of other prison facilities.

Most significant are studies from the University of Illinois' Human-Environment Research Laboratory showing that "the presence of vegetation and green-spaces can strengthen social ties in a neighborhood, reduce levels of aggression and violence, and help people cope with everyday stress. In one of the more startling findings, researchers found that crime rates actually go down in neighborhoods with more vegetation--the opposite of what many policymakers had in mind when they ordered bushes cleared and trees cut down to decrease crime.

Some of the lab's most noteworthy research has shown that raising and teaching children in a green environment can put them on the path to success early in their lives. One study showed that interaction with nature significantly curtailed the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Another showed that girls who can see nature out their home windows are more capable of concentration, impulse inhibition, and self-discipline." (American Forests, Autumn, 2002.)

This is just to say that humans and communities are always healthier – emotionally, spiritually, psychologially, physically and, yes, economically – when we live with nature instead of always trying to eliminate it, or engineer it to work our way. Nature is a vast infrastructure; it's a system, just like the sewers and water lines and mechanical systems we build. A tree in the right place, usually the west side, will shade a house, and the cooling it provides will lower your air conditioning bills. Plantings on the north side of a house will give shelter from winter winds and cut your heating bill. A garden of water-loving plants at the low point of your yard will absorb the pondwater that accumulates in heavy rains and keep it from flooding into your basement.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't cut down any trees. When we decided to live where forests once grew, we assumed the responsibility of caring for the green we keep. Just like humans have a defined life expectancy, just as we age and eventually die, so it is with trees. Many of the trees in our city are at the end of their lifecycles. But unlike humans, who reproduce themselves and nurture new generations, urban forests don't act like "real" forests. We don't always let them seed their progeny and replace themselves. We don't let them fall and decay to enrich the soil and feed their young as would happen in a normal forest.

A forest isn't just trees, it's also the wetlands and waterways and open spaces and the edges where new growth takes place. It's not just the big tree canopy, either. It's also the understory trees, the shrubs that grow berries and native plants that grow seeds that wildlife count on. We have to manage all these resources. Sometimes it's best to let the forest be. Sometimes it's better to take down older trees before they fall, let the young trees below get air and sun, or replace them with new trees that are more amenable to life in the urban environment.

Nature is always trying desperately to return to this original state. The land we live on was originally a vast forest, primarily of oak and hickory, but including one of the most varied collection of maples, hemlock, tulip trees and many many other species. Some areas were wetlands, and sometimes big chunks of the forest would fall and leave open areas for new forests to grow. Consider all the maple seeds that litter the driveways and streets and the keys – whirlybirds – that fill our gutters. That's the maple trees trying to plant new generations. Weeds, too, are nature's way of returning to a state of balance, where roots hold the soil and filter the water and leaves catch the seeds that grow the plants that feed the birds and animals that carry the seeds to plant anew.

This brings me back to the greenspace plan (convenient, huh?). I invite everyone with an interest in how our community grows – pun intended – to write to me and make your voices heard.