Originally posted at CRD WATCH
By Mary Fowles and Jennifer Button
Feb 9, 2025
In July 2024 Victoria City Council approved (6 to 3) (1) a design (2) for Centennial Square which included the destruction of the square’s Sequoia tree.
Following the decision, several citizens wrote to the Mayor and Council to express their concerns.
Councillor Caradonna responded via email to several of these letters to council. In one of his emails which members of the Save the Sequoia petition group have become aware of, he noted reasons for why the Sequoia tree needed to be removed. One reason he gave on August 23, 2024 was that BC Hydro “does not want the tree to remain.”
See paragraph here:
“The tree’s roots are already intertwined with numerous utilities and are fast approaching a very large, underground Hydro box. If the roots were to enter that utility box, it would create an emergency situation. […] Hydro does not want the tree to remain.” (2)
This email set off alarm bells as trees everywhere coexist with these same types of underground services and utilities. Therefore, a Freedom of Information inquiry was submitted to BC Hydro to obtain any reports they had on the tree. The FOI response revealed that BC Hydro doesn’t actually have any reports on the Centennial Square Sequoia at all, setting off further alarm bells.
On September 27, 2024 BC Hydro’s Freedom of Information Coordinating Office responded to the FOI request in a letter which read:
“Please be advised that we checked with the departments who would have known about the tree and electrical vault, and none of them indicated knowing about any correspondence with the City of Victoria (to or from).”
On January 12, 2025 we reached out to the Mayor and Council, the city’s Legislative Services, and the Parks department. We noted this discrepancy between the FOI response from BC Hydro and Caradonna’s email and asked for any documents which would provide an explanation.
We asked to see any reports the city had received from BC Hydro. We also asked for the LiDAR report referenced in Caradonna’s email, and for all other reports which showed the “extensive analysis of the tree’s root system” also referenced in Caradonna’s email. Up to today we have not received any response back from the city.
One of the concerned citizens who received Caradonna’s email last August has since written to the Mayor to ask her to investigate whether any breach of the city bylaw Code of Conduct for Council Members (4) has occurred. However, up to today, we are not aware of any response back from the city on this matter.
We are sharing this information, in order to receive full transparency from the city with regards to the sequoia tree. We ask, on the record, that the city not only be fully transparent with its reasoning around potentially removing the tree, but that it also explore every avenue available, so that the tree can be saved. What the city does in this regard will go down in history.
Footnotes:
1. Motion: https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=98612
*On the main motion as amended:
THAT Council approve the updated concept design for Centennial Square and direct staff to proceed with implementation as outlined in this report, as amended by the following: 1. Increase the child-orientated play features in the final designs. Committee of the While Minutes July 04, 2024 7 2. In future consider commercial mixed-use to return to the north side of the Square. 3. After removal of the unsafe trees, and without slowing down the project, staff to repurpose the timber within the Victoria community as they see fit.
OPPOSED (3): Councillor Hammond, Councillor Gardiner, Councillor Coleman CARRIED (6 to 3)”
2. Staff report: https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=98055
3. Cllr. Caradonna’s email: Caradonna Email.png
4. Code of Conduct for Council Members: https://www.victoria.ca/media/file/code-conduct-council-members-bylaw-23-058