Pay for construction costs

Hi Santa Cruz!

We are fundraising to help save a 120ft tall Sequoia Sempervirens on Walnut Street.

Find our website (linked below) for more information, but long story short we have contested the removal of the twin trunks Redwood on the corner of Walnut and Lincoln Street. As of now, in an unlikely ruling, City Council has voted to give 90 more days to this lovely tree in order to collect more data about the situation. The issues are: fixing the sidewalk, and protecting the building foundation.

This GoFundMe is specifically for raising funds to go towards hiring professionals to consult, design, and plan ways to fix the sidewalk and protect the building foundation.

We hope that once we have these plans, the City and Apartment owners will decide to move forward with saving the tree. If this is the case, another GoFundMe will be created to help cover costs of repairs.

GENERAL IDEAS:

Aside from costs of professional guidance, we are hoping this GoFundMe helps raise community awareness. We are hoping that with community help we can increase the amount of data the city is able to collect in this next 90 days. We are looking for community members who may have experience in structural engineering, or other folks with knowledge that may be able to aid us in collecting information that will support innovative ways of keeping the tree while fixing the sidewalk and protecting the foundation.

Once we can move forward into pursuing solutions, the likelihood is that the city will not be able to pay for all of the construction costs. We want to support the building owners in these costs, as saving this tree is a community effort. Repairing the sidewalk and finding solutions to protect the foundation will be costly. It is our priority to provide financial aid for these folks, encouraging them further to want to save the tree. As mentioned above if we are able to move forward (which is the City's final decision), we will create a second GoFundMe.

Currently, the state of the sidewalk is impassible, and we are encouraging the City Council to fix the sidewalk first, and then tackle the foundation issues. The sidewalk needs to be ADA accessible, while giving room for the tree to breathe. We know this may be difficult, but we suggest the possibility of removing one parking spot at the top of Walnut and Lincoln to provide this larger berth.

We are hoping to raise funds to support hiring professionals to create these plans, as well as hear input from community members with ideas and knowledge!

Thank you for your support!

http://www.santacruzsequoias.com