County fell down on job in tree case

A series of blunders by Sacramento County enabled home builder Reynen & Bardis to chop down hundreds of oak trees in Rancho Murieta without replacing them.

Last month, the county filed a lawsuit against Reynen & Bardis to force it to plant thousands of young trees to make up for 500 mature, healthy oaks it removed to make way for houses in the southern portion of Rancho Murieta.

If the company won't or can't plant the trees, the county is asking the court to make it pay $1.99 million – the estimated cost for the county to do the job.

With the formerly high-flying home builder in deep financial trouble, however, the county's lawsuit may have come too late to remedy the situation.

"The outcome thus far is not one that anyone can take pride in, that's for sure," said county Supervisor Don Nottoli, who represents Rancho Murieta.

The county required that Reynen & Bardis post a $100,000 bond to guarantee the job would be done – far less than the cost of planting the trees. But now county staff can't find the paperwork proving the bond exists, said Todd Smith, the senior environmental analyst overseeing the mitigation effort.

"In theory it should be somewhere within the county," Smith said. "We've requested it from Reynen & Bardis and have gotten no response, either."

Michele McCormick, a local public relations executive hired to speak for Reynen & Bardis, said the company would have no comment on the tree situation.

When Smith began overseeing the Reynen & Bardis mitigation effort for the county in 2003, he said he quickly discovered irregularities in the county's enforcement.

For instance, in 1999, the county Department of Environmental Review and Assessment signed off on issuing building permits for the Reynen & Bardis project even though the company had failed to file a required tree planting plan.

The plan was not actually completed until 2003, after many homes had been built, Smith said. The county continued to issue building permits even as the company fell further and further behind on its mitigation effort.

The development that displaced the oak trees is the same one where house foundations have cracked and dipped because they are inadequate to withstand the expansion of the clay soil beneath them when it rains. Groups of homeowners have sued Reynen & Bardis, which recently stopped fixing the foundations, citing financial problems.

Smith said he's not sure which county official waived the requirement for a tree planting plan and allowed Reynen & Bardis to begin construction.

"That decision was made at a higher level, and I'm not sure who made it," Smith said. "That question comes up all the time."

Dennis Yeast, who supervised the county's Department of Environmental Review and Assessment at the time, has retired and could not be reached for comment.

The employee whom Smith replaced on the Rancho Murieta project, Don Liddell, said he was unaware that Reynen & Bardis was even supposed to have a formal tree planting blueprint on file. He said he just tried to make sure the company planted enough trees to make up for those being cut.

As far as he knew, Liddell said, Reynen & Bardis was operating under "an understanding" with Yeast, the department director.

"We kept track of the trees they cut," said Liddell, who retired in 2004. "They never caught up. They were pretty far behind."

He said he was dismayed that the Board of Supervisors had allowed Reynen & Bardis to remove so many trees in the first place.

"It was one of the remaining untouched blue oak stands in Sacramento County," Liddell said. "That's why, in my view, it was a sad commentary."

The company did plant some trees, but many of them were put in inappropriate locations on the golf course or were not cared for, according to subsequent county review. A 2005 county report said the golf course plantings were never submitted to the county for approval.

Even after the 2003 tree planting plan was produced, it wasn't followed, said Rancho Murieta resident Ron Hand, who has spent years pestering the county on the issue.

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