With more than 9,000 votes cast, almost 80 percent voted against Measure S.

Elliot Cohen, who drafted the Public Tree Act of 2004, was moving between election night events and was unable to be reached for comment.

The Tree Board, which would consist of 13 to 18 members, would also be responsible for creating licensing requirements for contractors who plant or remove public trees. Cohen drafted the measure in response to what he said was irresponsible destruction of public trees downtown and in residential neighborhoods and in opposition to the city’s plans to remove 98 trees from the Marina. Many of the removals are politically driven, says Cohen.

Fighting about trees has a tradition in Berkeley. In 1919, residents of what is now City Council District 5 drafted a letter to the council protesting removal of an ailing but venerable oak on Le Conte Ave. The oak could have been saved, they argued, given the proper attention.

“The matter of the removal of these trees should be given due consideration,” wrote the Northside citizens, “and submitted to the people most interested in their preservation, and not left to the uncertain judgment of an ever changing and probably uninformed city employee, who may in a few moments, before protest may take effect, destroy on or more trees which may be the most prized aspect of a district and are absolutely invaluable, in that they can never be replaced.”

Cohen has expressed much the same sentiment 85 years later.

City commission members, school board president John Selawsky, and the Berkeley Daily Planet staff have voiced support for Measure S. The Tree Board could cost the City up to $350,000 during the first years after it is enacted, but Cohen estimates the actual costs at closer to $60,000, the cost of paying one-part-time employee. Measure S will not increase public spending, according to the initiative’s text, since private funds will pay for the planting of new trees.

Measure S would give the board “broad and unfettered power to establish licensing requirements for all persons involved in work on public trees,” the city attorney says. But Cohen says this is false, citing limitations written into the act, such as a restriction for using donated money to plant in public space and a clause preventing contractors from charging the city excessive rates.

Seven of the nine city council members, including Mayor Tom Bates and Vice-mayor Maudelle Shirek, endorsed an argument against Measure S, saying that the Tree Board, if created, would “conflict with PG&E’s obligation to trim trees with power lines running through them,” and with the fire department’s ability to enforce fire codes.

The threat of a hill fire resonates powerfully with Berkeley voters, whose collective history includes the “Great Berkeley Fire” of 1923, which razed District 5 only a few years after residents petitioned to save its trees. But the argument that the Public Tree Act would increase fire hazards is intentionally misleading, says Cohen, who insists that the measure cannot interfere with PG&E tree trimming, which is mandated by state law.