Great Leucadia Tree War

Leucadia's trees are under attack from the city of Encinitas!
A timeline thus far:
First, the city cuts down the trees in Leucadia Park.
Then, they target several of the eucalyptus trees along 101 for removal.
Then, the city removes some of the trees from Orpheus Park because of some 1990's era verbal agreement with the developer of a condo complex. They would have removed more if an activist wasn't camped out in one of them. School kids from Ecke Central even got into the protest action.
I won't pretend to understand tree biology and know whether or not these trees needed to be removed. But the deal with the condos smells fishy. Assuming there was a verbal agreement, how long was this supposed to go on? Forever? How many other "verbal agreements" are there that we don't know about. I was surprised that city manager Cotton wouldn't listen to a sitting council member and delay the removal. How hard would it be to stop and figure things out.
Leucadia blog is covering all aspects of the Great Leucadia Tree War.