To the editor:

Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of the Springwood Heights Neighborhood Association and actively opposed the 500-plus unit apartment complex proposed adjacent to my neighborhood. I could see nothing but problems — anticipated and unanticipated — coming as a result of this project.

So, I was very glad when the Planning Commission voted, 8-0, to reject the proposed amendment to the Horizon 2020 Plan that would have helped facilitate this project. I thought we were done, only to see, to our neighborhood’s collective dismay, the destruction of a small patch of trees on the site of the envisioned apartment complex.

What is really irksome is that no one — not us, not this newspaper’s intrepid reporting staff — was able to stop the removal of the trees, identify who made the decision to so or clearly determine why the city wasn’t able to stop it. Now, all we’re left with is a large swath of overturned soil, the loss of the semi-privacy the trees afforded our homes, the clear destruction of a small section of habitat and a list of unanswered questions.