As of 2006, sadly, much of what we predicted in 2002 has come true.

In our rebuttal, we wrote: even his next-door neighbor seems to have no qualms about permanently parking his "egregious" SUV directly across the sidewalk. This referred to one of the abutting property owner's exhibits, a photo which showed exactly that. Our own photo from 2002 shows the healthy Corymbia ficifolia in question (foreground) and the next-door neighbor's SUV, illegally parked on the sidewalk.

We wrote: each new curb cut is seen by car owners as license to illegally park across the sidewalk. Whereas before a driveway is built only parallel parking is possible, now the person to whom the driveway belongs claims the right to use it to indiscriminately block all pedestrian access -- by the very young, the very old, blind people, people with mobility problems, abled and disabled alike.

In 2006, the tree has been killed, and has been replaced with a curb cut and a new stretch of sidewalk (the lighter-colored section in our photo). As we predicted, this stretch of sidewalk is now being blocked by a variety of illegally-parked motor vehicles -- a white SUV in this case. Note that the sidewalk is also blocked by the silver car in the foreground. (Though not seen in this photo, the neighbor's black SUV also still blocks the sidewalk on a regular basis.)

As the photo shows, the street tree abutting that neighbor's property is a bit stunted, due to damage from the winds. A we wrote in our appellant brief, this was part of a row of identical trees which were all planted at the same time, forming a 2400 square foot tree canopy, but now one tree is damaged and another has, of course, been killed to make room for cars.