Alas, Brave Little Norway Spruce. We Hardly Knew Ye!

“I care about trees, Father” young George said. “I know their importance to us and I want to make sure we preserve them. I’m always willing to partner with parents or other authority to make sure we do what is best for the public good. Next time I’ll have more time to work with those who are interested in helping me get the appropriate tree. Once the weather clears up, I would love to meet the community (here in Virginia’s Stafford County) and plant a new tree.” – Get thee from my sight, you wretched boy, cried his father in transports,  before I smack thee; enraged am I, George, that you killed my tree; further that you have wounded me me for it a thousand fold, by showing no hint of remorse or contrition. Such an act of vandalism in my son, is a heart-sickness of more pain than a thousand blows of your hatchet, though laced with iodine, and their stripes of purest lye.

I’m sorry to see that Mayor Jackson just does not get it. The Mayor is still defending the City’s misbegotten decision to harvest a perfectly healthy, 40-year (that’s 4 decades! 2 score!)  old, 35-foot publicly owned Norway Spruce tree from the City’s Franklin Park in December for a couple of weeks’ service as Trenton’s Official 2014 City Hall Christmas Tree.

After 40 years of bothering no one in Franklin Park, innocently making oxygen, providing shade and sequestering about one ton of carbon dioxide, our brave Norway Spruce has now been unceremoniously mulched, its 2000 pounds of carbon released into our overburdened atmosphere. Since we are in the dead of winter, we can’t really even hope that the new mulch created by the tree’s passing is sustaining the life of other trees, shrubs, and bushes.

Our plucky little Spruce likely lies unmarked, and unlamented in some local landfill.

Thanks for caring, Mayor Jackson!

All sarcasm aside, I am still upset at the way this entire affair has unwound, and the lengths to which the Administration – and now the Mayor, on record – discount their mistakes and dismiss their failures as trivial in comparison to the great affairs of the City that they are managing. Please, regard how I believe this incident is a perfect lesson – writ large and small – about First, how NOT to first plan and conduct public action; and Second, how NOT to deflect, demur and cover up when coming under criticism after the fact.

In the matter of the first question, I’ve written about this several times already, both last year and this. I will just re-state that the matter of holiday celebrations and decorations are nice and all, but hardly essential civic functions. Especially in a city as broke as Trenton. I do not believe that providing City Hall and other public property with seasonal decorations is a legitimate use of federal funding (which was used last year to buy a tree) or property held and protected by our officials in Indefinite and Permanent Trust for our citizens.

If Mayor Jackson and Council would like holiday decorations, fine. Find donations for them. If those aren’t sufficient, they should dig into their own campaign funds for them. It’s a definitely permitted use of such funds. Spread among 7 Council members and 1 Mayor, how much are we talking about?

And if no funds can be found, then let’s make do with a few wreaths, perhaps some lights, and perhaps some tinsel. That will be fine. After all, the real Holiday Spirit is in our hearts, we’re told. Right???

We don’t NEED a TREE to have the HOLIDAYS!!

OK??

Next, How NOT to cover up after the fact.

Is “cover up” a strong term? It is, but it is appropriate here. When the tree first went up at City Hall, I filed an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request for any and all documentation connected with, among other things,  the attempt to find a tree by donation, and assurances that the harvest of the tree in Franklin Park was performed legally, in accordance with City Ordinances.

It took from December 8 until January 5 for the City to reply to my OPRA request. On that date, the City Clerk’s office replied that there was nothing on file with the City about this. No documentation, no emails, no permits, nada. So, nothing was furnished to me to satisfy the OPRA request. I thought that unlikely at the time, but didn’t have the chance to follow that up until now.

This morning, in a Trentonian article by Penny Ray, Mayor Eric Jackson was interviewed about the matter. Mr. Ray writes, “The mayor’s office said the city placed advertisements for a 2014 holiday tree donation, but there were few offers: one tree was inadequate, Mayor Eric Jackson said, and it was difficult to access the other one.  ‘We only had two (offers) and they were not feasible for our use,’ Jackson said.

That statement has my attention. Advertisements were placed? Offers were received? Two of them? Tell me more.

The City in its official OPRA reply told me they had nothing to show me. According to their official reply, there are no advertisements to show me. No offers for donated trees came in to describe to me.

Which answer is correct? Were there ads, or not? Were there two offers for donated trees, or not? Where I sit, the Mayor and the City’s OPRA response cannot both be correct? Who is wrong?

In my OPRA request, I asked for all documentation that would show and describe the process by which the Franklin Park tree was harvested. Specifically I wanted to see how the city determined that the appropriate city laws were complied with. Along with the rest of my OPRA filing, I got nothing in response to this request.

“So,: Mr. Ray writes, today, “the Public Works Department decided to use one from Franklin Park, and the decision to cut down the tree was 100 percent within the confines of the law, Jackson said.”

How is he so sure? Mr. Jackson is not a lawyer, any more than his unlamented predecessor was. That being the case, how is the Mayor so certain the cutting decision was “100 percent within the confines of the law”?

Who told him that it was? And how?

According to the OPRA response I got, there were no emails or memoes, no phone logs or other notes having ANYTHING TO DO with cutting down this tree.

So, HOW can Mayor Jackson be SO sure?

I’d like to know the reasoning behind this, because the discussion of the city’s Tree ordinance in Mr. Ray’s article bears little resemblance to the ordinance I read.

She writes,

But some people believe the administration should have held a public hearing to receive feedback from citizens about whether the tree should be cut down. Those residents cite a subsection of the city’s code regulating the removal of trees that says “no tree shall be removed prior to the posting of a notice that a public hearing may be requested to determine whether removal of the tree is necessary to protect the health, safety or welfare of the residents.”

But that passage pertains to the removal of trees that endanger the public’s safety, and the tree removed from Franklin Park posed no danger at all, according to people interviewed for this story. So, what should the city have done?

Well, in my reading of the ordinance, imminent threat to public safety is one way that trees may be removed from public property without an open process. Public safety can be given as a reason at a public hearing requesting the tree’s removal and, it seems to me, about the only criterion that can normally be used to grant permission to harvest a tree.  Section 287-4 B. (2) says that the Open Space Advisory Board needs to conduct a hearing to discuss and approve a request to cull a tree. It seems to me, unless there is a public safety reason to do so, the tree stays put according to City law.

In any case, approval has to be provided by the Advisory Board. Which did not happen in this case.

So, what should the City have done, as Mr. Ray asks? Followed the damned law! Held a hearing!!

But, hey! I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know for a certainty what the law is or whether it was followed in this case. The City replied to me that it had nothing at all to show me about this process.

But today, Mayor Jackson is absolutely certain that his actions were “100 percent within the confines of the law.”

Oh, yeah? Show me.

In light of the mayor’s statements on record, I sent an email this morning to the City Clerk as well as others in the Administration who were included on the City’s official OPRA response to me. I have asked them to reconcile their determination that nothing exists on file with the City with the Mayor’s allusion today to advertisements, offers of donation and legal conclusions. I’ll let you know what I hear.

I hope that after all this, you have an idea why I am focusing right now on what is really a small issue in relation to everything else this City and its people face.

In my mind, a series of poor decisions were made, and actions taken that resulted in the unwarranted destruction of city property.

These decisions were made and actions were taken. in my opinion, in disregard for the law.

When an attempt was to secure information about how this happened, a legal OPRA request was stonewalled and ignored.

This morning, the Mayor offers a defense of his actions that seems at odds with information provided by others in the City, alluding to documents and judgments the City denies having.

Yeah, this is a small matter. But the whole way they’ve gone about it – before, during and after – make me think this is Standard Operating Procedure for them. If they cannot be trusted to handle the small things correctly, openly, legally; then how in the world can we trust them with the Big Things?

If the City can use this instance as an occasion to improve its communications; rededicate itself to full legal and ethical compliance with ordinances and proper procedure; and start to come clean with citizens about its actions; then maybe, just maybe, our plucky little Christmas Spruce 2014 will not have died in vain.