In a city where our employees complain they have too much to do, we receive limited public services in exchange for our tax dollars, and our city government wants to raise our taxes to pay for big bumps in city hall salaries, you’d think our city manager wouldn’t invite more projects, especially stupid ones. But you would be wrong.
A recent episode of “why the h*ll are you wasting my tax dollars on this” brings us to the city manager’s report at the February 24, 2025, city council meeting. What happened? It apparently all started when a Middle Lake Road resident topped off his privately owned trees on his privately owned property. 😱
Let’s unpack what city manager Jonathan Smith told us (his comments are in italics and taken from the informal meeting transcript published on the Clarkston Sunshine website – please click through for the whole discussion in context because I’ve taken things out of order to show the chronology):
Smith said this is, what’s the cause of this is a homeowner on Middle Lake Road topped off some pretty significant trees on Middle Lake Road, on his property. Presumably, I don’t know the details behind it, but it’s sad. These were major trees that were just topped off. I’m not sure what the impetus behind that was, but it looks a little silly.
Translation: Private trees, private property, no one’s damned business. But wait – this is Clarkston, so we can’t just leave it there!
When I talked to a couple of the neighbors that have complained to me that how did this happen, they said these were all thriving trees. They weren’t dead . . .
Translation: more than one neighbor didn’t like what someone else was doing with his/her personal property (and this should concern the rest of us why exactly?). Contacting the city manager because you don’t like what your neighbor does with his own property was the first stupid decision point. (Seriously, who does this?)
But wait, there’s more.
Smith said and they asked me, how did you let this happen. I said, I don’t have any control over this. And nobody ever came to me and said, hey, I’m thinking about topping off all my trees. What do you think about that? They never asked for permission. . . . So, it’s just a request that I got from homeowners, mainly in Middle Lake, like, what happened here, and how could you let this happen?
Translation: the city manager not only also didn’t like what the private property owners did with their own trees (thinking “it looks a little silly”) but his bigger issue is the property owner didn’t engage in a game of “Mother May I” with city hall first; more specifically, they didn’t call Smith to ask for permission.
The matter should have ended when Smith told the complaining neighbors the city has no control over what private property owners do with their own trees on their own property. It might have been rude to add “please get a life,” but that should have been inferred.
Oh, but it didn’t stop there.
Tom [Ryan, city attorney] and I have talked about this. Wait, what? The second stupid decision point was when Smith decided taxpayers should pay legal services fees because two neighbors complained about what someone did with their own property. (Further evidence the city doesn’t need any more of your tax dollars since they aren’t good stewards of the ones they receive now.)
So, rather than me, though, pursuing this, or having the planning commission pursue this ordinance change, I was just looking for some guidance from city council. Is this something you think, I’m not gonna vote on this, just looking for feedback. Is this something we should pursue? . . . I could have the Planning Commission investigate this and bring some examples of other municipalities. And then you can decide whether it’s something you want to act on or not.
And there you have the third stupid decision point – let’s talk about this at a city council meeting!
And what do you think happened at the city council meeting? Common sense would suggest that they all pointed out the moron-osity of getting involved in aesthetic disputes between private property owners. But that’s not what happened in the clown show that is Clarkston government. Instead, there was much discussion about whether we should change our 110-year-old tree ordinance to accommodate the wishes of two neighbors who didn’t like what happened in someone else’s backyard.
A couple of the comments from your city council members were quite disturbing:
Councilmember Gary Casey thinks we should eliminate Section 96.03(B) entirely, which is the ordinance section that expressly states private property owners can cut down their own trees. No surprise – Smith agreed with Casey.
Casey also claimed that “allowing” property owners to decide what happens with our private property as expressly permitted in our 110-year-old ordinance will “destroy the character of our town.” (Huh?)
Attorney Tom Ryan suggested we should apparently care what other cities are doing for some reason and said “I mean, it just, so it probably would be helpful to look at what’s going, I mean, because there are a lot of tree ordinances now where people can prescribe because people, you know, that’s a public resource and whatnot, even though it’s on private property . . .” So, private property should be converted into a public resource? Sounds kind of Marxist-y to me, but Smith agreed with this position, saying “what we could do to start is do a little survey, as we have in other cases, survey what other cities have done, look at the wording in their ordinances. Other mature cities, like maybe Huntington Woods or another city that has some beautiful mature trees to see what they have done.”
Councilmember Ted Quisenberry agreed with all this, stating “if you’re saying I, as the property owner, have the right to do whatever I want on my property, whether it’s cutting trees or replacing windows, I should be able to. But we’ve decided as a city, and the type of city we want to be, that there are gonna be controls put in place for you to do certain things on your property.” You might recall Quisenberry lives within the historic district and enjoys the extensive city meddling with his private property because that’s the type of city he wants to live in. Quisenberry even thought defeating the historic district commission charter proposal was the most pressing issue facing the city last November, so by inference, he is against protecting historic district residents from abuse and providing additional due process protection. Since not even one blade of grass on the property where the trees were cut is located within the historic district, what Quisenberry is telling you is he’d like to bring the oppressiveness he enjoys – and that historic district residents are forced to live with – to everyone in the city.
Mayor Sue Wylie was the only council member who clearly supports individual property owner rights and forcefully spoke against the insanity. She wanted to eliminate Section 96.03(A) of the tree-cutting ordinance, which prohibits cutting down trees except as allowed in the ordinance. (In lawyer speak, 96.03(A) allows private property owners to cut down their own trees because 96.03(B) says it’s OK, so it’s a convoluted way of saying that no one can cut down publicly owned trees.) Wylie said “I don’t think we should be telling people whether they can cut their trees down or not. I don’t care if they’re a shade tree or an ornamental tree. I think it’s none of our business . . . it’s still my property. If I want to cut down a tree because I’m going to do something else or I don’t like the tree or it’s messy, I don’t think the city has the business, and I know the trees he’s talking about. . . . I don’t think it’s my business or anybody’s business to say he can or cannot do that . . .”
Council members Erica Jones and Laura Rodgers asked questions about the wording of the tree ordinance but didn’t say anything about private property owner’s rights. Council members Amanda Forte and Al Avery were absent.
Unfortunately, Mayor Wylie’s sane voice did not prevail on February 24 and the city manager got his way once again, excitedly claiming in his March 10 city manager report that: “Following up on a discussion in the February 24th Council meeting about the City’s Tree Ordinance, the Planning Commission agreed this week to evaluate existing ordinances in other municipalities and then submit a recommendation to Council.”
And that was the fourth stupid decision point.
If you’ve ever wondered why you get virtually zero city services that you care about, and why the city will be asking for more money to provide the minimal city services you do receive, this is why. The biggest wastes of taxpayer dollars and city employee time always seem to originate with Smith – who can’t even tell two nosy neighbors to get a life. And the city council always rubber stamps every single one of his requests.
No wonder our population has dropped. People aren’t stupid.
If one goes to the city website, they will find that there is a Tree Committee. In the description of that committee, it states, “All aspects of City wide tree management are handled by this committee.” It seems the council and city manager know nothing about this committee, the city’s tree ordinance, or much else related to this subject since they want to make up things as they go.
Traditionally, the Tree Committee has only dealt with trees on city owned and managed properties. That may be spelled out somewhere, but I don’t know where. I’m not sure if the beavers that are chewing trees in Depot Park consulted the committee or not. The description seems to imply a city wide management of the tree inventory and policies even if others in the city government think otherwise or simply ignore the committee.
As an aside, the Tree Committee has a history of spending city funds first and asking for approval later, ordering and planting trees with no review or approval from anyone except themselves. This violates all sorts of ordinances and laws but much like the recent activities of the city manager and attorney, that’s OK because to them, it sounds like a good thing to do with taxpayer money.