Help Close the Tree Destruction Loophole
A quiet rule in Shorewood lets large tree removals avoid elected oversight. This narrow amendment would close that loophole without creating a new veto or review standard.
The rule almost nobody knows
Want a variance — a few feet off a setback, a shed in the wrong place? Your project goes to the City Council. Elected officials look at it, trees included.
Want to take down a hundred mature trees, on a project that happens not to need a subdivision or a variance? Or where the variance is requested after the trees are cut? No elected official ever sees it. The tree plan goes in with the building permit, the Planning Department approves it, and that's the end of it. [Section IV.B.2.b, if you want to look it up.]
That's the loophole. An assumption that big tree removals would be part of something the Council already reviews. They often aren't. The trigger is paperwork, not trees.
Which means the City's oversight of its own woods runs backwards. Trivial project, full review. Whole original woods, nobody. And developers get to decide who controls their tree cutting plans - get the permit, cut and then request the variance and you avoid the Council.
Why that matters more than it sounds
Nothing here means anyone has done anything wrong. But staff cannot be voted out and the Council can. Residents get exactly one lever over how this city treats its trees, and it is five people who have to face voters.
Right now the Policy lets those five never know. That isn't oversight. It's an arrangement in which nobody has to answer for anything.
And worse, it means you don't have a voice. The City doesn't publish permit applications and there's no hearing. You get no chance to express your opinion. One day the trees are there, the next they're gone. If the Council votes, then you can give your input.
We've seen what discretion without oversight or accountability means. On one project we pulled the whole City file under the Data Practices Act. The Policy gives the City eleven separate powers to protect trees; there is no record that any of them was used, discussed or even considered. Not one. Read that again - not one, in a pristine natural area. And the Council was never told. Eleven Tools, Not One Used.
That isn't unusual. It's the kind of systematic bias that comes from unsupervised discretion does, everywhere, every time.
The fix is one sentence
Any project removing more than five significant trees comes to the Council — whether or not it needs a plat or a variance — with a written statement of which protections were considered and what was decided. Counted across adjoining parcels and phases, so a project can't be split into pieces that each fall under the line.
No new standard. The decision gets written down, and the people who face voters get to weigh in.
What you can do, in about ninety seconds
Under the Council's own bylaws, one member can ask that this go on a future agenda, and if one other member agrees, it's on. Two people. That's the whole procedure.
We laid it out for the Council on October 12. Nobody asked. It is not on any agenda.
So ask them.
Copy and paste this
jlabadie@shorewoodmn.gov, ngorham@shorewoodmn.gov, dmaddy@shorewoodmn.gov, gsanschagrin@shorewoodmn.gov, mdigruttolo@shorewoodmn.gov
Subject: Tree Preservation Policy — please put the reporting amendment on an agenda
Dear Council Member,
I'm a Shorewood resident. I'm asking you to place the proposed Tree Preservation Policy amendment on a future Council agenda under Section V.o — the one requiring that any project removing more than five significant trees come to the Council with a written statement of which tree protection powers were considered.
Right now a project can remove any number of mature trees without the Council ever seeing it, as long as it doesn't need a subdivision or a variance. I'd like that to change. Please ask for this to be placed, or second another member's request.
Thank you,
[your name]
What's at stake
If you want to know what's actually at stake out there, meet Arthur, the oak the City calls tree 11036. He's about a hundred and thirty years old, and he'll be a bag of mulch at Home Depot soon if we don't take action.
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