The City Council meeting in which speakers were allowed to comment on Tom Coffin's firing was held this afternoon. While some speakers focused on the unfairness of his firing, most speakers stressed that they felt that firing practices were being used by the City Arborist Division as a way to wriggle out of having to enforce the Tree Ordinance.
My speech (limited to two minutes) was as follows:
“My name is deLille Anthony and I live at (address withheld). As a resident of North Atlanta, I am here to ask what kind of message does it send when (according to Tom Coffin’s report) the city arborist who filed 70 illegal tree removal cases during the first half of this year and conducted MORE site inspections than any other city arborist is replaced with a city arborist who filed only 1 illegal tree removal case during the first half of this year and conducted the FEWEST site inspections of all the city arborists?
I’ll tell you what message it sends. It says that all developers on the North side of Atlanta now have a free ticket to cut down any tree they want to with NO repercussions. THE TREE ORDINANCE WILL NOT BE ENFORCED.
Wow! What did the developers have to do to get THAT favor? I hope the investigation Mary Norwood is calling for “un-Covers”, excuse me, uncovers that information.”
After I spoke, Janell Bazile was called to speak. She is the arborist who replaced Tom Coffin and I refer to above. Janell spoke about her education in the field of forestry services, and said that the reason she had fewer cases than Tom Coffin was because Tom was assigned to the most active development region in the city. She also said that if you compare her record from last year while she served in the north region that Tom just most recently covered (and Janell covered before Tom replaced her), you would find that their records were very similar. She said if anyone wanted that information -- and she held a document in the air -- all they had to do was ask her.
Well, of course, I asked Janell for this information as soon as she finished speaking. She replied that she had to get back to her job and that I could “get it from the media”. I told her that I wanted to get this information from her because I wanted to understand the full picture, and that so far I was making my assessment based solely on the information provided by Tom Coffin. She said that the information was available and I could get it myself.
"Hmm… that's odd," I thought. If someone had just accused me of not doing my job in front of the entire City Council, and I had data to prove that person wrong, why would I not be more forthcoming with that data?
My speech (limited to two minutes) was as follows:
“My name is deLille Anthony and I live at (address withheld). As a resident of North Atlanta, I am here to ask what kind of message does it send when (according to Tom Coffin’s report) the city arborist who filed 70 illegal tree removal cases during the first half of this year and conducted MORE site inspections than any other city arborist is replaced with a city arborist who filed only 1 illegal tree removal case during the first half of this year and conducted the FEWEST site inspections of all the city arborists?
I’ll tell you what message it sends. It says that all developers on the North side of Atlanta now have a free ticket to cut down any tree they want to with NO repercussions. THE TREE ORDINANCE WILL NOT BE ENFORCED.
Wow! What did the developers have to do to get THAT favor? I hope the investigation Mary Norwood is calling for “un-Covers”, excuse me, uncovers that information.”
After I spoke, Janell Bazile was called to speak. She is the arborist who replaced Tom Coffin and I refer to above. Janell spoke about her education in the field of forestry services, and said that the reason she had fewer cases than Tom Coffin was because Tom was assigned to the most active development region in the city. She also said that if you compare her record from last year while she served in the north region that Tom just most recently covered (and Janell covered before Tom replaced her), you would find that their records were very similar. She said if anyone wanted that information -- and she held a document in the air -- all they had to do was ask her.
Well, of course, I asked Janell for this information as soon as she finished speaking. She replied that she had to get back to her job and that I could “get it from the media”. I told her that I wanted to get this information from her because I wanted to understand the full picture, and that so far I was making my assessment based solely on the information provided by Tom Coffin. She said that the information was available and I could get it myself.
"Hmm… that's odd," I thought. If someone had just accused me of not doing my job in front of the entire City Council, and I had data to prove that person wrong, why would I not be more forthcoming with that data?
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