Holding Atlanta City Government Accountable

From the Buckhead Reporter... Tree Next Door plots advocacy by Michael Jacobs write the author June 12, 2009 The new Buckhead-centered tree-protection organization in Atlanta has finalized its name: The Tree Next Door. The group had tentatively adopted the name Canopy Keepers Atlanta but voted overwhelmingly for the name change at a meeting of 14 members June 1. Shel Schlegman, who chaired the Atlanta Tree Protection Commission for 2½ years, pushed the new name and prepared stationery with a disappearing-tree logo for the group. "Everybody who came before the tree commission got involved because of the tree next door," he said in explaining the name. Patty Jenkins, who is chairing the group, expressed doubts about the clarity of the new name, but others appreciated the vagueness. "We don't want to scare people off" with a name that's "too Greenpeacey" or militant, Debbie Moscato said. The name comes with a tag line: "An organization of neighbo...

This just in from Atlanta Progressive News… although it doesn't say much more about the City's response than what has already been posted in this blog, this article is an excellent synopsis of the saga of Tom Coffin and how the current City Administration has quashed our city’s tree ordinance. City Responds in Fired Arborist Lawsuit By Alice Gordon, Staff Writer, The Atlanta Progressive News (June 12, 2009) http://atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0469.html Also, comment at our blog: http://et.ratepoint.com/lt/4789a665f19623753d18e59db16e4a3e/a829e35a51d44c04aa73a460e86f494d (APN) ATLANTA -- The City of Atlanta has responded in a lawsuit brought by Tom Coffin, Ph.D, the former Chief Arborist for the City of Atlanta who was fired in July of 2008. As previously reported by several outlets including the New York Times newspaper last year, Coffin produced evidence to the City in July 2008 that, while he had cited 70 violations of the tree code--a code which he had helped write--since...