For Immediate Release June 12, 2024
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Amid Tree Uproar Tumwater Mayor Cancels Meeting of City’s Tree Advisory Board
TUMWATER—In what has become the city’s most contentious issue over trees in
memory, Tumwater Mayor Debbie Sullivan canceled the June meeting of the very
committee concerned with municipal trees.
Since public discovery of the mayor’s plans to cut down the historic 400-year-old Davis
Meeker Garry Oak that is listed on the city’s historic register, citizens have been
petitioning the city to preserve and care for the tree.
“This is a subversion of the public process,” said Michelle Peterson, a lifelong
Tumwater-Olympia resident, of the cancellation. “Mayor Sullivan has demonstrated that
she has no interest in the will of the people.”
In an email dated May 28, 2024 and obtained by Save the Davis Meeker Garry Oak,
Tumwater city staffer Alyssa Jones Wood, at the direction of the mayor, informed the
board that “Neither the Chair nor I have anything for you all to discuss at our June
meeting. As such, the Tree Board meeting will be cancelled.”
May 28 was four days after a Thurston County Superior Court judge issued a restraining
order against the city, preventing them from cutting down the tree before the issue could
be decided in court.
Nearly a hundred citizens turned out in person and online to a city council meeting on
June 4 and 39 testified against Mayor Sullivan’s plan to kill the tree and the babies of
the migratory kestrels currently nesting there.
However, and in light of the unprecedented citizen turn out to comment on preserving
the tree, and despite many letters in support, the Tumwater Tree Board meeting was not
rescheduled. The mayor is actively working against citizen efforts to preserve the historic oak.
It is located on the old Cowlitz Trail, used for millennia by Indigenous People and later by
setters on what became a northern branch of the Oregon Trail. The tree was a landmark
for travelers. Garry oaks are Washington’s only native species of oak and Garry oak habitat is protected under state law. Mayor Sullivan overrode the Historic Preservation Commission’s refusal to remove the tree from the Tumwater Historic Register, claimed she had emergency authority to skip getting the required permit for taking down the tree, got bids for the removal
without opportunity for review or comment, and went to court to remove a temporary
restraining order sparing the tree obtained by Save the Davis Meeker Garry Oak
(SDMGO) citizens group.
SDMGO asks citizens to reach out directly to Tumwater city officials by emailing