Contact:
Michelle Peterson, 360 878-7689, michellepeterson.RN@gmail.com
Ronda Larson Kramer, 360 259-3076, ronda@larsonlawpllc.com
Selected documents obtained by SDMGO through public records requests at: Public Records (Media Resources/Public Records Requests)
Website: Save the Davis Meeker Oak: https://www.davis-meeker-oak.org/
Hashtags: #tumwateroak #SaveTheTree
State Legislator Addresses City Administrator’s Directive for Silence on Oak’s Fate
TUMWATER—In what has become the City of Tumwater’s most contentious issue over trees in memory, City Administrator Lisa Parks told staff in an internal email last October to keep from the public the city’s plans to remove a 400-year-old tree next to the Olympia Airport.
Washington State Representative Beth Doglio said of Parks’s internal email, “I think the city should pause, reflect and reassess the public process concerning this historic tree, given the tremendous community and tribal concern that has come to light.”
Doglio represents the state’s 22nd Legislative District, which includes Tumwater.
Lack of Public Process
In an October 27, 2023 email obtained by Save the Davis Meeker Garry Oak, Parks wrote to staffers, “. . . there shouldn’t be any agendas that have this topic as an item listed . . . I would ask that any . . . conversations about the topic remain internal to this group.”
Later in the same email chain, another city employee explained the reason for keeping it a secret was to “get ahead of any backlash.” Tumwater Parks and Recreation Director Chuck Denney responded that Parks was disregarding “all kinds of things that need to get done.” Denney said, “Mum’s the word I guess—we are not ‘sharing’ the possibility that the tree may be removed to anyone yet.”
Though Parks’s email had noted that there were several internal steps needed before a public process was begun, these steps were not taken. Instead, Mayor Debbie Sullivan made a unilateral decision before a March 11, 2024, council work session to destroy the tree with minimal public process and notification.
Councilmember Joan Cathey remarked during that work session that the council should have been brought into the process earlier to afford time to consider options and review the issue with the community.
City Arborist Unqualified to Assess Tree Risk
Parks claimed in a May 14, 2024, memo to the city council that City Arborist Kevin McFarland who recommended removal had the credentials to do a tree risk assessment (“TRAQ”). This qualification provides assurance that an arborist has the training needed to accurately assess risk. The city arborist’s signature block states that he has this qualification. But a website listing arborist credentials indicates he lacks the qualification.
Paul Dubois of Keyport, Washington, a certified tree-risk-assessment arborist, found the danger level for injury from the Davis Meeker Garry Oak to be moderate at most, and found that it could easily be reduced to low with selective pruning and a support system. Dubois volunteered his time to perform an independent assessment of the tree on June 19, 2024.
The results of Dubois’s risk assessment are consistent with a June 2023 email from McFarland to Tumwater’s operations supervisor stating the risk was not high. The city council was never made aware of McFarland’s internal statement that directly conflicts with the conclusion in his October 2023 report to the city. In his October report, he recommended destroying the tree. McFarland has not responded to a request for comment on his contradictory statements.
Because the Davis Meeker Oak is on the Tumwater Register of Historic Places, the city must get a “waiver of a certificate of appropriateness” from the Tumwater Historic Commission before it is allowed to remove the tree—something the city has not obtained, in violation of the city’s own ordinances.
The city has not filed for a required permit from the Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP). DAHP has concluded that based on the historic and tribal association of the tree, it is an archaeological site.
Airport Expansion
Before becoming city administrator on June 16, 2023, Lisa Parks was the executive services director at the Port of Olympia, which operates the Olympia Airport next to where the tree stands.
The port is currently updating the airport’s master plan. The unadopted draft preferred alternative plan projects significant future land developed for general aviation (114 acres), aviation-related/compatible industry (245 acres), and additional area for parallel taxiways.
Local airport activist Jan Witt summarized the airport development plans that she and others were told about at an open house in 2023 held by the Port of Olympia: “The plans would reconfigure the airport to accommodate commercial passenger and freight air service by constructing a new passenger terminal and 500 parking spaces and room for more and by making taxiway changes to increase capacity and refurbishing a portion of the main runway, likely including strengthening it to accommodate heavier aircraft. Plus the plans would add a new turf runway parallel to the main north/south runway,” Witt explained.
Warren Hendrickson, the airport’s senior manager, explained to the Tumwater City Council at a February 28, 2023 work session that by 2040, the forecast potential is 20,000 passengers per month using the airport. He suggested that if the airport was not expanded to meet a forecasted deficit in the aviation industry, it would result in losing out on $31 billion in economic gains and jobs.
The Davis Meeker oak is adjacent to the end of Runway 17/35 at the airport. A 2003 environmental impact study found that the tree hinders flexibility in the use of that runway because it constitutes an “obstruction” that dictates “precision instrument approach minimums” to the runway. Part of the 2013 master plan update also mentioned infrastructure improvements to Old Highway 99 at the tree, including widening the road to four or five lanes and improving the intersection at Bonniewood Drive SE where the tree stands. That work has not been done to date.
The city maintains that airport expansion and road improvements are unrelated to the decision to remove the tree. Thurston County resident Sharron Coontz voiced skepticism: “The mayor stated unequivocally that the oak is coming down, as if there are no other options such as pruning,” said Coontz.
“That only makes me more convinced that the city has hidden motives, whether to do with the widening of Old Highway 99 or airport expansion or some other plans. The mayor has claimed that she wants an ‘unbiased’ evaluation of the tree. If so, wouldn’t she say, ‘Perhaps this tree could be saved without compromising public safety. Let’s investigate that’? Instead, she seems to have already made up her mind.”
Foregone Conclusion by City
The mayor promised at a June 4 city council meeting attended by an overflow crowd to get an unbiased evaluation in the form of a follow-up risk assessment. However, destruction of the 400-year-old tree appears predetermined, as Sullivan later told the Olympian newspaper on June 12 that the tree will not be there in the end: “It’s an historic place and will stay an historic place, it just won’t have the tree standing there,” said Sullivan.
The mayor put a request for qualifications for the follow-up assessment on the city council agenda for its July 2nd meeting.
The Davis Meeker Garry Oak is located on the old Cowlitz Trail, which was used for millennia by indigenous peoples and later by settlers on what became a northern branch of the Oregon Trail. The tree was a landmark for travelers.
Photo credit: Open Knowledge Foundation.