A tree once grew in East Hampton. A big tree. A “perfectly healthy tree” that was likely “a couple of lifetimes” old, according to Dave Collins, the East Hampton Village superintendent of public works. Then, a homeowner decided it needed to go and in a spasm of governmental efficiency, it was promptly removed.
In late January a team of workers from the New York State Department of Transportation slowed traffic at the corner of Buell Lane and Main Street while they removed the Japanese zelkova, which had a diameter of over three feet.
When Olivia Brooks, the head of the tree committee at the Ladies Village Improvement Society, asked the D.O.T. workers why the tree was being removed, she said they told her, “ ‘It’s political. The order came from high up on the ladder.’ “
They offered apologies, then continued with their work.
“We know our trees,” she wrote in an email to The Star. “This should not have happened.”
At the Jan. 24 village board meeting, just days after the tree was removed, Joyce Tuttle, president of the L.V.I.S., which has allocated $160,000 of its budget to trees in 2025, told the board about the organization’s dedication to the village’s trees. “We have such a tree-rich environment in East Hampton,” she said, explaining that the volunteers care for over 3,500 trees within village boundaries and “report any that look distressed” to the village’s Public Works Department, with which they collaborate. As part of their tree-related duties, they maintain the familiar memorial plaques, 700 of them, found at the base of some trees. Turns out the zelkova had been adorned since 1978 with a memorial plaque dedicated to Ronnie Milford.
The tree seems to have fallen victim to a cross-jurisdictional communication gap.
“The tree near the intersection of State Route 114 (Buell Lane) and State Route 27 (Main Street) was removed after New York State Department of Transportation was asked to inspect it and crews determined that it posed a hazard to area pedestrians and motorists,” said Stephen Canzoneri, a spokesman for the D.O.T. “Safety is always NYSDOT’s top priority. NYSDOT is planning to replace the tree.”
But was it unsafe? Not so, according to Mr. Collins. In fact, days before it was removed, village crews had inspected the trees on Buell Lane, and the village contracted with arborists at Whitmores to remove dead wood and prune the trees. “That tree already had dead stuff taken out of it,” he said. “The zelkova was a healthy tree. The homeowner was complaining about the trees on Main Street and the trees on Buell. I told him they were state trees, and none of them were hazard trees so they weren’t a priority on our end.”
By contrast, Mr. Collins said there were many examples of dangerous trees within the state’s right of way that have gone overlooked, despite village requests to have them inspected by the state. “It takes such a long time to get those guys mobilized. The shocking thing is they mobilized to take down a perfectly healthy tree when it’s almost impossible to get them to show up otherwise. That’s our main frustration.”
When pressed, the D.O.T. said it was alerted to the situation by former Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s office, which passed along the concerns of a neighborhood resident who lives adjacent to the tree and feared that it posed a danger to his property and passers-by.
However, despite multiple requests, Mr. Canzoneri could not produce any sort of arborist report that said the tree was sick. Russell Kratoville, the director of finance and development for the L.V.I.S., said his organization was never shown a work order. A tree on the opposite side of the homeowner’s driveway looks to be in worse shape than the removed tree, leading some to question if, making a bad situation worse, the wrong tree was removed.
In a letter to Mr. Canzoneri, Mr. Kratoville wrote “L.V.I.S. recognizes that the coordination between the state and village must be primary for the state-owned trees inside the boundaries of the incorporated village. L.V.I.S. remains comfortable in having the village be our conduit for that information. However, I would ask that we have an introductory meeting with all three parties to discuss a simple go-forward process. L.V.I.S. is solely interested in continuing its nearly century-and-a-half-year-old tradition of being a major stakeholder in the care and maintenance of the trees within the Village of East Hampton.”
As of earlier this week, a meeting had yet to be scheduled.
While an old line of village code reads “No person shall in anywise mutilate, cut down, remove, injure or destroy shade trees planted along public highways, streets or sidewalks without a permit from the Mayor or Board of Trustees,” it’s not clear how that applies to trees in the state right of way. In fact, most of the village’s prized Dutch elm trees were planted in the state right of way.
Further, there are no clearing laws in the village. This, much to the surprise of a Pantigo Road resident who claims a property next to her, purchased in July, was clear-cut. She said the owner removed “30 trees, some more than a hundred years old,” and then put the property back on the market for $1.5 million more than his purchase price.
In December, she co-signed a letter to the East Hampton Village Board with 21 other village residents asking them to enact legislation that would prohibit clear-cutting on village properties.
“We are not asking the board to outlaw tree removal, but to impose modest restrictions that balance the public and private interests,” they wrote. Along with the letter, they provided the board with two photographs of the Pantigo Road parcel that was cleared. “The photos speak eloquently to the urgent need for legislation that protects community resources from irremediable destruction.”
Mayor Jerry Larsen said in a conversation last week that he was considering enacting legislation similar to Sag Harbor’s. Nonetheless, it would not protect the trees along the state rights of way, thus highlighting the importance of communication between the state and village.
