Urban forest fiasco
August 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm by Thomas Wheatley in News
Tom Coffin loves trees. And when we say he loves trees, he reaaally loves trees.
The unfamiliar face – who was the city’s senior arborist until he was fired July 29 – is the epicenter of the latest scandal to emanate from already embattled City Hall.
The city’s failure to specify why Coffin was fired (or who called for it) has led many to speculate about the cause – and jump to the conclusion that developers saw him as a threat. Even the New York Times took notice – and questioned whether Atlanta’s development machine had chalked a win over the environmental community.
The uproar began the day after Coffin, whose job it was to enforce the city’s controversial tree ordinance, sent an e-mail to residents and members of city government in which he claimed he was fired from his $50,900-a-year position for the most curious of reasons: doing his job.
Read the rest of this article here.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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