Today’s guest column was written by former Alachua County Commissioner Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson.
I’m not alone in noticing that it is hot as hell in Gainesville.
I work outside for part of each day and am fortunate that some of that work is beneath the canopy of large trees. When I’m not wringing out the sweat, I’m wringing my hands over the international, national, and state situations, where climate change is denied, energy policy makes no sense, environmental protections are being gutted, and land conservation, including the protection of our national and state parks, is being undone.
At least, I thought, we still had refuge in our blue bubble of Gainesville.
Then came July 2026.
During this month, when the sun is highest and shade is rare and precious, the City of Gainesville has been cutting down large trees on public property at an alarming rate.
In three projects overseen by the Public Works Department, the work on the ground has departed substantially from the published plans and presentations made to neighbors and the public.
Last week, large trees were removed within the downtown Streatery project, a place where people are expected to relax on broad paved areas beneath the shade of trees. This week, the City is cutting down a still-undetermined number of large live oaks that made NE 9th Street a true canopy road.
Ironically, this is being done as part of the street’s conversion into a bicycle boulevard, precisely the kind of place where shade is most essential. Along NE 8th Avenue, a number of stately and thriving cypress trees planted for Arbor Day in a drainage swale nearly forty years ago were disappeared for no apparent reason.
In each case, the doomed trees were never posted. The final removal plans apparently were never reviewed or approved by any of the City’s five certified arborists. It is likely that the City Manager, and almost certain that the City Commission, did not know about or approve the destruction before the chainsaws were cranked up.
We have all begun to recognize the feel of authoritarian times, but I never expected that spirit to reach our fair city’s government.
I know a little about tree policy, having watched it evolve during my wife Meg’s 23 years as Gainesville’s first City Arborist. During my twelve years as an Alachua County commissioner, we modeled much of the County’s tree protection program after the City’s. Gainesville once had one of the most respected urban forestry programs in Florida.
Among the best features of that program was the requirement that anyone seeking to remove a large tree post it for a period of time. That gave affected neighbors and the general public an opportunity to learn what was proposed and why.
The City also had a Tree Appeals Board that would meet at the site of a condemned tree in a public meeting. The independent tree professionals on that three-member panel would hear the arguments, listen to public input, inspect the tree, and decide whether it should be removed, trimmed, or preserved.
It was inexpensive, efficient, and procedurally elegant. Not everybody was happy with every decision, but the process was open, qualified professionals were involved, and there was an understandable record of how the tree’s fate had been decided.
A public outcry, a change in policy
After trees next to Harry’s Restaurant were saved at the last minute through a public outcry, the City Commission re-directed its staff to save the trees though alternatives they had previously rejected. The former City Manager subsequently changed the rules so that Gainesville’s public trees no longer had to be posted before removal.
Whatever her motivation, the practical result was to insulate staff decisions from public scrutiny. City crews and contractors could move quickly, trees could disappear before the public knew they were threatened, and the City’s own tree professionals could be left out of the loop until it was too late to do anything but apologize.
Today’s paradigm at the City of Gainesville appears to be: cut the tree first, deny that it deserved protection, revise or reinterpret the plans, and stonewall questions about who made the decision and why.
The public’s only apparent recourse is to listen for chainsaws and watch for construction activity near large trees. If citizens can halt the work until the next City Commission meeting, staff might finally be compelled to answer a few basic questions: What is being removed? What alternatives were considered? Who approved the decision? What is the City Arborist’s professional opinion?
This is happening despite every City Commissioner’s campaign literature and all the blah, blah, blah about the environment, trees, transparency, and listening to the public. Our current City Commission may not even realize that it is presiding over the dismantling of tree protection plans, policies, and programs painstakingly constructed over the past four decades.
Their predecessors did more than talk about protecting the environment. They adopted enforceable programs, created public processes, relied on qualified professionals, and held their managers accountable for results.
Those efforts helped make Gainesville’s urban forest one of our community’s defining features.
When government no longer follows its own rules, especially when those rules protect living beings that have no voice of their own, the public has both a right and a duty to intervene. By their fruits you shall know them; by their stumps, we shall know this City government. The best time to stop this destruction was before the first chainsaw started. The second-best time is now.
Contact the Gainesville City Commission and demand a halt to all non-emergency removals of large public trees until advance posting, professional arborist review, and a meaningful public appeal process have been restored.
For extra points, leave polite but firm phone messages of concern: City Commission email: CityComm@GainesvilleFL.gov,City Commissioners: 352-334-5015,City Manager: 352-335-5010, City Arborist: 352-316-5749
Speak for the trees.
Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson
Former Alachua County Commissioner, Former Director, Alachua Conservation Trust, Inc., Former Director, Gainesville Downtown Redevelopment Agency, Self-appointed Lorax-at-Large.
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