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Amid Tree Uproar Tumwater Mayor Cancels Meeting of City’s Tree Advisory Board

Updated: Jun 22

For Immediate Release June 12, 2024


Court and background documents at https://www.davis-meeker-oak.org/ Media

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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





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