One week after Roxxanne O'Brien's mother moved in her home she was hit with unpleasant news. "The Park Board Forestry and inspectors told her she had an infested tree and needed to pay someone thousands of dollars to remove it,” Roxxanne O'Brien said.
Roxxanne, a longtime North Minneapolis resident, recalling the financial turbulence in her mother’s home buying experience. She believes local officials were haphazard in determining the quality of her mother’s soon-to-be property.
“What makes it worse is that they admitted to her that they knew the tree was infested,” Roxxanne O'Brien said. “They saw the for sale sign outside but waited till she purchased it to condemn the tree.”
Roxxanne’s family found out their tree is one of the many that fell victim to a devastating Emerald Ash Borer breakout in Minneapolis.
Emerald Ash Borer is a green insect that infects, lays eggs and kills both weak and healthy ash trees over the span of one to four years. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the tree pest is native to eastern Russia, northern China, Japan, and Korea and has killed millions of ash trees throughout the eastern half of the US and southeastern Canada.
In 2010, the beetles were first detected in Minneapolis. There is no known cure, but experts say not moving firewood is the easiest way to slow the spread. Hennepin County is calling the outbreak “the biggest threat to our tree canopy,” due to the state having the highest volume of ash trees in the nation at nearly 1 billion.
Closing on a house is a moment where families usually celebrate the acquisition of land, independence and generational wealth. However, in the case of Roxxanne’s family, they’re housewarming gift was correspondence from the State’s collections office.
“My mother is 73 and she actually qualified to have it deferred at her age but no one told her. And they automatically placed her on a five year Lien,” Roxxanne tells us. “This issue was a prime example of environmental racism. There wasn’t just an ecological harm taking place but a financial one too. This issue is an example of housing, environmental and financial injustice.”
The Minneapolis Parks & Recreation is leading an Emerald Ash Borer mediation program. The program makes room for them to inspect and mark infected trees in the city. When trees are removed, homeowners are mailed the final removal cost and payment options. Right now, the amount of outstanding fees are $368,000 and are growing by the day, per MPRB data.
Residents can pay for the removal all at once or have the cost assessed to their property taxes over a period of five years with interest. Those with qualifying financial hardship, can spread the cost over a 10 or 20 year period or defer the cost until the property is sold or the financial hardship disappears.
“It's imperative to spotlight the significant injustice taking place right here in my own backyard,” said Felicia Perry.
Felicia, a longstanding resident of North Minneapolis for the past 40 years, was charged over $5,000 for the removal of two trees from her property. On top of that, a third tree in her backyard has been marked for removal. All are moves that were not authorized by her.
“The Park board is not entitled to payment for these trees since they breached the law by removing them without adhering to the ordinance,” Felicia said.
Felicia believes MPRB violated their code of ordinances by entering her property to remove the trees without explicitly confirming the infestation. On top of that, she’s calling them out for a discrepancy in her invoice.
“MPRB invoiced me $585.33 beyond the actual removal cost,” she said while alluding to the potential of a targeted behavior against fellow Northsiders. “The emotional and physical toll of addressing these matters has been substantial and ongoing.”
Felicia also asserts that MPRB and other officials have yet to address her concerns. She has previously stood before their board on separate occasions to plead her case, with the most recent occurrence happening in a public hearing earlier in November.
“I have receipts, courtesy of Ralph Sievert [MPRB Director of the Department of Forestry], that not a single tree was tested before being removed,” she said passionately. “I need yall to look at me and see the humanity. You took my trees illegally. You trying to charge me and my neighbors, mostly Black, mostly in the lower income in the whole frickin’ city. You didn't test one tree, and the law says you’re supposed to. I haven't been provided any proof that any trees on my property have been diseased. No one has. That’s illegal.”
Felicia and Roxxanne are just two of many who say their invoices ranged from a couple hundred dollars, to a few thousand bucks or even exceeded $10,000 depending on the size of the tree. Minneapolis was awarded an $8 million dollar federal grant to help lower-income families, but the funds are not able to relieve those who were already charged before the funds were awarded in late September. Felicia and Roxxanne’s families are out of luck when it comes to access to those funds.
“In that moment I realized this issue was bigger than I understood,” Roxxanne said.
However, MPRB recently announced that they secured a $500,000 grant to retroactively supplement the cost of private tree removals. Officials have also announced new commitments to communicating more in their program including: language translations, more detailed online text and flow charts and forcing tree removal companies to first examine the trees to get more competitive bids for all removals. The update signals a step towards repairing the harm that was done to several families.
“There were and are so many things wrong with this process,” Roxxanne tells us. “I had to speak up and once again alarm my community that if we don’t get a handle on this this could have a multitude of consequences.”
For over a decade, Roxxanne has become a notable community and Environmental Justice organizer. She was key in helping jump start the Green Zones working group in Minneapolis and organizing against Northern Metals (a former metal shredder in North Minneapolis that was shut down after a 2019 report revealed the company was altering records to make emissions appear safe.) Roxxanne is now calling foul over the handling of the outbreak.
“I think this issue is larger and more corrupt than Northern Metals,” Roxxanne said. “It’s ripping the tree canopy apart for greedy purposes under the guise that it’s a public health emergency and charging Black and fixed income homeowners four-to-seven times the amount for the costs to remove their trees. There’s a lot of reasons that these trees are in the condition that they are in and it’s not just because of the Ash Borer beetle. It’s because they let our trees die and get to a point of no return. “
In a letter Hennepin County Board Chair Irene Fernando penned to MPRB leaders, she revealed that her data found that the assessments have a “disparate impact on low-wealth residents and BIPOC households.” She also emphasized that Northsiders are the most impacted:
“Of over 800 tree removals on track for special assessment, nearly half are in North Minneapolis while only 15% of Minneapolis residents live in North Minneapolis. Of the 800, median assessment is roughly $1,700 and some assessments exceed $10,000. It is unreasonable to place this amount of financial burden on residents.”
The entire letter can be read here.
The MPRB is weighing a proposal to convert past due fees into special tax assessments on affected households and sell City of Minneapolis bonds in the amount of $1.2 million dollars to fund the diseased tree program in hopes of alleviating some of the financial burden.
Their board believes over 20% -- or 200,000 -- of all public and private trees in the city are susceptible. The estimated total cost of removing, stump grinding and replanting the public trees alone (38,000) would exceed $26 million dollars.
“I would just say we keep following the money and the people,” Roxxanne said. “We hope that this gets investigated by the Attorney General’s office. And we hope to start a litigation to get people justice for this process which has put people's health, environment and homes at risk.”
Signs of infestation could be: a section of leaves at the top of the tree or one part dying, splitting bark, sprouts growing from the roots or base, serpentine patterns underneath the bark, or D-shaped beetle holes among others. If you think you have seen evidence of Emerald Ash Borer infestation in your backyard or community, state officials are asking you to report it at https://www.mda.state.mn.us/reportapest or call 888-545-6684.