Meeting to discuss live oak trees on Front Beach

Some residents in Ocean Springs are fighting to keep three oak trees from getting the axe.

The Ocean Springs board room filled with concerned residents over an issue that stems back to February: the decision to allow the removal of these trees at 209 Front Beach.

Tonight, this was the topic of discussion during a special meeting to hear an appeal of the tree committee’s decision.

“It’s sad when the only way we can have progress is to destroy some things that’s been here long before we came.” Ocean Springs resident Mark Garriga is talking about the removal of three live oak trees in the city. “The tree committee made a decision a couple weeks ago on a thing. When the property owner came back and appealed it, they heard from the property owner, but there was nobody from the tree committee here to represent them and they gave them approval to take down the trees.”

Tuesday night the board of aldermen listened to those in opposition of cutting the trees and heard from the property applicant’s attorney.

However, Ocean Springs has a unified development code in place that makes it unlawful to destroy including cutting down a tree.

Jaklyn Wrigley’s property neighbors 209 Front Beach. She says the most important thing in this case is following the law. “My concern is if you affirm the decision of the Tree Protection Committee that what that does is create a precedent in the city of Ocean Springs that effectively says if you wanna take down a tree, a tree that makes us Tree City U.S.A., a tree that makes Ocean Springs Mississippi special, then all you have to do is say it restricts my ability to do some of what I want with property, in this case that the applicant or the co-applicant doesn’t even own.”

During tonight’s meeting, witnesses were called to share their expertise including Principal of Andrew Dooley Design Associates Andrew Dooley. “I took the floor plan and simply printed it out on two separate colored pieces of paper and cut out the rooms exactly as drawn and proposed. Here are the rooms with every room, every feature included in a manner that would save the trees. It took me longer to cut this manila sheet of paper, cut the squares out then to redesign. It took less than five minutes.”

We will continue to update you as more information becomes available.