"beyond the pale of reasonableness" - Connecticut FOIA request for city tree records

One common complaint by officials in dealing with FOIA requests is that the person requesting records asks for materials which cover an extended period of time or that result in a search returning enormous volumes of data.

A recent instance of this is in New Canaan, CT, where the NC Advertiser reports on a request for city forestry records:

Town officials are pushing back against a group of residents that has appealed the town’s decision to remove 10 maple trees along West Road, with some suggesting that any incurred legal fees be paid for from the town’s tree replanting fund.

The residents filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October to view all “non-exempt public records” on Tree Warden John Howe’s work computer, along with any tree-related content from other town databases, dating back to the beginning of 2007.

First Selectman Jeb Walker told the Advertiser the group’s requests are “beyond the pale of reasonableness,” at a potential cost of “hundreds of hours for [the IT department],” not including court fees.

The residents opposed to the tree clearing cite the need for comprehensive tree management, as reported in the New Canaan News Review:

John Burns, a resident of West Road who opposes the removal of trees, said it is very likely that the neighbors will appeal. He and his neighbors hope an appeal will result in the establishment of a tree management program in New Canaan, he said.

"This is the crux of our appeal and the town's overwhelming problem concerning our trees: New Canaan has no tree management program -- its public works department simply reacts to complaints," Christopher wrote to the New Canaan News in an e-mail.

"The true risk to public safety and to the beauty of our community lies in our town leadership's failure to take the Office of Tree Warden seriously and fund a meaningful tree management program as most other nearby communities did 20 years ago," he wrote. "So now we're paying for it."

As an example of what this kind of tree management program might look like, I'd point you at the City of Ann Arbor's tree inventory program:

The inventory of city managed street and park trees has been completed!  The tree inventory provides the species, size, diameter, geo-coded location, condition and maintenance needs of all street trees and park tree in mowed areas.  The tree inventory information has been added as a layer on the city’s geographic information system (GIS) and integrated with our asset management software Cityworks, which will enable us to manage the trees as we do the other City assets.

The City began its inventory of all city-owned trees in the right-of-way and city parks in February 2009 as the first step in developing the City's first urban forest management plan. The City contracted with the Davey Resource Group, a Division of the Davey Tree Expert Company to conduct the inventory. 

Ann Arbor released a spreadsheet with all of this tree information; they have not published their GIS layer as of yet.