Wyatt Porter-Brown knows a thing or two about trees.
A skilled tree climber, he worked for three years as an arborist in North Sandwich before becoming a contract administrator with the state’s Bureau of Public Works, Design and Construction, his current gig.
Last week, Porter-Brown spent time at Memorial Field in Concord, near his house on South Fruit Street, analyzing a swath of stumps. He called the removal of hundreds of pine trees at the park this winter a “slaughter.”
“The trees are cut, the damage is done. It’s never, ever going to look the same, not that it has to, but that park is forever without large, mature trees,” he said.
A timeline of cutting
In late January, with the City of Concord’s blessing, Hopkinton-based Chuck Rose Logging entered Memorial Field and cut more than 200 trees, mostly white pines, from two acres of land, according to a report the logging company submitted to the Department of Revenue Administration. In total, the cut amounted to 440.5 tons of timber.
An earlier notice of intent to cut stipulated that the job would encompass three acres. One area outlined in the original report, the section of trees behind the visitor football bleachers on the north side of the field, was not cut down.
The action had been recommended both by Parks and Recreation Director David Gill and by Ryan Rambeau, the certified Master Arborist and Tree Risk Assessment qualified City Tree Supervisor.
“This recommendation does not come hastily,” Rambeau wrote in an email to city staff with the subject line, “David Gill looking for letter of recommendation for removal of trees abutting Memorial Field.” “These removals will undoubtedly be an aesthetic change for this area. However, we have and continue to have, issues with these trees.”
Rambeau and members of the city’s General Services department did not respond to requests for comment.
Concerns about the trees’ structural integrity, complaints from abutters and potential “risk to users of the area” were cited as reasons for the cut, according to a report submitted by Gill to the City Council.
City Forester Ron Klemarczyk, who also serves on the Hopkinton Conservation Commission, supervised the tree removal and inspected the work on-site in late January.
Knee-high snow still covered the field at the time the cut was completed. When Porter-Brown first visited the site after the cut, it wasn’t clear to him or other neighbors just how many trees had come down.
As the park has opened back up with warmer weather, without trees lining its southeastern edge, residents have noticed the stark difference.
Porter-Brown walked through the park and questioned the rationale for cutting the vast majority of trees starting at the entrance and circling around the property lines.
The potential effects on the athletic field could range from dry soil and flooding to the loss of green space and shade, especially in the summer heat. Checking the stumps for signs of rot or structural issues, he said he found little that could have justified all of them being cut.
The Woodside School
The Woodside School, an abutter that had many trees near its property line felled, was blindsided by the removal. School administrators had previously asked the city to prune tree branches, but to never remove the trees altogether.
Stephanie Beattie, the school’s director, said she wasn’t on-site the day cutting began and wasn’t aware that a city committee and the City Council were even considering it. The expansive cut took her aback.
“That’s the only word I can think of: It’s devastating,” she said. “There’s a just complete lack of privacy for our children now, which is a big thing. It is my priority and my job to keep our children safe.”
Beattie said the non-profit school is looking into options to plant new trees to replace that protective natural barrier and shade loss, but that course of action will take time due to limited funding.
Gill said he notified the Woodside School by voicemail of the plan to drop the trees in December, after the city council approved it. Beattie said she never received a notification before or after the cut. She said all her voicemails are forwarded to her voicemail, and she has no record of a message from Gill.
How many trees?
Porter-Brown and other neighbors on Clinton Street toured the site last Thursday with Ward 5 City Councilor Stacey Brown.
Brown said she counted over 200 stumps at the site. In a recent newsletter to residents, she called the lack of adequate communication around the cut “devastating and disorienting.”
In November, meeting minutes show the Recreation and Parks Advisory Committee had recommended cutting “60 old white pine trees.” After the cutting was done, the RPAC February minutes noted: “65 White Pine trees were removed; they were removed due to the potential danger to neighboring buildings/property.” That figure represents a fraction of the trees that were taken down.
At its meeting on April 19, chair Mary Miller informed the committee that the lower figure was incorrect. “The minutes had stated 60-65 trees, when in fact the number exceeded 200,” the most recent minutes note.
Michele Horne, the Ward 2 City Councilor and member of the committee, said she recalled discussing the lower figure, not 200 or more.
“Obviously, the minutes also reflect my recollection of 60 trees as well,” she wrote in an email to the Monitor.
Sarah Beauregard, another committee member, said she did not remember whether the conversation was 60 or 200 trees. Merrimack Valley School District representative and Director of Athletics, Kenny Edwards, said he could not respond due to being out of the office.
Other members of the committee who were contacted for this story, including At-Large City Councilor Nathan Fennessy, did not respond to requests for comment.
In December, Gill submitted a report to the City Council highlighting the lines of trees that would be removed, including a map and photographs. Councilors approved the removal under the consent agenda without discussion and held no public hearing.
In an interview, Gill said the quantity of 60 white pines came from those around the baseball outfield, not all the trees planned to be cut.
What’s the process supposed to be for tree removal?
A state law regarding the removal of trees (RSA 231:144) specifies that a request to cut trees must go through the”tree warden,” and the community must hold a public hearing, with notices published in at least two public places, and post a written note on the tree or trees to be cut.
The exemption to the public hearing law is that the tree warden can only grant permission without a hearing if the tree is on a public way outside of the residential part of town.
Concord Deputy City Solicitor Danielle Sakowski said the law applies to others who want trees cut on city property, not the municipality itself.
She said the city of Concord has control over trees in parks, such as Memorial Field.
Moreover, Sakowski said the Recreation and Parks Advisory Committee meeting in November would have fallen under a public hearing. “If somebody had attended the meeting and wanted to be heard on anything on the agenda, including the trees, the committee would have taken that testimony,” she said.
Beattie, the director of the Woodside School, said if she had been notified, she would have testified, or at the very least sent a letter to the city asking that the trees next to her property remain in place.
“At no point during 2025/26 was there any communication, notice, or discussion regarding the complete removal of the trees along this boundary,” she said.
Accelerated schedule
In August of 2025, Gill discussed over email concerns about the trees damaging Trinity Church’s new fence with Dennis Lampman, the church’s director of facilities and operations.
At the time, Gill noted that the city would be happy to prune branches abutting Trinity’s parking lot, but noted no active plans to remove the trees were under consideration.
“We are currently in the master planning phase for the Memorial Field Complex and as part of the plan, we do anticipate all pine trees along the property line to be removed. However, that is several years out,” Gill wrote.
Planned site work to improve drainage around the athletic fields included in the Memorial Field Master Plan, called for removing the trees.
The plan calls for an aggressive replanting plan with a larger variety of trees and spacing for a more sustainable site layout after the upgrades made to drainage and athletic fields.
Gill said he will not recommend reforestation at Memorial Field until a master plan for the field is clearer.
The Joint Memorial Field Committee met on Wednesday, but did not discuss the trees. Rather, the members focused on rethinking the master plan to get sports back online at Memorial sooner, at a lower cost.
On-site
On Tuesday, Gill was at Memorial Field overseeing stump grinding and cleanup of tree debris.
Gill said the process would come at little cost beyond the time for labor.
Both Brown and Porter-Brown raised concerns over the no-bid process for a project of this scale. Committee minutes state the project would come at “no cost” to the city.
A small crew of Parks and Recreation workers were at Memorial Field clearing debris and grinding stumps on Tuesday, April 28. Credit: ALEXANDER RAPP / Monitor 
As of April 28, a large portion of Memorial Field was still filled with stumps and debris, extending around the baseball field into the yards of abutters. Credit: ALEXANDER RAPP / Monitor 
A crew of workers removed debris and grinded stump wood from Memorial Field by loading them up into a full truck bed. Credit: ALEXANDER RAPP / Monitor
Pete Hoag, an arborist with P.C. Hoag & Co. Inc. up north, who had no role in the Concord cutting, explained that the removal of trees in any case goes beyond just timber value.
Hoag said trees have ecological value and need to be individually assessed for their function in urban spaces. Trees absorb particulate matter created by driving and dust and also provide essential cooling.
“When it gets to be 104 degrees in downtown Concord, I can tell you right now, that’s going to affect the entire neighborhood,” Hoag said.
Environmental concerns were part of the conversations with Rambeau and City Forester Ron Klemarzcyk before the recommendation was presented, Gill said, but they agreed that the trees needed to go, primarily for safety reasons.
“What happens when, if a tree falls, or a branch falls, and is there past history of these trees having issues?” Gill said. “That was the decision to remove the trees.”