After being known for all things equine, Aiken is widely admired for her trees. The revered South Boundary Oaks have graced the cover of magazines and posters nationwide. Our beautiful parkways, thoughtfully and sustainably designed without the need for irrigation, make you feel at one with nature, even in an urban setting. Downtown itself is nestled around the Hitchcock Woods, the nation’s largest urban forest. The City of Aiken also boasts an Arboretum Trail and the city-owned Hopelands Gardens whose first line on their website reads:
Wrapped behind a serpentine brick wall, under a canopy of ancient oaks, deodar cedars and magnolias, is Hopelands Gardens.
Trees are Aiken’s Crown Jewels, and the city has enjoyed the Tree City title for the past 38 years.
Sadly, recent events including the “accidental” destruction by the City of the Farmer’s Market Parkway trees, and now a city-proposed plan to destroy 68 trees in the historic Smith Hazel Park, have once again put citizens in a battle with the city to save an integral part of what makes Aiken special, her trees.
Despite requests from community leaders, including Bill McGhee, President of the Schofield Community Association, and a vote from the Recreation Commission to recommend pausing this project that would destroy these 68 trees, City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh charged ahead, informing the Aiken Standard that the project would move forward. Mr. Bedenbaugh was quoted saying the city “has held several public meetings to discuss the upgrades and tree removal, including a Sept. 11 public hearing,” but, as reported inWhat Public Hearing that does not appear to be the case at all.
There was a City Council Work Session on Septembr 11, 2023, however, as any city official knows, public comment is not permitted in work sessions. To date, city officials have not responded to email and FOIA requests for evidence that a public hearing ever occurred.
Citizens opposed to the proposed destruction of the trees undertook an online letter writing campaign that, within the first four days, saw over 1000 letters sent to the Mayor, City Council and the City Manager. To put that into perspective, more letters have been sent than the number of votes some of our council members garnered to win their seats. Excerpts from some of these citizen letters were posted by the Aiken Chronicles. One letter read:
“If not for Aikenites who said no, our downtown parkways would all be paved. Be the leaders today who our children and grandchildren will one day thank.”
To her credit, newly elected Mayor Teddy Milner responded, inviting some letter-writers to meet with her at the Smith Hazel Park on Sat Feb 10 at 9:30 am. It isn’t a public hearing but it is a first step in the right direction.
What Does It Take To Be Named A Tree City?
The Tree City title comes with four standards. In the wake of the Williamsburg Street “wrong plan”where 11 mature trees in the parkway were mistakenly destroyed last summer — and now a city-proposed plan that will destroy 68 trees in a City park — it’s time to review those standards. What protections are currently in place? And who has the final say over the fate of City-owned trees? Is Aiken living up to Tree City standards?
According to Standard 1, “The public will also know who is accountable for decisions that impact community trees.” Both the Mayor and the City Manager were emailed with a question of who is this board? No response to the question to date.
According to later language in Standard 2, “Importantly, a public tree care ordinance protects public trees at all times, not just during the development process. In other words, the policies for tree planting, care, and removal of trees codified in the ordinance must be continuous, not triggered by an event like landscaping requirements or the land development process.”
The city of Aiken does have several tree ordinances, however, they appear to give top authority to the Planning Director.
Removal. No Grand Tree may be removed unless the Planning Director determines there is absolutely no alternative because of unavoidable grading or because of the required configuration of paving, essential utilities, or buildings. No more than 80 percent of the DBH inches of Significant Trees may be removed unless the Planning Director determines there is absolutely no alternative because of unavoidable grading or because of the required configuration of paving, essential utilities, or buildings.
This authority is of great concern, considering the nod our planning director has given to developers. Below is a video of current Planning Director, Marya Moultrie, working here in conjunction with City Attorney Gary Smith to pave the way for a car wash on a parcel of land that was conditioned to exclude Car Washes.
Should a city planning director be given sole authority to make determinations about our City’s grand and significant trees? And shouldn’t city owned trees in a park enjoy greater protections than ordinances used for a developer on a private project?
Going Forward
In the short-term, City Council should immediately schedule a true agenda-item public hearing on the Smith Hazel plan before 68 trees are destroyed. In the larger picture, City Council should establish and appoint a Tree Advisory Board as suggested in the Tree City standards to make clear who has authority over public trees and to provide greater protection for publicly-owned trees in City parks, parkways and the Arboretum Trail.
What happens to one city-owned tree can happen to any of them. Here, it should go without saying that tree companies and others who profit from the cutting and removing of trees should not be appointed to the advisory board.
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Credit: Feature photo, “Chainsaw Piggy” used with permission from local artist Martin Buckley.
There is much misunderstanding surrounding the Smith Hazel Park project. Linked at the bottom of this page are some of the numerous articles published in the Aiken Chronicles over the past 16 months on Smith Hazel and other northside parks
To be clear …
The Smith Hazel story is not about choosing trees over people. It’s not even a story about trees, although that’s what is being discussed, since the loss of trees will be a huge part of the collateral damage from the project the City has planned for this park. Nor is the Smith Hazel story about amenities, although citizens advocating for a pause and a public hearing on this project have been accused of trying to keep northside children from receiving long-awaited amenities.
No, the Smith Hazel Park story, much like the Pascalis and Williamsburg Street stories that preceded it, is, at its root, about a city government that eschews established processes; a city government that makes decisions in a vacuum behind closed doors; a city government that withholds information from the public and denies citizens opportunity for input. It is no wonder that the output from this municipal apparatus has been a series of wasteful and destructive projects driving increasing number of local residents to rise up and say, “No more!”
The Obstructionists and Naysayers
Individuals who have spent the past two years pushing and advocating for the northside parks, and pushing to see some of the windfall plutonium money spent on the long-neglected northside, are hardly the obstructionists and naysayers in this equation, nor are they devoid of ideas and inspiration for solutions.
Destroying 68 trees, bulldozing the landscape of the Smith Hazel park, and creating expensive stormwater issues in order to cram all of the northside amenities into the 5-acre Smith Hazel Park is not the solution to the city’s long-term failure to provide amenities on Aiken’s northside.
Consider this: Across the street from Smith Hazel is the 25-acre Perry Memorial Park, (from which the City recently considered disinvesting, see articles below) — a park that could be utilized for the ADA-compliant City intends to bulldoze into 5-acre Smith Hazel Park. Out on Hwy 1/Columbia Highway are 118 acres of land the city purchased in 2015 to finally, finally provide the northside with those long-promised amenities. So where are those amenities?
ABOVE: The City’s concept plan for the 118 acres of land purchased for a northside park in 2015 which envisioned a generosity of amenities including 4 baseball fields, 8 soccer fields, 6 tennis courts, a track and stadium complex, a multi-purpose gymnasium, a swimming pool, 2 playgrounds, and five parking lots. All of these amenities were left on the cutting room floor in the final product except for the detention ponds, a partial amphitheater, a piece of playground equipment, and some parking lots.
Forty Acres
For whom was the Beverly D. Clyburn Generations Park (nee Northside Park) built? The park is located on the outskirts of town on a 118-acre plot of land the City bought on which to build that long-studied, long-deferred Northside recreation facility and park. From this 118 acres, 40 were denuded of trees, laid with sod, left largely bereft of amenities (no money, said the City) and pronounced as a park.
The amenities include an unfinished amiphiteater whose components must be trucked in for events. Portable sinks and porta-potties must also be trucked in, as there are only two toilets (presumably due to the fact that the City could only afford a septic tank for the park). Shade must also be trucked in. Portable playgrounds are also trucked in. The park has a one-mile walking track and a water fountain. This is all good, but it is not what the City spent 25 years promising the northside and hiring a Clemson University consultant to conduct high-dollar surveys in order to state the obvious about the unfulfilled need for recreation facilities on Aiken’s northside.
ABOVE: So much open space at the Northside Park. The potential is enormous. Why is there not even a single basketball court in this park?
In the wake of creating this park, City Council stated, as generations before them have stated, that the City will one day find the money to provide the northside with some park amenities. One councilmember offered that perhaps a public-private development project could make it happen.
Cue in the greenway project, which will connect the Beverly D. Clyburn Generations Park (nee Northside Park) northward, away from the City and toward the thousands of acres of forested land between northside Aiken and I-20 that the city is opening for development to be peopled with future residents for whom the City is installing new water infrastructure.
It’s just as well the Northside Park go to someone else. After all, the distance is too far for northside kids to walk, and even if it weren’t, there’s no sidewalk to get there. What parent wants their child walking or riding a bike down the busy four-lane Columbia Highway to go and … do what?
We’re All Northsiders Now
An analogy for the Smith Hazel story appears: The City will provide sparkling clear water for future residents in Aiken’s new north — the I-20 lands. The in-town residents, whose concerns and input about their drinking water and boil-water alerts have fallen on the deaf ears of a City Council body that refuses to listen to the people they’ve been empowered to serve, will have brown water.
About the Purported Dozen or More Public Hearings on the Smith Hazel Park Project
They never happened. While the City has kept the public abreast of plans for the evolving interior improvements planned for Smith Hazel, this cannot be said about the plans for the extensive demolition, tree removal and grading work on the property about which a public hearing has been requested, but never held.
A recent video circulating on Facebook with statements to the contrary was posted this week by the Umoja Village CEO and shared by Councilwoman Diggs. It contains a timeline of purported public hearings running from November 2022 through December 2023. This individual is unfortunately confused over the difference between a public meeting and a public hearing — a common and understandable misunderstanding. We could all benefit from lessons in government jargon so that we could better understand the processes of government.
The most cogent response to the claims in this video may be found in the two emails from City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, which he sent on January 31, 2024 in answer to a request to, “Please provide evidence that the City has ever held a public hearing on the Smith Hazel Park project.”
A reading of the information provided in these two emails confirms that there has never been a public hearing on the plan for the Smith Hazel Park project.
About this Saturday’s Purported Public Hearing
In the above-mentioned video was an announcement that there would be “a public hearing, another public hearing, presented by the city of Aiken this Saturday.”
This is not true. Much of the confusion over the Smith Hazel Park project stems from the public’s lack of understanding on the difference between a public meeting and a public hearing, a difference that could be likened to the difference between an informal straw poll and an official election.
There will be no public hearing at Smith Hazel on Saturday if for no other reason that the legal requirement for announcing a public hearing has not been met.
Public Input
Over the past 7 days, the Mayor and City Council have received over 1240 letters and statements from local citizens calling for a pause on this project so that a public hearing — the first ever pubic hearing on the Smith Hazel Park — could be held.
An Impromptu Get Together
In response to the letter writing campaign, Mayor Milner sent emails to some of the letter writers inviting them to a meeting outdoors at Smith Hazel on Saturday, February 10 at 9:30 a.m. If it’s not raining, we can tell the Mayor or the City Manager our thoughts, opinions and wishes. It’s not clear just yet who will be there, but one thing is clear. No matter how closely or sincerely City officials do or don’t listen to our concerns, our words have zero impact on the course of this Smith Hazel Park project in the absence of a public hearing.
As Councilwoman Gail Diggs made clear in an interview with WFXG News yesterday afternoon, City Council is not prepared to bend in its determination to go forward with this destructive plan. “This project is going on,” she stated. “It will not come back to counsel for a vote.”
The City Manager has repeatedly stated as much. Our only hope, then, is that a vocal majority of the citizens arriving to the Saturday meeting will bring umbrellas and spend their energies urging the Mayor and any other Council members in attendance to use their authority to request a pause and a pubic hearing on this project.
Whether or not trees are spared in the process is secondary. The important thing is the process itself, which is an established, democratic process and a process of which most people should be able to agree is necessary in a democratic society.
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FOR FURTHER READING
Below is a history of but some of the articles published in the Aiken Chronicles over the past 16 months chronicling the advocacy of local citizens for our city’s parks, our parkways, our trees, our water, our quality of life.
September 21, 2022: Has it been only 18 months since the city was charging kids money to play basketball at Smith Hazel? (p.s. Citizens pushed back and won).
September 22, 2022 Has it been only 10 years since the City was planning to build that long-promised, long-deferred northside Park on top of the city landfill?
October 27, 2023: Photos from April 2023 taken while following the unfolding Smith Hazel Park story and trying, unsuccessfully, to get information form the City, which spent 13 months making plans for Smith Hazel behind closed doors, without public input.
February 1, 2024: We have been asking for a pause on the destructive Smith Hazel project to allow for a public hearing. In response, City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh was quoted in the January 26 front page of the Aiken Standard as saying, “The city has held several public meetings to discuss the upgrades and tree removal, including a Sept 11 public hearing”. Curiously, there is zero evidence that any such meetings took place “to discuss the upgrades and tree removal” much less a public hearing. What’s up with that? Read Kelly Cornelius‘ article on this. https://aikenchronicles.com/…/what-public-hearing-the…/
February 2, 2024: The way out of this time loop, which has City leadership creating plans in a vacuum, (the citizens for whom they work too far removed from their purview to be seen or heard), is through public hearings. A public hearing should be the standard for any project that proposes to improve a place by destroying it.
February 2, 2024 through today:Those of us who are trying to find solutions get accused of being against everything and never offer solutions. Yet the record (see the above thread of articles) shows that just opposite is true. Let’s all learn what we can about the issues before us so that we can give informed input and use our voices wisely. https://actionnetwork.org/…/pause-the-smith-hazel-park…&
February 7, 2024: At the latest count, 1144 letters have been sent by Aiken citizens to City officials requesting a pause on the project to allow for a public hearing and informed public input. Read some of what they have to say. https://aikenchronicles.com/citizens-speak-on-smith-hazel/
What we all want: Smith-Hazel outdoor facilities need improvement. This can be done without destroying any trees or bulldozing and levelling the park.
Funding: Improvements at Smith-Hazel Park are being funded by a grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund matched by city funds. The grant provides a one-for-one replacement of existing facilities. No new facilities are currently funded.
Problems:
According to the city, the current basketball court is in a DOT right of way and cannot be improved with grant funding. For this reason, the Basketball court must be relocated.
When the basketball court is relocated trees must be removed and the tree removal and additional hard impermeable surface will cause stormwater runoff.
The Smith-Hazel Park is 30’ higher than surrounding properties.
The additional stormwater runoff will require a retention pond to be constructed.
The additional stormwater runoff and retention pond will require significant grading work all over the park, destroying not only the trees, but groundcover and surface soil and will substantially change the topography and character of the park.
A retention pond is a dangerous and attractive nuisance for children. Even with a fence. This is a lost recreation area in a park that is already small.
Relocating the playground will result in substantial cost and destroying two grand trees (more than 6’4’ around the trunk) longleaf pines may be between 300-400 years old.
The new locations of basketball and playground will require ADA approved access which requires more pavement and results in more storm water runoff.
As far as we know, the city has not conducted any study into the storm water runoff problem that they are creating. The adjacent Perry Park and residences sit 30’ below Smith-Hazel.
The city does not have funding for any additional amenities but has decided to remove all 68 trees and do all site grading in advance.
Parking will be added where the basketball court is now. This will require substantial grading and the addition of a more impermeable surface will cause more stormwater runoff. Water and sediment will run into the street and neighboring properties.
No study has been done to determine the need for more parking, although approx. 62 spaces are being added. No study has been done to understand the traffic that will be generated. We do not know the capacity of the current building. There are currently 73 parking spaces.
The city has not released information on the destruction of 68 trees and substantial earthwork to be done to the public at any time. No public hearings have been held. Only Bill McGhee has been given this information, after months of requests, and only on January 12, 2024.
The Neighborhood Association, Schofield Community Association, has expressed important concerns about the city plan.
The Parks Commission voted to pause the project.
1200 citizens have sent emails requesting a pause and a public hearing.
The city will not release the mandatory tree inventory list for Smith Hazel Park.
The city conducted a survey of citizens at two public meetings held at Smith-Hazel in December 2022. Thirty-nine people responded. Although it was asked, no information was given about the sitework and tree destruction. This is the only survey of residents and does not justify any of the city’s plan. In fact, the most requested amenity, outdoor bathrooms (18 times), are not being built, and the respondents specifically asked for “less pickleball” (11 times), “less basketball courts” (8 times), more parking (8 times), also “no pickleball”, no “hammock garden” (12 times) (yes, that’s a thing) and “more green space”, “keep the trees.”
Removing 68 mature trees and replacing them with impermeable surface will not only cause significant storm water runoff but will also raise the temperature at the park. There will be no shade. The long term, unfunded plan for the park will cover 80% of the park with impermeable, heat retaining, reflective surfaces.
The LWC fund Grant money expires on October 1, 2024
The removal of 68 trees, substantial grading, retention pond, demolition and moving existing amenities are all costly
Pickleball is loud and basketball is louder. The plan for four pickleball courts, three basketball courts and three tennis courts will be loud in this residential neighborhood. This is the source of complaints and lawsuits in other neighborhoods. As far as we know, the city has done no study, or survey and has not notified any neighbors of the potential noise issue.
There are city ordinances regarding the removal of trees. As far as we know, the city has not done surveys needed to establish the exact distance of trees being destroyed from the road. City ordinances specifically state that no grand trees may be removed unless there is absolutely no alternative, and other protections are also included. We do not know if any other options have been explored as seem to be required by ordinance.
Solutions:
Pause the project until citizens can be heard at a public hearing.
Look into extending the Land & Water Conservation Fund grant funding deadline.
Fund the badly needed basketball court improvements with a different source of funding. Fix the court where it is.
Learn about the “right of way” issue and see if something can be negotiated with DOT
Fix the tennis courts where they are. Line them for tennis and pickleball. Two courts surrounded by trees will not create a noise nuisance for neighbors.
Leave the trees alone.
Do not bulldoze and grade the park.
Do not put in a retention pond. The park is only 4.75 acres and does not currently need a retention pond. The limited space must be used wisely, not wasted on a retention pond. Stagnate water, the attractive and dangerous nuisance a retaining pond is for neighborhood children, storm water runoff, sediment runoff into the streets and neighborhood are not existing problems. They are problems this plan will create. Do not create problems.
The existing trees do a wonderful job of providing shade, habitat for birds and animals, and catching storm water in their canopies, letting it run down their trunks and be absorbed by their roots. Let them continue to do the job.
Utilize the 25 acres adjacent to Smith-Hazel at Perry Memorial Park, for additional park facilities IF they are needed. If necessary, work with the school system on this project. Perhaps they’d also be able to use tennis courts or other amenities. The two parks could be managed as one and combined would be about 30 acres. Odell Weeks is 44 acres.
Utilize the underdeveloped 118-acre Generations Park for other amenities.
Be transparent and work with citizens instead of against them. Be willing to answer questions fully. Always be honest. Admit mistakes. Provide great service. Represent citizens accurately and fairly.
Encourage communication between citizens and City Council by responding to correspondence. Hold regular meetings in each district with councilmen to facilitate communication and diminish animosity.
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ABOVE: Marked for destruction is a shade tree in the Smith Hazel Park, its bare bones beautiful in the winter landscape; in summertime, the tree is leafy green and provides a generosity of cooling shade and habitat and respite for birds and other wildlife. Part of the tree’s leafy bough is visible on the right side of the photo of the children’s playground at the top of this article.
Is it Groundhog Day again already? Seems like only yesterday we were reeling from the shock of the Williamsburg Street-Farmers Market fiasco. Before that, it was Project Pascalis. And before that, it was the Powderhouse Connector, which, unlike the other two, at least provided public hearings, even as the end product leaves us to do little more than fasten our seatbelts and gape at the destruction and chaos that will unfold from this 400-acre plot over the next several years. Perhaps the Powderhouse Connector can serve as a cautionary tale on the importance of paying closer attention.
So here we go again, this time with the City prepared to rush headlong with a plan to improve one of Aiken’s gems, the lovely, historic Smith Hazel Park, by destroying 68 trees and bulldozing the land to comply with an idea drawn from wish lists collected buffet-style by the City. Why wasn’t a public hearing held to both inform the public of these plans and to provide a forum for public input — input that would then become part of the public record, available for all to see?
As-is, citizens have been forced this week to file FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to see the contents of those wish lists that the City collected over the past year from citizens who weren’t given the benefit of the facts; forced to file FOIA requests to see the records of a public hearing that never happened.
What comments might City leadership have heard from the public, had they divulged the facts about the 68 trees, the bulldozers, and the unintended consequences of this plan — erosion, stormwater runoff, pollution, noise, and the loss of summer shade, aesthetics, and quality of life?
In the absence of communication from the City, we’re left to wonder. Why not plan a walking track over at the 25-acre Perry Memorial Park located across the street from Smith Hazel? Why are there no basketball courts, tennis courts, pickleball courts and soccer fields at the 100-acre Northside park property over on Hwy One? Why the impetus to shoehorn all of the northside amenities into the 5-acre Smith Hazel park?
The way out of this time loop, which has City leadership creating plans in a vacuum, (the citizens for whom they work too far removed from their purview to be seen or heard), is through public hearings. A public hearing should be the standard for any project that proposes to improve a place by destroying it.
Trees in Tree City are no longer safe. They are not safe in our historic and storied Parkways, as evidenced by the recent Williamsburg Street “mistake” at the Farmer’s Market, and they are not even safe in a city park.
Aiken City Manager, Stuart Bedenbaugh, announced Friday that the city would proceed with plans to destroy 68 trees from Smith Hazel Park despite community leaders asking to save the trees and despite the Recreation Commission asking for a pause to rethink the destruction of trees after citizens and community leaders brought it to their attention.
Bedenbaugh was quoted in the Aiken Standard as saying “The city has held several public meetings to discuss the upgrades and tree removal, including a Sept 11th public hearing”.
Except that it doesn’t appear the city ever held a public hearing to vet this particular plan. In fact, according to the city’sSept 11, 2023 Meeting Agenda packet, there was no agenda item for this and no public hearing. There was a work session held before the city’s regular meeting that same night, with “Smith Hazel Recreation Center Improvements Update” on the agenda, however, there is no opportunity for public input or comment in City work sessions.
A FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request has been submitted for a September 11 public hearing — or any public hearing on the Smith Hazel Park plan. A subsequent FOIA was also submitted for receipt confirmation of public notice for said public hearing on Sept 11 — or for any public hearing where this plan was shown. In addition to the FOIA requests, both Mayor Milner and City Manager Bedenbaugh were emailed requests for evidence of the public hearing that Mr. Bedenbaugh referred to. Neither has responded to date.
Officials are ignoring community leaders and their own Recreation Commission, with apparently little memory of the heat they took last year after “the wrong plan,” as City Manager Bedenbaugh termed it at the time, destroyed 11 trees at the Farmer’s Market. This debacle, which was an embarrassment for all involved, could have been avoided had the public been allowed to see “the wrong plan” and give input before the plan was executed. Here we are again, less than a year later, the lesson already forgotten.
Below is a reminder of this lesson from a June 12, 2023 City Council meeting, which occurred after the Farmer’s Market trees had been destroyed.
The City should have a proper public hearing regarding this plan so that citizens can have input before these trees are destroyed and gone forever like the “mistake” at the Williamsburg Street Farmer’s Market. The oops-we-did-it-again excuse is not going to fly this time.
What Can You Do?
You can email or call city officials
803-642-7654
City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh sbedenbaugh@cityofaikensc.gov
Mayor Teddy Milner Tmilner@cityofaikensc.gov
Councilman Ed Girardeau egirardeau@cityofaikensc.gov
