This meeting, held at 6:00 p.m. in the County Council Chambers, covered zoning ordinances, a resolution honoring public safety telecommunicators, and public concern over tree clearing. All votes were unanimous unless noted. Note: The agenda and transcript indicate the meeting occurred on March 17, 2026, but the user-provided date is March 18, 2026; this summary uses the specified date.
The following items were approved unanimously as part of the consent agenda:
Kelly La Pietra, a resident of the Forestbrook/Sakasi area, spoke against widespread tree clearing near her neighborhood. She reported that approximately 25–30 acres of trees were removed at the entrance of the Arcadia section, and another 30 acres were cleared along Sakasti Boulevard. She stated the clearing has lowered property values by $20,000–$30,000 per home, increased flood risk, and created an unsightly “war zone.” She called for a permit process for tree removal, notification of nearby residents, and a two-percent transfer tax on home sales to fund land preservation. No other public comments were made.
It's six o'clock. Good evening. Welcome to the regular council meeting for March 17, 2026. As Mr. Howard said, we start on time so we can finish on time. And we always start with an invitation tonight by Dr. Dukes, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Mr. Servan. If I can get already, please stand. Heavenly Father, we come before you tonight to thank you for another beautiful day in this county and an opportunity to gather as community leaders, friends, and residents. We ask that you may bless us with wisdom, patience, and your guidance as we all work together to make decisions for the betterment of our residents. Father, we ask that you keep your hand of protection upon our first responders and those that serve each and every day. These things we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Attention to the flag. I pledge to the flag of the United States of America. One nation. Thank you. Please be seated. All right. We have this wonderful light system. Green is go, go go. Yellow is one minute left, and red. Red is stop. And this is a professional venue. If you signed up and want to talk to us about something that we can do on county council that can help Ori County, we want to hear from you. But this is not a place to come in and um be disrespectful or anything like that because it's a professional venue. We can't help you and less we get a chance. So we had one person signed up, and we will go ahead and get started. Kelly La Piatra talking about tree clearing. Thank you for allowing me to speak here. My name is Kelly La Pietra. I live in the Forest Brook, Sakasi area. And if you see the pictures that um they're putting up on the screen right now, this is the area where my residential area is at the Arcadia section off of Forest Brook Road. About a year and a half ago, um, we had someone come in here and remove all the trees off the entrance of the Arcadia section of uh of our development. And it's been like this for a year and a half, and it looks like a war zone, so I like to call it it looks like Beirut. Um there's no reason to have trees taken down, like at least 25 to 30 acres on off of that property. It's on both sides of Arcadia Parkway. Um it's lowering our uh property uh property values where we had several houses um, you know, trying to sell their homes and they had to take at least a 20 to 30,000 dollar hit on the sale of the house because people purchasing their houses uh are just complaining about um the entrance. It's not inviting anymore. It used to be a tree-lined area. Um I also have here more pictures um inside the Arcadia section, where we had another um further back in the Arcadia section uh by the springs, they had um pictures uh they have trees that were removed at least a good 20 acres behind these homes where a developers just coming in here and just ripping down the trees, and none of us were notified. And there really should be a process where if if anybody's being taking down trees off a property or a lot that's near homes, and residential people should be notified of this removal of all these trees. And I'm I don't like hearing that they're only doing it for logging purposes. I think that's a poor excuse. If they're gonna be taking down trees, there we should be a permit process, and residential should be notified in advance that that these trees would be removed and give us a chance to uh to voice our opinions about the removal of the trees before they actually remove them off the property. There's some there's solutions to this where you can actually people ain't buying people buying houses in the area, they can actually pay a two percent uh transfer tax on to the county, and the county can use you that money for a transfer tax to actually purchase vacant land that still has a whole bunch of trees on it, and it goes for land preservation. That's something that we did in my former state where we had uh a transfer tax to anybody per purchasing a home. Two percent of the sale of the house goes to the county for uh for land preservation, and it's been very successful. Uh it's it alleviates any type of flooding because with no trees, where's the where's the water gonna go?