News-Press Editorial

The 15 or so environmental activists who appeared at the Falls Church City Council Monday to dispute a ruling by City Manager Dan McKeever on the tree ordinance are to be otherwise hailed for their positive values and community involvement. But their demands that the Council overrule the McKeever and the City Attorney Roy Thorpe's ruling do not equate to the interests of 10,500 residents of the City.

You could fool the City Council, however, and they clearly did. You would have thought it was every cicada that emerged out of City soil in the last week that showed up Monday, and not just a dozen already well-known activists. The Council stumbled all over itself in a way-too-long and torturous exercise to appease these "masses," unwittingly violating their own agenda by debating extensively and even voting on a measure during the petition period, thereby forcing others who had signed up to petition the Council to wait almost two hours to be heard.

Worse was that no one on the Council was really willing stand up for the actions of City Manager Dan McKeever and City Attorney Roy Thorpe, but instead left them to fend for themselves.

But worst of all was the lack of clarity about the issues at stake, themselves. The fact is that McKeever and Thorpe acted in their capacities as officers for the City of Falls Church on behalf of the citizens of Falls Church, all 10,500 of them, by protecting those citizens from legal liability and possibly significant legal damages.

Upon careful examination of the statute in question, and a careful review of the 1977 Falls Church City Council minutes when the matter was written into law, McKeever in consultation with Thorpe ruled that a narrow part of the City ordinance pertaining to the disposition of trees on private property did not restrict the construction activities of a certain City resident on his residential property.

The matter came before McKeever on an appeal, in a lawful manner as provided for by the City code. That meant that the matter had risen to the level of a legal dispute. Once this was the case, then it became the duty of the City Manager and City Attorney to act in defense of the City's interest by ensuring that the City complied with the law.

According to McKeever, the statute in this case was clear. It was not a matter of "interpretation." Were McKeever and Thorpe to read the statute the way they did, and then interpose their own will to act against their legal understanding of it, that would be certain grounds for legal action against the City. Moreover, it would cast serious doubts on the leadership and moral character of them both. Every City taxpayer would wind up bearing the cost of the kind of action our City's handful of environmental activists were pressing for either McKeever or the Council to take Monday night, and we're glad they did not cave in.