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By STEVEN PAUL DuBOIS; Times Leader Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 08, 1997 Page: 7A
FORTY FORT — The fight to save a 230-year-old tree on River Street made
for an often ugly borough council meeting Monday night, including a near
fistfight between the mayor and a councilman.
Councilman Dean Brown Jr. said if the council is liable, then it should cut
the tree down. He made a motion to do so, which seemed to infuriate Mayor
Robert Megatulski.
Brown and Megatulski leaped from their chairs, their faces reddened, and
got into a shouting match that ended with both men shouting “liar” and Brown
leaving the meeting.
As Brown bolted the meeting, a woman in the audience yelled at him. Brown
turned and said: “You’re an a–hole.”
Outside the meeting, Brown, who lost the last mayoral race to Megatulski,
said he and the mayor just don’t get along.
“I don’t need to take this stuff. Ever since I lost the mayoral race, it’s
been a nightmare. He’s a wacko and I told my wife I’m not going to take it
anymore. For $100 a month, I don’t need to live in Forty Fort.
It was decided that the jurisdiction to save the tree still ultimately
rests outside the council.
The council, mostly through the voice of its president, William Feldman,
said the decision to save trees, even one as valuable as the massive sugar
maple, rests with the borough’s Shade Tree Commission.
“You’re the leaders of this town and you’re passing the buck,” said
Christine Phillips, president of the Historic Commission, which is leading the
fight to save the sugar maple.
Feldman consistently repeated council’s position.
“Listen to me; you’re missing the point,” Feldman told Phillips. “Council
doesn’t have control over this issue; the Shade Commission does.”
And the Shade Tree Commission, led by Carol Seltzer, didn’t seem to be
bending in its prior decision to remove the tree, which the commission deemed
unsafe.
“That tree has many targets,” Seltzer said. “Every person who drives down
that street is a target, every person who walks on that sidewalk is a target
and every person who lives under that tree is a target.”
One target living under the tree is Patricia Cimino, of River Street, whose
child is afraid to sleep at night because a branch from the tree fell on
another neighbor’s house. This followed another traumatic event, when the
family car was hit by another River Street tree.
“They can say `Save a tree,’ `Save a tree,’ but they don’t live under the
tree,” Cimino said.