Marc Rosenberg has lived on the same block in Montclair’s Fieldstone neighborhood for 30 years and in that time, he recently told The Montclair Pod,not one tree on his street has fallen in a storm.
But recently a few came down, not because of a storm, but because of what some residents allege was a mistake made by the town.
“The arborist is supposed to come and check the roots before any kind of cutting, after they expose them, and that step just didn’t happen,” Rosenberg said. “They just came one day while no one was home and cut every single root off every single exposed tree and … killed this one. It was a perfectly healthy tree that we’ve had for almost 30 years. I think it was 11 feet around. This street specifically has this beautiful cathedral of trees. It’s not like taking down a tree that’s kind of in a forest and if you took one down you wouldn’t notice. This is a row of trees that are 100 years old on a whole triangle, so the pattern is gone when these trees just get taken down.”
According to the residents we spoke with, the tree didn’t fall. It was killed by root cutting, they say, and the arborist who was supposed to sign off before any roots were touched never came.
“They just came one day while no one was home,” Rosenberg said, “and cut every single root off every single exposed tree.”
How Montclair’s Fieldstone Trees Came Down
In March 2025, the township passed an ordinance making homeowners responsible for sidewalk and curb maintenance, then launched an enforcement sweep. Between April 3 and June 11, it issued 192 violation notices, with 45 days to fix the problem or face fines.
Root systems from century-old Fieldstone street trees have been pushing up concrete for decades. Under township protocol, the Shade Tree Division must assess exposed roots before any new concrete goes down. Tom O’Byrne, who has lived in the neighborhood for 23 years, says that never happened.
“The only thing that they seemed to have done was come in and shaved all the roots,” O’Byrne said. “There were a couple of trees here that they actually just went in and took out so many roots that the trees became so compromised that they had to be taken down almost straight away.”
The township’s own standard operating procedures state that root removal will not take place until the site is free of concrete and that only Shade Tree Division staff may perform it.
The Wrong Standard, the Mayor’s Ticket and a $5,400 Bill
The earlier crackdown on alleged sidewalk violations was also using the wrong benchmark. Code enforcement applied an ADA tolerance built for brand-new sidewalk construction, a maximum quarter-inch height difference between slabs, to existing sidewalks held to a more lenient standard. Township Manager Stephen Marks confirmed the error in December 2025. “The federal guidelines and standards are for new construction. And I think it was a misapplication that the town was using that standard for existing sidewalks.” he told Montclair Local. Many violations, likely including some in Fieldstone, shouldn’t have been issued at all.
Enforcement had already stalled once. Then-Mayor Sean Spiller received his own sidewalk ticket in 2023 for a South Willow Street property. The case moved to Essex County court to avoid a conflict of interest and was dismissed, with the prosecutor citing remediation and a lack of discovery, the exchange of evidence required before trial. When enforcement resumed under the March 2025 ordinance, the wrong standard came with it.
That December, resident Frank Rubacky handed the council clerk a bill: $5,400, the cost of a sidewalk repair he’d been wrongly ordered to make. Marks acknowledged the mistake on the record and said there is no mechanism to pay anyone back.
“Any kind of communication we’ve had with the town,” O’Byrne said, “it’s led to more confusion and it’s led to more aggravation, especially for this neighborhood.”
Fieldstone Has Been Here Before, and the Town Was Warned
In 2019, Montclair Local reported that sidewalk work on LaSalle Road, just inside Fieldstone, removed four oak trees. Residents demanded an independent arborist and got a warning that more trees could come down.
On June 9, 2026, the Township Council approved up to $50,000 to Rich View Consulting for a Community Forestry Management Plan, a first-ever township-wide tree inventory. A revised tree preservation ordinance was tabled the same night. First Ward Councilor Erik D’Amato named Fieldstone directly, calling what happened there the product of “poor administrative oversight.”
“What we cannot do is just create a paperwork blizzard,” D’Amato said to the Montclair Local. “And then have the real-world stuff stay the same. That’s what failure looks like.”
A letter to the editor in Montclair Local this week alleges that at least 4,786 trees came down townwide between 2020 and 2025. In 2025, despite a $500,000 tree budget, the township planted zero on its own. Its Urban and Community Forestry accreditation, a state certification tracking active canopy management, expired in 2024.
The Montclair Pod reached out to the township for comment and has not heard back. The tree ordinance revision is still in progress. If you want to weigh in, the next council meeting is the place to do it. The Montclair Pod’s video of the Fieldstone tree cutting is on our Instagram, nearly 50,000 views and more than 200 comments. Go watch it
