By Mike Keller, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
Dec. 1–GULFPORT — A North Carolina contractor and businessman is the first person to serve jail time for breaking Gulfport’s tree-protection ordinance.
Peter Dane Koke, 39, was taken to the Harrison County jail Thursday morning to begin serving a 15-day sentence. He will also pay a $690 fine for clearing 102 trees on more than 100 acres without a permit over the 2005 Thanksgiving weekend.
“It is not illegal to remove protected trees, it is illegal to remove them without a permit,” said prosecutor John Dawson.
Brion Capo, the former Gulfport tree-protection advisor who’d served in that capacity since the city created the tree protection ordinance in 1989, said he tried to work with Koke to get the permits after the trees were torn down.
“He disregarded our codes and did what he wanted to do,” Capo said. “He went around the normal process that everyone abides by. It is the will of the people that we do not cut down every stick we have.”
Capo went to the site- at the northeast corner of 34th Avenue and 33rd Street- after receiving complaints from residents. He counted 59 Live oaks, 15 red maples and 28 Sweet Bay magnolias on the ground among numerous other trees that were not protected.
Dawson said there had been negotiations with defense attorney Billy Miller over higher fines and less jail time, but city officials wanted to go with more jail.
“We offered to pay a $10,000 fine for less jail time, which would have planted a lot of trees in Gulfport,” Miller said. “The city official thought it would serve the city more to serve the 15 days. It offended my sense of logic.”
Koke, who came from Wilmington, N.C., to the Coast after Hurricane Katrina to run a demolition and debris-removal operation, bought and later vacated the old American Beauty College on U.S. 49. He subsequently moved out of Mississippi.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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