The sound of hammering and the roar of heavy machinery woke 28-year-old Mitchell Akullian one Tuesday morning before his 7:30 a.m. alarm. The marketing analyst padded through his childhood Key West-style house in Tavernier, one of the connecting islands between the Florida mainland and Key West. The noise grew louder as Akullian neared one of the windows.
The scene shocked him: Two armed police officers and a team of public workers were walking around his front yard, slicing back the residence’s 100 trees and shrubs.
“Our house looked like a crime scene,” Akullian said.
The Islamorada Fire Rescue Department said the plantings posed a public safety hazard. It's not unusual for local public works departments, utilities and the like to prune or fell trees to ensure service, but the undertaking is typically not at this scale.
Owner spent thousands on plantings
Akullian's 65-year-old mother and owner of the house, Lou Ann Steed Buschlen, had planted trees and shrubs over five years with a budget of about $3,500. She wanted privacy at her 1,800-square-foot four-bedroom, two-bathroom residence. The area changed 31 years after Buschlen bought the house with her husband to raise their son there. More people bought property in the area, and what was once a quiet strip of paradise became noisy and active with new residents, renters or vacationers staying briefly at nearby houses. Buschlen’s husband died of cancer years ago, but Buschlen, a barber, decided to stay.
The trees and plants, some of them just over head-high by the time public workers cut them in late April, provided her with exactly what she needed — a green oasis, including white stoppers once used as medicine for indigestion, fiddlewood, cinnamon bark, blue buttonwoods and marlberry bushes.
Their removal, Buschlen said, shook her. “I was dying standing there watching them cut my trees down, watching that happen.”
The removal of trees and shrubs marked the end of a hotly debated battle between Akullian, Buschlen and the Islamorada Fire Rescue Department. The argument falls on an easement and driveway. Akullian and Buschlen said the easement has 4 feet of land used as a buffer, where Buschlen planted the trees and shrubs, but the fire rescue team says all the land is needed for access to Buschlen’s house and two residences sitting behind it.
'These two homes had no access'
Buschlen and Islamorada Fire Rescue Department Fire Chief Terry Abel had set a meeting with the Islamorada Village Council for June to settle the matter. It was months after Abel had requested the clearing of the easement and driveway in late 2024. Buschlen pushed back the January meeting to May and then rescheduled again to June.
“Who knows what’s going to happen? In the meantime, these two homes had no access,” Abel said. “What if something happens to one of the residents, then I’m the one to hang dry, because I can’t reach my constituents.”
Fearing an emergency, Abel said, he decided to clear the way once and for all without notice.
Abel said it was the only property tug-of-war he has had with owners in the area; others have cleared easements when requested.
For Buschlen, the matter could have been resolved another way. The fire department could reach the two houses near the rear through another road. Abel said the only other option would have been the neighbors’ yards.
The June appeals meeting remains on the agenda, and Abel said he’s committed to going. Buschlen said she is finding out what recourse she may have.