McKinney Council Member Faces $44,000 Penalty for Cutting Down Own Trees

A McKinney City Council member is accused of illegally chopping down 18 trees on property he owns, KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported. Don Day's company, McKinney Entertainment LLC, bought the property last year from Eldorado-Collin, which is owned in part by Attorney General Ken Paxton, Community Impact reported. Day faces $44,000 in fines and fees for the 18 "quality" trees he had felled, NBC5 reported. His company began clearing the land for development last year. "The flood plain area has been an illegal dump site for decades and the underbrush under the old growth trees had overgrown the site to the point that it was choking and killing large old growth trees," Day told Community Impact in January. "Numerous large trees had fallen in the storms this year. In order to clean up the site, we removed the decades of the accumulated trash and underbrush to expose the large, majestic old growth trees and create a park-like environment."  Continue reading...