This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on Oct. 19.
The mowing of sunflowers planted by the Johnson Beautification Committee has become a political flashpoint and prompted a renewed debate between differing factions within town and village government.
Last summer, the committee, in partnership with the newly formed Johnson Rail Trail Committee, conceived of a plan to help attract those traveling on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail into Johnson village.
To make the path from the rail trail entrance to downtown Johnson more appealing, the committees planned to plant rows of sunflowers on the grassy rights of way that separate the street from privately owned lawns, dubbing it the “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” initiative.
When beautification committee chair Kyle Nuse went to the Johnson Selectboard on July 3, the board was supportive. Board member Eben Patch asserted that the land was owned by the town and that landowner permission for the planting of the sunflowers was not necessarily needed. Presciently, he predicted they might become a target for vandalism.
The project was approved without objection, with a simple note that Nuse should check with Johnson village to ensure there were no concerns regarding sidewalk maintenance. The public works department didn’t object and Jenna’s Promise, the holistic addiction recovery organization that hosted some of the sunflowers, also endorsed the project.
Nuse reached out to village manager Erik Bailey, and after being assured the sunflowers would be removed before the first snowfall, gave his approval to the project.
In the swampy heat of Saturday, July 8, a team of volunteers from the beautification committee and Jenna’s Promise spent the day sowing sunflower seeds from the rail trail entrance down Railroad Street. A grand opening of the full rail trail, with a stop in Johnson from Gov. Phil Scott and Sen. Bernie Sanders, was planned for the following weekend.
A few days later, Johnson was hit by torrential rainfall and devastating flooding. Among the displacement and destruction, the seeds became an afterthought and assumed lost.
But they weren’t.
As some Johnson villagers were tearing out waterlogged drywall and filling dumpsters with their possessions, the sunflowers began to grow. To some, they came to represent a small symbol of hope and beauty amid the destruction.
“They were like our little beacon of hope, our symbol of resilience,” Nuse said. “They didn’t die, and not only did they not die, but they were growing and thriving.”
The mowing
The sunflowers grew through August undisturbed, until one day in early September when Nuse found that a wide swath of the flowers had been mowed down.
Fearing vandalism, Nuse contacted the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department and later passed on a lead received after the beautification committee posted about it on social media to Det. Kevin Lehoe.
Lehoe determined that a caretaker for a Railroad Street property mowed down the swath sunflowers, without malice, fearing they were an obstruction. The caretaker said he sought and received permission to cut them down from Johnson village trustee chair Ken Tourangeau.
On Sept. 9, village trustee GiGi Beach emailed Tourangeau and Bailey to share her concern that “most of the flowers” in the sunflower project had been mowed down and wanted to make sure the village road crew hadn’t done it.
“I’d say the landowner beside the area you’re talking about probably mowed it as they are responsible for the grass in between the road and sidewalk,” Tourangeau responded. “They can’t be in that area as it will get tangled into our snow blowers anyway. I’d suggest they consult the village next time before anyone decides to plant in them areas.”
Bailey confirmed to Beach and Tourangeau that the road crew did not mow the sunflowers and that the beautification committee had permission to plant the flowers, and called the matter “unfortunate” and one of the committee’s “better efforts.”
After learning of the caretaker’s claim that Tourangeau approved the cutting, Nuse and other community members attended a Sept. 25 selectboard meeting to air their grievances over the incident.
Outrage
At the meeting, Nuse and others criticized Tourangeau and Vanessa Tourangeau, a former relation, called the sunflower incident a malicious act.
Selectboard chair Beth Foy argued there was no proof of malicious intent and said there was a lot of ambiguity over who is actually responsible for the grass strips.
This was not the first time Ken Tourangeau or the village trustees’ opposition to a beautification committee project forced the town and the village to negotiate maintenance and ownership rights over shared property.
In July 2022, Tourangeau called a “Humans of Johnson” mural painted on a garage owned by the town but used by both the town and village “ugly” and initially refused to sign a memorandum of understanding regarding the municipality’s rights to the shared building.
Tourangeau and Nuse have also consistently found themselves on opposing sides of various municipal issues. Tourangeau was elected to the board over former selectboard member Nuse in 2021 and they have publicly opposed one another on issues ranging from beautification committee projects to the fallout over the village’s failed attempt to lay off a village lineman last year, highlighting the often interpersonally fraught nature of municipal politics.
Tourangeau has remained publicly silent on the sunflowers.
When asked by the News & Citizen to comment on the claim that he had approved the mowing at an Oct. 16 trustees meeting, Tourangeau denied having approved the cutting and refused to allow fellow trustees to comment on the matter.
Beach reached out to the News & Citizen after the meeting to claim she had no issue with Tourangeau refusing to open the topic for discussion and claimed that the selectboard had told Nuse to first get abutting landowner permission for the project, though minutes of that meeting do not back up that assertion.
“This entire situation could have been easily avoided if a representative from the beautification committee had simply spoken with the residents to inform them of the project and answer any questions,” she said.
She also questioned the value of reporting on an incident that was “truly of no consequence given the recovery efforts that will be underway in this community for the next year or so.”
Foy declined to comment further on the sunflowers, but at the meeting said the beautification committee should make nearby landowners aware of such projects in the future.
Nuse agreed but was frustrated as the committee had followed all the selectboard’s instructions before planting.
She said that despite how trivial the sunflower incident may seem compared to other problems facing Johnson, the project was meaningful.
“This stuff really matters to people,” she said. “It’s the main swath that everyone walks their dogs by, and people really felt it when they were gone, especially with all that we went through with the flood. It is like, ‘Wow, look at these little joyful spots that we could kind of focus on when everything around us was pretty devastated.’”
