The Twin Cities tree tops have changed since Sydney Hudzinski began climbing into them five years ago.

More twigs are dying. Some leaves change colors early. Many show signs of emerald ash borer damage. Mature, sensitive trees are especially stressed, while others still seem to be thriving.

“It’s been an interesting year,” said Hudzinski, a Plymouth forestry technician who spends her workdays climbing to the tops of city trees to evaluate their condition and prune them.

It’s been an especially busy year for forestry teams throughout the Twin Cities metro area. Severe storms followed years of drought, just as the emerald ash borer damage is approaching a predicted peak. Some trees fell down. Others were removed. Leafy neighborhoods are little more sparse.

“The Twin Cities is gonna suffer, is suffering, will suffer more from a community perspective than the rest of the state, just because there is just such a huge density of community ash trees through that urban area,” said Mark Abrahamson, plant protection division director for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle that burrows into trees, depositing larvae that eventually starve the tree by severing the channels it uses to take in water and nutrients. It’s always fatal.

Borer damage “really exploded” in St. Louis Park between 2022 and 2023, said Michael Bahe, the city’s natural resources manager.

Crews sprayed paint onto dying trees, marking them for removal. Old trees that provided lots of shade have been replaced by newer ones that will take years to grow to full size.

If Keaveny closes her pharmacy, the next ones are 17 and 25 miles away.

Slindee joined the lobbying effort after his parents sold their pharmacy in Harmony, near the Iowa border, in 2007, then saw it close in 2022. “Now there’s nothing,” he said. His father refuses to use a mail-order service so drives 12 miles to Preston, or if he can’t get it there, over 23 miles to Cresco or Decorah, Iowa.

“I have that personal experience of how crappy it is to be in a rural, small town and to just lose your only pharmacy,” Slindee said.

Stepping outside his company, Wolfpack Promotionals on W. Broadway in north Minneapolis, Brown said he knows the feeling of losing access to nearby pharmacies. Nodding toward two nearby senior apartment complexes and thinking of his volunteer side gig, he said, “They need rides.”

The number of residential treatment beds in Minnesota has shrunk, and the facilities that do exist struggle to find enough staff to operate at full capacity. Treatment providers said they must determine whether they can adequately handle each child’s particular needs and balance those with other kids in their care.

Kids who cannot find timely placement in Minnesota’s residential mental health treatment facilities often also have an intellectual disability, aggressive or sexually problematic behaviors or a physical health condition, county workers said.

Minnesota has an array of intensive community-based and residential services for youth with high needs, DHS said in a statement. The agency said it continues to identify and respond to gaps and accessibility issues, which could be due to workforce shortages, low Medical Assistance reimbursement rates and a lack of uniform access to services statewide.

“There is a growing need to address systemic challenges impacting children’s intensive behavioral health services and the lack of treatment options within Minnesota,” DHS Assistant Commissioner Teresa Steinmetz said in a statement. “It takes every member of the system – the state, counties, Tribes, providers and community partners – working collaboratively to alleviate these challenges.”

The day a child leaves a facility, services should be in place to help them live at home, such as an individualized education program, respite services for the family and a youth behavioral health worker and therapist, said Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, who is also a DHS employee.