This is horrible and obnoxious tree trimming. Bad for the trees, bad for urban tree canopy, bad for urban heat management, bad for carbon sequestration, and done as an insult to labor.
I asked our AI overlords for an appropriate punishment:
The company executives have to spend the weekend acting as city gardeners, complete with typical gardening attire, tending to the local parks and trees - ensuring the community that they're committed to their "root-level" duties.
Where as I don't disagree with the timing being retaliatory, my parents have similar trees and my father had me do that just before he passed away. I was convinced I was killing the trees and turns out their canopy is larger than ever now, so it might not be terrible for trees, but still timing is bullshit.
I'm not an arborist and we don't have those type of tree where I live, but I have worked in landscaping before. My understanding any substantial trimming like that I've done in the past should never be done in the hottest part of the year because the tree will have trouble retaining water.
This looks more like tipping than pollarding to me. If it’s supposed to be pollarding whoever’s doing it is shit at it. Tipping is harmful to trees, and based on the photos of the tree prior to it being cut it looks like it may have been tipped once in the year already (likely why they weren’t issued a permit by the city and cut it illegally).
The trim is negligible when you are talking about carbon sequestration in the scheme of things too. I'm not sure how the other points stand up either - but the timing would suggest it is an insult to the labour.