How do we arrive at either of those conclusions?

I, for one, know nothing of this tree other than what I have seen just now. It's entirely possible that a trained arborist (which most cities and counties employ) looked at the tree and decided it needed to be taken down or coppiced. In fact I would argue that it's much more likely that happened than anything else.

I'm actually a little disappointed that the article jumps to weird conclusions in an attempt to be insightful.

I didn't know what the verb "coppice" means, but it turns out to mean cutting off the top of a tree so that new growth will occur: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing