I've driven down this road for years and didn't bat an eye to these trees until recently. The other shrubs that were cut down around them have been gone for years and have never been replaced. The other shrubs and trees planted in the surrounding area are either spread out very sparsely, not maintained, or just straight up dead. And plus, like Trenthany suggested, I would replace them with new plants that would ultimately make the area look better. I don't think mother nature intended for people to dig her trees out the ground, but nonetheless bonsai wouldn't exist without yamadori. So no, I don't think the city planted them for someone to dig up, but I also don't think the city cares enough about the aesthetics of this neighborhood, surely not enough for these two trees.
Offer to turn it into a communal garden, don't even tell about the junipers. Flowers and vegetables for the neighborhood. Offer to buy the seeds, to put up a sign with instructions and to make a start for them. Your twenty dollar investment and two hours of writing a letter will be pretty rewarding.
City government will love it. Heck, I did a social study in the past.. And the American social worker presenting this idea to us students had a hard time not jerking himself off on stage. He was so darn proud of himself! Until people started asking the real questions about social cohesion (if 150 people own the tomatoes, who is allowed to pick and eat them if the plants just yield five tomatoes in total?) and the long term effects.. But hey, as long as you can dig those junies and lay a foundation for something that has potential, they'll probably approve without a doubt. Some of these projects do actually work for a long time and they do have positive effects! On paper, it sounds like a perfect plan. In practice, results vary greatly.
Don't forget to include terms like social cohesion, biological, locally produced, self-sufficient, improvement of living space, practical education, entry level gardening, future prospects, setting a good example through leadership, neighborhood ownership/responsibility, guerrilla gardening, and all those woolly new-age management terms.
I'm not going to lie, I'm an advisor to one of those projects and it's working like crap. People fight over flowers, "steal" or "claim" each others veggies and one dude got mauled by a dog because he was just walking there. The yields are so low that nobody who does actual work in those gardens gets to eat something. The bee keeper left because there weren't enough flowers to keep his hive alive. Three times a year the entire garden gets vandalized and they can start from scratch. BUT the city loved the idea and they happily give financial injections to this project. Because on paper, it sounds right.
