Category: tree ordinance

Tree ordinance proposal raises alarms around N.C.

Photo: Nancy Pierce

Charlotte likes to boast of its tree canopy, so a proposal at the state level to gut N.C. cities’ tree ordinances has gotten Charlotte City Council’s attention. At the council’ Environment Committee meeting on Wednesday, after a briefing about the measure, the committee referred the issue to another committee to devise a lobbying strategy with N.C. legislators. Here’s the PlanCharlotte.org article I wrote yesterday after the meeting.

But if you’d like to burrow a bit deeper into the issue, here are links to news coverage from around the state:

 It’s not entirely clear how the proposal emerged late in April from a state study panel, the Agriculture and Forestry Services Study Commission, its members appointed by the legislature and the governor.

But at one March meeting, the commission heard from an Iredell County nurseryman upset over municipal regulations in some cities over who pays for trees that get planted and aren’t acceptable to local government officials. And some state legislators, as well as developer lobbying groups, have said for years that some cities over-reach in their ordinances affecting private property.

Here’s a link to the agenda materials for the study commission’s March 28 meeting, with a copy of a
presentation from John Allen of Shiloh Nursery in Iredell County. Allen’s presentation shows a variety of news clips about an incident in 2011 in which the city of Charlotte fined Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church after a church member severely pruned crape myrtle trees (horticulturists call this kind of pruning “crape murder”) on church property but which apparently had been planted because of a requirement in the city’s ordinances. After a national outcry city officials dropped the fine, and said they were working with the church to educate members about pruning techniques that would not harm the trees.

Meanwhile, in Greensboro, civic discontent continues over what many believe to be extreme tree-trimming practices by Duke Energy. Last week a confrontation between a local couple and tree-trimmers led to police and an assistant city manager being called to the scene, and Mayor Nancy Vaughan getting involved. Here’s the report in Triad City Beat. Residents there have been so angry for so many years that last year the Greensboro City Council created a new tree ordinance aimed at preventing some of the more severe tree trimming.

Over the years utility tree-trimming has also infuriated residents in Charlotte neighborhoods. Some years back, when I was at the Charlotte Observer, I got a surprise phone call from then-Planning Director Martin Cramton, as angry as I had ever heard him, complaining of a contractor for Duke Energy who showed up in his back yard intending to, from what Cramton described, essentially clear-cut a part of the yard. Cramton, phoned by his wife, had rushed home and got the tree-cutting delayed for a time. But — maybe because Duke is headquartered in Charlotte, and then-Mayor Pat McCrory was an employee, or maybe because of how often fallen limbs disrupt power here — the Charlotte City Council never seriously discussed an anti-tree-trimming ordinance. The Planning Commission discussed possible ways to get more power lines buried. Those talks went nowhere, either.

More delays for Charlotte’s tree ordinance

Charlotte has lost half its tree canopy since 1985, and Mecklenburg County has lost a third of its. (Read the report on that – see page 70 of this pdf.) So plenty of eyes are on a proposal – moving through the bureaucracy with the speed of Providence Road traffic at 5:30 p.m. – to strengthen the city’s aging tree ordinance as it applies to commercial and multifamily development.

Finally, the plan was, the City Council’s environment committee would render its recommendation today at an 11 a.m. meeting. This isn’t final adoption, mind you, just a recommendation to be sent to the full council. The environment committee, which until Anthony Foxx was elected mayor last November was dominated by Republicans (on a council with a Democratic majority, mind you), has been gnawing on the ordinance since June 2008.

I don’t know what all local developers think of it, because that’s a large and diverse group – a fact you wouldn’t know if you listen only to the local developers’ lobbying group, REBIC. But REBIC and its members have been raising issue after issue for five years, first on the stakeholder committee, which could not reach consensus, and now as the ordinance is before the committee. During the stakeholder discussions REBIC used the time-honored “stall-it-by-demanding-a-cost-benefit-analysis” gambit, which took more than a year, in part because a few non-developers on the stakeholder committee suggested that maybe the anti-tree-ordinance folks shouldn’t be the ones who got to choose the sites on which the cost-benefits were being analyzed.
REBIC didn’t like the idea of pushing the required “tree save” from the current 10 percent up to 15 percent. They didn’t like the idea that trees in parking lots should be planted closer together. Those issues have been, I think, resolved.

Today two sticking points remained: The city staff’s proposal for how to deal with development on already-developed sites, and how to set the fees for a “fee-in-lieu” proposal, under which developers could opt to pay a fee rather than save the trees on a full 15 percent of the site. (It’s all very complicated.) REBIC’s preferred “fee-in-lieu” was laughable: just decide that all land in the city, for tree ordinance fee-in-lieu purposes, is worth $40,000 to $50,000 an acre and set the fees as if that were the case.

Council members offered several proposals to “compromise” between staff’s recommendations and REBIC’s ideas. Why the council members so rarely seem to just opt for their paid staff experts’ recommendations, which have already been compromised during stakeholder talks, is beyond me. But instead of voting today, the committee has punted until June 21.

Best quotes of the day: Both courtesy of District 6 rep Andy Dulin.
– In the context of his worries that the tree ordinance will add costs to development: “We’re going to jack up the cost of building a strip shopping center.”
– “Developers love trees.”