The City of Roses is also sometimes called the City of Trees. Look down on Portland from Council Crest, Mount Tabor, or Rocky Butte and, except for downtown, much of it looks more like a forest than a city. But 165 years of history as a forested city is not good enough for the city council, which just passed a 100-page tree ordinance that regulates what people can do with trees on their own land with even stricter rules for trees in their front yards that happen to be partly or wholly on city right-of-way.
Portland from Mount Tabor. Flickr photo by Patrick Michael McLeod.
Under the rules, if a tree on your property is greater than 12 inches in diameter, you can’t cut it down without a permit and a promise to plant a new tree. If you have a tree of any size on your property that happens to be in one of six overlay zones, then you can’t cut it down without a permit and a promise to plant a new tree. If you want to cut a “street tree”–a tree of any size on your front berm, the land that is technically in the street right of way even though you are legally obligated to landscape it–you can’t cut it without a permit and a promise to plant a new one.
You also need a permit if you want to plant a street tree. You need a permit if you want to prune a street tree of branches larger than one-quarter inch in diameter, or if you want to prune a tree on your private property that happens to be a native species or any species if your property is in one of the overlay zones. You also need a permit if you want to permanently attach something or brace or apply pesticides to a street tree.
Finally, you need a permit to do just about anything to a tree that the city has declared a “heritage tree,” but only about 300 trees have been so designated. But, in effect, the new rules make all trees greater than 12 inches in diameter or in the overlay zones into heritage trees.
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How hard is it to get a permit? A permit application to attach something to a street tree is two pages long and costs $264 per tree. The application to merely prune a tree on your own land is five pages long (although the part you fill out is only two pages). There’s apparently no fee associated with this permit, but the work must be done or overseen by a qualified arborist, so you can’t just go in your back yard with some sheers or loppers and start cutting.
The application to remove and replant a tree is eight pages long (with the part you actually fill out filling four pages). The non-refundable fee is $25, and many tree removals require two-week public notice to allow your nosy neighbors to express their views about it. The likelihood that your application will be denied is great enough that the city has developed an appeal process.
Portland is hardly the first city to adopt a tree preservation ordinance. But most tree ordinances focus on street trees only, and while they may require people to keep trees pruned and healthy, they don’t put barriers in the way of that happening. Yet there are groups that lobby for preservation ordinances, including, not surprisingly, arborists, who may think they are the big beneficiaries of Portland’s new process.
Portland’s ordinance will probably do nothing to protect the city’s forested nature. Trees grow so fast in the Willamette Valley that landowners must work harder to suppress them, if they want to use the land for anything else, than to grow them.
What the ordinance will do is increase the cost of living in Portland. It could also have perverse consequences. Anyone with an 11-inch tree, for example, will have an incentive to cut it down before it reaches 12 inches and falls under the city’s rules.
This is just one more example of Portland and Oregon planners’ utter disregard for property rights. In their minds, what’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is theirs as well. Not only should you have to get their approval to do anything on your own land, you should also have to get the approval of everyone in your neighborhood or even, should they care, everyone in the state. Unless your goal is to drive the economy into bankruptcy, this is not a good way to run a city.
Lesson:
NEVER—NEVER —-NEVER plant a street tree!!
NEVER—NEVER —-NEVER plant any tree in Portland (except on an enemy’s property!)
PS: Didn’t Portland’s fascists just make trees into White Elephants?
If you like trees on other people’s property, the answer is to punish people if they plant or allow trees to be grown on their property?
I live in a HOA in which people who have no trees on their property supposedly get to decide what I can do with trees on my property. In reality, I don’t ask permission.
“I live in a HOA in which people who have no trees on their property supposedly get to decide what I can do with trees on my property. In reality, I don’t ask permission.”
Don’t play the victim. You’ve voluntarily chosen to live in an HOA and to abide by the HOA rules. These rules have not been imposed on you.
People like this who think they’re above rules of voluntary association make me sick.
I predict a marked increase in tree girdling by unknown vandals.
Another name for Portland cold be “City of Sequoyas”. Note the fine ~130 year old and 8+ ft dbh specimen in the Tabor photo looking towards Hawthorne (looks like a pencil top). According to my estimates, there are as many as 8 per square km in pdx. They live up to 3200 years in their native habitat. So perhaps it’s beneficial to have some rules.
I fail to see how these tree roots are any different than the pages and pages of other rules that have made private property public.
Oh, and those who don’t like it can do as I did and vote with their feet and get the hell out of Portland. There are plenty of other better reasons to leave.
I have spoken to an arborist in our regional district, and he confirms that a fair bit of his business comes from people in municipalities with tree-cutting bylaws, all of whom are having trees cut down before they reach regulated size.
Sequoias. Auto correct.
Enacting a law is also the authorization for police to kill people in certain circumstances because of that law. Cutting down a tree on your own property is just a petty a crime as selling single cigarettes without paying off the state for the privilege. Those protesting the police activity should reconsider why they authorize up to deadly force by the state to force such petty preferences upon the citizens.
“This is just one more example of Portland and Oregon planners’ utter disregard for property rights.”
And the two links in this sentence were from Antiplanner blog posts in 2008, nearly seven years ago.
So, why another post now? Why trees?
Why no posts about private business owners being denied the right to create rules regarding smoking on their private property? That rule went into effect just after the posts mentioned above. Certainly this is a private property issue.
Again, why trees to trigger the private property issue?
What about this long list of requirements for property owners that includes:
I mean, the city is even demanding that house numbers be posted in a conspicuous place. If it’s my private property, why do I have to post a house number?
What if I want to have a pig or a rooster on my private property? City says no way! Certainly this too is a violation of private property.
Point is that private property isn’t really private, especially not in cities like Portland. Even if you own your property outright (no mortgage), the state really owns the property as failure to pay fealty to the overlords results in confiscation of “your” property. Every little bit of what you may or may not do with your private property, whether it is a residence or a business, is tightly regulated (even if it’s not always enforced).
But what do you expect from a place that takes pride in its nickname “Little Beirut”? The overwhelming majority of Portland residents are statists; go talk to the hipsters lining Hawthorne pictured in the pic above. If you can pry them away from their legal weed or microbrews, each will say they LOVE this tree ordinance, perhaps while actually hugging a tree.
Certainly the 500 or so Libertarians who lived in Portland and voted for the Libertarian candidate in 2008 have either fled or resigned themselves to living among statists.
Now back to my point: why not more posts from the AP about private property rights violations in Stumptown? Why does he hate trees so much? 😉
The inevitable next step will be:
Parents hanging tire swings on tree limbs without a permit will have their children taken away by the state – as they are obviously unfit roll models, encouraging their children to ignore governmenta mandates.
“Parents hanging tire swings on tree limbs without a permit will have their children taken away by the state”
You mean the state will forcibly take their children away in addition to the 11 years of required mandatory attendance at government reprogramming centers? Universal government pre-K reprogramming centers should do the trick, and probably will soon in Portland. Children can be programmed to rat out their parents for trimming their trees or hanging tire swings.
The level to which private property is regulated in Portland is simply incomprehensible. During my searches through the pages and pages of regulations, I found that if I wanted to tutor in my home in Portland, I must pay $147 to the government for the privilege; like a sex offender, I would be required to notify all my neighbors of my business (Grumpy neighbor? No permit!); I could only tutor during certain hours and could only have a maximum of eight clients a day. Oh, and if I have a mother-in-law apartment on my property, no permit!
Again, I think the Antiplanner is missing the forest for the trees; the City of Portland long ago destroyed private property rights. Now that private property no longer exists, regulating the pruning and cutting of trees on any property is perfectly fine.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Portland is hardly the first city to adopt a tree preservation ordinance. But most tree ordinances focus on street trees only, and while they may require people to keep trees pruned and healthy, they don’t put barriers in the way of that happening.
The City of Takoma Park, Maryland has a lot of tree-related regulatory stuff its Web site here.
Yet there are groups that lobby for preservation ordinances, including, not surprisingly, arborists, who may think they are the big beneficiaries of Portland’s new process.
I don’t mind using an arborist – on our HOA property, having an arborist licensed by the State of Maryland, Department of Natural Resources to advise the association about tree pruning and upkeep has saved us a lot of trouble and money over the years. But that is our choice (we also have a fiduciary responsibility to prevent the HOA’s trees from damaging the private property of our owners, tenants and visitors).
Old name: “City of Trees”.
New Name: “City of Fees”.
Also, if by “street right of way “ the Antiplanner means “city-owned land”, I don’t think they can force you to maintain land you do not own. That issue has come up elsewhere, and I am pretty sure that the problem is that it is a form of involuntary servitude.
I’m sure any trees the City of Portland may make me plant as a result of this law will most likely die after about a year or two. That’s what happened to the tree the “friends of Trees” planted in our parking strip a couple of years ago. When this law was adopted we had 5 trees in our yard that would be effected by this law, as a result we have only one today. One day the 90″+ tall Norway Spruce we have in our parking strip will die or fall down, and the tree that the City of Portland requires me to replace it with will most surely die after a couple of years.
You only have to plant one young tree to replace an old mature one? NYC doesn’t let you off so easy.
“Mr. Molino, through his attorney, declined to comment about his own saga. But the city determined he’d need to plant 103 three-inch trees to make up the value to the public of his century-old tree. The Parks Department said it would handle the tree plantings for $1,550 a pop, or Mr. Molino could contract out the work. ”
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130714/ECONOMY/307149974/staten-islands-300000-tree
ahwr – FYI – most lot’s in Portland with single family homes are 50′ x 100″.
I’m sorry 50′ x 100′
I’m not sure I understand the relevance of lot size, in NYC the replacement trees aren’t all on the same lot. Generally within the same community district, but there are probably exceptions to that. I think the lot talked about in the story I linked is about 50×100 too.