Planners eye exempting subdivisions from tree law

By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Should Fayette County’s tree protection laws govern residential construction projects, or just commercial and industrial ones.

County planning officials will take another look at the tree protection ordinance, enacted last year, to see if there are any changes they want to recommend.

Members of the county Planning Commission asked County Attorney Bill McNally and planning director Kathy Zeitler to study the wording of a section that requires subdivision developers to reroute streets in order to save any tree over 24 inches in diameter.

Developer Jeff Ellis said it’s not logical to require saving 24-inch pine trees, when many homeowners want them removed because of danger they’ll fall on houses.

In one case that has come to the commission’s attention, a developer is being required to move a street to avoid several 24-inch pine trees, and in the process will have to remove a larger number of 23-inch trees.

Ellis also objected to a requirement that developers use tree protection fencing to protect all trees to be preserved. In a residential subdivision, in which only the streets are cleared initially, that means surrounding hundreds of trees with fencing, an expensive proposition, he said.

“Since we pay dearly for every acre that is cleared, plus we know that trees sell lots, we want no more land cleared than is absolutely necessary,” Ellis said in a letter to the commission.

“Therefore, the requirement for tree protection fencing in subdivisions was deemed unnecessary.”

Commission Chairman Bob Harbison said he is inclined to simply delete the entire section having to do with residential subdivisions. “I’m ready to recommend that we take that out,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s going to be workable.”

But commission member Al Gilbert argued that instead of deleting the section, it should be beefed up. “I feel like what we have here is half an ordinance,” he said. “Unless we put some of the same restrictions on residential that we do on commercial, it’s a counterproductive ordinance.”

Gilbert did agree with Ellis about pine trees, though. “I look at it like corn... it’s a crop,” he said.

Commission member Jim Graw said it may actually make more sense to regulate tree retention in subdivisions than in commercial developments. “If you think about it, we put so many regulations on people that want to develop commercial, and it’s a small, small percentage. The large percentage [of development] is residential,” he said.

County Attorney McNally suggested splitting the difference. “It would be good if we could find that middle ground where we save trees and we allow reasonable development,” he said.

The group will tackle the subject again in its Sept. 21 work session, 7 p.m. in the county zoning office.