Posted on 04/18/2013 2:45:07 AM PDT by Ferndina
Hello, my local building and zoning board recently approved a tree ordinance after outrage of a land owner cutting down 30 trees to enlarge his gas station. It will be brought up Monday at our County Commisioner's meeting and possibly voted on.
I don't like the government in our business, I think it goes against the U.S. Constitution as well as the Florida Constitution, which states we have a right to own and possess our property,
I would like any ideas to help convince the local gov. not to approve this ordinance. Thank you
In most locales (at least here in parts of Georgia), a homeowner can cut down trees on his/her property at will.
It is not so for businesses I’m afraid. Counties should have a reason other than they don’t like it. An arborist, or other profession should have a valid reason for protecting the trees. My guess is they were pine trees - a dime a dozen.
The only advice I can give you is when these eConNUTs try to say cutting down 30 trees harms our environment, you can tell them that there are over 1 million acres in Florida dedicated to pine tree plantations. At least that’s what they had when I worked at Buckeye Cellulose in Perry, FLA in 1982. Each stand was replenished in a 20 year period.
Florida (examine the name carefully) has an abundance of ‘flora’..........
A local nursery or tree farm can easy replace those 30 trees at anywhere from 18” seedlings to 15-20ft specimens, depending upon what you want to spend.
Trees are an easily- and quickly-renewable resource, and most grow 8”-25”/yr, depending upon variety/cultivar.
Actually they were oaks, but when this fella cut them to enlarge his store there was many letters written to the local paper’s editor and now they are going to try to pass this tree ordinance, supposedly it only hinders developers now, but they have attempted this in the past and their goal is to enlarge it to affect private citizens as well.
Sorry, in my opinion. ( above post )
If they confine it to developers the rule will likely stand. When they mess with the private homeowner then it won’t.
What if the developer is the land owner, would that change things?
Old trees are actually a net LOSS on the balance of keeping down the CO2 content of the atmosphere. No longer growing with the rapidity of younger and smaller plants, the degree of decomposition of dropped dead plant material (leaves, dead branches, old bark) exceeds the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, the biological reason trees even exist in the first place.
If you REALLY wanted to use the growth of plants to maintain the balance of CO2, a very rapidly-growing species like some form of grass is much more efficient than oak trees. Say, maize or bamboo.
Even palm trees suck up more CO2 than most oak species.
But this is far too technical for the typical econut to understand or follow, as trees occupy some special place in the heart of the romantic, and the response of the Lorax is totally emotional, not logical or measured.
Yes, I know.
Question to those who will make the decision;
Are you, and the town, willing to accept liablity for all damages done to property in the future by any and all trees on private property ?
Tree ordinances are not necessarily a bad thing if they allow for reasonable use of the property. Cutting mature trees down for the sake of reducing property maintenance, or improving roadside signage can create a blight on a community.
If I owned land you wouldn’t find a single tree on it, that’s for sure.
Bird sh*t falls from trees.
Property is property. If you can’t use it, build on it, rearrange or remove the flora, then it ain’t yours.
Of course, as long as property taxes persist, we are all renters.
That's why governments pass ordinances effectively robbing people of one or two sticks out of a private citizen's bundle of rights over the use of a piece of land while leaving the private citizen still the owner. That way they can say, "hey, we didn't take your land. We just passed a zoning law. You're still the owner of the land."
They get away with that because so few people understand the "Bundle of Rights" concept of land ownership.
People rarely own their land completely. Usually, in the fine print of their deed (forgetting the bank loans, and such, for the moment), someone else owns the mineral rights and the three feet from the property line where the utilities are buried, or the right of way to piece of adjacent property otherwise cut off from access to the road, or the limitations on how high one can build, the limitations of being inside a city's limits, etc., etc.
Putting it very simply, all things being equal (which they rarely are), when a government comes along and "removes" one of the sticks from the bundle of rights to use a piece of land, it's a "taking," and requires dues process and just compensation.
At least that's what our Constitution spells out. Governments really, really dislike the chain of title and the bundle of rights, the way our law describes private property as it relates to Real Estate because it's expensive. They would rather use the power of the majority to, for example, make everyone along a shore line build further away from the water with a new law than have to compensate millions of people for taking their property.
Cities and Property Owners Associations probably already enjoy a wide range of degrees of ownership of limitations over the use of a private owner's use of their property spelled out in their deeds.
Nest bet is to ensure any ordinance include provisions to protect the homeowner such as allowing removal of up to 20 trees per year of a certain size or for health and safety issues. Also to let cut trees be replaced by new plants in other locations or even other lots. At least this will provide greater flexibility for landowners. Sad to say we are already screwed on issues lik this in America.
Tree cutting ordinances are actually quite common.
Couple faces $20,000 for cutting down trees.
http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/83174527.html
You're right. Large swaths of my little town have been ruined by commercial property owners --who do not live in town-- clear cutting their lots simply because they don't want to pay for leaf clean up.
And blight is exactly what we've gotten. My town now has lower property values than adjacent towns that have more effective tree ordinances. We are also starting to get gang-related graffiti and an influx of low-rent types.
These things are not unrelated.
Yes, you have those two aspects as property owners but you have nearly lost all of the most vital aspect of owning... you have lost CONTROL to government and the militant mobs at the planning commission and county/city commisioners meetings who believe only in majority rule, the despotism of democracy with it's inherent "tyranny of the majority!"
You probably still believed as I did long ago, that a man's property is sovereign, that he is the king of his castle (home) with his hetrowife as his queen, free to control all that lies within his kingdom!!!
Now we have people living in "equitable servitude" in gated communities like sheep in the fold with a dictatorial, tyranical Homeowner's ASSociation enforcing government by whim called compliance and conformity in a belief that this guarantees better growth in equity.
Whatever you do, don't run for county commissioner or even seek to get appointed as your district's planning commissioner thinking you'll have enough power to restore any power to any landowner. I've been there and done that and holding office is the most thankless, embittering exercise in futility I've ever done!!!
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