CA: Brush removal was brushed off (San Diego)

San Diego Union - Tribune ^ | 12/30/07 | David Hasemyer and Jennifer Vigil

[BurbankKarl]

In June, Mike and Ann Collard hired a company to remove limbs from 11 soaring oaks and two sycamores that surround their home in Glendale, Calif.; a city fire inspector told them that some of the branches were fire hazards because they hung too close to the roof. What the couple didn’t know was that three months earlier, the city council had revised its tree ordinance to include substantial penalties for pruning protected trees without a permit, and doubled the fines for illegally cutting them down.

The city slapped the Collards with a $347,600 fine. “It may as well have been $3 million. There’s no way we could pay that,” says Mr. Collard, a software designer whose wife gave birth to their third child in August.

They won’t have to. Last week, the Collards met with Scott Howard, the Glendale city attorney, who told them the city was dropping the fine altogether. For the most part, the ordinance was intended to dissuade developers from treating the fines as a cost of doing business, Mr. Howard says.”There wasn’t a lot of debate about how [it] will affect an average homeowner.” The law is currently being reviewed by the city council.

[BurbankKarl]

and the only reason they backed down was because it was on KFI 640 for two straight days

[roamer_1]

I think it is amazing they got the fliers out. Then DO IT. You want the firefighters to REMIND you? and check on you? That would mean that MY tax money would pay someone to remind YOU to clear your brush. Pretty soon we’ll be paying people to remind others to wipe their hind ends.

Up here, fire danger is taken very seriously. I was in the lawn care business many years ago. The county would send notice to property owners to clear away fire hazard. If the work was not done in 60 days, the county, through the fire marshal, would contract my company to do the work (I had long-grass/brush crews too), and attach the bill (along with a substantial fine) to the property owner's tax bill.

One notice by mail, second notice on the door, and then the county would contract the work.

[bboop]

Now see, I have no problem with that. It needs to be done and the homeowners are flakes. Fine, go ahead, do it and charge them. But the whining because the Fire Department warned them once but then didn’t remind them — that is stupid.