So we have a palm tree in front of our house. It lives in the area that is City owned. Visualize: front of house, yard, sidewalk, patch of grass where palm tree is, curb, then street. There are palm trees all up and down our block and they are great. They stand tall, proud and stately, reminding us that we live close to the beach. Some of the palm trees on our street have been removed by the City because of whatever reason City’s remove their trees once in a while… We have no issue with the palm trees in general: except for when the wind blows really hard and the gigantic dead fronds (that the City should be maintaining) fall off onto our cars and then scatter into the street with their prickly thorns all over the place while leaving unsightly scratch marks on the roofs and sides of our vehicles… that part is slightly annoying, but it doesn’t happen often. Also, there was that time when a particularly large frond blew onto our roof and then scraped down onto our driveway along with a bunch of roof shingles. That was also annoying. But it only happened once.
The palm in front of our house is valued at $6,080.00. How do I know this? Well, I’ll tell you. We just got back our Engineering Department corrections and there was a problem. The problem was with the palm tree. The one we do not own. The City has requested that we remove their palm tree and replace it with a new tree when we build the new house. Why? Because we can not pour the new proposed driveway without getting too close to the drip-line of their palm tree. What is a drip-line you ask? It’s the area where the roots grow underground and there must be a 5′-0″ clear diameter area around the tree measured from the center of the trunk and our plans show that our new driveway impedes on this 5′-0″ diameter area. (so much eye rolling going on around here that my eyeballs hurt from the strain)
The City has sent us a request form. On this form there are three questions.
- Are you willing to pay for cost of Removal?
- Are you willing to pay Loss of Tree Value?
- Are you wiling to pay for Replacement Tree and Labor?
OK. I get #1 and #3. Yes, the tree does not technically belong to us, but we get that since we are making the changes to the driveway that okay, we will agree to pay for removal and replacement of the tree and the labor associated. But come again with #2??? Will you be willing to PAY THE LOSS OF TREE VALUE? What The…? So correct me if I’m wrong, but after all is said and done, the city would like us to essentially spend $6K on the removal and replacement and loss of value of the palm tree which we did not even plant let alone own? Hells-to-the-NO.
How does this make sense? Can someone please explain this to me?
Annoyed and to be honest, kind of baffled.
-K
