Posted on 02/01/2024 6:46:08 AM PST by Twotone
If you need more evidence that America has become a "permission-slip" society, look no further than the City of Portland, Oregon, requiring homeowners to get permits to remove trees that've fallen on their houses during recent winter storms.
Portland alt-weekly Willamette Week published a story last week about Joel and Sarah Bonds, who had a large Douglas Fir in the backyard squash their house after it became weighed down with ice. The tree barely missed the Bonds' young daughter and cat.
As it turns out, the couple were not unaware of the danger posed by the tree. In 2021, they'd applied for a necessary city permit to cut down the tree and another in their backyard. The city's Urban Forestry division turned them down, citing the trees' apparent health and the damage their removal would do to the "neighborhood character."
That decision rankles the Bonds now. Making them even more mad is the fact that the city is requiring them to obtain a $100 retroactive removal permit for the one tree that fell on their house and plant a new one in its place at their own expense.
A Forestry Department employee also advised them to hire an arborist to chop down the second, still-standing tree, but that they should take care to document the work in case they'd need to apply for another removal permit. According to the Willamette Week story, the couple could risk daily $1,000 fines for removing the tree without a permit.
The Bonds aren't the only homeowners being required to get retroactive removal permits for trees knocked down by the weather. This fact has provoked local outrage and calls for a change in policy.
A recent Oregonian editorial argues that the city should suspend the need to get retroactive removal permits for weather-downed trees, noting that neighboring cities in the area are not requiring such permits. One lawyer who spoke to the paper argued that the city code doesn't obviously apply to trees felled by bad weather.
The city maintains that the removal permits are required by the city code and that city council action is needed to waive those permitting requirements.
The whole episode is an illustration of how property rights have been turned on their head in America's cities. The city regulates tree removal to protect surrounding property owners' interest in the shade and character of the neighborhood. Homeowners' interests in doing what they please on their land are of secondary concern, even though they have to bear all costs and liabilities associated with keeping these trees on their properties.
God Bless Texas and the Abbott family.
What is insane is the city ordinance governing trees
https://www.portland.gov/code/11
Reminds me of the beaver dam dispute in Indiana
https://ssqq.com/archive/vinlin20.htm
You know you are living in commie hell when there is ordinance covering bee poo
https://www.portland.gov/code/13/30
The government is a body of people with the power (by election or fiat) to control your life at the point of a gun or via financial ruin.
Sounds like Gainesville, Florida.
The permit gives them a foot in the door to inspect any repairs done.
Here was an opportunity to arrange these Marxists in a circular firing squad. In addition to the Permit Squad, contact the Sidewalk Committee, it’s ‘unsafe’. Contact the Fire Dept. — how you gonna run a hose through this from the hydrant on the corner. Contact PDX City Event Committee - we want to hold a Cinco De Mayo celebrating Castro but this tree is in the way. Have them all meet there on the same day same time and vidya the fun!
They voted for it.
I have no sympathy for them....................
Sue them for not allowing removal of the tree prior. Find some smarmy lawyer who will inundate them with motions and subpoenas. Have a low-life reporter turn you into a victim of the political machine. Claim the tree was racist for having been planted by a white man 100 years ago. There would be a GoFundMe site up within an hour.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll have a few laughs”. - John McClane
Portland desires to be weird and kept weird..
And governed or ruled, weirdly, is a part of their charter..
Daily.
Daily as in every day until the removal is remediated?
I live in DC so I can’t get too snarky about other insane jurisdictions. But the lunacy runs deep and is longstanding. My favorite example is now somewhat dated, but it is a famous story about Takoma Park, MD.
Mind you, Takoma Park is a lovely place, most of it anyhow, especially the historic district. I can understand why people love to live there. Unfortunately, it got taken over by the fruits and nuts long ago. For years, it was popularly known as “The People’s Republic of Takoma Park.”
At one point, the local animal rights activists decided that rat poisoning was inhumane. They found a fool on the city council willing to front for them. The fool proposed a city ordinance, and the activists showed up in force to whoop it through. The ordinance called for the cessation of poisoning. The city was to switch to humane trapping.
So far, so good.
No one bothered to ask what they would do with the rats once they were trapped.
Someone — today he’d probably be labelled an insurrectionist — showed up at the next council meeting and posed the question. The answer was that “rats are wild animals and don’t belong in heavily urbanized places. We should take them out to the countryside and release them there.” Takoma Park is in Montgomery County, MD, just over the DC line. Frederick County is to the north and was mentioned as a good sanctuary jurisdiction for a catch and release policy for rats.
You can imagine how that went down in Frederick County. Somehow a Maryland civil war was avoided and the Takoma Park City Council reconsidered before the Frederick militia got organized and burned Takoma Park to the ground.
This remains a classic example of how the activist crazies simply don’t think. They respond emotionally to slogans and pictures, and utter stupidity gets enacted into law.
No one suggested moving them to their natural habitat, DC?
Communism.
_________________
I do not recall Stalin of Mao requiring permits to cut your tree?!
Not communism here, just crazy busybody environmentalism.
You know, the people who brought you the global warming and clean energy!
BTW, this approach pretty much guarantees that there will never be any tree there.
DC poisons rats (unfortunately, only the four legged ones ...). No humane animal rights activist would propose dumping the rats in DC.
In addition, DC has a very nice zoo, with lots of captive snakes (unfortunately, only the legless variety ...). We could dispose of a lot of surplus rats right there. But I don’t think the animal rights activists would like that either.
This is the same city that encouraged Antifa/BLM thugs hired by the DNC to torch the city — so that the city could then demand that only licensed contractors do repair — at exorbitant prices. This doomed the properties and let them be snapped up under force majuer — so the city could sell to real estate donors.
Oh, and the contractors were relatives of the city council.
Municipality has to get $$$ somewhere, preferably without raising taxes. This is one way (among many) that they try to do this. What’s the Hotel Tax for Portland?
I remember a New Jerseyite relating how he was cited with a $110 ticket for putting out his garbage can on the wrong night for pickup.
Thing to meep in mind, all the city expenditures for things we (sort of) take for granted are kind of predicated on a tax base and a tax revenue stream that died a long, long time ago.
It is profoundly sad and unfair and probably illegal to everyone that all these unrealistic promises were made in someone else’s name decades ago, that seems to be the issue.
Mao did require everyone to try backyard steel smelting for a while.
There was also (supposedly) a famine caused in part, by an edict to kill a certain bird species. With shovels. May have the particulars wrong, basically the program was so successful that in the subsequent season it caused a a huge uptick with certain insect species, which in turn, devoured major food crops.
Just remove it anyway.
Just get out of lefty land as fast as you can.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.