Ashland Tree Ordinance Prevents Property Owner Protection

As if having an ongoing property dispute and tax scandal wasn’t enough, now there’s a house and vehicle damaged by a fallen tree. What kind of resolution will occur? Nobody knows. But there’s more to it than just consideration from the tree damage. We’ve also got to prevent future destruction from other trees. The problem? 2883 Tree Ordinance.

Dave Kanner: Cannot Submit Application To Remove Tree On Another Person’s Property

There was a Friday meeting with Dave Kanner and I (Nathan Hammond) had a lot of questions on the tree ordinance, the tree fund (AKA Neisewander Foundation) among other things.

My biggest question was; “Had we known that this tree was going to fall, would we have been able to submit an application for removal. And had we submitted an application for removal, would the City of Ashland has approved it, being that the tree was ‘many calipers’, had no signs of disease and appeared healthy”. The answer was “No”.

Dave Kanner, City of Ashland administrator told us there was no legal way we could have prevented due to Ashland’s tree ordinance.

But, we could have illegally cut it down, paid the “fine” (or became a benefactor to the Neisewander Foundation, as we like to call it) and saved the house. What would you have done in such a situation?

Is there anyone who would have actually sat by and let their property get destroyed, because it would have been illegal to do otherwise? Would a city employee have actually advised anyone to NOT cut down a tree that could have been life threatening? That seems more negligent than advising Ashland citizens to illegally take down the threatening trees.

More Threatening Trees On Property Line

Having identified the cause of the problem being the insanely high water tables, we now know that the root system of every other tree in the area could be as weak as the ponderosa pine that fell. All of our neighbors are scared and some have even evacuated rooms where large trees could threaten their lives.

We’ve got several trees that are still a major concern. The question is, what should we do about it? We can’t go about it the legal way. Are we going to have to bust out the chainsaws and just take care of the matter ourselves? It sounds like the only resolution, as we don’t have the rights to remove it ourselves and with the City of Ashland’s “Tree City USA” thing going, they’d probably rather see the structure destroyed than take out a tree.