Town Council - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded. We call to order the Town Council workshop meeting of July 29th, 2026 for the town of Surfside Beach. The workshop agenda has no invocation, but please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I thank you very much.

Okay, today the agenda is devoted solely to discussion of the proposed new tree preservation and landscape ordinance. The primary purpose of this meeting is to gather sufficient info to develop the proposal for first reading readiness at a subsequent council meeting in the near future. At a workshop meeting, no motions may be made with respect to the item and no votes will be taken. There are two public comment periods in a workshop meeting before council deliberations and after you've heard them. If anyone wishes to comment before, before we discuss the proposal, this is your chance.

You want me to go up there?

No, you're gonna.

I'm gonna present?

You're gonna.

But should I present before?

No, no, this is the public comment before the presentation. Okay. And then presentation discussion. We have two public comments. Please, sir.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Ken Pedraza, live at 616 10th Avenue North. I'm a member of the Stormwater Committee. This draft proposal that we're discussing tonight is much improved over versions we've seen in the past. I appreciate that. Our comments today, this time around later, are going to highlight some of the major concerns I have in regard to this regulation, proposed regulation. I'll be emailing the comments.

Sorry, you have to, you got to talk into the microphone so they can hear you. Okay, sorry.

I'll be emailing town council and other members, county commission and other directors, administrators, with my comments just to make sure you get them and understand. And if not, you can always call me and get information for clarity or whatever. So first off, overall, when you look at the proposal and intent of this regulation, as it's written, it's to protect and replenish trees. Therefore, when I looked at the elements, I'm always looking to see this regulation do that because it's important. If we want to look at table 17-713, it indicates that proposed regulation only requires a minimum number of trees or diameter by lot size. And if we do that, only do or, then what we're going to do is have a significant reduction of the number of trees and tree canopy in our community. So I recommend using the word and, and modifying the minimum number of trees required, the minimum total diameter, and total number of lot sizes So I would recommend that we have a total number of lot sizes only four, which really then only changes bar one to two areas, two square foot areas. For the minimum number of trees, I would change that to eight being the minimum number max within the lots. But today we have 10 in your proposed. And for a minimum cumulative diameter, I would say it's 66 inches as opposed to what's in the current proposed regulation of 80. So these are changes for this particular area really only impact the R1 zone. So with regard to replacement trees, it's in the definition, a few other places. Replacement trees must be purchased at a two inch minimum DBH as stated in other sections in there. When you go to a nursery and want to actually buy a tree, you don't buy the DBH, you buy a caliper. The caliper is measured at two to 18 inches as opposed to four and a half feet. And so that's definitely a very different kind of tree. And so my recommendation is go with caliper and then change the requirements. Replacement trees and qualifying trees. So within those sections, we can talk about palm trees. And it's both of those. So I would recommend with palm trees or palmetto trees, you count only two palmetto trees or palm trees as a maximum number of trees counted in any lot size with only 12 inches of total diameter used to meet the requirements. Otherwise, our community is going to be filled with only palm trees and there'll be canopy will be lost. That's a significant reduction in water absorption, which will then have more potential flooding. When we look at qualifying trees, replacement trees, protected trees, landmark trees, lots of different kinds of trees. It's a little hard to follow them in this particular proposed regulation. I would propose to clarify that maybe in a chart to make it real clear. With regard to removing trees within 10 foot of an existing building, footprint, or driveway in a pool, I wouldn't recommend having required visual damage to a building, driveway, or some other area like that before it can be removed. And another recommendation is consulting arborists for options. Because you don't always have to remove trees. You can easily do some root control, cutting, and you can maintain the tree and not have to cut the tree down. As far as mitigation option, pre-replacement mitigation in that particular area and order, it says to satisfy the minimum when the replacement is not feasible or preferred by the homeowner, the property owner has the option of mitigation instead of payment. So what this says is if you're willing to pay as a homeowner, you can put every tree down and just pay money. So our community will have no trees in their lots. But I think it has to get changed. I think you have to get rid of the word preferred and adding words like not feasible. With mitigation, the only option as determined by harvest. There's a lot of different trees you can do in the plant. And with regard to emergencies, whether it's an imminent or emergency event, I would recommend changing that to add in damaged trees, a damaged tree, so that it has to be damaged trees that are going to take it down. And you have to have pictures to show that. Because this is in times when we're not going to get the approval of things coming out. I just think it's really important to do that. Last thing is protect the fencing. You're asking to go on the drip line of a tree. That's really not practical or feasible. I would recommend five foot away from the tree trunk. That would circle with the fence. That's at least practical. I am done. Thank you. I'll talk at the very end. Well done. Yeah. Hello.

Seventh Avenue North. A general comment I'd like to make to you all. We live in a wonderful town. We count our blessings by the people, resources, and the beauty that surrounds us from the beach, the pier, the climate, the environment. The beach attracts many visitors. The number one attraction are our magnificent trees. It's what attracts people. It draws them here. It makes them want to move here. And we are only two square miles. The transfer, they transform us in a way that there's no other part of the Grand Strand that does this. It's our civic duty and job as residents to take care of them. I agree with my colleague and resident right here that the draft that we're reviewing today has done a lot of improvements. We see a lot of great things that have been added from the previous January and June drafts. i'm also like him going to provide you the total comments i have in writing following this meeting my main concern overall for this ordinance is that the regulations that have been set up for the different trees we deal with invasive nuisance landmark qualifying protected and replacement they are being set up to essentially create a dynamic shifting of surfside beaches polyculture urban forest towards that of a monoculture, single type or tree ordinance or tree species that makes this environment different. Surfshark Beach has an ecosystem that supports an urban forest that include a variety of oaks, pines, and many evergreens, especially like the cypress tree. It's this diversity that should be protected with these regulations by both including hardwood and softwood trees. It's this diversity that gives our tree its unique appearance, benefits, and appeal. By eventually creating a monocultural urban forest, we stand to lose many of these trees and the look of our town. We have to create stewardship that safeguards them as our precious natural resources. I only want to touch upon a few of the texts within the body of the document. Under invasive and nuisance species, those are two different types of trees by definition. In the chart, common bamboo is not a tree, so it really shouldn't be removed. It's part of the grass family. Privet is listed. Privet is a shrub. There is a privet that grows to a tree form that should be substituted for tree privet and blossom privet. Landmark trees are defined to include oaks and evergreens. Oaks are the hardwood. Evergreens are everything else, conifers, fruits, furs, pines, everything else that this place has. Limiting landward tree species to just two types of oaks and one cypress would reduce our biodiversity and lessen our ecosystem in greater numbers. The list should also include the native longleaf pine, That is the pine that South Carolina research is to replace. It has a very vital, highly diversified keystone to the ecosystem that resists extreme weather, such as drought, prevents catastrophic fires, and supports the endangered wildlife in this state. Qualifying trees are out of order. They need to come after the peas. It's a minor point. They're only including non-invasive trees. This is also being an important consideration because we have to include, no, take that back. It should also not include top trees, dogwoods, crape myrtles, yew ponds. Next, my question about palms. Counting palms as trees is not a good idea. Palms are not trees. They are related to grasses. They do not make tree wood. Their trunks do not grow growth rings. By allowing palms to become qualifying trees, we lower the canopy volume and the cooling effects that real trees provide. Palms do not sprout from seed. They have to be purchased from a nursery. They should be considered ornamental. And if we have to have any regulations regarding palms, it should be in the landscape section of the regulations. Protected trees you list only as non-invasive hardwoods. What about the softwoods? Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment at this point?

Hi. I'm Dixie Button. I live at 411 Fifth Avenue North. I had a couple of little questions that as a homeowner that were a little bit confusing to me. When you talk about the number of trees versus the total DBH, when I read this, it looks to me like you could have one huge oak tree and you'd be good because you'd meet the DBH requirement. Or you could have a hundred little saplings and if you added it all up, you could like see it. So anyway, I just thought I'd point that out. And then another thing, and this is just a personal observation, the enforcement on the business license revocation of a tree company that removes unauthorized whatever. The first time they do that, you're automatically removing their business license and you're reporting them to all these licensing agencies and all this sort of thing. I thought it was a little bit harsh, but that's a personal opinion. Maybe that's what we mean. I don't know. But I would suggest maybe give them a warning. Sometimes it's just a natural mistake. Maybe they didn't know the ordinance passed yet. I don't know. But just something like that. I thought it was unusually harsh, but like I said, that was just a personal thing. And then the thing about weekend police enforcement, somebody's got to do it, right? So we have the police department work 24-7. But just because they don't have a permit showing, I mean, I don't know if we do permits electronically or not, but lots of places do. So maybe they should have printed it out and put it on something. their permit on their tree or whatever the post they have out there. I mean, if the wind blew it off or something like that, and the homeowner's not home for the police to question them, so they put a stop work order on it. So the officers don't always have up-to-date information. So I would suggest making it a temporary stop work order rather than, you know, however it's worded there. But on stop work orders, you have the ordinance establishes fixed stop work periods ranging from 30 to 120 days. I'd ask you to reconsider this a little bit because some violations probably could be corrected within a day, but yet their stop work is for 30 days, even though they corrected it within that first day. So I would think that maybe change the wording that would stop work order would remain in effect until the violation has been corrected or something like that, or compliance has been demonstrated. Mitigation, the payment formula, and this is just, I guess, because of my background on the product. You talk about, let's see here. For example, a 10-inch DBH tree, the payment is $10. For a 20-inch DBH tree, the payment is $20. I think you mean per inch of DBH. Otherwise, I mean, $10? Well, I got $10 in my purse right now. I'm kind of doing that kind of thing. So, I mean, that's just, That's just a little something or another. You need a better multiplier, I suppose. And then on the five-year survival replacement, we require them to do replacement trees, but I think the ordinance should spell out a little more clearly about when the inspection intervals will take place, who will do it, what's the responsibility for documenting survival, what constitutes proof of survival, the time you're going to give them to replace a dead tree, And who determines whether that tree has really died or not? Well, I have another minute and 34 seconds, but I don't have anything else to say, so I'll stop.

All right, thank you very much.

Bill Kinkin, 1312 North Dogwood. I only have two things I want to talk about. Palm trees, they're not a tree. They don't do any of the things that we say that a tree should do. They don't even provide much in the way of shade. So I know there are lots where we allow people to take a lot, split it in half. They're too small. You can't put anything there but pine trees or rose bushes. There's just no room for anything else. So in the smaller lot, I guess it's okay. But to allow a palm tree in a 10,000 square foot lot to be a tree is just, to me, is wrong. And the last thing, oh, the first thing I want to thank y'all for doing this. I'm sorry, I skipped right over. I worked on this thing six years ago. It's a nightmare. And I really appreciate all the hard work you put into it, because this is much better than what we had. But I don't want to just be critical, I'm real happy with what's for the most part. And then the last criticism is the $10,000 fine for clear cutting. It ought to be $100,000. You buy a $300,000 or $400,000 lot and you put a $400 million house on it, what's $10,000? It won't even bat an eye. It just goes to the mortgage and it's another $2 you pay every month. No, that needs to be higher. If we're going to stop clear-cutting, we have to stop clear-cutting. And the way you do it is with money. I mean, and maybe pulling permits and not allowing them to build. And there's a lot of different ways to do it. But money is one thing. But $10,000 is a drop in the bucket in this town. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm glad to see y'all are still awake. Don't push us.

I did not know that this would be in this format, so I did not prepare something the way this is done, but maybe it's a better way. Good to see you all. Some of you are my friends. Some of you are also my friends, so it's good to see you all. well for one i i'm on the planning commission and i did work with bill kinkin six years ago on the other three ordinance and i was the only negative one on that one i was the one no vote and uh this one's even more hate using the word draconian but it's it's a little more strict um i uh i've been a vocal uh opponent of this ordinance primarily because I believe several of its provisions are unnecessarily restrictive and, in my opinion, excessive. My biggest concern is the reduction of what homeowners can do on their own properties without government permission or permit. We've gone from allowing the removal of trees that are six or eight inches breast height or so, now with this new ordinance, it's down to three inches. During our planning commission discussion, I asked whether there was room for reasonable compromise somebody who's a little bit more conservative, a little bit more freedom loving, higher than three inches. And the response was maybe three and a half inches. And that told me there was very little willingness to find middle ground. The vote for this ordinance was not unanimous. It was five to zero. There were seven members of the commission. I happened to have had to leave early. It wasn't because I was disgusted by the meeting, but now that I look back, that would have been a good reason to leave. Some people ask, what is the harm of getting a permit? What's wrong with going to the government and asking? You know, you'll probably get approved, maybe. To me, that's not the issue. The issue is whether a permit is granted is that the government permission is now required I've always believed that government should protect the community while respecting individual rights, personal freedoms, and private property. We should be careful not to create regulations that solve one problem by unnecessarily lending those freedoms. People often joke about Surfside Beach. You know, you need a permit to be able to blow your nose. Have you heard that one before? No. I have, several times. And it used to be an exaggeration, but lately it's starting to get a little bit closer to reality. I sound like a broken record because I'm with the Planning Commission. I keep kind of saying this kind of thing, but this is just another slow and consistent in this community. I'm trusting that the council will examine this ordinance thoroughly and be a little more flexible about how to make it more fair and reasonable for our residents. Whenever I'm working with the Planning Commission and listening to you all, I wonder, okay, as a matrix, how does this ordinance or anything that we do, promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for our residents. How does this ordinance, this nutrient ordinance, do that? And I think it's slowly running that away. Now, as a final little note, and I wrote this down before I got here because I thought, hey, I have five minutes, not just two minutes. So I have another minute. i love and worship our creator that's one of my foundational belief systems in my heart and that's why i want to treat others with respect and hope that they treat me with respect i love but don't worship his creation and there's a big difference creation to prove that we love it. And being reasonable and fair, I'm hoping that U.S. Council, who are elected and hopefully want to remain elected, will consider the residents of this beach. And as an aside, 24 seconds, I love palms. I love crape myrtles. I think they are trees. They look like trees. They act like trees. They drink water like trees. They're beachy feeling. They're beautiful.

and they give it a really good free feeling and after all the great myrtles is how myrtle beach got its name i believe thank you all and god bless you thank you no others all right okay we've concluded the public uh comments portion of the meeting the first public comment without moving to the uh workshop items and uh it's just I'm going to ask you to just kind of start walking through, I guess, if you're ready. Actually, probably the best way not to walk through, but just for us to start at the beginning and start with whatever questions, comments we have. I don't think you need to read anything to us. We've all read it.

I don't want to read anything to you. I object to that happening at any meeting, but I would like to hit some highlights and sort of give you a little bit of how we got to this point. Okay. So that you understand sort of our process.

So you just want to go an overview of this? Okay.

Yes, and then ask away on the question.

All right, I think that makes sense.

Okay. Before we get started, I'd like to make a motion that we suspend Robert's schools time of talking for each person and be able to talk more than one, I mean more than five to answering the kind of questions.

Second. Yeah, I actually have that on my notes. I'm glad you brought that up. So yeah, just to suspend the two speaking terms. Yes. Okay. Any discussion on that? All right. Then all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Non-motion carry. So we now have unlimited terms to talk. Use them wisely. Thank you. Okay, so Ms. Bradley, go ahead and just give us the overview.

Okay, so at Council's direction, the Planning Commission took a hard look at the current tree ordinance, suggestions for modifications, and the materials developed by the Stormwater Committee. As part of that process, we conducted workshops, we had public hearings, and we considered, as the Stormwater Committee did, What makes Surfside particularly special and different from our neighbors to the north of the South? And I agree with the vet. It is, aside from the beach, it is our trees. That is a big distinguishing factor. And so the Planning Commission determined that to benefit our community now, and provide trees for our children, grandchildren, future generation, that our tree ordinance needed to be retooled to account for a lot of things, to make it more user-friendly, more protective, less confusing, and less complicated or cumbersome. It's really cumbersome right now. And I know it's not a true measure of those kinds of considerations, but this ordinance right now, just the text part of it is 10 pages. The current ordinance is 18 pages. And what the stormwater committee recommended was 28 pages. So all of that becomes way too dense for citizens and You know, there were comments during the workshops and whatever, could we get this down to a single page, to four pages, to whatever. We took that all into consideration. We drafted different things to see if we could make that work and nothing was terribly successful. So we went back to the current ordinance and we thought, okay, what do we do to make this better and user-friendly and structured in a way that makes sense to the citizens. So let's walk through it. And structurally, one thing we did was we put trees first and landscaping second. I don't know whether you noticed that, but that is a change We think more people are covered by, need to deal with the tree portion than with the landscaping portion. And I'll get to that. The landscaping portion has very limited application in terms of when it comes into play. So focusing on the tree part, Definitions is where we started, and I know I heard some criticism over our definitions, and nothing's perfect, and we're not gonna make a perfect regulation. If we tried to deal with every scenario that anybody can think of, we would have an ordinance that is more than the current Munich of it all together, I think. So we don't need to do that. So in our effort to make things clear and understandable, We made sure that the terms we were using were defined. We used initial caps or uppercase letters throughout the ordinance to signify that a term is defined. Much of the ordinance uses the term DBH. Now, I don't know whether you all understood DBH, but that was just coming at you without an explanation. That is the tree's diameter at breast height. That is an industry standard that Mark has informed us about. And so that is our driving force in all of this. And so DBH appears all over the place. And when we defined it, we told the user how to measure it. We gave lots of simple instructions as to how you can figure this out. Yes, we defined qualifying trees. I know the alphabetical order needs to be fixed, but qualifying trees is something that relates to the tree minimums. And I'll get to the tree minimums in a moment, but the current ordinance uses the term qualifying trees, but has no definition of whatsoever. There's no way that anyone can figure out what a qualifying tree is. And by defining the number of, by using these definitions and we narrowed things down, it meant that we could get rid of that confusing chart at the back of the current ordinance that has everything done by species and how big the tree is and what have you. It just creates a lot of confusion and it makes the regulation much more cumbersome for the ordinance. In division two of the ordinance, which starts on page seven, that addresses the permit and the permit requirements. It spells out in the beginning the general requirements like the fact that you need to get a permit. We want everyone to get a permit. We don't want people out there just taking down trees. And you can use a single permit to take down multiple trees if that is what you need to do. And the permit has to be posted. so that everyone knows that the work is authorized. The remainder of that section is divided up into the various circumstances or scenarios for the removal of specific trees. So we were very cognizant of the reasons why someone might need to remove a tree, and so we made the requirements specific to that particular need. And there are exemptions. Any tree below three inch DBH, you can just go out and remove it. It's exempt from the permitting requirement. And I know we've had some comment that the tree removal, the tree minimums, they don't think are workable. We spent a lot of time debating that. And we made it clear, at least I hope it's clear, that the tree minimums only apply to two removal situations. they don't apply across the board so if you have a dead tree that needs to be removed and you come and you get your permit or what have you there's no consideration of minimums so if you are below the minimums with that removal of that tree there's no requirement that you plant again we just thought that that made the ordinance more simple and understandable for everyone. The three minimums have, I don't know, they've been a lot of debate and discussion over the years. But anyway, I think made it very clear when the minimums apply. And then we simplified the minimums to make sure that they were more understandable. We made them more understandable, and we took the property interest into account. So there are lots of lots in particularly R1 that are undersized lots, and they were being held to the same standard as a larger lot. So instead, we took the whole table and made it based on lot size instead of zoning district to give some relief to the property owners who shouldn't have to overcrowd a small lot with trees. Anyway, we made the minimums based on the number of trees or the total DBH. And we told everybody how you calculate DBH, particularly if you have trees like I have in my yard that are river birch that have multiple trunks. Just how does that get calculated? And we have done what, I think it was Daisy who commented, to this effect that if you have a very large live oak tree in your yard, that that is likely to get you over the threshold with DBH and then you don't need to plant other trees in your yard. We had citizens coming and telling us that they had, I know this sounds funny in this day and age, too much shade in their yard. So they couldn't plant vegetable gardens or flower gardens because they weren't getting any sun. And so they wanted to be able to deal with those circumstances. And if they took out a tree, it just snowballed for them. So the thinking was that if you had a really large tree, that would suffice. If you needed to take out other trees or wanted to take out other trees, in order to accommodate a garden or something of its sort. So we're trying to recognize the property owner's right to do certain things and yet protect trees. Where the replacement trees are put in, because you need to satisfy the minimums. Because there are circumstances where we say you have to satisfy the minimums. Replacement trees, I can't remember who said it, but somebody said you can't get them at two inch DBH. Well, we didn't require any DBH size for a replacement tree. And the proposed ordinance. We understand that at a nursery, you're going to get trees of a certain size gallon. I mean, you could go large, but we weren't going to force anybody into the expense of going with really large trees because that is hard and it's harder to get into it. But anyway, so we were not forcing that. We were allowing that smaller replacement tree to be accounted for in a total DBH or tree count measurement. So that it would count for that particular permitting incident or situation. But it would not count for future ones until the tree grew. We're saying it counts initially, but if you have to come in for some other reason to get another tree permit, it's not going to count because it's too small or it probably hasn't grown, but it will count as soon as it grows enough. We did debate the issue of whether or not we should put requirements and inspections and what have you on the replacement trees in terms of making sure that they were sustained after they were planted. And we thought that that created a too difficult of a situation. And we were repeatedly thinking if we don't think something is going to get taken care of, don't put it in the ordinance kind of thing, that it just, it creates other problems. So anyway, and yes, we did debate palms and pines in an unbelievable degree. We have different opinions on those things. Pretty much though, it came down to the idea of the practicalities with regard to some properties and the fact that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to plant trees other than palms in certain areas in the town. But we think that with the fund, the tree fund, that trees could be planted using monies in the tree fund in other parts of the town. Started down some of this, Mark had us thinking about towns and cities with like a main street that were tree lined. And the idea that the trees had to have been planted generations ago so that there was planning and protection there. And so we used that as part of our guide or mantra here is what can we do to make sure that, I mean, the live oaks that are in my yard, they either sprung up naturally or somebody planted them, I can't even imagine how many years ago. So that's the idea is to keep those things going. As it's been said, clear cutting and tree topping have been prohibited except for those crape myrtles that everybody likes to cut. Anyway, the fines that are in there are all in the current ordinance with the exception of the new things that we have added um uh to it so so we we did we didn't uh uh think that we were the people to decide whether or not fines should be upped that's in the current ordinance for those things um and but we are recommending that fines be added for clear cutting damaging trees during construction and dealing with failures with regard to replacement trees. Now with regard to landscaping, we hopefully can clarify that those requirements are only applicable where an activity is undertaken that requires a zoning permit and involves more than 800 square feet. Otherwise, they don't apply at all. So for most homeowners, they have no application. They just are in there for mainly construction situations, new build situations, those kinds of things. So nobody needs to worry about them otherwise. And like the tree minimums, the landscaping minimums, we change to be based on lot size rather than zoning districts. sort of sum things up here. I think we have developed a good replacement ordinance that strikes a pretty good balance between property rights and the public interest in preserving trees and making sure that we are regenerating and sustaining our tree canopy. Did we address every scenario? No, you can't. You all know this from all ordinances. You cannot address every scenario. If you tried to, you would have just an unwieldy document and you would be defeating what we saw as our goal of trying to make tree ordinance more user friendly and uh and simple and frankly that is what we heard from the majority of the citizens who came to offer public comments uh to us that uh they wanted uh things to be more simple uh and uh in dealing with it and wanted the some flexibility with regard to things So I'm happy to answer any questions. And if you want me to, I can walk you through the whole ordinance.

I don't think we want to do that. But I think we should try to go in order. Because if we start jumping around, and somebody says something about clear cutting, and then somebody talks about the deviation, I think it's just going to get crazy. Yeah, neither do I. So I guess if everybody's in agreement with it, if you've got comments, you know, just take it section by section. Do we want to say anything about purpose and intent, 17700, for instance? Okay. Is this agreeable to everybody? Okay. I'll just walk through the document.

I'm not making a motion.

I'm just kind of walking through it. Well, I have one. right off here in this section. Section six, provide for the continuation and continued funding of the Tree Mitigation Fund. So this exists, we have a Tree Mitigation Fund somewhere?

That is our understanding. It was created under the existing ordinance and I'm trying to remember who told us. It's administered by Public Works.

Public Works, okay.

Yeah, it's an administrator,

I don't know how much money is in it. I was going to say, what do we have?

We confirmed that it is an existing account in the, I don't know, the accounting. I've never seen anything in the finance report. It may just be an empty account. I don't know. but it was created before.

We may have some info in the room, Ms. Hellyer.

Yes, the Tree Mitigation Fund was added to the ordinance.

Yeah, why don't you? Thank you. Yeah, please, we need everybody. Everybody's got to get some exercises done.

The Tree Ordinance was in 2021 included a Tree Mitigation Fund. just like you have now. And there was a major case that was taken for $18,000 of clear cutting near the town hall. So that money went into the tree mitigation fund. The problem we found was when it was created to be made available for tree vines, there was not an established account code given to it. So it really just took the knowledge of the finance people to understand when they got money for fines, that they would put it into this account, but it was otherwise part of the general account. So I think they know that better now, so they may in fact have created a severance code, but it does have money. It had 18,000 a couple of years ago. And that was that case. I don't know if you were familiar with the one where they cut the lock next door to where the town hall is now.

I think it was right as we started. Right. The one meeting I missed right after the election.

And it was in the transition right before Melanie came. Yes, it was. We don't know if she was aware. Sabrina Adair had the check. Right.

And it was close to $19,000, I think. But that took a couple of years to litigate as well because they appealed it to the court. You're fine.

You're fine. Director Brown, I'm just going to ask that you review with the administrator and Director Adair and just and finance and just see if we can identify that. But as for the purposes of this ordinance, we do have one because, again, I saw that as it continued. I don't. Okay. All right. So that's good. Any other things on the purpose and intent? Anybody? All right. Then let's move into definitions, I guess. Anybody have comments on definitions?

I think I do. Go ahead. And actually, it's kind of related to what Yvette brought up during when she started. Is there any reason some of the trees that Yvette mentioned are not in the landmark section? I think she mentioned specifically.

Okay, so the landmark trees definition is It's a carbon copy, not in style, but in the trees covered of the current ordinance. So if you go to the current ordinance at the back of the current ordinance is a chart and it defines one of the columns is landmark trees and it identifies the trees and they have to be greater than 24 inch DBH. So all we did was take it out of a chart. We just listed the species in there and continued to use the greater than 24 inch DBH.

So what's in here is what's in the current ordinance.

In terms of landmark trees.

Correct. Libo, Gloral Oak, Bald Cypress.

Same with the spine. for taking down a landmark tree without authorization. So we maintain that, we just shuffled it to make it hopefully more user-friendly, understandable.

Okay, I've got to comment on landmark trees then. When I first moved down here, everybody said, you know, we got all the live oaks. And then I started to hear, you know, this low oak and I think willow oaks and river oaks And then I, yeah, I know there's like seven different ones. They're not, even if they're 24 inches, they're not valued as landmark trees.

They aren't in our current ordinance. And that's what we were sticking with.

And I don't understand what they are. And also do we have the expertise in this town in BB and Z code enforcement and or public works to know? Yeah. Cause I sure don't know. And again, I don't, If they're very similar related trees, I would think that maybe they ought to be part of that. Again, if the 24 inches is already there, that's fine, but I don't want to say something that's a liberal. Yes, if you've got some knowledge, anybody? Yes, please do.

You probably won't even see landmark tree much in this document. However, if you look at that definition, a landmark tree is a protected tree. Go down and see what a protected tree is. and it's any non-invasive hardwood tree. So if you have a big oak that isn't one of those, it's going to be a protected tree. And that's the important classification. Very good. Landmark classification is kind of like a grandfather classification. So that's all.

It's really just to, as I interpret everything, it is really a reason so that you can set the fine higher. So that if the tree is big, you're going to up the fine. But otherwise, anything that's a hardwood that is three inch DPH or greater is to be protected under all of this.

That clarifies it. Yes. Thank you.

I have a question.

Still on this landmark? Yeah.

Okay. Under replacement tree, number two, pine tree, 14 inches DBH or greater. I have a Subaru. I don't think I can get one of those in there.

Wait a minute. Are you talking about a qualifying tree versus a replacement tree?

Well, it's under qualifying tree. Number two. Oh, I'm sorry. This is replacement.

That's our tree that's already in the ground.

Okay. I got you. It says a replacement tree. So I was assuming that's what that meant, but I realized now it's a qualifying tree.

That's to pull replacement trees into the count that you can use for qualifying trees.

Very good.

Thank you.

Is it possible to add another comment to this landmark?

Sure. Come on.

uh it brings me to two things in the definition it says a landmark tree is a protected tree so it assumes i assume that you're only talking about live oak laurel oak and bald cypress the problem i have with that is when you go down to protected tree definition it says it's a non-invasive hardwood a bald cypress is not a hardwood it's a softwood it's in the carnifer family So right away you kind of create a contradiction in the language of the ordinance. So I would suggest that a land, well, the existing ordinance has all trees that are 25 inches that can be a landmark and then protected or a specimen that makes it even more confusing. So I think it just needs a minor change that includes soft and to have the definitions include softwood, because that is the dynamics of art. or a permanent forest here, not just hardwoods.

It seems to me we could do something as simple as a landmark tree is a protected tree, and then a protected tree shall mean any landmark tree or any non-invasive hardwood tree. And then it covers what you just said.

Well, you want it to say hardwood and softwood. There's two classifications of trees. You have the hardwoods, the oaks, the maples, the magnolias, and then you've got the cypress, the spruce,

Well, what I meant, that would take care of what you just said about landmark trees, the small cypress. Now the pine softwood tree is another issue. And I get that you guys, you know, several of you have said that should be in, but that would be then to me a separate issue.

Okay.

Gotcha.

So you do not, you change the truck protected is what you're saying.

I'm trying to clarify protected because you said that one of the landmarks is a, is a conifer tree. And yet, protected tree said non-invasive hardwood. So we need to fix that. So I think we could say any landmark tree or any non-invasive hardwood. Now we'll deal with pine trees later. We can consider that separate.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you. You got that note? Because we're not making motions.

Okay, so what is the process? I mean, we have an approved recommended ordinance that we're sending to you all.

Well, and to get it to pass, council, you need to listen to what council's saying, and we can't make motions, but if people tell me I'm full of it, and several people say it, then you go, I'm not putting that in. If everybody else kind of nods, it's probably a good idea to put it in.

I think what she's saying is that the note is for y'all, not for her. Y'all make the final decision.

Well, and actually, you're going to develop it and present to us, correct? You're going to write the ordinance. Yes. So, yeah. So he takes the input.

We work together. This is a joint effort amongst all of us.

Right. I'm not saying to send it back to Planning Commission. We got the recommendation.

I just want to understand the process because the process under our ordinances is not for us to retool things here and then just send things back to you without the Planning Commission again dealing with it and voting on the retooled version. So I'm looking for process.

Yeah, I think if I understand correctly, you can jump in, but you guys have made a recommendation and we could vote on that exactly as written. We need to develop a first reading. So I guess we can bring it in as written, But meanwhile, you should probably be looking at a version that will likely pass here. Because I don't see any reason to bring in something that won't if we see some improvements that are needed.

Typically the way I've done this is that the Planning Commission's version is the version that goes to you. Okay. Accompanying that version are a series of suggested modifications suggested here in the workshop. At that meeting, Council decides, this is the Planning Commission's version, which of the suggested modifications are we suggesting that be placed back into this? Then I'd redraft that, come back to you with a clean, perfectly clean now, ordinance for you to adopt. That's the way I've done big ordinances like this in the past, trying to retool it five times before it comes back to you.

I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. Just too much. Mr. Mayor, here's one more. But Mr. Staney wanted to say something. Oh, I'm sorry.

uh if they if this is a presented document and they don't change it i don't understand why we're even here i mean i don't think to sit here and listen to everybody talk if this is a document that they don't present to us and they don't listen to changes it's not a question of not listening to changes it's a question of process that's my question is does it come back to us

As a whole, we retool it, we go through. No.

And Director Brother just explained that.

No. Okay. So, I mean, that was my question. It's not a question of, I could make suggestions as to how we change. I can, too.

We can sit here and make all the suggestions you want. But, Carolyn, you just sat there and told us that this is the document we're going to present to you as a council. You don't want to hear presented. Then we can make the suggestions. The representative just explained how it's going to work.

We're going to still see this document, but he is taking the inputs, and we'll bring some things that he thinks might help it pass if we bring up objections to it, if we don't want to pass it exactly as written. That's the way we should deal with it. So when it comes to a first reading, and if they're small enough, we can still pass first reading. If they're extensive, we'll let it go.

i don't think so that's what you just said i don't think so yeah it does not go back mr mayor because that would mean planning commission has veto power over talent and that's not true well we understood what she was saying is that this is what we're presenting he just clarified it i was looking for a determination of procedure

not on the language and how how it would work but anyway is anybody sorry you took it can i ask a question well hang on does anybody still have a meeting no does anybody still have issues with this clarification i do okay now go ahead i would like clarification thank you mr may i just want to make sure we're on the topic i would understand this process to be please tell me if i'm wrong They would submit, we're making the recommendations and we'll see those revisions when they're presented with your decision paper. Then we'll consider and you'll come back with a first reading. Isn't that the way it would go?

It's sort of like that. Let me clarify it maybe just a step further than what we've said, okay?

Thank you.

So normally what happens is planning commission makes a recommendation to council and the council takes it up, not as a workshop. You literally will take it at first reading And then you sort of say, well, we like the first read, but we want to change the following things. And we get into a long, protracted workshop-type environment where this is trying to alleviate all of that. So when we get the first reading, you're going to have the Planning Commission's version in front of you and a list of suggested modifications that come out of today's meeting. And then you all will go through that list and decide which one of the suggested modifications I draft into the final code.

But am I correct? That will come from you. Correct. It will come from me.

Not the Planning Commission. Not from the Planning Commission. Exactly.

They're pretty much... They've done their work.

They've done their work.

They've done their work. Every piece of work is evolved into this. So I want it to come over to you. Correct. We'll revise with you and come up with a final. I just want to know if that's what we're talking about.

That's my preferred suggestion to them.

Thank you. Thank you.

first of all i appreciate it because i've been here now 10 years it'll be in the summer and i remember when one of my neighbors was on um the tree committee ordinance whatever you wanted to call it i don't even think it was part of planning commission at that point they had a separate committee that was working on a treatment and she quit over because the work went in and went in and went in. And there was, I think there was a lack of going back and forth. And I understand you did a great job, but I would tell you right now, if this came to me, I wouldn't vote for it. I would not vote for it because not that it's all bad because I've been showing this and to my neighbors and other people that have asked me about it and they're like no you can't pass this you can't there's too much so i like the fact that you're bringing this to us he's going to give and i'm just saying this to repeat this so i got it in my brain sometimes i'm a little slow that whatever we say up here as far as suggestions You're going to put probably a tab. It'll be in red here where you could stick it in like we did in the old days with WordPerfect or Word or whatever. Well, you're old, child. I am old. WordPerfect was a wonderful program. Yes, it was. Thank you.

Rest in peace.

Rest in peace.

Okay. So with that said, I just wanted to kind of calm us all down and just that we don't appreciate

Okay, so back to these definitions. Okay, we got a process down.

Can we let the hardwood idea originated with Mark in the process? So can we let him address why protected trees would be hardwoods Frankly, I didn't pay attention that a bald cypress wouldn't be constituted a hardwood.

Sure, we were still on this topic, so yeah, that'd be good.

Very simply put, Planning Commission focused on hardwoods because hardwoods are our long blade species. Softwoods are typically fast growers and what they call invasive, but not invasive. That's the wrong word. Whenever there's a fire in a field or a fire in forest, those are the first trees that pop up. They're what they call recovery type species. They don't have the long life of hardwoods. So the planning commission felt it was most important to protect the hardwoods. Softwoods, we didn't see that as being as critical a tree type. to the overall tree canopy. The argument, and I'll play the other argument, the argument is we want a varied tree canopy. We want lots of species. What we're basically saying, however, though, is that you can have pine trees, you can have softwoods, you can have all those, but we're not going to regulate you on those. You want to plant those? Great. And you're not going to get credit for them, but if you want to plant soft woods in your tree, in your yard, go for it. But the commission felt we needed to focus our attention on what I call our legacy trees. The trees that, not my grandchildren, your grandchildren and your grandchildren's grandchildren are gonna have. That's why we dropped the number from eight inches to three inches. We wanted to create a much more robust tree forest from being cut down because everything between zero inches and eight inches was getting cut down. Basically gone, bye-bye, hardwood trees gone at that level. That's the reason we dropped it to three. And I think you can make an argument that perhaps softwoods should have been included, but I just told you why we didn't. We're just not going to regulate the softwoods. You want to plant softwoods? God bless you. But we want you not to be cutting down your five-inch oak tree in your backyard. We don't want you cutting your six or your seven-inch. We want you to protect it at the three-inch level so that we have what I call a legacy forest for our children. That was the, I'm abbreviating what probably took an hour at the Planning Commission to describe. And if there's members of the Planning Commission who might want to add on to what I've added, please do. But that was the basic reason we went. Protecting the hardwoods at smaller size, protecting the legacy forest. Thank you.

And I will note that as Mark said, you can plant those trees. You're not prohibited from planting them. And they would count if you got into the situation of needing to satisfy the tree minimums, because I think, oh, no, they wouldn't. Not unless they're these hardwoods or fines or problems. Sorry, I was- Well, 14 inch DBX would count.

Right, right.

you can plant and you're not prohibited. It's just that we're trying to steer things in a particular direction for the future.

So, and I don't want to jump around too much, but wherever it says, and I don't remember the number, wherever it says the DBH calculation for the number of tree calculation.

Those are the tree minimums. Right.

So does a pine tree count? In that, only if it's 14 inches? Yes. So to be counted even as just a number, it needs to satisfy the DBH requirement for a pine tree. So a 10-inch pine tree doesn't count as a tree?

Correct.

Okay. But an eight-foot palm tree does?

Yes.

Okay. I'm just trying to clarify.

And we went with height on palm trees because there are so many varieties of palms that we wanted to make sure that it was more the tree variety than the bush variety.

I don't want to re-go through the whole hour discussion you guys had, and then I think you had stormwater committee input, five hours. But I would like to maybe, because we heard a couple of people speak for pine trees, maybe have one person speak for why pine trees should be included. Is that maybe what you're coming up to do? Does anybody want to say that or just leave it? I'm blocking.

I think pine trees should be considered.

Because we have a very, very long, from the biology sense, it's stormwater. Water management, flood management. You get a two or three inch flood, it's the pine tree that's gonna drink up that water faster. The big oaks will too, but why dismiss them? And the other thing is, yes, they will go up in fire, but the long needle, the long leaf pine does not. That's the one South Carolina does all the research for. And that's one of the ones that I think we should continue to foster. and to protect here, because there are some.

So going back to Director Broder's comments, I guess I don't want to regulate pine trees, but maybe we make them a little more allowable, at least in the count. Maybe it doesn't have to be 14 inches to be counted. I mean, an eight-inch pine tree.

I want to be clear. Okay. I want your direction to be clear. That's what I'm asking for. If you have a 14-inch pine tree, it's a protected tree. You try to take down a 14, you're gonna be mitigating or paying us money. If it's a three-inch pine tree, four-inch pine tree, 10-inch pine tree, cut it down. We're not gonna make you repair, replace, mitigate. The question I believe you're asking, correct me if I'm wrong, please, is that, we will allow folks to plant pine trees as replacement trees the only thing i would ask is that we set a number on the dbh or nursery it's caliper calipers that would qualify like i don't want somebody I'm thinking most of the trees that come to us are builder trees. Very few private residents come to us unless they're taking a tree down for safety reasons. I don't want, I don't think we as a community want to have a new house go up and see that they've got a choice between hardwoods, palms and pines. And they think to themselves, well, I know how much pine tree stuff's down at the local nursery. They're going to plant pines everywhere. I have a problem with that. I think, The Planning Commission has a problem with that. I'm just relaying to you the conversation we had. We don't want that pine tree to be considered a replacement tree, and we don't want to give you credit for the pine tree unless it's a big pine tree, 14 inches. You were all here during you know. Which trees came down? All of them, right? Snap pines came down. That 15-year-old oak tree in your yard, it didn't come down. It bent. It didn't break. That pine tree snapped. So that's why pine trees are kind of like this remediation species. Fires, wind. So what I would ask you, give me direction on if I'm going to allow a developer to place pine trees as his requirement to meet the pine tree, tell me what size that pine tree is going to be. And if you want to listen, the longleaf pine is probably i'm going to be careful here because i'm not an arborist i've got to do a landscape architecture which is this far away from an arborist longleaf pines are a valuable pine tree so if we were to allow pines as replacement i would suggest that you you limit it to the longleaf pine and then it'd be planted at three, four, five inch caliper so that we get sizable, good trees in our tree forest. And I think the planning commission supports that argument. I think that's the one we went round and round on.

And I wasn't really going so much from the replacement tree angle. What I'm talking about is from the homeowner angle. So you need to take something down and You don't, you have a couple of 10 inch pine trees and they can't, but I mean, you don't want to take them down. You need to take something else down. Can they count in your tree count? Because they are doing the water absorption. They are providing canopy some time.

That's what I'm talking about. We've limited that to 14 inches.

Yeah. See, I mean, it's got to be a big, big pine tree to count.

Yeah.

That may be a little restrictive for some people.

That's fine. And that's the kind of input I need from you all to put in my addendum to you so that when I give you back the fresh version, it's going to have, just like Sean suggested, I'm going to have red text in there where you've suggested making changes so that when you go through it, you know exactly what this conversation was.

I don't know what other people are thinking, but I think that may be, again, to give a little more flexibility to the residents. We're not just doing comments.

Just a quick note about pine trees.

You want to offer?

On Hurricane Hugo, and I have a lot of trees on my lot, two of them snapped and missed our house, and our insurance company paid to have those two pine trees hauled off and said, don't replant.

But that's outside of the tree ordinance. I mean, yeah. Right.

So, Mayor, just so you understand that the qualifying tree issue only comes into play when the permit is one that involves, for the most part, construction. And you're then having to do some tree replacement.

So there's not going to be anything for residents. It's just going to be based on this DBH.

Okay. So, so if I have to take out a tree because it's a questionable health, those minimums have no application. So if I have five, 10, 15 inch pine trees, it's irrelevant. It's just not even a question in the permitting process for the trees. And it comes in, okay, I'm going to do construction. I'm going to put in a swimming pool and I need to take out trees in order to do that. And so I'm going to be taking out protected trees in order to do it. then I have to satisfy the minimums. And that's when the counting process.

And a 10 inch pie too bad. Right. If it's in your front yard. Okay.

Can I just ask a follow on question of that? Cause that was the one thing I'd written down there. I think I heard you just say that if you're an existing homeowner, you have a current lot that may or may not meet the table in the back.

The minimum.

The minimum. Essentially, you're grandfathered in. Is that what I'm hearing? Here's what I'm concerned about.

Okay.

I don't want to... If there's a lot that doesn't meet the criteria in the table, and it's an existing homeowner, we're not expecting them to go plant another tree, right?

No. Okay. So I think what you're talking about is a permit under subparagraph F, which doesn't involve construction and doesn't involve the other scenarios for tree removal. It's just, I want to get this tree off my property kind of thing. Okay.

the tree minimums don't come into play in that scenario unless you don't have a sufficient number of trees to meet the minimums but but if you don't if you're not looking to cut down a tree and you don't meet the minimum there's there's no issue no issue okay it only becomes an issue if you just need a permit to cut down a tree and then that places you below the minimum Am I hearing that correctly?

Right. And it's only certain permits. It's not every permit that we laundry listed in the ordinance. If the permit is to take down a dead tree, minimums are irrelevant. If it's to take down an invasive tree, minimums are irrelevant.

My whole concern is I wanted to make sure that I understood that because as I read through this about 10 times, I didn't quite 100% get there. I thought I was reading it the right way, but I wasn't sure because otherwise it becomes a tax on the existing homeowner to have to go out and purchase another tree. And they may or may not be able to fit because they're a lot so small.

So I would ask you, since we're gonna be, I guess, putting together this list of suggested changes. If you look at section 17713 on page nine.

Sorry, I know we weren't trying to jump around. Well, but the definitions go in, so I don't think, we just have to deal with it, yeah.

So the second sentence in applicability,

But where are we? I'm sorry, where are we at?

Page nine. Page nine, 17713A.

Okay.

Is the second sentence there not clear enough in terms of telling you minimums have no application but under those scenarios?

It probably is if you know what you're looking for. Jeff, keep popping back and forth. If you don't... Maybe not if you don't know what you're, you know.

Do we need a note somewhere? Like just calling out exactly what you said. It only applies in a couple of situations.

Because that would probably.

Or a note that says does not apply in. Right. However you do it. I think that's what a resident's going to be looking for. 100%. That would be the first thing I'd be looking for. How does this impact me?

Okay. So would you put language in 17710A? because that's the first part you're reading in this, to say that the tree minimums in this other part have no application except in certain situations.

And right at the beginning makes a lot of sense.

Okay. I got it.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get us off track.

That's okay.

The definitions go into that. There's no way to get around this, I guess. We're trying to do it orderly, but it's going okay. Hope you hear well. Yeah, that's true.

Okay, so what do you want to talk about? I'm just trying to follow the process for the workshop. You said on each of the topics we could make a comment if we wanted to. in regard to process and would you talk about how you're going to do that to approve things so that you'll get the proposed regulation and then a list of things of changes. Then you guys will make a decision. I'm just having to ask that you all guys decide on council how you're going to have a criteria to choose so that you decide, is it experts going to help guide you? Is it feeling? Is it comments? Is it how many people feel a certain way? What are you going to use for the criteria? be able to make the decision that represents the vast majority of the community. So I just raise that as a good question. And I mean, you can say that about anything any government does.

Yeah. Any topical government.

OK, still in definitions. Anything else? OK, then I got a couple. 17.7. 701 definitions, clear cutting, shall mean the non-selective removal of all trees and vegetation on the single parcel. So it's not clear cutting if they leave one stick. I think we need to better, I mean, because I'm going to walk and say, hey, I left something up. I didn't clear cut. It's got to be like 90% or something more definitive than all.

Where are you?

Clear cutting in the definitions, 17701. Page 4. Page 4, yeah, clear cutting. Very good, thank you. Okay. And then I have another one. Tree removal or removal of a tree shall mean the felling, destruction, or any act likely to cause the death of a tree, and such definition applies where the removal of a tree is further described by inclusion of the type or condition. Actually, reading that again, any act likely to cause the death, because there was an issue about potential poisoning of a tree, So I wrote that note to myself, but I think you've got it covered. So I'm going to just drop that. And root crushing also, which you guys kind of talk about that. Anybody else have anything in definitions?

Oh, Mr. Mann.

Michelle?

No, that's definitions only.

We're talking definitions.

Well, no. When you talk about invasion species, in that definition there, if you have any of these listed here, is a resident required to remove them immediately?

No, but in order to remove them, you need to come in and get a permit. We're trying to, channel or funnel everything into a permitting process so that hopefully it works better in that scenario of getting the permit. You get the tree companies to get their business licenses if they don't have them. We're just doing more checking up in that.

And on that section, I will simply add that I understand that bamboo is actually a grass. I don't know anything about privet, but I don't see how it hurts to have them in here because the general public may not have any real technical knowledge at all. So seeing them there, it saves them from maybe making a phone call.

I have one more comment. Go ahead. Not necessarily related to this, but more kind of philosophically. Mark, I'm assuming you're probably going to do this, but whenever this thing is ultimately approved and finalized, et cetera, are you going to have like an FAQ type of thing that accompanies this thing? Because the common person is not going to run through this.

I ask what training are we giving poor residents like me?

Us tree ignorant folks need help.

In fact, one of the... I did a PowerPoint presentation with the Planning Commission. At the end of it, I had 15 FAQs and said, okay, Planning Commission, can we answer all of these questions? And they said, we ought to do a handy dandy handout that goes along with the permit. And, you know, I haven't said this, but I'm going to say it. This is a complicated piece of . And Sean, if you had shown that person the existing ordinance and then shown them our ordinance, they probably would have had the same comment. Gosh, it's impossible for me to understand all this. We, on a daily basis, and scouts honor, every time a permit comes in, what do I do? Open that book up and I start reading text because words matter. Everybody thinks they're walking away today with an understanding of the tree ordinance. I have some swamp land. It's complicated. It is super complicated. And the Planning Commission really tried really hard to make this as simple as possible. And we still- Yeah, no, I get it.

I think what you guys have done is extraordinarily impressive.

We are trying to simplify. But to answer your question, I think the simplest thing to do is If you want to remove a tree three inches or greater, go see the Planning Commission and get your permit.

And that's FAQ number one.

And that really is the end of the thing because then you're walked through the process and everything should be taken care of in that environment. To me, that's the simplest thing to say. Because what we're trying to get across is go get the permit, because we figured funneling people through that solves, it's not going to solve 100% of the problems, it can't, but it's going to solve a lot of the

A lot of residents are going to find when they do that, that they were dreading it. And then Mark's going to go, no, you don't have to do anything.

I mean, more than 50% of the time. Right. It's 530. We're at seven. We just finished 1707. We got 752 to get to. So I think FAQ is sounding. Yeah. Right. And that's true. Yeah. We can't have people just popping up.

Yes.

It's a council meeting. So, okay. Okay, so anything about morning definitions? Then we'll move to applicability and duties. Anybody have comments there?

Mr. Hyde. You need to maintain and report hazards. Property owners are responsible for the responsible care and safe conditions of trees on the property. My issue is we have some vacant lots in town with lots of big trees on them and Sometimes one gets diseased and it starts to threaten the adjoining parcel holder who may have a house there. How do we get those corrected? You know, whose responsibility is that? Often you don't even know who owns that lot. Town might, but the homeowner doesn't.

Oh yeah. We cannot allow people with chainsaws walking onto vacant private property, cutting trees.

I understand that. I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting how do you fix that when you have a dangerous tree on an adjacent lot and we need, I think that since you guys would have access to who owns that lot, I think you guys need to have some enforcement responsibility. Well, that's what we would do.

If somebody comes in, there's a tree next door falling on my property, I can't get the property owner, can you help us? We do that all the time. Oh, you do that already? We do that already. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. I have one in this section. 17702 C, permit required. No person shall remove, alter, or relocate trees without a valid permit, blah, blah, blah. Are these trees any tree? I mean, if I go to Costco and plant a little skinny tree, and then I decide I want it on the other side of the yard, barely taken root i can do that i think or we so do we need to say uh they're not removing well i'd relocate i'm going to dig it up and move it to the other side oh you're going to get one of the trees on your property yeah yeah i just planted it and it maybe it's it's too shaded i want to put it on the other side it's still a little tree i can dig it up easily so should we say relocate protected trees because that's what we really care about right Yes. Okay, I would suggest that.

702C.

702C. I got it. Got it. All right, anything else in 702?

I will say, Mary, before you move on, is in the scenario you gave, if the tree was a very small tree, it's exempt from permits. that you can do whatever with it.

These words make it sound like. So I would just say protected tree.

No, no, no, I understand that. I think that's a good change, but I'm just saying that the reference there to 710, you're out of it with a small tree.

Okay. All right, thank you. 702, anything else? Going once, twice. 703?

I have something.

Yes, sir.

Item number two. On weekends, the police department, I think that needs to be changed on non-work days. Otherwise, there's a lot of holidays when I guess I go out and cut down all the trees I want because the police won't stop me. It needs to be on non-work days. The police department stops the removal of trees.

Regular work days. Mr. Mayor, I would suggest that it needs to be maybe broader than that, so that it's whenever a town is not operating under regular business hours. Yeah, because at night. Holidays, evenings, outside.

Outside non-business hours, yeah.

And probably PB&Z hours, maybe, something like that, because you've already defined your group, and you guys do code enforcement. Good catch.

I like that.

and it stops the removal of trees or do we just say enforces this ordinance something like that how would how would they stop we had police while we're on duty go out and stop because we had

Our enforcement officer go out there and literally almost get run off by the tree company. We called the police department. Police department said, you guys, out of here. So sometimes you need the back of the police to come in and help you out on this stuff. Guns work. That's a dangerous job out there.

Administration good? 704, public tree care. Anything here?

Yeah, I have a question on that one, too. On the second sentence, it says, within the lines of all streets, alleys, avenues, and lanes, and then the first line says, the town of Surfside Beach shall have the right and responsibility to maintain. There's alleys. I have one behind my sister's house that the city has as an alley. It's totally overgrown and not maintained, so when this passes, I guess we'll be calling Mark to come over there with his wheat whacker and clean it up for us. Is that really what we want to put in there?

All right, I'll go back to you. It's on 17703. Sorry, 1704.

First line, the town of Surfside Beach shall have the right and responsibility plant prune, maintain and remove trees, plants and shrubs within the lines of all streets, alleys, avenues, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you have some uncared for alleys in town. You might wanna do something besides take responsibility for them all.

If it's our alley.

Since you haven't grown them.

it's blocking the storm water flow out of that alley i said what can we do about this just tell me where it is i'll go remove it right now yeah yeah it's our right away all right well that looks like you want to leave it in there yeah please we got to maintain all right gotcha

Anything else in 704? I don't think we need to touch severability. That's standard legal stuff, I hope, everybody. Okay. And then we skip a few sections. All right.

Wait a minute. What? Another one under 17704.

Oh, okay.

Monies deposited in the tree mitigation fund shall be used to install trees on public property, period. I think that we should also be able to use the money to buy hardwood trees to give away at our family festival or somewhere that people would then take home and plant on their own property to maintain and care for them on their own dime. And next one, we'd have more trees in town. So I would like to be able to see that money be used by trees for the public to plant on their own property.

We had that conversation and I would look to council. Is that something, we talked about that. Is that something you would like the council to be able to put in here so that you're not just strictly buying trees. This would allow Public Works, for instance, to let's say go out and buy 35 live oak trees and then have an arbor day.

Arbor day we could do it.

And you could give them away. So if you would like that included in the language, I'll put that in the additional comments to be added to the, but we did have that conversation and we said, we better not sweep too wide.

I'm in favor of that. I think it would make sense to give us that option.

Yes. Mr. Mayor, if I could, we did that. Ms. Mull did that at our Arbor Day celebration. Very popular. That was kind of an accident. Well, I know, but still, I mean, there weren't any trees left over there.

I mean, it was very popular. We ended up planting most of them in the park. That was a problem because the Arbor Day Foundation did not send the little tiny saplings

my wife plants and you know we're getting off topic no but we couldn't give them away i'm just saying that would be a venue i think if we did hardwoods they were doing craves and stuff like that but if we did hardwoods i think it would be extremely popular yeah i agree okay you just have to be careful that people were given who were actually town residents because in arbor day there were folks who were picking them up garden city i i don't think we do an informal giveaway we would have to have people apply for them

and you know you might even have to go look at the cycles for how you do the treatment right but that's clear that we could be using it for more than just buying trees all right mr mayor i would point out that previously town council rejected the use of the parking fines and parking um uh i don't know fees uh to be used for plantings on private property. So I don't know how that.

I don't think that has anything to do with it because that was a business 17 beautification thing. And we had several of us had concerns that they wouldn't be maintained. It would just be a waste of money. So on and so forth. Yeah. So I mean, the people are applying for these, we can control it.

Yeah.

okay um 710 we ready to go to 710 permits for tree removal or major premium comments there's one thing um number one that needs to uh change to what to the non-business hours you have weekends in there again 17 10 a yeah 10 10 10 a walk in a world 10 a1 a1 yeah uh hours of eight

Mr. Mayor.

Ms. Shawn. Yes, so under 3C. Is that under? A3C, right? No. Oh, no, it's just C. It's just C. Okay, C. Yeah, I see. Getting back to this again, you mean I have, as a resident, I have to apply for a permit to take these things out? That tree?

That's more than three inches.

See, when I look at invasive species, I look at bushes, like that kind of stuff. But what this is saying here is saying, basically you go back to that three inches again. Because a lot of the invasion part here, I'm in here, I'm due close to homeowners. So I got to get a permit when I know something I'm going to remove might be a bush that's invasive. I have to get a permit for that?

I think it has to be a tree. Well, we describe it as DBH. No, for invasive or nuisance, it's regardless of size.

And it has to be a tree.

tree must be true though we do call bamboo and privet trees in this case this might be where it is not good right that's what i'm worried about like people have bamboos like i was thinking about doing when i found out about the root system so i'm gonna reveal my pool so um i have an issue with residents getting a permit say they want to remove bamboo And that's listed as invasive. They still need to get a permit to do that?

According to this, you would.

If it's over three inches.

Why don't we put that in here?

Okay, so as far as I know, it is,

covered at the beginning of the section where it says except as provided in 17, seven 11. So those are your exemptions. What that is, is a cross reference to the exemptions. And then the exemptions include the removal of anything that is less three inches or less, less than three inches, regardless of the type, um, What we are accepting there is don't take out the replacement trees that you planted because your permit from before said plant these replacement trees. You've got to keep those going because we hope they're going to grow into eventually big oaks or whatever other hardwood species.

But getting back to her question, invasive species where it still seems like she'd need a permit. I don't see where that's exempted.

Okay. So the beginning of 17710A, the first clause is except as provided in 17711. right right where in 711 does it say invasive doesn't require d it says well it doesn't mention invasive it just says regardless of the type of tree if it's under if it's under three inches you don't need a permit okay so if you have a three and a half inch russian olive you need a permit yeah yeah okay yeah so it's invasive but yeah don't take care of the boys cut so invasives do required if they're somewhat large now one thing i can think of that i don't know might have helped with this i'm always willing to edit anything is that if you moved 17 711 d up into the a position so it's the first thing anybody reads Yeah. I mean, that could make it, I don't know, even more maybe user-friendly to make it clear there.

Yeah, because this was one of the comments I got from a resident.

Was what?

That they felt an undue cost to homeowners because they were mixing up like a bamboo and a tree. So they were like, I still have to get a permit to remove bamboo. But if it's over the edges, I didn't.

I think why we did that is everybody in this room knows what bamboo is. How many people in here know what a Chinaberry looks like? I have no idea. That's why we're requiring a permit. I don't even know what a Chinaberry looks like. Okay, we'll stop. That's why we asked for the permit, so that we can go out there Don't look at the tree. We don't know what the species is. We can use an arborist from one of the tree companies. They're always willing to help us go out there and identify the tree for us. I still have to pay the cost of the ferment. So, is it $25? $25. Thinking out loud now, thinking out loud, if it's a removal of an invasive, Maybe it's a no fee permit. Maybe it's a no fee permit. We don't place any value on history. We don't spend a lot of time out in the field. It's invasive. Go ahead and take it out. No permit fee for an invasive. Now, I'm going to have to weave that in here artfully someplace, but I think I hear what you're saying is that if you've got an invasive in your yard, right, It's a China berry. It's some of these others. Chinese tallow, really bad tree. You want to remove that. You should have to pay the talent to remove that tree. You're only going to pay the tree company $300 to remove that tree. That's going to be your hit.

But I think you have to take care of that in the fee schedule. Not so much in this ordinance.

Not so much in the fee schedule. I'm going to make a note.

Right. Redefine your permitting for pre-removal. No fee for invasive. But they have to come in and you need to know it's an invasive tree.

Yeah.

So they still need to contact you. Yep. Okay. Are you stretching? No, I'm following the quorum. You wish to say something? Yes. I mean, are you adding information to a topic that we're talking about? I'm willing to let you chime in.

John Munson, I'll let him for you. No, you don't have to do that. I'm just trying to feed the core mission. All right. So a key point here in a lot of this discussion about these permits, words matter. What it says, it does not say you have to get a permit. What it says is you have to apply for a permit. So that's the requirement. Not that you have to get one, that you have to apply for one. Read it. It's applied for. So in the application, in applying for the permit, you're going to see the gentleman behind me and the questions that come up, oh, they got to have a permit. They got to have a permit. Okay, all that's going to get answered with the apply. And it's only in the application process that the gentleman behind me is going to say, yeah, okay, yeah, you do need a permit or no, you don't. I mean, that's critical because I hear what you're saying, Councilman Chauvin. People are reading that and they're like, oh, I got to get a permit. I got to get a permit. No, you need to apply for a permit. In a lot of cases, I would argue more than 50% of, they would go to apply, thinking, oh, God, I've got to go through. And they would talk to Mark, and he would say, no, you don't need a permit for that. So I just want everybody to think about that when you're reading this. Or it's a cost permit.

It's a supply permit, not you have to have a permit. Okay. So I think we clarified that.

Yes. So one of the things that we considered in developing this revised ordinance is that The current ordinance is a no fee permit. And we thought that because it had no fee that people came to the conclusion that they could just go ahead and take these actions without getting the permit, because why do I have to get a no fee permit? So we thought permits with fees, would be a better route to make sure that people came in and basically got permission for doing these things for whatever the variety of permit that was needed. Maybe rather than saying no fee permits, we adjust the permit schedule, I don't know. I would think that returning to no fee permits would be counter to some of the objectives that we're trying to accomplish.

I suppose we could give the discretion to the director to waive a fee, but does that get more cumbersome? I don't know.

Because if you say you're going to have a fee and you're not going to charge you're going to say you have a fee. People are going to say, well, you know, I'm not paying for it. And I'm not even going to get them from me.

So that's, you know, just as added, um, nobody can wait fees except for council. Okay.

We can't pass on that authority. I guess if you want to change the ordinance, but I meant in the fee schedule somehow. Yeah. Just saying that. Yeah. But anyway, um, that's one that i think we ought to look at how can we clarify that better okay i mean i think we get the point that we want them to apply so that we know what they're cutting right but we don't want to burden them how i'll say thank you for coming in for getting your permit here's your permit no fee thank you well but i mean we got to make sure we do the ordinance right yeah and if we yeah if we you know he can't I don't want him to come to us every meeting and say, I want to wave. I guess I'm just going to say, ask around and try to bring the best idea. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. But it's a valid question. It is. So we're still in 710 in hermits, technically. We jumped to 711 to get a definition there. But in 710, anything else?

Mr. Mayor, oddly enough, I have a recommended change. Okay. Which, I mean, I've spent so much time with this language. But I never appreciated that in all of the many drafts that we went through, We were not requiring for every permit scenario the requirement on page 8 at the top for the applicant for the permit to identify the tree removal company. And I think we should do that across the board. That way we're getting licensing information and what have you. And if the permit applicant doesn't want to use a tree removal company and wants to do the tree removal him or herself, then they need to execute this hold harmless agreement. And I think that that There's no reason that that shouldn't apply to, I want to take out a dead tree. A dead tree could cause just as much havoc in the removal process as another tree. And so I think it would behoove us to require that for all permits.

So put it in A, maybe A4?

Yes, I think that it gets moved up so that it's a requirement for all purposes. Okay, it's in 17.710. It currently is in E6, and it would move up to become, I don't know, A4.

Who's the hold harmless agreement for? The town? Can they hold us harmful if we don't have this agreement? That I don't know. That is a question for a lawyer who would in fact- You might want to run that by an attorney and see what he says.

This is actually in the current board of law.

Oh, is it?

Yes.

Mr. Walts, go ahead. Mr. Hyatt, I could speak to that. I've been, because we require. We can be held harmless in any end result or harmful. We could be held liable. So because we require that tree to be removed, we allow Ms. Jones to go out and remove herself. And she takes a chainsaw to the bottom of the 30 foot tree and it falls on her neighbor's yard.

Well, I got you that. The town said I had to take it down. They didn't tell me how. I didn't think we were requiring it. This is for any tree that's removed. not just the ones we're requiring, right?

I'm suggesting that it would be a good practice to require it for all trees.

Seems reasonable.

If it's already in there, it doesn't seem like that's a major issue.

It is currently in the tree ordinance. I don't remember. what it currently applies to.

That means we're already doing it, so it's not a change, so I don't have a problem with it then.

Well, I do have a question on that, Mark.

Yes, sir.

At the time of permit, do we have somebody sign a hold harmless type of...

I believe there's small text at the bottom of the application that says you hold harmless to count when you sign that application. Okay. There's a small letter down at the bottom.

That's fine, but just so we cover it.

I think that covers us.

Yeah. Maybe bump up the font.

Take it from a forefathers maybe doing it.

But that requirement would only come into play if the applicant were not identifying a pre-removal company to do the work because then it falls to that tree removing company who we're saying has got to be licensed.

But yeah, you already have that. Yes. Okay, anything else?

710. One question. Under G, permit for major pruning, have we defined what major versus minor pruning is? Yes. It's all just defined. It's an inch.

It's an inch of diameter measured two inches from the trunk. Okay, good enough, thanks.

Okay, I have one in F. Permit for removal of tree not otherwise covered by this section. So, I mean, you cover a lot of stuff and I didn't try to do the logic backwards. What is not covered in this section?

I just want to get rid of trees on my property. There's nothing wrong with them. They're not invasive. They're protected, but I'm not, I'm not involved in any construction at all. There's no connection there. I need to clear it, whatever. I want to build my vegetable garden and I just have too many trees that produce too much shade. And so I can't get sufficient sun to grow my tomatoes or what have you. So I want to take down my trees. I come in, I get, a permit in order to fell those trees. And in that process, I have to satisfy the tree minimums. Okay. Either, you know, I'm done because I've got so many trees on my property that I'm just automatically satisfying it, or I might have to plant a replacement tree way over so that it is not interfering with my vegetable garden that I want to put in.

In my notes to self, I wrote a poem with a question, and that could be one of them, right, if it's a small poem. Small or I can't even read my other word here, so I don't know what. Pine or cedar, something like that, that are not protected, not covered otherwise, I guess. And then I wrote a note to myself, is a magnolia a hardwood? OK. So when we cover the hardwoods, OK. Because I found conflicting answers on that. But they generally said hardwood, but it said it was disputed. And I did my little Google search. OK. I don't think I have any other questions here. Anybody else in 710? So 7-11 is the exemptions. We kind of touched on some of this. Anything else?

I have a major one.

Okay, Mr. Hyatt.

Under B, imminent emergency situation. Let's think this one through. We have a major hurricane. There's trees down all over the place. Everybody that has a chainsaw is going to grab a chainsaw and go help their neighbors clear the roads, their driveways, their lots, get stuff off the roofs, clean up their yard. All bets should be off during periods of time like that. And I would like to just say during those kinds of periods, all bets are off. No nine waiting four days. Town hall might not even have any of the generator power in four days. I think that we should just say if this emergency exemption is used to illegally prune or remove protected trees, the fine becomes doubled. I think that would be simple enough. And that way we don't have to have all this stuff going on. I think we need to realize what's going to happen in that kind of a situation. And we need to free people up to be people. I think that's the point of this. It doesn't seem like it to me.

It says it's an exempted in an imminent emergency situation. So immediate tree removal or major pruning required to protect life safety, blah, blah, blah.

It did.

There's insufficient time. It's exempted. Keep reading. In case of such removal, you have to notify them within 96 hours, which is four days. Okay, so that's it. Okay. So we could change it to more than four days. Okay. Or just not even have it. Well, but you're trying to tell people you can do this. It's exempted.

I think you want to get that reported because somebody has a hurricane and there's a hurricane and they want to cut down the tree even though it's not having problems. So they don't have to report it. So they chop down three or four trees.

And if they're caught, then they pay double fines.

Well, that's a different issue. But first you have to essentially report it. So it needs to be a week.

If it's a week and they just report it to us, what trees they've taken down, then they're fine. I don't want to hold. I don't want to hold up anything.

I mean, 96 hours may be soon if it's a really major storm, I guess.

The other thing you have to consider is that when you've got your neighbors over there cutting trees, are you responsible for what they cut? So you've got to now prove that the landowner is the one that cut the tree down. Okay, this is only an exemption.

You're getting into other issues. Right. Right. It's saying you don't need to get a permit. It's an exemption to the permit. But you want to do it.

whatever you need they put you out there notified right and if we need more than 96 hours i got no objection to that but but you're you're getting into you know penalties what i'm trying to say okay well then yeah we can take the penalty out and just say all bets are off during a time like that i don't know no i think you just need to change the time i mean how long are you going to give you're going to get five days six days

seven days, whatever it happens to be. I think that's where it needs to be changed. But you still have to notify.

Mr. Mayor, how much time do you want to put in a revision to that?

Well, Mr. Hyatt raised it. How soon do you think they'd have to know?

I don't want you to have to get a permit. I want you to deal with your people. All right. I'm sorry. You don't need to get a permit, but you have to tell them that you did it. I want to take that out. I don't want to have to tell anybody that I cleaned my house up after a storm.

Well, I think this is intended to make sure that people don't abuse it the way you were concerned about. That's, I think, the reason you want the notification, right?

Mr. Mayor, that's what I wanted to ask because there's kind of a, you know, there's kind of a thing, a giggle that goes on between homeowners that says, You don't let the trees in there. Like I hate that Magnolia in my side yard because it's just trash. Just wait for the next storm and go over there. So how do we prove the storm didn't take it or I just didn't go over there and whack it?

I will tell you how we find out about every illegal tree removal in my opinion. 75 code enforcement officers out there keeping their eyes on things. I get asked all the time from neighbors.

squealing on their neighbor don't tell him i called you he's over there cutting his own tree that's okay that's how we find them today okay 15 people in the field that's what you want that is exactly what you want somebody telling you that john does over here come and look and see if they gotta commit or faint and that's in a hurricane yeah we've had american major storms

I think five days, 168 hours a week. I mean, you can put a week. That gives everybody plenty of time to remove anything that's leaning on their house, about to lean in their house or in their pool.

And this is after the removal, so that could be a day or two after the storm. That's right, you might not even be back in town. Right, in that case, yeah.

That's exactly what I'm worried about. Yeah, 96, maybe not enough, a week. I'm not even sure if that's enough, folks. I think we need to make a reasonable period of time for people to get back into their house. Well, but it's after the removal of the fruiting.

Come on, come on. It's after removal of the fruiting. So if you're evacuated for two weeks, you come in and cut it, it's from that day on.

One question. You get this information, what are you going to do with it?

Nothing.

Nothing. So that goes back to the question, what do you need to actually report it if you're not going to do anything with the information?

The only thing we're going to do, Rick, is by having a report, is that people aren't using this opportunity to remove that 18-inch oak tree in the backyard that they've hated for decades. That's it. That's exactly what happens. I just want to make sure there's a purpose to the report. We'll send somebody out.

Don't put that in the FAQs. My concern is that we've had somebody speak about this as kind of draconian, and I think this provision is one of the more draconians. I will tell you, if we have a major storm like the last one, I'm going to do exactly what I did. I'm not going to tell anybody. And I guess I'm now a lawbreaker. No, you're not.

You're not as long as your neighbor doesn't call me. He'll never know. You're not alone. I'm not going to know. the mayor isn't going to know okay i know i know where he lives and i'll tell you whenever a new bill goes in and they go in and they start clearing trees oh my god what calls we get i understand all right i just i just don't want this to sound too dramatic to the public too i don't want to be collecting information we really don't need i want people to be free to be people

And this to me is where having to report what you do after a storm, that's unusual. We don't do that anywhere else in America. Why are we doing it here?

I'll let the council do it then. All right.

Yeah, the point's been raised. And so, yeah, go ahead and give a couple of options. Yeah, I'll give you some options on that. Yeah.

I would just like to add, you're absolutely right, but you're also not aware of maybe that that is what people do. Since we had a storm, and Hurricane Matthew was a huge one, a lot of people were out there seeing a tree removal company right on their street, bringing them over to their house to get rid of any tree they didn't want.

Yeah, we've raised that point.

So I would not stress so much on the amount of time after an accident, for putting it in the ordinance, 96 hours. What if they don't live here? There's a lot of ways. It's more important that they try to document and provide that. Because the next question I have is if they fail to comply, what is the violation? Is it a fine? Is it a notice? Does their property get evaluated and then determined it's non-compliant lot? That kind of thing.

OK. We understand the potential. Just you're going to give us options. We're not going to solve everything right here.

OK. Yeah.

Small and unprotected trees, I have a question about that. 17, 711 still. We don't define unprotected. I guess by not, I mean, by having so many protected, we just anything other than what those, and I guess I'm okay with that. Again, you have to do a fair amount of reverse logic to figure that out, but I don't know how you define all of that. except to maybe say anything that's not defined as, you know, replacement, qualifying, protected, you know, but that's just wordy. So I think I'm okay with that. Anything else in 17, 711? 712, pre-protection plan requirements. Any comments?

I have one.

Yes, sir.

Under B2, bottom line where more than six inches of soil fill is to be used to bring a lot of up lot elevations the tree protection plan must indicate how existing required trees will be protected i know some lots require three feet of fill so i'd kind of like to know what kind of uh what kind of what we're going to have to do when you have three feet of fill coming in to protect the tree i'd kind of like to understand what that looks like

If you bring in too much fill at the bottom of a tree, you're going to kill the tree. That's right. I know that. So I've seen people put paving stones around the tree, and the tree is in a tree well, and then the rest of the lot is brought up. So a tree well would be what you're . Yeah. OK. Thank you.

I have one on A, the protection fence and prohibited activities evacuation restrictions, damage, the whole section. I think on some of the lots we have, by the time you put fencing around to the drip line, you can't store any, you know, materials within the fence tree protection area, grading or trenching with five feet of the root zone. I mean, is this, on some of our lots, is this even feasible?

I mean, it's, it's, you're just gonna get it down to, no, they will pilot and they will pilot up in front and they kind of usually put it in the right of way. They push it. And then what happens is they bring it back. But I have never had any developer ever come to me with that. That's a problem. Okay. So I, I, I sense what you're getting at, but I've never had anybody come to me and say, you know what? I just can't store all of this material on the side. All right. I'm in.

Okay. Anything else in 712? 713. Oh, go ahead.

I think I had something on that. I don't remember where it was, but one of the things that I, if somebody, I think we talked about this once before, If somebody says, I want to build a pool, I'm going to have to remove this tree here. And then they remove the tree and the pool never gets in. You need to have something in there that brings them under this ordinance, in my opinion.

That's why we have the tree replacement.

Just jump from 713 to 713.

To meet the number of trees, great. Or if you have that big, giant oak in your front, You're okay. You're okay. That's why we made it either or. We wanted to make this...

So you're saying it's taken care of. You're saying it's taken care of, that scenario. Okay.

Mr. Mayor, the permit you would have to get is a permit to remove that protected tree. Correct. And then you are going to be required to replace it if you take it out even though you don't pursue the um construction it's arguable that then you your permit could be transferred to the f provision in which case the minimums would also apply so um i think it is taken care of very good that's what i needed to know um

I'm just gonna go on record as saying the minimums, the B section, number of trees or DBH, I like that. I think the end is way too hard to meet in some lots. So I prefer the core provision there.

Mr. Stanley.

I've got a question, and maybe I missed it along the way. On the palm trees, would they count towards the minimum or maximum amount of trees down on your lot? Since they're counted as trees, can I take out, if I'm putting in a pool, take out an oak and replace it with a palm tree?

No. Well, you can replace it with a in very limited circumstances. And that has to do with the size of your lot. And that goes back to the replacement tree definition that allows a palm to be included if the lot size is pretty small. I don't remember off the top of my head.

66, I think this is small.

If it's fewer than 5,000 square feet. So if you're in that kind of lot environment, then you can use a palm as a replacement tree, but it's gotta be the eight foot size. You can't come in. It's the only place where we have, defined the size of a replacement tree. Otherwise the replacement trees can be the, I don't know, 15 gallon trees that are, you know, not very much bigger than a finger in terms of their girth. Those are allowed as replacement trees. Palms, we're gonna make you go to the eight foot. If you're in that small lot scenario, we were trying to deal with primarily homes in R3 that just don't have the space to be able to accommodate other trees.

Okay, with that scenario being said, if I live on a lot now, Got a microphone. I thought I was talking about, excuse me. But if I live on a lot now and I have 25 trees on my lot, all that counts is trees. Of course, my total will match, right?

In terms of qualifying.

For my DBH, I mean, not my DBH, my number of trees and so the roundness of it. that that we're not looking at the girth of palm trees we're looking at their height so you don't count them is in your total number of inches of tree where i'm driving the 60 66 inches or 60 80 inches whatever it is for a total amount of circumference um that is totally out of it now no we didn't directly deal with that but i i guess they they would their girth would

They're not qualifying unless they're eight inches, eight feet. But then their girth would count towards the DBH.

Well, what I'm trying to get at, there are a lot right now that the gentleman put all palm trees back on his land. Probably 25 of them. Well, I'm just getting at this because it's done and I know it's done. I'm kind of aggravated that we have this scenario of we can put these mini palm trees on iron and we're going to do away with our hardwood trees. We ain't going to make you have them trees because he could go in iron and take down ten palm trees and he still wouldn't be required to have a tree. You understand where I'm getting at? I can't understand why we allow palm trees to be counted as palm trees. I personally don't have a problem with palm trees. I like palm trees. I love seeing palm trees. And you ought to have the right to plant a palm tree. But we ought to limit it. How many of them counts towards your total number of inches of trees? If it's two, four, six, whatever we come up with, I think that's an alternative of looking at. I just don't think that we ought to go down the road of the future saying, well they got these palm trees out there and i could go plant these palm trees today 10 years from now you're going to go count all them palm trees and that'll be taking care of all the other trees that i've got out there you just go ahead and cut your trees down and i don't have nothing left for palm trees you see what i'm trying to get at carol it ain't that i'm trying to make a fuss i'm just trying to look for the future to make sure that Palm trees don't take over our whole general area in the future. Not now, not tomorrow, but in our future. Because we can go on my lot, my house, where I'm at right now, and start planting palm trees. Because I like palm trees. I think that palm trees are beautiful. Ten years from now, that tree's going to be eight foot tall. Then I can go in there and cut every hardwood that's on my property off. because i've got enough palm trees to take care of every time to qualify yes ma'am and i think i personally this is my opinion i tell you that i think that we overlanded it and i like i said i don't care

up with or the direct ones come up but i think there would be a limit on having palm trees counts towards that in now and in the future so um just to make sure i understand what you're saying so if you're going to have palm trees that count as qualifying trees you're suggesting that uh there be a cap so this is on the number that they count yes ma'am okay And somewhere in there, there was a replacement idea and suggesting that that was palm trees. You can't replace with palm trees. You have to replace with protected trees, save if you have the less than 5,000

square foot lot and then we'll let you put in a palm tree yeah and he still came up with a scenario where you can get around that no i mean it's not a replacement yeah that's what we need to address i'm not addressing the problem of these small lots i think they're great on the small lot i just say set a number on how many palm trees that will count against that because in the near future as i said earlier and i'm going to repeat myself again i can go on my locker while you're right now and start planting palm trees In 10 years from now, them palm trees are going to be eight foot tall. I can go in there and cut my oaks. I can cut them down. Because I've got my palm trees. That's all I want to say.

I think that's a good point. But how many would you say we should count as qualifying trees?

That's up to you. i mean that it's not my job to figure out how many you want yeah two two three two uh you know just give me a number that depends on the lot too yeah that's that's i'm still saying it's about a lot smaller yeah medium-sized lots well maybe three yeah maybe one five two five yeah

and you don't have to wait years to do it because you can buy a palm tree at eight so you can you plant all these things and then you can take all your hardwoods out and say well i qualify yeah or mr mayor if i could okay i'm trying to keep chris from saying the same thing five times okay um maybe we could look at only allowing the palm tree circumference

to equal a maximum of 50% of the total, rather than saying, rather than getting into one, three, five, based on, you know, you got 600, 6,000. So if you're going on the circumference and it could only, those 25 palms would only qualify as 50% of the total wood that you have to have on the property. I don't know. Is it 50?

in order to simplify this i i would say that it would be better to just say only two palm trees per lot count and you could incorporate it into the table and you could incorporate it into the definition and that would make it um probably the simplest way to get the point across yeah But it's a good point. Frankly, we didn't think about it. And I just think in terms of execution, it could be simple and not very worthy.

Mr. Mayor, saying that, I'm glad that you understand what I'm coming for.

Yeah, I think we got it. Director Broder got it, so yeah. All right, anything else in, what section is this? 701, we still have. 713, oh. Thanks, Mr. Wells. Anything else in 713? All right, we have some empty sections, good, and now we're at 720, tree topping prohibition. Anything here? All right, how about, keep moving. 721, clear-cutting. We already talked about the definition. So, yeah, this doesn't get into it. So this just has the prohibition and the exceptions. Have we moved to clear-cutting?

Yeah. We got a comment? Yeah, go ahead. Yes, please. Mark, you and I have had many conversations. Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot in our town, but it has happened. And it'll almost make you cry when you walk by one of the locks where these guys just decide, oh yeah, I'll stroke you a five figure check. And I got the lot I want. Now you and I talked about doing more stringent guidelines on saying, okay, yeah, Mr. Developer, if you want to come in here and destroy a lot in my town, then we're not going to let you build for three years. I didn't see these teams.

Did you decide, did y'all decide to do away with it?

So I can just, I can just come in here and clear any lot I buy and you all, and I can stroke you a check for 10 grand and we're golden. It does happen.

It happened before you got here.

It happened before. Yeah, it's happened. So fortunately not very often, but it's happened and we have, got to do something y'all about that we've got to keep people from all right so i'm going to come back with a suggested modification i don't know that's that was a suggestion you gave me when we when we talked about how do we stop this

So we did talk a lot about that because we, but by saying that someone can't build on their lot for three years because of something a builder does. First of all, I don't think that that would hold up in court. I think that that would be, we'd be asking for big problems. Just say that you are, sitting in New Jersey and you own a lot here and you hire a builder to build your home. Well, you're trusting, you're paying that builder, you're trusting that builder to do it. So the builder cuts the lot unbeknownst to you, but then you're telling that homeowner that they can't build on that lot for three years. Maybe they've just retired from their job. I'm just saying, you know, you kind of got to think about it.

You're right. That was the reason. The scenario I was thinking about is these guys, these developers, they come in and buy the lots and they slap one up and they sell it. We were, those are the people we found. Mark mentioned that those are the people that were doing it.

I'm not going to say it never happens, but typically they don't start construction until they've sold the house all day. Until it's under contract.

My wife's

But Mr. Coleman just asked, go ahead.

I wouldn't punish the homeowner. I'm not even saying. I would have punished the building.

No permits in town for the next three years.

Yeah, you'd like to build it for five years. Because what else can you do? I don't believe it. One meeting.

Okay. One meeting.

I'm sorry.

Michelle, I think you want to say something too?

Yeah, because at one time when this was going back and forth, talking about, I never thought about putting a fine wood resin.

No.

I was thinking more of the actual company or the tree cutting company that, like you said, and you can put any amount on it, especially if it's a builder. They're just going to add it to the price of the house. So to me, I think it would kind of hit home if you say to the builder, well, guess what? You can't build here for five years. I think that drives more, and that kind of language has been talked about before, because that was not my idea. So, I mean, one time it was 10 years, five years, but I think we have to get these builders, because you see tree companies coming in here too, I hear it all the time. So I think we have to put the fee on the builder for the tree companies.

Go ahead.

Because I think they're the ones that don't care. They don't care if you're going to fine them $10,000 because that's not their $10,000 they have to give up. So they're just going to keep going down the road to build somebody that you said like lives up north may not know our ordinance, but the builders should know our ordinance.

But to address the situation that Melanie brought up, it would have to be after they finished this place.

Yep. Okay. That's after.

Because you'd be penalizing the person who contracted this building. So you say, okay, you finish this, but you're done for five years. You're done for five years. Okay.

Good point, Rob. Yes. Mr. Mayor? So Mark, I've got a question. Yeah. Um, so we're at least I see this most of the time is in those situations where somebody, a builder buys a lot and then builds three houses, you know, close together. Um, or somebody comes in and knocks down a house and puts two houses where one was before. So process wise, when they get their permits, how does the tree issue get addressed?

They have to, uh, I have a point here. have to first of all identify every tree on the lot whether it's in the footprint or not they have to identify every tree every tree that's being removed has to have an extra every tree that's being maintained doesn't have an extra and they've got a tree symbol then we look at total number of trees being preserved what was removed how many inches the sudden current ordinance and then we determine whether they need to plan and i'll tell you most of our builders know the ratio Very seldom do we have to go back to a builder and say, you need to add more trees. A lot of times they've got the trees there.

So understanding that process there, the penalties would be if they don't replant, if they've gone in and knocked all the trees down in order to build three houses, they have to then put X number of trees on each lot. Right.

And when they come to us for a certificate of occupancy, we go out on site and we count the trees. They're one tree short, You're not getting your certificate. And every day I hold that certificate of occupancy, they are screaming.

They don't get paid.

Certificate of occupancy is where you ever get screwed in the building.

So from a builder standpoint, if they don't do what they've agreed to do, they don't actually get to sell the property.

They're going nowhere.

That would seem to be a penalty.

But if I could, Mr. Mayor, just to kick off that, in Melanie's scenario, though, we wouldn't do that.

We wouldn't allow... We're going back to clear-cutting, though.

Oh, I thought... That was kind of what I was getting at. I thought we were talking about... Most of these buildings, they are clear-cutting. I mean, they're knocking everything down. But if you had somebody in New Jersey that was having a home built, and this guy did that, then you wouldn't hold the CO up on this family that's waiting to move. You would? Oh...

so they're paying for the now now that homeowner's got to go talk to his building hey you need to go plant two trees in the backyard i can't move okay that's all we got to do to get to see okay okay yes in the clear in the clear cutting prohibition um i do also want to uh say the wholesale removal of most of the trees on a site shall be reviewed blah blah blah make sure that that language agrees with what we called what you're going to change clear cutting to so that they're just an agreement. Go ahead.

So when you're talking about the penalty, though, make sure to think about if this builder already has more homes permitted. Maybe they have three homes permitted at one time. So are they allowed to complete those homes? So I just want you to think about that.

They are allowed to complete the homes if they have the trees mitigated.

But she said if we decided to pull the license for three years or five years. Oh, but license? Prohibit no bill, yes. And he's already got three permits.

I would suggest that they can finish anything that started. Any permit that's been pulled as a zoning permit, that's their gateway in. If they haven't pulled the zoning permit, which is the first permit they need to pull, they're not getting any more zoning per customer.

Or would we just pull their business license? Which way would be more enforceable?

Affordable?

Enforceable. Enforceable?

Not giving them a zoning permit?

Yeah.

That's their money. It sounds like it's going to be a mess, no matter what. It's going to be very hard to manage this.

It's very tough to manage a clear-cut

We may get back to, I think Mr. Kinkin left, but the $100,000, that's a little harder to absorb in a bill. $10,000 I get, $100,000, you know. Of course, I don't know when they decide our penalties are absorbable, I don't know. All right, that takes us through 721. Okay, we now move into Division IV, Enforcement and Mitigation, 17730. This is Enforcement Actions and Fines, which we've already kind of touched on a little bit. Anybody?

Ms. Romero.

Ms. Schott.

Well, under C, under fines number two, G, it says damaging trees during construction shall be $500 per tree.

G not C. Oh, G. Okay.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. It's C, you know, under 17730 ABC, and then you go under fine. Yes. I'm just trying to follow, buddy. Damaging tree storm construction shall be $500 per tree. What do you mean by construction? Is that when they're building a house, when somebody needs to have room added on?

It's when the tree is damaged. It's usually during construction. 90% of the time, it's when they're grading the parcel when they damage the tree. It's not when they're putting nails in walls and things like that. It's the grading generally. And when they're making the swales for the stormwater, they butcher. the bottoms of those trees with earthworms. You see those little detractors? They put you at the bottom of the tree all the time. And guess what? The tree dies.

This is going back to section 17.7.12, right? Tree protection plan requirements. Yeah. I mean, maybe we should put that reference in. I don't know. Oh, here? Yeah, just damaging trees during construction or section 17.7.12. I don't know.

You just made an interesting point. Are you done? If I damage this landmark tree to the point it dies, it's only gonna cost $500, but if I purposely kill the landmark tree, it's gonna cost me 10 grand.

I'm gonna come after you for 10 grand, I'm sorry. I'm coming after you for 10 grand. It looks like you did this on purpose. I'm coming after you for 10 grand.

It may be good to put that additional verbiage in here.

Okay, so if, what's the word I want?

Purposely? Intentionally? Intentionally.

I mean, just damaging trees during construction should be $500 per tree, except landmark trees, $10,000.

Yeah, if you end up killing the tree, then it's a kill. I mean, if you damage it, damage and kill are two different things.

Well, then it wouldn't be killed.

It's not on there, but it'd be removing. Mr. Mayor, I would suggest that we add an H And that would be the, I don't know, the killing, the complete destruction or whatever.

You have to figure out a word. Intentional tree murder.

If damage leads to, hey, we're geese murderers.

If damage leads to the death of the tree, then the... the fine is what?

Yeah. Okay, so under the moving tree, where's the damage? How come we go from G to D? Damage is G. So I'm going to add on the G. Oh, follow me here. Maybe if I'm helping you. I haven't done that. On D, damage to a tree during construction will be 500. If the tree is killed, if the tree is killed, if the tree dies, if the tree dies,

As a roller as a result of the damage as a result, right? Feed behind is 10 K. Just go mature. So we've added an H, but now we go to top of the page. We go to D again. Because we're ABC. You were in C. C. These were subsections of C. Okay.

I have one other question on ABC.

Okay, guys. Mr. Hyde has the floor.

Go ahead. I'm wondering if these fines should be moved to the fee schedule and these should just say as per the fee schedule.

Please recommend that. Please recommend that. We had that conversation in Planning Commission and I went, sometimes we don't adopt AP ordinances for years, but you all deal with the fee schedule every year. So I would much prefer that all of these be placed in your fee schedule. Now that's going to be a little bit more work on my part of the budget time, but I prefer to do that because these numbers have to escalate as time moves on.

And that way we don't have to revise the ordinance when you recommend that we need to move forward.

So I'm going to say- Thank you, Mr. Hyde.

Thank you, Mr. Hyde. You're very welcome. Good job. Okay, so did we wrap up 717, 730? Or no, we have a couple more on the next page. Mr. State, go ahead.

Before we get any further on this, I'm going to ask Mr. Mark, do you have the capability of carrying out these, does our department have the sufficient to be able to keep up with it. Do we have, or are we just shooting our own self in the foot in Iraq and ain't gonna take them? Are you gonna keep, I mean, is your department gonna keep up with this, or are they gonna get out and do their job?

They get out and do their job, but it gets ahead of us sometimes. I'm gonna be honest with you. I know it does, and that's what I'm trying to get at. We're adding a staff person. I want you to ask me that question in six months. Okay. I will. This department, I found this out today, This department used to have a tree arborist, an arborist on staff. Wow. You want to talk about cutting to the quick and not having to depend on, Okay, so I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know. Every tree company in town has an onboard tree arborist. Whenever somebody says, I have a sick tree, Nick goes out and goes, doesn't look sick to me. But if you get a letter from your tree arborist, we'll let you cut the tree down. I don't know about the shenanigans that go on. I can't comment on that, but I think it happens. if we have an arborist on staff or not our own staff even our own calls that can check because then i can go after the license of that other artist too which starts really putting all the tree companies on notice that we're serious about this stuff but i thank you for asking the question ask me in six months and i will give you an honest answer in six months

Okay, so we still are in 730. We got a couple of paragraphs on the other side, continue with violations.

Mitigation famous street litigation fund anything in these areas.

Mr. Mayor Miss Bradley this the language in Subparagraph B has the weekend enforcement of the police department. So I suggest we make a comparable change here to the change earlier with regard to our Okay, back up off, yes. The police being involved outside of PBZ's normal working hours. 17730B. Last sentence.

Last sentence, the voice department shall stop. Make it agree. There was a comment earlier, and I'm glad you brought that up because it brings it here. Minimum of 30-day stop work order. I mean, if it is something, a minimal or a miscommunication. Can we address things that can be resolved in a day or so or in a week and not necessarily put a 30-day minimum?

We do not have a stop order for temporary.

And in fact, until... Stop work order is more significant than something that just says, you need to do this. Right. And... Stop work order is very serious. Yeah. And go correct it. Right. That's a different level of... Oh, it's a totally different level. And it's not mentioned in here, right?

So...

I'm sorry.

That's all right. If you're reading key leaves, maybe it isn't a stop work order, but maybe it's a... Cease and desist until it's corrected.

Until corrected or temporary.

All right.

All right. But not to exceed 120 days. Yeah. You can leave that in.

But could we also say that if they bring it in to you and show it's been corrected, you can let them move on? I mean, right? Okay. That's right.

I'm going to let them go.

Okay. It just seems like it's not. at the level of a stopped reporter. If that is the scenario that you're confronted with, you're saying, get this corrected.

I don't know, it's a citation of some sort.

I don't know what it is, but it causes, you know, fix this, I'll be back in two days to look at it.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, when you issue fines, I mean, it's not a... Yeah. Yeah, I like the language of being able to cease and desist until corrected. Then we allow them to move forward. But not to exceed, and if they don't, not to exceed 100%.

That usually comes under poor cause. Poor cause, right?

Yeah. It becomes a more stronger legal position.

All right, are we done with 730? 731, mitigation payments. the one that jumps out right at me is is a each tree removed without a permit shall require additional applicable fines mitigation payment equal dollars to the dbh of each tree removed without a permit that could be a couple dollars dbh is three four or five inches so you add five dollars yeah if it's required it's for failure to have the permit so if you didn't need it in the first place for that little

stick of a tree, this doesn't come into play.

But I'm just saying, if you do it without a permit and you couldn't have done it anyway, in addition to the applicable fines, we're going to charge them $5 for a five inch DBH tree. What does it say? It says a mitigation payment equal in dollars to the DBH of each tree removed without a permit. Oh, And yet if it's unknown or not acknowledged, it's $5,000 per tree. I think it should be $10 per the fee schedule. But whatever, I mean, I don't understand this. The mitigation payment is equal to DBH. DBH is, you know, even of the landmark trees, 24 inches is $24 in addition to- It would be more than a dollar. Equal in dollars to the DBH. I mean, why even bother?

Yeah, why even bother? I mean, if you're whacking them five grand, who cares about five bucks? Oh, okay.

Yeah, I think. Okay, so.

I don't understand the intent of that paragraph.

Sometimes some of the

logic that we had during the Planning Commission meeting made total sense to us. And four weeks, five weeks later, I have to admit, as I read this, I go, eh, what were we thinking?

Well, especially, like I said, if you don't know, all of a sudden it's 5,000.

I go, wait a minute. I just think that was a typo. There was a number in there.

But then that sounds like there was an intent to make this serious. 200 dollars or something.

Yeah, I thought we talked about BPH inch per inch.

Per inch, okay.

I'm gonna say per fee schedule, how about that?

But still, we gotta come up with what the number should be. And it sounds like Mr. McKean's saying $100 per inch, not a dollar or something like that.

Would you know? No, like I said, it's sort of like, I don't remember all the conversations that we had.

Oh, you missed it. I guess just go back and review your notes and try to come up with a reasonable number to bring it back.

Mark, to your point, if I could please? Yes, please. Put it on your fee schedule.

Correct. Right, the fee schedule.

But we have to define it.

I get it, but okay. It's got to be a good deviation.

One quick question. Fees are usually what you pay before you begin an action, and penalty fines are after you've done the action. So I don't understand why you want to put penalties in the fee schedule, because it sort of runs contradictory to what its intention is. You go every year to check your fee schedule and then up the fees, but your penalties must go through ordinance changes if you want to increase penalty. So if you agree to vote for this ordinance today with the penalties that are listed, you can do so and it will be effective immediately.

But this is a workshop, we can't vote.

No, I'm just saying. If you go with what is currently what you want to vote on at second reading, that becomes effective immediately. I'm really a little confused as to why you're bringing up fees in place of penalties.

I actually have that concern too. I was going to kind of address that.