The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The Environmental Commission is taking another stab at changes to the township’s tree ordinance.
The Commission at its December 18 meeting voted to forward an email, written by Commissioner Arnold Schmidt, suggesting that the ordinance’s definition of a tree be changed from measuring four inches in diameter, three feet off the ground, to 2.5 inches in diameter.
The recommendation will also include a suggestion that the Council reinstate a cap of 25 percent on the amount of tree replacement that developers could make up through contributions to the township’s Tree Fund.
Developers are required to make contributions to the township’s Tree Fund if they cannot replace either on their property or other property the required number of trees to make up for the trees cleared for a project.
The Commission took a similar step in December 2022 but, Schmidt noted, nothing has happened.
The concern over the tree definition rests on the number of trees developers can clear without having to pay into eh Tree Fund. Anything not defined as a “tree,” meaning any tree smaller than four inches in diameter, doesn’t count.
“So in other words, these developers have been knocking down hundreds of thousands of trees that are three and three-quarter inches or less, seven, 10 feet high, good healthy trees, and they don’t have to pay a penny for them, nor replace them,” Schmidt said in December 2022.
As she did last year, Commissioner Robin Suydam supported Schmidt’s proposal, but also pushed for the reinstatement of the 25 percent cap.
“Do we really need to overbuild every lot? Can’t we leave some trees?” she asked.
Schmidt said one of his concerns about including that language is that no one he has spoken with can remember why it was removed.
The language “appears to be a complicated issue that may not have been well-vetted,” he said.
“Some of the input I got was then you are restricting a developer from doing what they want to do with their own property,” Schmidt said.
“We restrict them in a lot of ways,” Suydam said.
“Someone has to do some research as to why they took it out,” Schmidt said. “There must have been a reason.”
Suydam then made a motion to support Schmidt’s letter, but also suggesting that the cap language be replaced.
“Let the powers that be tell us why it was taken out,” she said.
