Trees are great. Trees provide bird and bug habitat and can extract a ton of water per day from wet ground. Trees are esthetically pleasing. Trees help to limit climate change. You can hang hammocks from them.
But they can fall and destroy your house, your car or worse, your neighbour’s house or car! They can down power lines, block the sun from your vegetable garden and their roots can reek havoc with your water pipes, foundation and driveway.
Also, there is fall leaf cleanup, pruning and pollen allergens to consider.
But wait, now there’s more. If you saw one down it’s gonna’ cost ya’! $10,000 — each tree! Even if you bought the sapling tree and paid taxes and paid a guy to plant it.
And now the permit to cut down your tree will cost you not $50 but $75. And apparently this doesn’t cover the cost of salaried employees to fill in a form and then maybe enter the info into the city’s computer.
But if you register yourself as a construction company the bylaw won’t affect you.
What I would like to see is a bylaw that prevents a neighbour from planting a species of tree that will render my land useless for crops, that will shade out my sundeck, that will drop its leaves and branches in my yard and require me to not only prune it but be stuck with the branches which I will have to pay to remove because our green bins are too darn small.
Furthermore, what about absentee or negligent homeowners who let trees propagate spontaneously in our temperate rain forest climate without a thought to their eventual skyscraper height.
Yes, I love trees, I’ve even hugged a few and planted thousands. I have also logged selectively with a team of draft horses.
I wonder if the Queen knows what the City of Parksville is up to in this regard?
Gord Byers, Parksville
