WILMINGTON — Another property owner has run afoul of the City of Wilmington’s strict, but often ignored, tree preservation code, an ordinance that prohibits the removal of trees without proper permits from the city.
But, unlike several large developers who downed dozens of trees without having to pay the fines assessed to them, property owners that remove just a few trees are often stuck paying thousands in fines.
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The property located at the intersection of Oleander Drive and Pine Grove Drive sits vacant and trees are abundant, but when property owners decided to do some cleaning up of the lot and removed six different trees from it without getting proper permits it ended up costing them.
Removing the trees resulting in a fine of $5,400 and a requirement to plant 54 new trees. The fine was paid to the city by the property owner, but now, a request to the city’s Board of Adjustment has been submitted to reduce the cost of the fine as well as remove the requirements to replant new trees.
According to the city’s staff, the six trees identified as removed from the property were:
- 20” Long Leaf Pine
- 21” Long Leaf Pine
- 25” Long Leaf Pine
- 8” Live Oak
- 26” Live Oak
- 8” Magnolia
Ignorance of requirements
According to the request from the property owner, she was unaware of the necessity for a permit to remove a few trees.
“My failure to do this was due to my ignorance of the requirement. This lot fronts Pine Grove Drive and Oleander Drive with very high visibility so I was certainly not going to remove trees and not have someone notice. In hindsight, I thought the cleanup was OK on a residential lot as long as no protected trees were removed,” she wrote in an email to the city.
This is not the first time property owners have been hit with a multi-thousand dollar fine due to supposed ignorance of the city’s requirements.
Last year before Hurricane Florence, the owner of a piece of property located on South Third Street cut a few trees from his property to prevent their possible toppling and damaging his property.
After hiring a professional who completed the work in broad daylight, he received a notice of violation, was ordered to pay more than $3,000 in fines and replant 25 trees — all because he had not applied for a $25 permit he did not know he needed.
The City’s Board of Adjustment, which acts as a quasi-judicial board for the city will hear from the appellant on June 20.
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