It's supposed to be easier to ask forgiveness rather than permission, EXCEPT with bureaucracies! Those trees could belong to the city she lives in [although SHE is responsible for them, the city 'owns' them] I know, made no sense when I lived there. Therefore she may need a permit from the city arborist to do ANYTHING with those trees.
When I lived in the Bar Area, i had two old acacia trees, deemed to be the two most dangerous trees in the city [hollowed and weakened by rot and roots cut constantly for various construction] These were BIG trees within 18 feet of the house. Since the trees were in the parking, I asked the city to replace them. That's when I found out the city owned them but the legislation had made ME responsible for them. I couldn't do a thing to them WITHOUT a written permit [the city owned them] yet I was supposed to be responsible for them. Right after learning all this and right after the city did a horrible trim job lopping off one side, a bad storm took one of the trees down. It fell diagonally just missing, well almost missing our house but flattened the front of the historical landmark building next door. Took two days for a full size city crew working constanntly to completely cut up and remove the LARGE tree's carcass! And this was with it lyiing on the ground. Since I am responsible for the tree, if it had more severely damaged our house, I would have had to pay a lot. But because it also fell adjacent, somehow the culpability went back to the city, not me, and they had to pay the neighbor to reconstruct his historical landmark house. Go figure. So there is govt at work again. THEY own the tree. Home owner is responsible for the tree, but can't trim it, can't select what type, can't cut it down. Nothing, without a permit and of course pay for the permit. Yet, and this is luckily, if the tree damages someone else's property, the city has to pay. Some lawyer somewhere must be getting rich off this convolution of logic.
The remaing tree? I was told the city would give me a free permit for me to hire someone to cut down the tree [estimation excess of $3,000. No thanks. Then along came light rail and THEY cut it down, part of their budget. Problem solved.
A few years ago the county wanted to clean out vegetation from a canal that cuts across about 200' of our property. It took...
a roughly 25' diesel powered barge with moveable, chopping props a crane to get the boat in/out of the water
2 airboats
1 supervisor (with county car)
2 men to work the barge at least 4 other men to do I know not what about 3 days __________________
Non-government workers are more diligent. When I lived in Honolulu I was in a position to see work being done while the new state capitol was being built. There was one guy with a backhoe who was moving a pile of dirt from one place to another. When he finished, he moved it back to where it was originally. That's all he did, day after day...move the same pile of dirt back and forth. Can you say, "cost plus"?
Home office, I can verify during all the work listening to the chipper being USED!, hearing, watching. Actually, I was surprised too, but it seemed due to the storm they were supposed to be MANY other places. But I think my neighbor got some preferential priority becuase he 'owns' half of Los Gatos, plus the tree kind of fell across a bit of SJ's north-south main street.
In my part of the world, the town hires out Asplundth (sp?) contractors to do the chipping (i.e., chipping is done by private companies working for the town).
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