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Hansen: Scales of tree justice a bit lopsided

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Just over a year ago, Laguna Beach passed a new view ordinance. One wonders, however, if any tree has been cut since.

The ordinance took more than a year of committee work. The document itself is 18 pages long and reads like a mix between a legal contract and a botany lesson:

“Crown raising means a comprehensive method of pruning that removes limbs and vegetation ….”

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“The quality and veracity of the evidence provided in support of establishing the extent of the view ….”

“The cost of the mediator shall be borne by the claimant ….”

It’s the kind of document you can read before bed as a sleep aid.

But then when you get up in the morning and look out toward the ocean, you might sigh at how much your neighbor’s tree grew overnight.

Maybe it’s a misplaced pepper tree or an out-of-control hedge.

Either way, it’s not a money tree, which is what you will need if you want to have the vegetation cut back to a reasonable level — the fair, original level that everyone agreed to.

Nothing more. Just enough to see that morning patch of blue ocean. The sole reason, perhaps, that you paid an extra $1 million for the house.

Instead, you’re looking at the back of Earth’s green head.

You don’t have anything against trees, necessarily, as long as they stay in their place.

But what’s happening now with the new ordinance is changing the way this simple procedure works.

If residents have a problem with a tree, they have to file a complaint and pay the initial $500 fee. That might seem justified on the surface to preserve million-dollar views, but there’s more.

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After further wrangling and an additional $600-plus hearing, the complainant might be in the position of actually forcing the tree to be cut.

But he or she gets to pay for that too.

The only time the tree offender has to pay at all is after everything is said and done — down the road if it happens again, and it will. Then the person has to maintain the tree.

Of course this raises the question: Why aren’t the owners required to maintain their trees in the first place?

Over the past year, I’ve watched with interest as the ordinance was passed with much fanfare. Some called it a great compromise that was long overdue. Others worried that it still did not go far enough.

A few fretted that we would look a little too groomed, like Newport, but that quickly proved wrong.

The fact is, I don’t think any tree has been cut. I’m still waiting for a return phone call from the city’s View Restoration Committee to find out.

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I know residents are complaining in letters to the local media. At first I thought it was just disgruntled homeowners who wanted a better view. But then the letters kept coming and got very specific.

They cited the costs and the fact that nearly every step of the process rests on the claimant — even when the excess foliage is obvious. Here a picture is not a thousand words; it’s a thousand leaves.

Granted, we live in a country where the worst criminal is innocent until proven guilty.

Well, with the Laguna view ordinance, criminals are never caught because they’re living rent free in tree houses.

Look, when I got a parking ticket in front of my own house last year, I fought it. I took a photo of my residential parking sticker and sent it back to the police with an explanation.

There was a mistake, I said. Look at the evidence.

But inexplicably, they rejected it. The numbers apparently did not match on my parking sticker, even though it was issued by the city.

I fought it to the next level, the county, but at that point, I had to pay the fine upfront, regardless of the outcome of the hearing.

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Eventually, I lost again at the county level. They basically told me it was a city issue.

Here’s my point: The parking ticket is my tree. It’s my problem.

There are laws about trees and if I violate those laws, I have to pay.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the view ordinance.

There’s absolutely no incentive for tree violators to do anything at all, except maybe put cable in their tree houses.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.

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