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Common Council Meeting with Committee of the Whole Meeting June 17th, 2026

5 matches · 2 unidentified

7:55

Thank you. Um, so I don't know about all you guys. Well, I do know that some of you's got a lot of calls about dangerous trees that aren't on city property. They keep telling me over and over that Rome has an ordinance, why can't we do it? So I had Marcus print me Rome's ordinance. He talked to the Codes Department out in Rome. I talked to Councilperson, Commissioner Sokolowski about it. And what I want to do in this discussion is to touch on aspects why we can do this, if why we can't do it. Um, I, I also invited Parks Commissioner Short because he is our arborist, but it doesn't look like he's coming. I didn't hear back from him. So, um, I'll just open it up to, um, Marques, if you want to start. We worked on this, so you know more Sure. The positives, and then I'll let legal go in and discuss it and what Mark's done. What I could just tell you about this right off the bat, there's a couple good things that they do right off the bat. Obviously our tree department, I think, what do we have, 2 or 4 guys?

9:19

3, okay. Obviously we have a hard enough time getting trees down that need to come down. So they would not be able to do this. This would be something where, um, a tree would be deemed dangerous and the person's house, the person who owns the tree, um, would respon— be responsible to take it down. If they did not take it down, we would hire an outside person and they would be billed for it. The problem right off the bat is in Rome, I think they have 120,000 put into their budget for this type thing. Am I correct, Marcus?

Unidentified speaker 13:02

But just generally speaking, I guess I'll touch on two things. We probably would have an issue as well with not knowing where property lines are and determining whose property taxes it would go on for the abatement. That would be the first thing. The second thing, I know Mark— Marcus mentioned about obviously entering on people's property. Typically when we go on city property— excuse me, when we go on private property to do work, either the owner gives us permission in some way, shape, or form. So if we have sewer repairs or any other, you know, easements or anything else that we need to get on people's property, typically we go on and either have them sign a consent form or we have some authority to go on. But usually we're in communication with the property owner. Generally speaking, the only thing that I can compare this specific abatement to is much like we do our demolitions of houses. And generally speaking, when we do those, we also have some form of an order granting us the ability to do that. Either that's a court order through an order of show cause, or if there's extraordinary circumstances that allow us to go on the property, we have that ability to do as well. It's not the best because there's no clear order saying we can go on this property and remove it. I'd be a little bit leery about trees and making determinations because we are starting to go more towards, you know, I'm going to call it providing a private service, much like we have a lot of places within the city that want us— want police to provide private security.

23:14

It's totally a different abatement than what Marcus is explaining about every day what we do with grass, what we do with garbage, board and secure. It's because that's a hazard, like he said. This, I get it's a hazard, but it's the people's property that they own, that that's their hazard, not ours.

Unidentified speaker 26:37

But as Marcus said, the more you push that line of hazard, the more you're expending resources to address private concerns that are not city concerns. I mean, a tree hanging over the, you know, a city right-of-way or on, in the street or on a sidewalk, that causes liability to the city. Some of the other things are not liability to the city. It's a danger, but it's not a danger to the city.