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

25 matches · 9 unidentified

Unidentified speaker 10:31

So first thing, Councilman Betrus called me, told me Rome had a resolution. I have a good relationship with the Commissioner of Codes in Rome. Called him immediately. He answered the phone. And I asked them about their legislation and what they do and how it came about and what happened. Basically what they do, they don't proactively look for trees. They respond to complaints from neighbors about trees of concerns to the neighbors. When they get a complaint from a neighbor about a tree of concern, they send their arborist to evaluate the tree. If the arborist determines that the tree is a danger for a variety of reasons, mostly it's dead. Then they tell the homeowner to remedy. The homeowner doesn't remedy. The city contracts a third party to remedy, cut down the tree, and they bill the homeowner as if we would in an abatement to move what they consider an emergency hazard. Now, the problems with it, with enforcement that I can pick up right away, Law will talk about more from a codes perspective. Kind of easy for us to enforce on those terms, but for the fact that we don't know where property lines are. If there's not a survey, I don't know whose tree that is. I know it looks like it's in the neighbor's yard, I know, so I could end up billing the wrong homeowner. And that would be my biggest fear, or not giving sufficient notice. Sufficient notice to a homeowner that goes. And then, you know, it's not a codes concern, but to some extent it is. It's more DPW. But from a codes standpoint, the right to access, right? Can you trespass on private property? And then if you're bringing trucks and saws and stuff on private property, they go. I asked Mark that, he said it's never come up. It doesn't mean, um, it's not good. The law is relatively recent. He wrote it himself. But he said that he's had success with it and he likes it. But like I said, my fear is the property lines. It's not so much the enforcement, the ability to enforce, because if the arborist is doing all the work, we're just responding to a complaint. So it's not the work, it's the property issues.

Unidentified speaker 16:23

Yeah, yeah, but here's the thing. With the arborist, we're putting a lot of trust in that one person. Because what happens with the arborist is, if he says a tree is not dangerous and that same tree falls the next day, we cleared that tree. Right? So you got to trust that arborist that every tree he says isn't dangerous isn't dangerous. Now, he probably, probably, my guess is, errs on the side of saying take the tree down. Which— but then he's cutting people's trees that might not necessarily need to be cut. So, and they're charging them because this is thousands and thousands of dollars. It's not like it's a small charge where we cut your grass, it's $200.

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 15:37

So, but the distinction there is like, so, we have specific laws for abatement that are really regularly practiced in a lot of municipalities across the country. And because of ticks, grass is one of them. Grass is not there because of the cosmetic reasons. Grass is there because of the spread and infestation infestation of ticks. It's the same thing with unsanitary conditions, just like garbage, um, because it brings rodents that can carry diseases and things like that. So there's specific laws that are, that are trial tested that allow us to go on people's properties for reasons. Now, a tree in danger might be one of them. My fear would be, if I got to sign off on that as codes commissioner, is that I don't know how to determine which tree is more dangerous the other one. And I'm afraid that—

Unidentified speaker 17:06

And again, just with respect to that point, and I don't know too much without doing like a more deep dive as far as liability and all of that, but you're starting to run into the, you know, we touch the tree, if something happens after we cut the tree, is that our problem?

20:49

I understand that. So what I'm saying is that what the city is responsible for is the city's already done and they did tree inventory on. I understand that you're talking about somebody's backyard and stuff like that. And I personally, and you know my feelings on this, like I don't see how the city can go in, they can't even go in somebody's backyard for a codes issue if they have chickens or anything anything like that. So the point to this, and I understand what Joe's saying, and it is a big problem, and I don't know how the City of Rome does it. I thought maybe because it's a bigger city and they might have more land and it's easier to see something on somebody else's property. But I think that the inventory that we have is based on the tree inventory that we did as a city. We hired somebody to do. Anything outside of that scope, I think, is just too much for the city to handle and outside of their scope of—

24:35

This is for Miss DiGiorgio. Uh, Steph, isn't the current law right now, if you have a If your neighbor has a tree hanging over your roof that you think is a danger to your property, don't you— isn't the way it works now, you write them a letter telling them that you're concerned about the tree and that they're responsible for it in the event it causes damages, and then you save that?

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?