At the last City Council meeting on Oct. 4, the council deliberated on, and approved, an increase (which received my support) of $212,877 to the current Fiscal 2012 budget to add staff to our Department of Community Development. Additional staff resources were added in the areas of land development inspection, arborists, plan review engineers and building inspectors to address an increase in permit activity in our city. The staff increase totals about 2.81 employees over all these categories.
This letter is to highlight why I believe the council needs to go a step further to protect our tree canopy resources in Sandy Springs, prior to construction activities, by approving an additional 4/5 time arborist at a cost of approximately $58,000.
Currently, we have approved a total of 1.45 arborists to enforce the tree ordinance in Sandy Springs. While that is a good start, the chief arborist’s focus is diluted from tree canopy protection duties as he also oversees all environmental code enforcement, including soil and erosion (land development).
It’s not that the city hasn’t recognized that we are understaffed in the arborist area. But in my view, we haven’t gone far enough.
Two months ago management initiated “cross training” of all code enforcement personnel, certifying four current employees as arborists to augment the city’s enforcement of the 2007 tree ordinance. A great step, but it still comes up short as those four employees’ main focus remains property maintenance code enforcement.
Here is the “bulldozer-sized loophole” in our enforcement of the tree ordinance that needs to be closed with the approval of additional staff: Not one certified arborist on city staff is required by internal policy to verify the accuracy of the tree survey on residential property by conducting a field comparison of the tree survey (required by the tree ordinance as part of the building permit application process) to the trees on-site before permitting the bulldozers to roll.
The city enforces the tree survey accuracy pre-construction on all commercial building permit applications, but not residential due to an inadequate level of staff resources. It is a cause of errors and omissions in reporting of tree sizes, locations and omissions of adjacent neighbor-protected boundary trees.
Why does this matter to you? Sixty percent of all permit applications since the city’s inception to August 2010 were residential.
The tree canopy to be protected is located predominantly in residential neighborhoods. There is an adverse impact to a residential property value when specimen trees on the boundaries aren’t protected from development activity on adjacent property.
Best management practices to reduce grading and allow vegetative cover to be retained helps reduce siltation and water run-off into our streams, and can be achieved voluntarily if an arborist could offer suggestions based on a field inspection pre-construction.
I am asking your support as the council considers the additional funds to add 4/5 of an arborist to allow for a pre-construction verification of the already required tree survey for all city land development and building permit applications. It is imperative to include a review of tree surveys for residential.
It will close the loophole that has caused past issues with the personal property rights of adjacent and down gradient property owners.
Karen Meinzen McEnerny
Sandy Springs City Council, District 6