I was "almost" charged $54,000 for taking out an Elm Tree- Story Time

[Richard Helppie-Schmieder]

I flip houses, alot of houses, all around DFW. Sometimes we scrape and build, sometimes we renovate. I just picked up a smoking hot deal in Denton, TX. It was 2 lots that we can convert to 3 and zoned for up to a 4-plex. In theory, we can build 12 units and the land cost was $242,000.

My crews got the permits, started the lot clearing, then I got the phone call...."sir, I noticed your team took down and American Elm tree, actually multiple, and that is going to be a $54,000 fine for mitigation." Uh-oh. 

Lesson 1: Don't take down trees until you have identified potential consequences, one tree hugging neighbor can cost you a fortune.

I saw the pictures from the crews, only 2 Elms were removed and a few hackberrys. The biggest elm tree was rotted inside about 2 ft down, so it needed to go, but now I have to retroactively convince the city this. After about 40 phone calls to arborists, trying to get some certified letters and open discussion with the city, I was unsuccessful. We did, however, get the fine to $14,000 due to them initially saying all the trees were elms, when in reality they were not.

Lesson 2: Take LOTS of pictures, this got the mitigation fine down $40,000. 

Now the city shared that I can plant trees to mitigate based on the diameter of the trees (1:1 ratio and some other calcs). Perfect! Palm trees are wide body and cheap, I will plant a few of those and put a plaque on it in remembrance of the city arborist as a kind gesture. Not so fast, there is a list of trees they want planted for mitigation, and palm trees were not on it. While doing this research, I ran across some alternatives to mitigation, if I "saved" some trees during lot clearing, it would count toward mitigation. Did the city know this and not want to share? Unsure, but either way, we had a few more elm trees on the lot that would count for this. This ordinance is written for large developments, but also applies to small ones as well

Lesson 3: Do your own research.

Ultimately, we got away with providing a tree survey ($500) and about 3 additional weeks of holding costs. It was also about 3-6 hours of my time in phone calls, research and scheduling. Lessons were learned that day! 

Does anyone have a semi-obvious lesson learned or a story like this we can all learn from? 

[Jules Aton]

Wow, thank you for sharing this experience. I would have thought I was being punked.