Expressing a desire to have the city maintain trees as opposed to homeowners, the Hoboken City Council narrowly voted down changes proposed in an ordinance up for second reading at last night’s meeting.
By John Heinis/hudson County View
“I am the current acting chair of the Hoboken Shade Tree Commission, licensed landscape architect, and arborist and I specialize in the construction and design of urban landscapes,” stated Ken Misbrenner.
“So, I’m here to encourage you all to support the tree ordinance and to think of trees as infrastructure really because two of the aspects that trees provide, which are listed in the ordinance, are stormwater mitigation – which is obviously very important to Hoboken and also mitigation of urban heat island effect.”
1st Ward Councilman Mike DeFusco asked if the ordinance would include any sort of hardship clause for residents, particularly senior citizens and/or anyone with financial troubles.
“The issue with the ordinance, as I see it, is that if a condo association or a building maybe cannot afford the maintenance of the trees. We already pay a ton in taxes, right? We pay a ton in taxes to the city to do these things, maintain the public right of way, which is ironic because we’re trying to talk about the way is in zoning and this is clearly one.”
He continued that the cost of maintenance should not be laid at the feet of residents, which would could impact people’s willingness to plant trees.
Assistant Business Administrator Caleb Stratton, who is also the city’s chief resiliency officer, said the ordinance did not change the responsibility here, since the onus has always been on the property owner.
4th Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos listed several examples where trees are taking up the entire sidewalk.
“The sidewalk is our domain in a lot of aspects, so I think we should be a little more aggressive in trying to take care of our public domain because we have instances of people tripping all over the place and parents carrying the stroller over these humps on sidewalks or seniors like trying to get their walker over the hump on a sidewalk,” he said.
“It’s just outlandish to me. We haven’t been able to get our arms around that issue a little more, a little more clarity on who’s going to do it.”
Ramos said he was going to vote no for those reasons, before 5th Ward Councilman Phil Cohen indicated that if the city issues violations to property owners responsible for maintaining the right of way.
In that scenario, they have the option to fix it themselves or have the city do it and then invoice them for the work performed.
“That’s the law right now: so all this does is just codify what is the law right now … the city could issue violations tomorrow to that homeowner and that homeowner is on the hook for both the fines and violations and for fixing the tree situation,” he explained.
“So again, this is one aspect of this and includes things like what the approved tree species are, the standards for tree protection during construction, what kind of standards are for tree guards, that kind of thing.”
2nd Ward Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher said that the current ordinance did not explicitly state that homeowners need to cover the cost and the matter came up during the summer.
” … It felt like it was in response to the 11th Street situation because it felt like the language was not as clear we’d like, so it is in response to that active situation. When we discussed it in our committee, I pushed back and said ‘I actually don’t think that the homeowners should be responsible for the trees between the sidewalk and the street,'” she stated.
“Those trees were planted by the city 50 years ago, 60 years ago, something like that, not all of them, clearly there’s some newer ones … but when we think of the ones that are really doing the damage to the sidewalks, the ones that are causing conflict with overhead wiring … I’ll generalize and say the majority of them were ones that were planted by the city.”
3rd Ward Councilman Mike Russo said that city services and responsibilities should improve when taxes go up, but that hasn’t happened here.
“I can understand that if we were fighting tooth and nail to make sure that taxes were decreased year after year for our property owners, then we could kind of ask them to do a little bit more. We constantly ask them for more … It goes back to the argument like with the recreation programs,” he began.
“I think the city fundamentally should be providing those services. In a situation like this, I’ve always believed that the city should be maintaining our streetscape and our sidewalks. So, it may currently be the law that the individual homeowner should maintain those tree pits and those trees. I think the question for me any way is is that the law that I actually want to have on the books.”
In response, Cohen pointed out that if someone gets injured due to an unsafe sidewalk condition, the homeowner is responsible for the injury based on insurance law and property liability.
To that end, Councilman-at-Large Jim Doyle said that while the want taxes to remain stable, the cost of maintaining all the trees in the city will come at a considerable cost.
Shortly before the vote, Councilman-at-Large Joe Quintero said he felt that the task at hand was being overcomplicated.
“I think it is somewhat insane that if you know there’s a 100-year-old tree it’s going to cost me maybe 50 grand to bring it down. I didn’t necessarily consider that when buying, putting my life saving into the building, he declated.
“So I think that is something we should look at. The question for me here, as we’ve demonstrated here, is that it’s going to be a really complicated fix.”
Council President Emily Jabbour thanked the shade tree commission for their service, as well as the council for the extended dialogue on this, before calling for a vote.
The ordinance was defeated 5-4, with DeFusco, Fisher, Russo, Ramos, and Giattino voting no.
Im handicapped and these trees are a major daley obstacle from bulging sidewalks to branches causing sidewalks to be so narrow one cant walk through with an umbrella. Homeowners dont even trimm there hedges/bushes back that grow obtrusively from there properties over there fences onto the sidewalks.