PORTLAND, Ore. -- The City of Portland wants to save more trees. At Wednesday's city council meeting, commissioners will hold the final vote on whether to charge housing developers a higher price if they chop down trees.
For the largest trees, 36 inches in diameter or more, that increase would be 10 times as much as the current rate. The proposal comes after several high profile protests in which neighbors fought to save trees from the chainsaw in Eastmoreland and Southeast Portland.
Currently, builders pay a flat fee of $1,200 per tree that is 12 inches in diameter or more. By code, builders must keep one-third of all trees on a lot.
The proposed increase would work in a graduated scale, based on tree diameter. Twelve to 20-inch wide trees would stay at the $1,200 fee. Trees 20-36 inches wide would be increased to a $2,400 fee. And any tree wider than 36 inches would cost the builder $300 per inch, starting at $10,800 and going up from there.
The Bureau of Development Services says it's designed to be a "disincentive to cut down trees." The bureau estimated in a recent study that seven percent of trees in Portland are 36 inches or more in diameter.
"I felt like houses could have been built around it without ever touching it," said Robbin Isaacson Deweese.
Isaacson Deweese is talking about a Douglas fir that was cut down in her neighborhood on Southeast 41st Avenue and Clinton Street. It's the same feeling a lot of Portlanders have, trying to balance the growth of the city with it's greenery.
"The trees are the beauty of our city, the beauty of our neighborhood," Isaacson Deweese said.
It's not that cut and dry for builders. City code says if they keep existing trees on a lot, they can't put anything too close to them. That means on most lots, the trees have to go.
"It's an unfortunate byproduct of some of the new housing that we need to have, to meet our growth projections at the end of the day," said spokesman Paul Grove of the Homebuilders Association of Portland.
He says some of his members who build houses priced for first-time home buyers, around the $350,000 mark, have had to walk away from four potential lots because it would have cost too much to cut down the trees needed to accommodate construction. Grove says it's affecting the amount of affordable housing Portland can build. The codes and extra costs make it not pencil out for builders.
"I believe trees have rights. Trees that are hundreds of years old in my mind, have rights to continue standing," said Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman who helped draft the graduated fee increase.
He said it's designed to put the financial pinch on builders to work around the bigger canopy trees that Portland needs to keep.
"One point that people have made is they could preserve more trees if they didn't build such 'McMansions' on those lots that are being replaced, and I think that's an accurate point," Saltzman said.
Grove said any increased costs won't sway builders to keep trees. Instead, the extra costs will just get tacked on to the new home's asking price at a time when the consumer needs cheaper housing.
"We need to be ensuring that future residents of the city have the dream of home ownership and the last thing we want to be doing is putting barriers to that goal of folks," Grove said.
To that, Saltzman said "Their point is an accurate one, but the counterpoint is, we need to preserve tree canopy and the money we would charge them for taking down a tree of 36 inches or larger goes to plant new trees, and in my mind you should go to all ends to preserve them."
The money from the fees goes to the city parks bureau to plant new trees and to buy land with trees on it.
City commissioners expect more public testimony when the vote comes up at 2 p.m. Wednesday.