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Streetside trees stir unrest over county liability issuesBy JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
© St. Petersburg Times,
She and her husband, Bill, helped make it that way. When they bought one of the model homes about a decade ago, the area just south of Spring Hill Drive and west of Mariner Drive was laid bare for development. "There were no trees," Beryl Darnulc recalled. "I said, 'Let's plant some palm trees and really make it look like Florida.' " Three queen palms now rise high above the lawn that sits between their sidewalk and the road. Throughout the neighborhood, dozens of trees, bushes and flowering plants similarly decorate the side of the road. And they're all illegal, according to the Hernando County ordinance that regulates rights-of-way. So in April, code enforcement officers sent about 60 Seven Hills families notices to remove their plantings or face fines. The neighbors responded decisively. Several sent letters to county commissioners opposing what they consider a push to make their deed-restricted subdivision ugly; more than 200 signed a petition asking commissioners for relief. They found a kindred spirit in commission chairman and neighbor Chris Kingsley. Undercutting the code enforcement actions, Kingsley last week instructed County Administrator Paul McIntosh to take "immediate action" in handling this "discriminatory enforcement of rights of way usage." "It's unconscionable to go in there and rip out 11-year-old bushes and trees that are never going to be a hazard to anyone," Kingsley said. McIntosh in turn told code enforcement Director Frank McDowell III to stop his officers from enforcing the rule until county and community representatives work out a solution. "The whole problem is liability," McIntosh explained. "What's the risk of an accident occuring on a cul-de-sac? It's 100 percent county risk. It's not the tree owners'. If it's in our right-of-way, it's our risk." The situation began simply enough with an anonymous phone call. Someone called the county to report that Edwin Beck had illegally placed mulch in the right-of-way outside his home. Code enforcement officer Gail Gilchrist inspected, found the violation and sent Beck a notice to remove the mulch. Rather than fight, Beck complied. Then he made a list of similar violations around his neighborhood, and sent it to the code enforcement office in Brooksville. "I didn't know why they were picking on me, because there were hundreds of others just the same," Beck said. "It was only mulch on the ground, with a few little shrubs. No big deal. But they thought it was." McDowell sent a team to verify each complaint. Notices soon followed. The sweep was nothing personal against Seven Hills, he said, adding that officers issue "tons" of right-of-way violation citations all over the county. If Seven Hills residents had escaped unnoticed for 10 or more years, it's because code enforcement officers generally have little reason to visit the area, he said. "We spend very little time in there because, quite frankly, we don't get very many service requests out there," McDowell said. "They do a darn good job of policing themselves." If Beck hadn't complained, it's likely the violations would have remained unknown. Standing in the shade of a neighbor's oak tree, also in the right-of-way, the Darnulcs said they did not blame Beck for causing a commotion. After all, he simply wanted the rules enforced uniformly in the subdivision. That's what they wanted for the whole county before they would willingly remove their trees. "If I'm going to have to take them down, I'll take them down," Bill Darnulc said, gesturing toward his palm trees, which would cost about $1,000 or more apiece at a nursery. "But everybody will have to take 'em down." Seeing his neighbors motioning toward the trees, John Rizzo walked over to join the conversation. He, too, got a notice to remove his two large oaks in the right-of-way. "We just spent $400 getting them trimmed, just to make it look nice," Rizzo said. "The reason we bought here is because of how nice it is. Now they want to take and cut everything down." It's not just a Seven Hills issue, he said. "This is the whole county." On that point, commissioners Kingsley and Nancy Robinson agree. "Unless we currently have a new initiative to remove all plantings, trees, poles, newspaper boxes, signs and mailboxes along all county roads, I do not see how we can decide that the plantings in Seven Hills are in some manner unique and have to be removed," Kingsley wrote in a letter to McIntosh. "It's really a major policy for the board," Robinson told her colleagues during last week's commission meeting. She called for a full review of the county right-of-way ordinances, especially considering the county's newly minted landscaping ordinance that protects planted trees and encourages the planting of new ones. Rizzo and the Darnulcs said they appreciate that the commissioners have taken up their cause. At the same time, they worried that an arbitrary change to the rule might have negative effects. If the ordinance says trees six feet from the road are a hazard today, and then commissioners change the distance to two feet, the first person to hit a tree two feet out will have a field day, Bill Darnulc contended. "A hazard is a hazard," he said. "They're between a rock and a hard place." Rizzo suggested that new rules might focus on the type of road on which plantings, poles or other items are placed in the right-of-way. It seems foolish to place restrictions on limited-access, residential roads like those in Seven Hills, he said. "You can sit here all day long and you can count on one hand the number of cars that go through," Rizzo said, mentioning that in the hour the neighbors talked on the street only two other neighbors had driven by. In a decade, the Darnulcs could remember only one car accident outside their house, and it was on the Mariner side. The driver careened off the road, through a brick wall and into the pool cage, Beryl Darnulc said, "but he never hit a tree." In other words, they said, trees don't jump out and hit cars. The trees and other plants should remain, they concluded. McIntosh said he would look into the liability question with his directors of public works and risk management. Afterward, he said, he will schedule a meeting with representatives from Seven Hills to try to craft a workable resolution for that community. Next, the commission intends to discuss whether to modify the right-of-way ordinance. The planned chain of events seems acceptable to just about everyone. Everyone, that is, but the man whose complaint started the ball rolling. "I'm just disgusted with it," Beck said. "They can do whatever they want at this point." - Discuss this and other issues in our Web-based discussion forum at www.sptimes.com/hernandoforum.
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