Did you know you can get a “free” shade tree (maybe, depending where you live) for your property in Montgomery County? It is true… the county runs something called “Tree Montgomery”. This government “program”, a part of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, says people in the county can indeed get “free” shade trees:
Yes! We’re offering shade trees, installed, with detailed aftercare guidance. All free, and paid for out of the Tree Canopy Conservation Account.
What is the ‘Tree Canopy Conservation Account’? It is a fund set-up under something called the “Tree Canopy Law” that MoCo’s County Council added to the County Code years ago, in their infinite wisdom and central planning:
In Montgomery County, this law requires trees to be planted during development activity. If the applicants choose, they can pay fees rather than plant. These fees are paid into the Tree Canopy Conservation Account. These fees can only be used to plant and establish shade trees through Tree Montgomery. Tax dollars are not used to plant or care for our shade trees.
The claim that “tax dollars are not used to plant or care for our shade trees” is basically a lie. This “fee” is equivalent to a tax – a tax on property owners or home / office builders or HOAs who wish to have a big, old tree removed, major soil work, or landscaping performed on their property. “When development on a property is enough to require a sediment control permit, then the property owner has to comply with the Tree Canopy Law.”
This is basically a tree tax and it is guaranteed to be passed on in the form of higher rents or higher property prices or even higher HOA dues. Why wouldn’t it? Why would a property owner simply “eat” this fee prior to sale of land to another party / family? If you belong to an HOA in this county, it is guaranteed that one of the major costs they claim your dues go to are “tree removal”, tree trimming and tree services. That is HOA due money that could be going to better sidewalks or pools or amenities but it is going to maintaining trees. But I digress.
There is a whole annual report associated with this law, for anyone who bothers to read it. The whole thing seems like an exercise in make-work for someone at the Department of Environmental Protection. For the last report issued through June 30, 2022, the program claims on page two that:
And then, as an update, in March 2023 County Executive Marc Elrich bragged about the “10,000th tree” installed via this “tree tax” supplied program.
But what is the result of all this taxing and spending and tree planting? Or rather, what will be the result in the near-future? Well, we know that summer rains and thunderstorms and damaging winds come roaring through the county every single year. This isn’t a “new” phenomenon – but I am willing to entertain that perhaps it has gotten a bit more frequent as time has gone on. Look at this headline / report by Maryam Shahzad for state media MyMCMedia.org just a day ago:
So we tax property owners who want to remove large and dangerous or damaged trees, use that tax to plant still more shade trees that get big and bulky in a few years and need to be maintained, and then the summer storms roll through and still more trees come down. Round and round we go. These trees are damaging more property and blocking roads and raising home insurance costs for everyone in “tree lined” communities of MoCo. This is an incoherent mess of a policy. This isn’t “solving” global climate change or greenhouse gas emissions. This is simply making it more expensive and dangerous to live in a home in MoCo because a wind storm could cause a mature tree to come through your front window.
The people making out like bandits in this whole scheme are the “tree expert companies” like Pennsylvania-based Asplundh. You’ll see their green and yellow tree removal / chipper trucks everywhere in MoCo in the summer. They are making big money thanks to this policy (and others) in Maryland that seem to insanely mandate or incentivize more trees near utilities and homes. When it rains and wind picks up, these companies have to be smelling dollars. According to Forbes.com rankings, Asplundh companies make a combined $4.9 billion in annual revenue and are nearly in the top-100 of privately held companies in America. There are other tree chipper companies you’ll see everywhere in MoCo, like J & B Tree Services, so this isn’t to purely single out Asplundh – which is now a multi-national corporation present across the United States and world. And we thank these companies for their tree removal services – they are badly needed each and every summer in MoCo now.
Surprisingly, the “Asplundh Tree Expert Co PAC” donated pretty exclusively to (establishment) Republican (federal) candidates in 2020 per OpenSecrets.org. But they sure are getting great “free” business from the incoherent policies and tree taxes pushed by the Montgomery County Democrats on the MoCo Council.
More to come.
