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Tree Ordinance Guidelines
Part
2. Drafting an ordinance
After working through the steps outlined in Developing
a Community Forest Management Strategy , your community may find that
a tree ordinance is necessary to further its urban forestry goals. This
section is designed to assist you in drafting an ordinance that addresses
your specific goals. Tree ordinances are typically made up of provisions
that can roughly be separated into two categories, namely basic provisions
and provisions for specific goals. You can produce a draft
ordinance by combining the necessary basic provisions
with the appropriate goal-oriented provisions.
You may also decide to develop other provisions to address goals unique
to your community.
We recommend that simple prose be used in the initial draft ordinance. The
draft ordinance should then be submitted to municipal legal staff for review.
We have provided an explanation of the purpose of each ordinance provision,
a list of its key elements, and notes on its use and implications, and example
text from existing ordinances. Many of the existing examples are from the California
communities (Bernhardt
and Swiecki 1991), but we will be adding additional examples from throughout
the country as this web site is developed further. For a few provisions, we
have not yet found good existing examples and have composed example text. We
have sometimes omitted (shown by ...) or added (shown by brackets []) code where
we deemed it appropriate.
All example provisions are provided for illustration, and are not necessarily
"model" provisions. We recommend that you use the examples, key elements,
and notes as a starting point for developing language that is suited to
meet your local needs. We realize that the 37 provisions described here
may not cover every situation. If you are aware of specific provisions
that are regionally important or particularly exemplary that you would
like to have included here, please contact us using the link below.
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