Dirty Tricks By Brisbane City Council

sproutman

If you want to hear about dirty tricks, you should see what dirty tricks the UK government tried to get away with in relation to trees

UK Government Attempts to Sell All Trees

Joshua Rugg

i got 2 words for the property owner ROUND UP! if he cant get permission to cut them down becuase they are healthy, then pour some round up one them and then he will have a reason to cut them down.

Eric Frei

This 0.65m DBH 25m tall silkyoak sports a clean trunk to 12m high and large decent canopy.

It is not protected however it is prominent in the area, it sits on a vacant block of about 450m2 size.

As I have mentioned before at the drop of some whining neighbour or bunch of nosey conservationists it could be protected at a whim, especially on the day of felling.

Introducing exhibit "A":



As I have mentioned before, we have already administered an anti-tree hugger/backflip council treatment to the tree when we secured the job of bringing it down.

Introduce exhibit "B"

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Brent Ferris

I thought we had a lot of regulations in our area, but they're minimal compared to yours Eric. Makes me wonder how you can survive in the tree trade. Reading the thread, I almost wonder if they passed a decision in the 6 weeks they kept your client waiting so they could apparently change the rules. (That, or they sent the letter, and before it was responded to passed the bill).
I am all for keeping healthy trees, and I feel that too many good trees are cut down by owners that don't like trees., And in that light, I feel those people should buy treeless lots, and leave the treed lots to those who love trees. However, I also feel that if you buy a lot, and based on your research the trees are not protected, it makes no sense for council to change the rules before replying.

It sounds like the council would like it best if the people moved out of Brisbane, and left the city to the trees.

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My business: Tree Pruning and Removals -- Strump Removals -- Advice -- Consulting -- Arborist Reports
If you want an honest opinion, call Brent Ferris...because, Trees want to Live Too !
We do great jobs, even in small yards.

Free Estimates Oakville to Oshawa - North to Bradford (Will travel further if cost of travelling covered)

Eric Frei

The video is out of this job being done, all went really well and no-one tried to stop us.... but the backflip protector was called an act of vandalism but some erroneous tree hugger.

Silkyoak Removal

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Eric Frei

More Dirty Tricks By Brisbane City Council - Fresh Evidence

A recent case that made the news.

On Friday July 22 around 9.30am Brisbane Tree Lopping was contracted to cut 3 trees back to the fence line at 2 Batman street Clayfield. The trees were owned by a lawyer and his lawyer wife at 10 Batman Street Clayfield.

Before commencing work and as the EWP was setting up BCC was called and there was no VPO order on the trees.

Channel 9 camera crew arrived around 10.30am.

Cutting commenced, I was hired to be there just in case, assist where required, video and document proceedings, liaise where necessary.

We were prohibited from cutting beyond the fence line, we were not to trespass the fence line. So where possible target cuts to AS4373 were made however where the target cut was on the other side of the fence line stubs were left so the tree owner (or his contractor) could finish them off after.

Matt Williams of The Tree Doctor arrived on the scene around 10.00am, I told him that the job was not mine and I was there to document the proceedings.

Jean Rouseaux from Brisbane City Council arrived on the scene with his co-worker. You can see me speaking with him at the very beginning of the video. Jean then went inside into the neighbours house for some time, he never spoke with anyone doing the work, the client or I again. He did not tell us to stop work. He left.

Yesterday (26 July 2011) the neighbour received a letter from Jean Rouseaux of BCC dated Friday 22 July 2011 that a new VPO (IT, Individual Trees) was put on the neighbours Leopard Tree and the next Jacaranda.

The BCC NALL states this for IT trees:-

I assure you there is nothing so significant about these run of the mill exotic (neither are native) trees.

There you have it. So you can move into a house after doing all the checks and bingo, a fence line tree gets protected which in turn then means you cannot touch it without a permit from BCC. It also demonstrates how frivolous BCC is and makes certainty and planning difficult. For some this could mean the land within the TPZ of the tree is rendered useless, too bad if you wanted a pool for instance, it is commandeering the use of your neighbours land. Trees are being strategically planted and used by people as weapons on their neighbours .... that fact was recognised in the UK with their Anti Social Behavioural Act - Trees 2003.

With that specific job I reiterate that the contractor by being restricted from going past the fenceline was inhibited from making the target cuts to conform to AS4373. It is another very important reason to have co-operation between neighbours. Now it is up to the tree owner to complete those cuts, could have been done on the spot on the day but access was refused.


Jean to my left and his co-worker to my right.

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Kenny Koala

Now treewhisperer i'm not generalising here but after my dealings with the Redland City Council (RCC) , a lot of council employees are exactly how they have been described in this thread.
They sit on their shiny backsides interpreting laws that have been made by solicitors rather than people that actually have a clue. One even had the hide to make jokes about my partners name. These people also have agendas. They are trying to save every tree on this planet regardless of safety or damage to property.

In the RCC if i walk past your property and like a tree on it, i can apply to have a VPO taken out on it even though i dont own the property.
In the public notice of the VPO they put community as the activation of application. It only takes one member of the community to burden the property owners with a VPO.
Council have even put VPO's on properties after having negotiations sour between the parties.

My gripe with this bunch of incompetents is different.
In the Redland Bay area in the early ninties they had TPA5 to improve the quality of the waterways.
They then changed it to VPA31 in 1995, which also encompassed a lot of rural land to stop the wholesale clearing of land by farmers.
Problem for me is my property isn't farmland but was included.
In 1998 RCC bought in local law 6 which had a permitted damage clause in which included a ten metre from house removal and 3m to establish a fence line. Now for 13 years RCC has been ignoring the original TPA's which in effect have become a wholesale blanket VPO of the whole area.

RCC now employs an aborist because of the possiblity of a public injury to acertain their condition as well as a new compliance officer. Now thats nothing out ot the ordinary except for the fact that they now interpret local law 6 and the TPA31 diffferently to what the RCC has for the last 13 years.
So what you could remove before they came on the scene is no longer able to be removed today

It's off to the Ombudsman and then if they persist with this crap it's off to Today Tonight and A Current Affair.
I'm sure they're going to love a council that has prosecuted people under local law 6 and then find that for 13 years they haven't applied their own law correctly.
Our local counciller has sort of had a go at fixing this but the Lord Mayoral candidate for next year has been the biggest help. The current lord mayor must think she is above this as she won't even return my calls .

Lacking common sense seems to be a pre-requisite for employees in enviromental departments.

Now before all you tree huggers have a shot at me.
We love our trees and our block. We encourage wildlife into our yard and feed birds and possums
We have a 3900 sqm block. On 2500sqm there are around 40 large trees. so it's not like i'm clearing my block of every tree.
The nuisance trees on my property are less than 10m from my house. hence why we thought we could remove them under local law 6. They are slowly but surely wrecking the bottom of my colourbond rood and gutters.
RCC won't pay for that.
There are 2 Ironbarks, both compromised by termites and have visible damage and large amounts of keno coming out of them. One other is a paperbark that has considerable damage to the heart wood as you can actually put your fingers into it. The other i'm not sure. Hey i've got horticultural qualifications, i'm no aborist.

Now here's where the lack of real common sense comes into it.
We're trying to do the right thing by the enviroment and all we cop from the council is brick bats.
How much carbon does 4 mature trees sequest from the atmosphere??
Well the sloar system we put in to erase our carbon footprint is the equivelent of planting over 500 trees.
Yep lets save the planet.
It's a shame that the RCC only gives lip service to being truly green