Bend’s rules for trees are so lax most big trees can be removed for development. Bend’s rules for trees are inconsistent.

Bend’s rules for trees are not clear. Bend’s rules for trees have incentives to help trees that are seldom used.

All of that feeds into why Bend’s rules for trees are changing.

One of the first decisions the city’s tree committee is looking at is: What are the right trees to save? What species should the city prioritize?

Should it be the ponderosa? Western larch? Douglas fir? Quaking aspen? The grand fir? The vine maple? Does the Western juniper get junked?

What order would you put on prioritizing those trees? If a good way to estimate a tree’s age could be settled on, does the tree’s age matter? What about the size of its canopy? Is a tree’s diameter at breast height meaningful? Will the city’s rules ensure every neighborhood and part of town get the same level of concern for trees? How will the rules balance out the need for housing and other development?

Many questions. Tricky questions.

If you are a homeowner there are no plans for the city to tell you what trees you can plant or cut down. The rules the city is looking at are for larger developments.

Some of the rules in the city’s development code surely need to be changed. For instance, there is this section: “Preservation is considered impracticable when it would prevent development of public streets, public utilities, needed housing or land uses permitted by the applicable land use district. The term prevent in this standard means that the development cannot be designed to avoid the significant tree(s).”

That language is and can be used by a developer to pretty much justify taking out any tree.

Changes in Bend’s tree code are going to happen with you or without you.

If you have some input, you can send it to phardie@bendoregon.gov. And if you want to see what other folks are saying, you can go here: tinyurl.com/Bendportal and then go to the planning and historic header, then type in PLTEXT20230178. We wish that trail to tree comments was a simpler one to follow. It is not.