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V.3 - May 11, 2022 1 Report on Tree Bylaw Enforcement and the Use of the OpenGov DPW Tree Permit THE TREE COMMITTEE IS CONCERNED THAT THE LEXINGTON TREE BYLAW IS NOT BEING ACCURATELY AND UNIFORMLY ENFORCED, RESULTING IN A LOSS OF CANOPY AND A LOSS OF REVENUE TO THE TOWN. Members of the Tree Committee reviewed selected demolition permits issued since January 20211 and related new construction permits. We identified issues related both to the use of the permit system and to the enforcement of the Tree Bylaw2. Our findings are as follows: 1) Demolition permits have been issued without an online tree permit submitted. The online permit has been used in only a fraction of teardown projects. Since March 1, 2021 approximately 100 demolition permits have been issued; only 47 online tree permits have been created. The permit to demolition ration has improved recently. but there are still cases where the online permit has not been submitted. Despite the requirement that a Tree Permit application be submitted before a demolition permit is issued, in many cases, the “Tree Warden Review” item was indicated as complete and a demolition permit was issued without the creation of a corresponding tree permit by the applicant. Significantly, we found other issues associated with tree bylaw enforcement at these properties; see, for example, the sites being developed by John Berglund in (5) below. 2) Demolition permits have been issued without certain online tree permit steps completed by the Tree Warden. In many cases, the “Tree Warden Inspection”, “Tree Removal Fee”, “Tree Removal Permit” steps are not completed but “Tree Warden Review” in the demolition permit is marked as complete and the demolition permit has then been issued. In some such issues, there is then no documentation of what the fee is and whether it has been paid (see also (6) below). Examples3: • 5 Skyview Rd • 303 Woburn St • 59 Laconia St 1 When the online OpenGov (Viewpoint Cloud) DPW Tree Permit was first implemented. 2 At the time of this writing, the spreadsheet containing detailed information about individual trees required by the Tree Bylaw to be submitted with the demolition application has not yet been implemented. For this reason, information for this report was gleaned from the plot plans and comments in the OpenGov system records. 3 Documentation for each of the properties referenced in this report is contained in the associated .zip file distributed with the report.