Tree Removal and Trimming in Franklin Park, IL
Ten dollars a year buys the license that lets a tree service Franklin Park has approved go near a village tree. The qualification behind that ten dollars is the expensive part. Section 7-13-4 requires that any person, contractor or firm in the business of “consulting, interacting, or in any way impacting trees on village property must be or have a certified arborist on staff.” It is unlawful to do such work without first obtaining the license. The village made the fee nominal and the standard non-negotiable, which is the right way round.
Chapter 13 And The Ban On Topping
Title 7, Chapter 13 covers tree preservation, planting and maintenance, and establishes the Tree Preservation Commission. It runs from 7-13-1 through 7-13-21. Section 7-13-5(b) reserves to the village the right to plant, prune, maintain and remove trees on village property. Under 7-13-5(d), removing, injuring or destroying a village tree without the village arborist’s authorization is unlawful for any person, contractor or firm. Removal is justified on defined grounds only: diseased, dead or dying, or damaged such that the tree is likely to die or become a hazard.
The section worth quoting to anyone who offers you a cheap price is 7-13-14. It makes it unlawful “as a normal practice to top any tree on village property.” Section 7-13-2 defines topping as removal of the top of the central stem. It also covers “severe cutting back of limbs to stubs larger than three (3) inches in diameter within the tree’s crown.” Topping is what unqualified crews sell as trimming. Franklin Park has written it out of the code.
Penalties under 7-13-20 run “not less than one hundred dollars ($100.00), nor more than seven hundred and fifty dollars ($750.00) for each separate offense.” On top of that comes ISA replacement cost, payable within thirty days. There is no per-day multiplier, which distinguishes it from most codes in Proviso and Leyden.
Ask for our Franklin Park paperwork up front; it goes out with the quote. Section 7-13-4 sets the annual fee at $10.00 payable in advance. It requires insurance of $500,000 bodily injury and $250,000 property damage with the village named as additional insured, plus statutory workers’ compensation. Separately, building-trade contractors under 8-1-2 post a $10,000 indemnity bond and carry liability of not less than $1,000,000 in the aggregate. The trades listed there do not include tree work, so the tree license is its own track.
A Village Planted Between 1940 And 1960
The majority of Franklin Park’s housing and its industrial and commercial buildings went up between the 1940s and the 1960s. That is a narrow window, and it produced a tree population planted within a couple of decades of each other. Trees on that kind of schedule mature together and fail together. That is why one street can look fine for thirty years and then need half its canopy replaced in five. Managing that cohort, block by block, is most of what a tree service Franklin Park residents keep on call actually does.
The village keeps count. In 2025, it planted 169 trees and lost 89; in 2024, 215 planted against 95 lost; in 2023, 189 against 64. It has been recognized as a Tree City for eleven years. It is also certified as a Bee City USA affiliate, working with Openlands and the East and West Leyden High School ecology clubs. Very few villages this size publish a planted-versus-lost ledger at all.
Franklin Park is landlocked across 4.77 square miles, immediately west of Chicago and immediately south of O’Hare. Schiller Park, River Grove, Melrose Park, Northlake and Bensenville hem it in. The Des Plaines River forms part of the eastern boundary. But the flooding that hurts trees here comes from Crystal Creek and Silver Creek, whose floodplains have “resulted in dozens of properties experiencing flooding,” compounded by combined sewer back-ups. Thirty-three properties carry FEMA repetitive-loss status — 27 single-family and 6 other non-residential — with two severe.
Tree Service Franklin Park: What We Provide
- Removals of the post-war cohort as it reaches the end of its span, block by block
- Pruning done as reduction and cleaning — never the topping that 7-13-14 prohibits
- Stump grinding to a depth that suits the village’s replanting record
- Emergency work after wind, ice or a Crystal Creek event
Storm damage. Stay clear of anything touching a wire. Call 911, then ComEd at 1-800-334-7661. The village’s own brush line for oversize material is (847) 671-8252. We run storm crews around the clock.
Get A Tree Service Franklin Park Price
Give us the address and tell us whether the tree is on the parkway or behind the fence. The answer changes who decides. Estimates are free, and we will not quote work the code does not allow.
Call 708-424-5885. Browse our Cook County service area, or read about Schiller Park and River Grove.
19253 South Blackhawk Parkway #80
Mokena, Illinois 60448
708-424-5885
Inquiries@protreeservice.com
Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week