Tree Service in Mount Prospect, IL

Pay for a parkway tree out of your own pocket in Mount Prospect, and it stops being yours the moment it goes in the ground. The village code says so without hedging: “All trees planted on public property, regardless of who planted them, become the property of the Village.” That one line settles most of the arguments that start on a front lawn here, and it settles them against the homeowner: the tree removal Mount Prospect residents want on a parkway is the village’s call, not theirs.

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Where Mount Prospect Draws The Permit Line

Section 9.711 makes it unlawful to remove or cut any tree in a street, parkway or public place without a permit from the Director of Public Works. The applicant has to carry public liability and property damage insurance in an amount the Director sets, the Director may require a performance bond, applications are reviewed within ten days, and contractors are bound to the village’s Arboricultural Standards Manual while the work is going on.

Private ground is governed separately. Section 14.2308 reads: “No more than five (5) trees on any property, nor a tree having a caliper of four inches (4″) or greater on any proposed development site, shall be removed without a permit.” Where replacement is triggered the scale runs four trees for a 4–12 inch removal, five for 13–29 inches and six at 30 inches and above. The section does not apply where the village itself asks for the removal, and it does not apply to public property, which is back under 9.711.

Enforcement has teeth. The village can issue a stop work order, fine to $500 per violation per day, and assess up to $150 per diameter inch for a tree that was destroyed. On a mature parkway maple that arithmetic gets uncomfortable quickly.

Two Rivers, A Levee And Three Planting Generations

The Des Plaines River and Higgins Creek both touch the village, and the mapped floodplain covers 242.69 acres at the 100-year level and 393.29 acres at the 500-year. Localized flooding is worst in the unincorporated Forest River subdivision near Kensington and River Roads, and the northeast section carries exposure to a failure of Levee 37. Five FEMA repetitive-loss properties are on the books, all single-family, three of them classed severe.

Trees on wet ground root shallow and lean into the wind, which is why the failures here cluster geographically rather than by species. Above the floodplain the driver is age instead. Mount Prospect was incorporated in 1917, went through a wave of 1920s land speculation, then filled in hard after the Second World War, with Randhurst arriving in the early 1960s. The village now reports more than 25,000 parkway trees on a five-year trimming cycle, roughly 5,000 a year, and recommends preventative insecticide against emerald ash borer rather than waiting for symptoms; timing and thresholds for that treatment are set out by University of Illinois Extension. Most tree removal Mount Prospect homeowners end up paying for is an ash that got neither.

What We Handle In Mount Prospect

• Removals on private lots, with the 14.2308 caliper and count thresholds checked before we quote
• Pruning worked to the village’s Arboricultural Standards Manual where a public tree is involved
• Stump grinding, including the ash stumps left behind by borer removals
• Emergency and storm work at any hour, floodplain streets first

Book A Tree Removal Mount Prospect Estimate

Send us the address and a sentence about what the tree is doing. If it turns out to be a village tree we will tell you that before we tell you a price. Estimates are free, and we quote seven days a week.

Call 708-424-5885. See the rest of our Cook County coverage, or the neighbors: Arlington Heights, Des Plaines.