Tree Removal and Trimming in Olympia Fields, IL
Ten inches is not a big tree. It is the maple you planted when the children were small. In Olympia Fields that is the line. Section 6-102 defines a protected tree as “any live tree which has a diameter at breast height (DBH) of more than ten inches (10") and which is not otherwise exempted.” Cross it and the calculus changes. The tree removal Olympia Fields owners treat as their own business becomes a permitted activity. Moreover, get it wrong and §6-118 sets the fine. It runs “not less than five hundred dollars ($500.00) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000.00).”
Ten Inches, And What It Costs To Get It Wrong
Article IV of Chapter 6, §§6-101 to 6-118, is a genuine private-property preservation regime, unusual this far south. Notably, damage counts, not only felling. Section 6-105 reaches any activity that “anticipates or involves the actual or reasonably likely damage or removal of any protected tree or public tree.” Section 6-111 governs the removal permit. It lets the village take “a fee in lieu of making such replacement.” That fee “shall equal the tree replacement value based on the average cost per tree inch.” However, the per-inch rate is not published, so ask the village for it. Behind all of it is the village arborist, established by §6-103 “within the department of public works.”
Two provisions are worth knowing before you need them. First, §6-115 covers genuine emergencies. It provides that “a tree removal permit will be issued by the village without formal application.” So nobody has to choose between a dangerous tree and a permit backlog. Additionally, the plan-review fee schedules at §§9-30 and 9-31 both carry the line “Village arborist: Four hundred dollars ($400.00).” That applies on single-family permits and on multifamily and commercial alike. Therefore budget for it before you draw a patio near a mature tree.
On licensing, accurately. Section 6-114 puts a duty on “all licensees under this article.” They must “clean up the area where he/she is working or has completed work and remove all branches, debris, and largest portions of the tree.” Therefore the code contemplates licensed tree workers. Yet no tree-contractor license class, bond figure or insurance minimum appears anywhere in the published code. We do not read that silence as an exemption. We carry liability coverage and workers’ compensation, and we clear the site to §6-114 whether anyone checks or not.
Sixteen Subdivisions Built Around A 1915 Golf Course
Small and deliberate: 2.94 square miles, 4,718 people, incorporated in August 1927 with Charles Beach as first president. Beach and James Gardner had already laid out a 72-hole course, the club dating to 1915. The village grew outward from it. Specifically, farmland and wealthy Chicagoans’ summer retreats became 16 subdivisions and homeowners associations, by the county annex’s count.
Water is the constraint. The Little Calumet River and Butterfield Creek both run through. Consequently the annex names these places as going under:
- Governors Highway
- Vollmer Road
- Crawford Avenue
- 83rd Street at the Tri-State Tollway
- The Graymoor, Hawthorne Hills and Vienna Woods subdivisions
Against that, the village holds no FEMA repetitive-loss properties at all. In short, that is nuisance flooding on the road network, not water in living rooms. For trees the effect is the same either way: saturated root zones and poor anchorage.
The village has been a Tree City USA since 2007. Nonetheless its own annex proposes a study to inventory trees and develop a “forestry program of tree trimming and maintenance.” That says plainly that there is no village-wide trim cycle yet. Most of this canopy is in whatever condition its owners have paid for. Consequently the tree removal Olympia Fields sees is nearly all reactive. It arrives after a failure instead of ahead of one.
Tree Removal Olympia Fields: Our Work
- Removals of protected trees, quoted with the §6-111 permit and any replacement costed in
- Pruning on large private stock that no village trim cycle reaches
- Stump grinding, with debris cleared to the §6-114 standard
- Emergency and storm work under the §6-115 exception
Storm damage. If there is a wire in or under the tree, treat the whole area as live. Call 911, then your electric utility. Wait for them before anyone touches anything. Our line is staffed around the clock, and we sequence jobs by the danger they pose.
Book A Tree Removal Olympia Fields Estimate
Give us the address. Then, if you can get a tape around the trunk at chest height, send the diameter. That one measurement tells us immediately whether this is a protected tree and a permit or a straightforward job. If you would rather read up first, see the ISA’s homeowner guidance. It explains how to take DBH and why the number carries so much weight.
Call 708-424-5885. More on where we work in Cook County, and nearby: Matteson, Flossmoor.
19253 South Blackhawk Parkway #80
Mokena, Illinois 60448
708-424-5885
Inquiries@protreeservice.com
Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week