Bend's Tree Code: Too Much of a Compromise?

Ask the average person about Bend's biggest challenges and near the top of the list will almost always be housing. The combo of a sprawl-limiting Urban Growth Boundary, high labor costs and a desirable place to live mean that housing prices are at a premium in Bend. That combo also means that when developers find a plot of land to build on inside the city limits, they're often looking to maximize every available inch. Those are the human and economic pressures in this scenario. But, as always, there's another type of pressure: the environmental one.

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When developers raze a large lot to build housing, leaving no vegetation – let alone any trees at all – we lose crucial tools that store carbon, create shade, provide wildlife habitat and so much more. It's because of those losses that the City of Bend recently created a committee tasked with updating the City's tree regulation codes.

That committee voted this past week on a set of new recommendations that would aim to see fewer large trees razed during the development of multi-family housing and commercial buildings. Those who consider the environment on equal footing to housing and humanitarian causes have long been concerned about the number of trees Bend was losing to development and sought a solution. And while the work the committee has done in the name of preserving trees should be commended, what emerged in the recommendations was a compromise that, to the environmentalists among us, may have been a bit too much.

The committee's recommendations, now in the hands of the Bend Planning Commission, are somewhat limited. The recommendations would apply to any development requiring a site plan review – residential developments with more than five units, buildings of over 5,000 square feet and additions to existing buildings among them — and not necessarily to the construction of single-family, duplexes or tri and fourplexes. That already throws developers a mighty big bone.

Developers will have to inventory all trees that are 6 inches or wider in diameter and will have to either keep 20% of the trees that are 20 inches or wider in diameter, or keep 25% of the diameter at breast height of all inventoried trees or just simply replant trees or pay a fee if they can't preserve the trees.

That may sound like progress – but when looking at recent developments, it appears to reflect what is already being done. The committee took a look at eight recent developments that would have met the criteria under the proposed code changes, and found that among them, most were already preserving the number of trees that would be required under the updated code. The committee discussed a preservation threshold of 25% or 30% of trees, but ended up going with the lowest amount discussed, 20%.

It's disappointing to see that, after months of discussion, what emerged from the recommendations is something of a status quo. Developers can still cut down big trees en masse – those massive sinks of carbon – and in their place potentially put small non-native trees that will take 20 years or more to equal the size of the massive ones they cut down. On average, Ponderosa pines grow about .47 inches in diameter each year – meaning it would take the average Ponderosa about 40 years to grow to a size that makes a significant impact on climate change.

In Bend, money doesn't grow on trees, but you can use it to cut them down.