Tree lined streets in Urban NJ: Who regulates them? Town or property owners? (houses)

[Seduflow]

Basically does a property owner have to get permission from the town to cut down a tree? Just wondering because there are times I have seen such beautiful tree lined streets in weehawken and sometimes when I visit different sections of it, its shows some streets had some cut down...which just makes it look ugly.

[Peanuttree]

the right-of-way that makes the street often goes further than the actual paving towards the houses/lots, so the trees may be on public property, and hence part of the public real property (land property). There may also be a street tree and/or utility line easement on people's properties adjacent to the right-of-way, dictating that the trees be left there, again making the street trees largely public property. Furthermore, many towns have passed laws dictating what can be done with trees within a certain distance of the roads, older than a certain age, etc., effctively making the trees public property.
So in general, a homeowner may be restricted from cutting down a street tree. Futrthermore, there might be issues with a homeowner pruning a tree or cutting pieces of it if branches came down and are hanging, even if it's necessary for safety/access, like we've had after our recent snowstorms past few years.

And then the other side of the coin is that towns have also passed laws requiring that each homeowner maintain the sidewalk in front of their haouse in a usable condition. Usually this means snowshoveling, but it might include clearing fallen branches, so you could be in trouble for NOT getting rid of the tree debris.

In short, the law can mess with you both ways.
But mainly it's don't-chop-it-down thing, keeping the trees are the town's main priority.

[jerseyj]

Originally Posted by Seduflow

Basically does a property owner have to get permission from the town to cut down a tree? Just wondering because there are times I have seen such beautiful tree lined streets in weehawken and sometimes when I visit different sections of it, its shows some streets had some cut down...which just makes it look ugly.

We have township trees planted on that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb (don't know what that strip is called, the strip of grass from hell? I call it the "besidewalk").

We maintain the trees (prune etc) but cannot cut them down. We used to have 3 of them but the town cut one of them down for no apparent reason, no warning, no explanation.

The one issue we have had is when the tree roots buckled the sidewalk. The town expected us to fix the sidewalk. We do shovel the sidewalk but drew the line here. Their trees, their sidewalk, their problem. After many years, they finally, fixed the sidewalk.

I'll bet this varies from town to town.