Owen Sound’s community services committee wants the city to have more control over your trees, but council chopped the idea down.
A committee recommendation to have staff come up with a plan for the management of “mature and native trees” on private property was defeated in a 6-3 recorded vote during Monday’s city council meeting.
“It’s basically asking the city to create a plan, policy or bylaw as part of the 2026 work plan,” says Coun. Marion Koepke, who is the chair of the city’s community services committee.
But several councillors had concerns about the city potentially becoming more involved in the regulation of tree management on private lands.
“I have significant reservations about the scope of government growing to oversee what or how private property owners respond to trees on their personal property,” says Owen Sound Deputy Mayor Scott Greig. “I think if I went up and down the streets in the city … there wouldn’t be substantial support to see government increase its level of oversight over personal property rights. That’s something cherished by a lot of individuals.”
“A lot of people have best intentions and do a really good job on their own personal properties,” Greig continues.
In addition to Greig, Mayor Ian Boddy and councillors Travis Dodd, Suneet Kukreja, Melanie Middlebro’ and Brock Hamley voted against the motion.
“Looking at this motion, I think this is a solution in search of a problem,” Hamley says. “We have a beautiful tree canopy and do a great job of maintaining it. I don’t think we’re in crisis of losing trees in Owen Sound, and then it starts to veer into private property. I can’t support the motion.”
Councillors Jon Farmer, Carol Merton and Koepke supported it. Farmer and Koepke sit on the community services committee and supported bringing the recommendation to council in narrow 5-3 vote at a Nov. 20 meeting.
“The issue of whether the city should regulate private property, we already do that,” Farmer says. “And we haven’t challenged that in other motions. To my thinking, if we control things that are only aesthetic problems, we should also consider controlling property standards in a way that preserves a collective good.”
While it’s not clear how staff would have approached regulating “mature and native” trees on private property, Owen Sound’s Director of Community Services Pam Coulter responded to a question and tried to provide a high-level overview of what it could have looked like.
“I would imagine a policy or bylaw would include some criteria … maybe that says only trees above a certain diameter, or height, would be impacted under the policy,” Coulter explains. “Maybe there’s criteria around health, or impacts on property that would be considered. So I imagine it would have criteria, and there may be … an inspection and permit, because otherwise having a policy with no weight to regulate it wouldn’t make sense. And then enforcement.”
“So it would certainly take staff time.”
Coulter adds the city receives more than 400 requests concerning trees annually through its Report A Concern system, and already struggles to meet those service requests.
“There’s a huge demand already that we have trouble keeping up with in terms of tree requests,” Coulter explains. “A new policy would take staff resources. Would it need more staff? Or just take away from other work?”
Boddy, who voted against the motion, says the intent or “why” of the motion is to have more trees and promote trees, which makes sense. But he says the “how” to achieve that needs refinement.
“Do we have anything in the plans that promote tree planting in town … is there a gap in what our policies are? Are we missing something,” Boddy wonders. “Is there a way we can get to ‘why’ with a different ‘how’ perhaps than what’s in this report?”