It doesn’t appear that the city of Issaquah has learned anything from the multi-year tug-a-war between King County and the rural land-owners debate. In a nutshell, you can’t impose city-type regulations against rural land lots. The case in point is the proposed new city ordinance that limits homeowners to cutting down three trees per year on their lot. If the target is a city-sized lot, then this regulation might make sense… but when it’s a 1-plus acre lot with approximately 50 trees and a home, then the regulation is just more unnecessary government bureaucratic regulation. And ­— worst of all, it costs the homeowner unnecessary fees for absolutely no value in return.

A single change to the proposed ordinance would help to level-set this disparity. It needs to be modified to say that a permit is required if a homeowner wants to cut down a) three or more trees, or b) greater than 10 percent of the qualifying-sized trees on their lot in a single calendar year. Now you’ve recognized the larger rural lots and given some leeway to them. We need to respect their need to fall more than three trees without bureaucratic interference. Let’s keep Issaquah a homeowner-friendly area regardless of the size of the lot. Don’t stifle homeowner rights with unnecessary excessive regulations.

-Bill Barker

Issaquah