Mature trees matter in Grand Junction. They provide shade, reduce heat, improve neighborhoods and add character to a community built in a high desert. But that was never the question.

The Grand Junction City Council recently considered whether to repeal the city’s Significant Trees provision. Since then, much of the discussion has focused on whether council supports protecting mature trees. That misses the point. The real question was whether the regulation adopted to protect trees was actually protecting them.

After more than three years, the evidence showed it wasn’t. Worse, the regulation may have created an incentive to remove some trees before the city could protect them.

The provision was adopted in 2022, just a few months before I was first elected. It required certain development and redevelopment projects to identify and preserve qualifying mature trees, with replacement or other mitigation when trees could not be preserved.

The intent was admirable. The results were not.

One example used in the Housing Affordability Code Task Force presentation was the Railyard development, which predated the current ordinance. A mature tree stood where part of the multifamily project was planned. Preserving it would have meant reducing or redesigning the housing on that site. Other trees were preserved, but that one was not. A tree can be worth preserving while still conflicting with how a property can reasonably be used.

During the council hearing, I asked staff what the provision had actually accomplished. The staff report initially identified one tree as having been preserved, but questioning revealed the project was exempt from the Significant Trees requirement. The city manager ultimately acknowledged the code had not resulted in the preservation of trees.

A regulation should be judged by what it accomplishes, not by how admirable its stated purpose sounds.

There was another problem built into the code itself: Significant Trees applied during the development process. A property owner could remove trees before submitting an application, and staff acknowledged the city had no recourse under this provision once the trees were gone. The staff report recognized the same problem.

A tree-preservation ordinance should not create an incentive to remove trees. We can’t know how often that happened, but good public policy still has to account for the incentives government creates.

Regulatory burden isn’t measured only in dollars. It also includes time, uncertainty, redesign, delay and whether a project remains feasible at all.

Examining burdens like these is exactly why City Council created the Housing Affordability Code Task Force: to reduce regulatory burdens; streamline processes; and eliminate barriers to development.

Significant Trees was a development regulation. Reviewing it wasn’t mission creep; it was the mission. The task force was never limited to regulations where an exact dollar amount could be attached to the price of a home. Regulatory burdens are cumulative, which is why we asked it to examine the code piece by piece.

Property rights matter here as well. A privately owned tree doesn’t become public property simply because the public benefits from it. If preserving a mature tree provides a broader community benefit, government should look for ways to encourage and help the owner preserve it rather than creating a system where removing it may be the easier choice.

Grand Junction’s Comprehensive Plan supports preserving our tree canopy, and so do I. But the plan establishes goals; it doesn’t require the city to keep a particular regulation when experience shows the regulation isn’t accomplishing them. The Grand Junction Planning Commission found the task force’s recommendation consistent with the Comprehensive Plan and recommended its approval.

Repealing Significant Trees also did not eliminate Grand Junction’s existing tree and landscaping requirements. New development remains subject to landscaping requirements that include trees along street frontages, in parking areas and in buffers. The code also gives credit for preserving existing trees.

Rather than abandon tree preservation, we now have an opportunity to approach it differently. Stronger preservation credits, flexibility in site design, technical assistance and cost-sharing are worth considering, along with a truly voluntary Heritage Tree program that gives property owners additional reasons to preserve exceptional trees.

We already use a similar approach with ash trees. The city helps qualifying private-property owners pay for treatments, because healthy ash trees contribute to our urban canopy. The trees remain private property, but the city shares some of the cost, because the community shares in the benefit.

Generations of Grand Junction residents, farmers, businesses and property owners planted, watered and cared for much of the canopy we enjoy today. We should continue that tradition with policies that give people reasons to preserve mature trees rather than reasons to remove them.

Development regulations shouldn’t be symbolic gestures. They should accomplish something. Trees are significant. That’s precisely why we should have policies that actually save them.

Cody Kennedy is the District A representative on the Grand Junction City Council.