by Nicole Bradford
Pearland’s tree ordinance may be tweaked slightly ahead of possible bigger changes as the city updates its development codes.
Conversation at City Hall about Pearland’s longstanding tree ordinance began last year after a council member expressed concerns that the ordinance is burdensome for business owners and developers.
A recent conversation has focused on incentivizing developers to plant and preserve trees rather than paying into a fund.
“Let’s tweak some of this stuff to get a move on,” Councilman Rushi Patel said during a discussion on Monday. “There’s no reason to wait for three years.”
The City of Pearland is preparing to contract for an update of its Unified Development Code, a document that consolidates all development-related regulations into a single resource rather than separate ordinances.
“We do have the upcoming UDC rewrite and last time we discussed this we looked at this could potentially be part of that,” City Manager Trent Epperson told the council Monday. “We can move forward with whatever council gives us direction to do, but it does take resources to go through a process like this.”
It would likely be at least two years, however, before the UDC update is completed.
No action was taken during Monday’s workshop, but tweaks could include increasing allowable credits to incentivize tree planting and allowing required landscaping to count toward tree mitigation.
“Because we have such a small amount of developable land left here, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with setting guidelines and being choosy about the standards we put on people who want to develop,” said Council member Layni Cade, who leaned toward leaving the tree ordinance in place until the UDC rewrite is complete, along with appointing a committee to research the issue.
Resident Linda Coon reminded the council that “we have no other technology that produces oxygen for us” and that trees are also beneficial in flood-prone areas.
Residential homeowners were exempted from the tree ordinance, adopted in 1997.
