There is an enormous cottonwood tree in my backyard. For about a month, every summer, it constantly sheds blobs of cotton that float around the entire neighborhood and get on and in everything. It looks a lot like snow except that it doesn't melt.
Several of my neighbors have asked me to cut it down because it's a real nuisance. It gets inside their cars and in their houses. It clogs up window unit air conditioners.
I agree with them. I fully understand their annoyance. In fact, recently I was sitting on my back porch and I actually inhaled one of the floating cotton blobs and it went down into my lungs and I was coughing for about 10 minutes.
I looked into cutting the tree down and the lowest quote I got was $4,500 because of its gargantuan size and other issues like difficult accessibility and close proximity to multiple buildings and power lines.
I was told by one tree removal company that he can't remember seeing a tree more difficult to remove than this one. He quoted me $7,000, I assume because he really didn't want to do the job so he quoted an inflated price, expecting me to reject it.
The bottom line is, there's just no way that I can afford $4,500 right now. In fact, I've got a pile of medical bills I'm struggling to pay off and I've been selling nearly all of my non necessary personal possessions that have any value at all in order to get back in the black ink again. Spending that amount of money out of my pocket would literally ruin me, right now.
Nevertheless, last week I talked to two of my neighbors who complained about the tree and I made them an offer. I said that I'd agree to remove the tree and pay $1,500 toward the cost, if they'd contribute the remaining $3,000.
They both rejected my offer and told me that they weren't going to pay anything and it was my legal responsibility to pay for it.
I consulted my lawyer and he told me that since the tree was healthy and there was no reason to believe that it might imminently fall on someone's house or other property, then I can legally leave it up. The fact that it sheds cotton is just part of the nature of the tree and I don't have any legal obligation to mitigate that.
I do have to admit an ulterior motive, here. The house I live in was built by my grandparents in the 1930s, when they immigrated here from Canada. The tree was planted in 1942, specifically to commemorate the birth of my father. I wish to keep the tree, partly for sentimental reasons. but also, because it provides a lot of shade in the summer and it keeps my house significantly cooler than if it wasn’t there. And it looks cool. It dwarfs every other tree in the entire neighborhood.
My question is, can anyone suggest a way out of this dilemma? Frankly, if it wasn't for the cost, I'd agree to take the tree down. I don't want to be a bad neighbor and this cottonwood is genuinely a nuisance. If I was my neighbor, I'd be really annoyed by it, but I just don't see any reasonable path forward where everybody is happy.
Several of my neighbors have asked me to cut it down because it's a real nuisance. It gets inside their cars and in their houses. It clogs up window unit air conditioners.
I agree with them. I fully understand their annoyance. In fact, recently I was sitting on my back porch and I actually inhaled one of the floating cotton blobs and it went down into my lungs and I was coughing for about 10 minutes.
I looked into cutting the tree down and the lowest quote I got was $4,500 because of its gargantuan size and other issues like difficult accessibility and close proximity to multiple buildings and power lines.
I was told by one tree removal company that he can't remember seeing a tree more difficult to remove than this one. He quoted me $7,000, I assume because he really didn't want to do the job so he quoted an inflated price, expecting me to reject it.
The bottom line is, there's just no way that I can afford $4,500 right now. In fact, I've got a pile of medical bills I'm struggling to pay off and I've been selling nearly all of my non necessary personal possessions that have any value at all in order to get back in the black ink again. Spending that amount of money out of my pocket would literally ruin me, right now.
Nevertheless, last week I talked to two of my neighbors who complained about the tree and I made them an offer. I said that I'd agree to remove the tree and pay $1,500 toward the cost, if they'd contribute the remaining $3,000.
They both rejected my offer and told me that they weren't going to pay anything and it was my legal responsibility to pay for it.
I consulted my lawyer and he told me that since the tree was healthy and there was no reason to believe that it might imminently fall on someone's house or other property, then I can legally leave it up. The fact that it sheds cotton is just part of the nature of the tree and I don't have any legal obligation to mitigate that.
I do have to admit an ulterior motive, here. The house I live in was built by my grandparents in the 1930s, when they immigrated here from Canada. The tree was planted in 1942, specifically to commemorate the birth of my father. I wish to keep the tree, partly for sentimental reasons. but also, because it provides a lot of shade in the summer and it keeps my house significantly cooler than if it wasn’t there. And it looks cool. It dwarfs every other tree in the entire neighborhood.
My question is, can anyone suggest a way out of this dilemma? Frankly, if it wasn't for the cost, I'd agree to take the tree down. I don't want to be a bad neighbor and this cottonwood is genuinely a nuisance. If I was my neighbor, I'd be really annoyed by it, but I just don't see any reasonable path forward where everybody is happy.
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