It has been more than a year since Donna Polos and other Burnaby residents spoke to city council about their concerns with the city's current tree bylaw.
The city responded, planning a tree review and public consultations for this past spring and summer, to assess the bylaws of other municipalities and determine what might work for Burnaby.
But the spring and summer passed, and the tree review has not yet been presented to council.
"I contacted the city in the spring to find out what was going on," Polos told the NOW in an email. "City hall told me it was still in the works."
Polos last contacted city staff in June and was told the review was still going ahead, she said. She has heard nothing since then.
The review is moving ahead, according to Mayor Derek Corrigan, who said city staff is arranging a workshop on the issue for council.
"The main purpose is to try to get an idea of what other municipalities have done," he said in a phone interview Wednesday.
"It's a controversial issue, almost inevitably," he added. "There are people who are very supportive of a tree bylaw, and feel we should regulate trees on other people's properties, and then there are people who feel it's a real interference with their property rights to tell them whether or not they can cut down a tree on their own property."
The city is attempting to strike a happy medium, Corrigan said.
"It's about striking a balance between people's property rights and community interest in protecting heritage trees," he added.
The timeline for the review has changed because the city has been inundated with development applications this year, he said.
"It's the planning staff's workload," Corrigan said. "It's been just massive."
The developments planned for Brentwood and Metrotown, particularly Brentwood Town Centre, have meant the city has to hire part-time staff and bring in consultants to deal with the extra work, he added.
The planning department has also been in transition, with Lou Pelletier taking over as director of planning and building after Basil Luksun retired in May, according to Corrigan.
Issues such as the tree review have been put on the backburner while planning deals with the immediate work of looking over plans and processing applications, he said.
"It's really just a question of setting priority for what the most important things are," he added. "Getting development done when we've got the opportunity is the first priority."
But the tide of rezoning applications and building permits will change, Corrigan said, and the city is planning to deal with other issues when that happens.
"We try to accommodate them (developers) because we know, as night follows day, there will be a slackening of development," he said.
Pelletier confirmed that planning staff is still working on the tree bylaw review.
Burnaby's tree bylaw from 1996 restricts property owners from cutting down large trees (larger than 20.3 centimetres in diameter) three months prior to applying for a demolition permit for a building on a property, and one year afterward.
Large trees that residents cut down are supposed to be replaced with a new tree, according to the bylaw, though the replacement of trees isn't always a 1: 1 ratio.
The bylaw needs to be strengthened with stiff financial penalties, Thomas Hasek, another Burnaby resident who expressed concern about the bylaw last year, said in a phone interview last Wednesday.
"I would like to see a bylaw with teeth," he said. "Whereby if a developer purposely or inadvertently damages a designated tree that is supposedly protected, he gets nailed with a $10-, $15-or $20,000 fine, not just a couple of hundred bucks."
Developers can't be expected to police them-selves, he added.
"It's in the developer's interest to get the maximum return out of his investment," Hasek said.
"Obviously if they're not regulated - and you see this time and time again - it's basically a scorched earth policy. They make sure there's not one living thing left on one square inch of a lot before they start building."
