Despite a new, tougher Orland Park ordinance that fines developers for illegal tree removals, officials say developer Robert Gallagher will not have to pay a $50,000 penalty for chopping down 100-year-old oak trees in a preservation area of the Creekside subdivision.
Village Trustee Bernard Murphy said the decision not to fine Gallagher is based on the recent recommendation of Village Atty. Ken Friker.
After reviewing Gallagher’s 1994 annexation agreement and the 1998 village ordinance, which calls for a fine of $200 per diameter inch of every illegally chopped tree, Friker determined the fine would not hold up in court.
Under the annexation contract, Gallagher is exempt from future ordinances unless the new laws pertain to life and safety issues, according to Murphy.
Murphy said he plans to ask trustees to send Gallagher a strongly worded letter about the October tree removal in Creekside. Murphy said he thinks Gallagher should be warned that legal action will be taken if any more trees are removed in the remaining conservation area of the development, which is a few blocks north of 143rd Street and Wolf Road.
“We need to do everything in our power to make sure this does not happen again,” Murphy said.
Gallagher has acknowledged removing trees near the creek running through the subdivision, part of the vast 1,500-acre Spring Creek project. But he denied he knowingly did anything illegal.
He said that the trees he cut were in the way of development and that some were on slopes that needed to be graded.
But Murphy and Village Community Development Director Bob Sullivan said Gallagher knew he should not have removed trees in a conservation area.
“We can’t take him to court,” said Murphy, former chairman of the Community Development Committee. “But we can come up with a good tree-mitigation plan and make him stick to it.”
Gallagher said he was happy that he would not be fined for the removal. He added that he was working with village officials about the type and size of replacement trees.
Murphy said that during the next several years, Gallagher will be required to replant at least 170 trees of a type similar to the estimated 65 swamp oaks and white oaks that were removed.
But Creekside resident Bob Loeb, who sparked the village action by reporting the removals, noted that the replacements would be much smaller and younger than the towering oaks that once dominated his backyard view.
“I’ll be dead by the time those trees grow to be the same size as the ones we lost,” said Loeb. “I still get sick to my stomach when I think about how those trees just got ripped out.”
Orland officials last year had toughened the village’s long-standing tree-protection ordinance, which had called only for the planting of replacement trees.
Sullivan said the board was asked to approve fines because the Community Development Department found the existing punitive measures weren’t stopping developers from removing trees they had agreed to preserve.
Similar tree-preserving ordinances have been passed in other suburbs, including Highland Park and Winnetka, where residents can be fined for removing trees in their backyards without a special permit.
Loeb said the failure to fine Gallagher shows that the new ordinance, despite its strong wording, has no teeth.
But David Sosin, president of the Southwest Suburban Home Builders Association, said it made sense that Gallagher’s annexation agreement would allow for him to be exempt from the fine.
Sosin stressed that any future development proposals made by Gallagher ought to be covered by the rules of the new ordinance.
“I think that every builder should be treated the same,” he said.
