Hinsdale Making Changes to Ordinances on Trees and Signs

While water is essential for trees to survive, watered-down ordinance revisions approved by the Hinsdale Village Board Tuesday probably won’t help many trees in the village avoid the axe during construction projects.

Some trustees and members of the Hinsdale Beautification Task Force had wanted to enact much tougher ordinance revisions, including imposing fines for tree removal in certain situations. But the board was advised in December by Village Attorney Ken Florey that Hinsdale’s status as a non-home rule municipality probably would preclude the village from imposing penalties on violators. At that time, the board opted to refer the matter back to the Environment and Public Services Committee, chaired by Trustee Laura LaPlaca.

Tuesday, LaPlaca told the board the committee was recommending ordinance revisions that “in effect, only changes two paragraphs,” including adding a definition of landmark trees.

“There’s a provision here for 14-day notification of removal of a landmark tree,” LaPlaca said. “There is no penalty for failure to notify and it is a voluntary provision. … This will not impact removal of diseased trees or other hazardous trees.”

Although adherence is strictly voluntary, LaPlaca said the ordinance change has “the potential for doing some good and does not have the potential for doing anything wrong.”

The board unanimously approved the ordinance revisions.

Signing Off on Signs

The Village Board also unanimously approved revisions to its sign ordinance designed primarily to help speed up the process of getting signage approval for new businesses in the village.

“This is an effort that we’ve had underway for some time,” Village President Tom Cauley noted.

Cauley said “one of the things we’ve heard repeatedly from store owners,” is that it takes too long to get approval for signage which does nothing other than change the name of the business. In some cases, the process can take up to two months, including receiving approval from the Plan Commission.

Now, the village manager and the chairman of the plan commission will have the authority to determine if a sign is compliant with the village’s zoning code without action by the full Plan Commission. The chairman of the Plan Commission could still refer an application to the full commission if there was some question regarding the sign’s compliance.

The ordinance changes were first recommended in October, when the Economic Development Commission gave them its unanimous support. In January, the Zoning and Public Safety Committee chose to forward the matter to the full Village Board without recommendation.