(Again) Nobody was Hurt or Killed This Time by (Another) Falling Tree

On a windy day in late July 2023, this 168-foot white pine tree uprooted and fell along the fence line. If it had fallen toward the townhomes instead, someone might have been crushed.

In the summer of 2022, to its credit, the Quail Valley HOA began the expensive work of taking down some of the many huge white pines that are close enough to threaten residents' homes and yards if they fall. The budget this year is $26,000 for "tree maintenance." Let's spend it all, aiming the majority of the funds at monstrous white pine trees near houses. Let's take them down.

The residents hope and pray that the Quail Valley HOA board of directors, its property management company TMGA, and groundskeeper PGC Landscape will listen to the residents and prioritize the hazardous trees that families have asked to be removed. The residents describe trees that threaten their houses. It is August 3, 2023, and this year's HOA evaluation of trees, with the list of trees to be taken down, has not yet been published. Please, can we speed up the take-downs? Might we see the HOA give top priority to residents' long-standing requests? The June 2023 HOA board minutes state that management and grounds professionals will "survey the community and compile a report for the Board’s review ..." (July minutes are not yet posted,8/5).

It is a great omission that Maryland's "Reserve Study" Act of 2022 (which requires HOAs to plan for the maintenance of buildings and to set money aside for that) does not mention maintenance of the commonly owned landscape, which includes HOA-owned trees. That is a huge expense for many communities, and our HOA should have been planning and setting money aside for decades. Even better, competent land management would have recommended removing white pines gradually, preemptively, over many years, before they became gargantuan. Now we are left with the dangerous legacy. "Most important is a tree replacement strategy—a 20- to 30-year cycle of adding, removing, and replacing trees," stated University of Maryland plant pathologist David L. Clement, (The Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2021). No HOA in Maryland (to my knowledge) has such a plan or the expertise to create one. That's not responsible governance.

I have written on this danger in 8 or 9 blogs in this series. I hope the next posting does not have to list the name of a Quail Valley resident who has been injured or crushed as a tree falls on their house. Our HOA has funds in the budget to do this work. The HOA collects $600,000 annually in assessments from the homeowners. The trees themselves are showing us what needs to be done. Let's not delay any longer.

Steven Sellers Lapham is a 23-year resident of Quail Valley and author of the "Living on Cuckoo Court" blogs on PATCH.com