Shoreline's tree removal fees tower over neighboring cities despite Council axing

Trees stand over a property in North City recently purchased by a local middle housing developer 
Photo by Oliver Moffat

By Oliver Moffat

Timber! Shoreline’s council slashed tree felling permits this week, but the fees still stand above other cities.

At the Monday, March 3, meeting, the council chopped Shoreline’s fees down to $3,325 for big trees. That’s a big cut from the $15,000 big tree fee the council adopted in January, but the fees still soar over nearby cities.

City staff recommended setting the removal fee on the tree’s environmental value to the community over twenty years. But in a five-to-two vote, the council adopted higher fees proposed by the Tree Preservation Code Team, a group of Shoreline residents. 

Based on data from the Forest Service’s i-Tree tool, the city said a tree with a trunk diameter at breast height (DBH) of 24 inches or greater provides between $900 to $1,500 worth of environmental benefits to the community in carbon sequestration, storm water mitigation, air pollution removal, and energy usage savings.

Councilmember John Ramsdell supported the staff’s recommended lower fees and said, 

“I have had many years of experience working with low-income seniors, and I know there are a lot of seniors who would find even [that option] to be burdensome… if they need to remove a tree because it was endangering the structure of their foundation or if they needed to … build a ramp to be able to ingress and egress their home.”

The new fee adopted this week is based on the city’s estimated cost of purchasing, planting, and maintaining a replacement tree for three years. A permit to remove a 24-inch DBH tree will cost $3,325 plus $100.00 for every additional inch of trunk girth. Proceeds from the fees will be used to plant replacement trees. 

Deputy Mayor Laura Mork supported the higher removal fees and said, 

“The really big trees are the ones that we're most particularly trying to save, and so I think the cost should go up much more quickly when they are starting at that size. And below that size, I can appreciate more modest numbers.”

The city’s debate over tree rules is not over. In the 2025-2026 budget, the council allocated $200,000 to perform a comprehensive update to its tree code. 

Council member Keith Scully supported the higher fees and said, 

“The housing stuff is important, and we have to keep prioritizing it, but I've been concerned from the start that we not trash the city while chasing affordable housing.

"And my concern given the rapid pace of redevelopment in our single-family zones already, is as we start emphasizing these alternate housing types (which we should) that we make sure that we're preserving our trees.

"We're going to look at the tree code, and quite frankly… it's a mess, and we need to clean it up and make it understandable. But for the short term, I don't want to see a run on chainsaws at Home Depot so folks can go in and get them all cleared out before we do that.”

Last year, King County called Shoreline’s tree code “comprehensive” and listed the city along with Kirkland and Lake Forest Park as having some of the most restrictive private property tree codes in the county. 

Fees and retention rules vary widely:

• Bothell: Doesn't specify tree removal fees on their website for small residential lots but has retention rules for trees in critical areas.

• Brier: Requires replacement and charges $500 plus staff time to remove up to 100 trees; removing more than 101 trees costs $1000.

• Edmonds: Requires tree replacement or a $1000 fee, with appraisal-based fees for trees over 24 inches.

• Kenmore: Charges $52.50 to remove a minor tree plus $1,758.75 for exceptional trees. 

• Kirkland: Charges $600 for a removal permit and requires 2:1 or 3:1 replacement ratios for big trees.

• Lake Forest Park: Charges $120.00 for a permit to remove a tree and adds an additional fee of $95 per hour for a review by an Urban Forest Planner.

• Lynnwood: Removal of big trees costs $193.00. 

• Mountlake Terrace: Requires developers to replace trees or pay $781 per tree. These fees can be waived if 20% of the housing units are affordable. 

• Woodinville: Tree removal permits are included in the construction permit fee or cost $42 without construction.

• Woodway: Requires tree replacements and charges removal fees but does not say how much on their fee schedule.

In 2022, Shoreline strengthened the city’s tree preservation rules. Those changes increased the number of trees that need a special permit to be removed, lowered the “significant” tree threshold to six inches in diameter, and increased the percentage of big trees that must be retained on a development site. 

Those rules were also proposed by the Tree Preservation Code Team.

Since then, the city has significantly strengthened tree preservation rules.

The city legalized cottage housing in 2023, but the rules were so restrictive that no developers ever applied for a permit. Cottage housing developers had to retain 35% of trees on a property, while single-family home developers only needed to retain 25%. 

And the city charged cottage housing developers up to $15,000 to remove a big tree, a fee single-family developers didn’t have to pay. 

The state’s Middle Housing bill made such shenanigans illegal: cities can’t favor single-family developers while penalizing middle housing developers. The Tree Preservation Code Team proposed those cottage housing tree rules too.

The planning commission and city staff recommended simply striking the cottage housing rules, but instead, the city council expanded the cottage housing rules citywide when they adopted new development codes earlier this year. 

At the same time, the council shrunk the percentage of a lot a developer can cover with hardscape, such as pavement and buildings. 

Building rules that would surely stump a housing developer.