Fremont's NEW (Hidden) Property Tax

By Kathryn Rhyu "Kathy" McDonald

City Council authorize the transferring of responsibility for City planted trees and resulting sidewalk damage to property owners. This amounts to an increase in property tax that was never authorized by 2/3 majority vote, and causes an unfairly high burden, especially to those in older neighborhoods, and seniors on fixed incomes. This decision is unfair, opportunistic and should be repealed.

This spring, Fremont City Council made a unanimous decision to donate the trees Fremont planted on our sidewalk easements to the owners of those lots. All property owners in Fremont are now responsible for the maintenance of the trees and the sidewalks in front of their properties, and the liability for their condition. The City finds that "due to budget cuts", it can no longer maintain them. They neglected to consider the ability of the property owners to take on the added burden.

I have been receiving significant response to my commercial highlighting this issue. The typical response has come from senior citizens on fixed incomes. They typically live in older neighborhoods with older, larger trees. These require permits to take down, and have caused the most damage over a longer period of time. Owners have watched the trees tear up their sidewalks for years without remediation from the City, and are appalled at the cost they are now forced to bear.

One Mission San Jose area senior wrote that she was finally allowed to pay $450 to remove a tree that was damaging the sidewalk, but still faced a $1300 repair bill for the sidewalk. Others have reported quotes of $500/square of cement replacement. The City did not ask homeowners if they could plant the trees on private lots. For years, the City did not make the necessary remediation to mitigate the problems their trees created. In fact, most of the damaged sidewalks have been damaged for years. The City even knew which types of trees caused the most trouble. The difficult truth is, we are still not allowed to take down any of these problem trees without a City permit. We can only continue to maintain the trees and repair the damage. However, if a tree drops a limb on a parked car, we are liable. If a tree raises a sidewalk, and someone trips, we are liable. But, knowing that they have given us this horrible burden, the City Council is showing no signs of taking it back.

In the State of California, it still requires a "super majority" to increase our taxes, that's a 2/3rds majority vote. This City action effectively increased our property taxes by the cost of trimming public trees, possibly the cost of taking down said trees (should the City permit such action), repairing sidewalk damage, and the added insurance cost for liability. Furthermore, for owners trying to sell their properties, this may now become a cost to bear at closing. For many residents, all this adds up to hundreds of dollars a year for maintenance, and potentially thousands of dollars to permanently remove trees, ground out roots, repair pipes, replace sidewalks, etc. Yet, property owners in Fremont were not even given a chance to weigh into this decision before the costs were levied onto us. If these costs were documented on a line item in our property tax bills, there would be outright rebellion in the streets. However, because the relationship between this added burden and the targeting of property owners was not made, it just became another ordinance. This action should be recognized for the illegal raising of property taxes that it is, and repealed immediately.