It

may soon get harder to dispose of a tree in the

city of Fayetteville.

The

city Planning Commission Tuesday is scheduled to

vote on a proposed new, tighter tree protection

ordinance designed to encourage developers to

save existing trees rather than stripping

construction sites and replacing the trees with

new, smaller ones.

Fayette

County's Planning Commission in recent months has

been going through a similar process.

"Gone

are the days of exotic ornamentals," said

city planner Maurice Ungaro during a Planning

Commission work session last week.

Large,

mature native trees help make the city more

attractive and provide more environmental

benefits, he said.

The

proposed new ordinance would give existing trees

twice as much weight as new ones in determining

whether a developer has met its requirement that

each development have at least 100 "tree

density units" per acre, and it would

provide rules for digging and grading around the

preserved trees to prevent their being damaged in

construction.

It

also melds the city's tree preservation and

landscaping requirements into a single ordinance,

and provides for "shrubbery density

units," requiring 200 shrubs per acre. The

old ordinance measures shrubbery according to the

number of gallons of each bush's container. The

new one adds a height requirement.

There

are also requirements that developers identify

"stands" of trees that can be preserved

and include plans to do so. A stand is defined as

a group of trees that have grown up together and

therefore depend on each other.

"If

you thin it out and just save all the oaks or all

the sycamore trees and remove all the others,

then you have tall, spindly trees that, left on

their own, look out of place," said Ungaro.

Rules

for phased harvesting of timber on large tracts

also are included in the proposed new law.

The

Planning Commission is expected to take action at

its business meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. at City

Hall.