Is a $586,000 Fine a Bit Steep for Chopping Down Trees?
Owing to a commitment to social equality, Nordic countries calculate certain fines by income. That way, low-earning individuals don’t have their lives ruined by a parking ticket and the affluent don’t regard tickets as a minor tax on doing whatever the hell they feel like. That led to a notorious $58,000 citation for speeding in a 50-mph zone in Helsinki.
Here in California, people routinely drive 85 miles per hour as they burst out of the Robin Williams Tunnel on their way to Wine Country, but once they get there, they’d better not cut down a tree. CBS reports that a Sonoma couple, Peter and Toni Thompson, were fined $586,000 for cutting down a dozen trees, including a 180-year-old oak. It happened on 34 acres of land near Bennett Valley that was protected by a conservation easement through the Sonoma Land Trust, and they were well into their renovation (so to speak) when their neighbor ratted them out for removing what turned out to be 3,000 cubic feet of debris without a permit.
One wonders if they’d had any face-to-face contact, because that’s a lot of beeping from heavy earth-moving equipment as it shifts into reverse.
The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat quotes the remarkably livid judge in the case, who said the Thompsons “demonstrated an arrogance and complete disregard for the mandatory terms of the easement.”
Read more: http://www.sfweekly.com/news/is-a-586000-fine-a-bit-steep-for-chopping-down-trees/
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