Ook wrote:

I hear you, and I feel their pain. I live in Oregon, and as bleading
heart as this state is, at least they are not overly anal about
things like that in most cities around here. It's an older
neighborhood, and there is no association. Associations around here
usually get run out of town, *nobody* wants them. As for neighbors -
they put 8' fences on their property line if they think they can get
away with it. The city set up various building ordinances in just
recent years, and they haven't gotten to rabid about them. We
recently cut down a dead tree on city property. The inspector was
here to look at sidewalk work I was doing, looks at the tree and goes
"btw, you needed a permit to do that (pointing at what was left of
the tree) because it's on city property, but because it's done
already I don't see anything".

In some places, the inspector would have made you put the tree back.

I read about a situation not too long ago where a citizen called to report a
dead tree on a highway right-of-way and cautioned that it could fall and
cause a problem. He gave them explicit directions and location. The tree
folk came out within a week and cut down a 75 year-old (healthy) pecan tree
on his property, roughly fifty feet from the diseased, dead tree.

When he got home and saw the damage, he went ballistic. He called the
highway department and raised more hell than the third monkey on Noah's
gangplank.

The next week, the tree people came and cut down two pine trees next to his
house. The dead tree was still dead.

The now tree-reduced citizen went bridal! He hired a lawyer. Sued the
highway department, the tree service contractor, the governor, and everybody
they ever knew. He hired an armed guard to patrol his several acres with
orders to shoot any tree-molesters on sight. He called the TV people, Time
magazine, he put up signs.

The state eventually compensated him for his trees. No word on the original
problem.

As to civic associations, I know a lady that's a legal administrator at a
law firm that specializes in responding to complaints by civic associations.
In other words, the association sics their lawyer on you and you retain this
law firm to fight back.