Tree Service in Franklin Square, NY
Franklin Square filled in by the early 1950s and never got any more room. The brick houses are still here, the lots are still forty by a hundred, and the trees planted alongside them are now seventy to a hundred years old and considerably bigger than anyone planned for.
The permit question: curb strip versus your property
Franklin Square is an unincorporated hamlet in the Town of Hempstead. It has no village government and no village tree code of its own - so the rules are the Town's Chapter 184, and the distinction that matters is where the tree stands.
The curbside strip is the Town's. Removing, destroying, or substantially altering a tree in that strip between the sidewalk and the street takes a permit from the Commissioner of Highways - $25 residential, $150 where it abuts commercial property. The Town does not grant permits to remove healthy, growing trees, and a removed tree has to be replaced from the Chapter 184 species list at a minimum two-inch trunk diameter measured six inches above the ground.
Behind the curb line is generally yours. A tree fully on your own lot is usually not permit-controlled the way the street tree is. That single distinction is the thing most competitor pages either skip or get wrong, and it is the difference between a straightforward job and a call from the Highway Department. Their number is 516-489-5000 if you want to confirm anything directly.
Why removals here are a rigging job
The typical Franklin Square lot is forty by a hundred or sixty by a hundred, with a detached garage, a driveway on one side, and a fence line close enough to shake hands across. There is no drop zone. A seventy-year-old maple against the back of the house comes down in sections on ropes, or with a crane in the street lifting pieces over the roof.
Access is its own problem. A chipper and a stump grinder have to get down a side yard that might be five feet wide - which is why we use narrow-gate equipment and say so before quoting, rather than discovering it on the morning of the job.
A wind town, not a flood town
Worth being precise about, because a lot of Long Island tree pages lump every town into hurricane-flood territory. Franklin Square is inland western Nassau. It is not a coastal flood zone, and the real risk here is wind loading on over-mature, close-planted trees.
Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020 is the reference event: sustained thirty to fifty mile an hour winds with gusts over seventy, more than a thousand trees and 338 wires down across Nassau County, limbs across sidewalks and roads here and an uprooted tree on Margaret Street. Isaias arrived at low tide with barely any rain - it was purely a wind event, and it still took out canopy across western Nassau for days. Nor'easters do the same thing every winter on a smaller scale.
Which makes pre-season pruning the cheapest insurance available here: deadwood out and weight off the long limbs before the wind tests them. Details on trimming and pruning.
What we do in Franklin Square
- Tree removal - sectional rigging or crane on tight lots.
- Emergency and storm work - trees on houses and wires first. Wires down: PSEG at 1-800-490-0075.
- Trimming and pruning - the wind-season priority in this hamlet.
- Stump grinding - narrow-gate machines; pricing guide.
Franklin Square, and the streets running toward Elmont, West Hempstead, and Valley Stream. Two to three miles from us. Written, itemized estimates: (516) 555-0100.
Franklin Square questions
Do I need a permit to take down a tree in my own back yard?
In Franklin Square, generally no. The hamlet is unincorporated, so Town of Hempstead Chapter 184 applies - and that chapter governs trees in the Town curbside area, the strip between sidewalk and street. A tree fully behind the curb line on your own lot is usually yours to remove. The curb tree is a different story.
What does the curbside permit involve?
A permit from the Town's Commissioner of Highways - $25 for residential, $150 where the tree abuts commercial property. The Town will not issue one to remove a healthy, growing tree, and any tree that does come out has to be replaced from the approved species list at a minimum two-inch trunk diameter. Highway Department is 516-489-5000.
Why does everyone quoting me seem to be from Suffolk?
Because they are. Search results for Franklin Square tree work are dominated by companies twenty-five to thirty-five miles east running templated town pages. We are two to three miles away in Valley Stream, which is why we can usually put eyes on a tree the same week rather than batching your job into a trip out west.