Homeowners quarrel with Ridgemark over tree removal

When Kate Mayhorn looks out her front door, she sees piles of dead trees across the street and dirt where once there was the beginning of a green golf course fairway. From her living room window, she sees more dead grass and rows of trees marked for demolition with red X's.

They have marked a red X on every single tree on this fairway, she said. And they say they're dead but they're growing leaves and they look pretty fine to me.

Mayhorn is a Hollister resident who lives just inside the gated community of Ridgemark Golf & Country Club, where course owners authorized the cutting of mature trees growing on two fairways near her house Oct. 1.

Neighbors have called the tree cutting a hit to property values and quality of life but Ridgemark President Alex Kehriotis one of the owners of JMK Golf LLC, the company that acquired the golf course about five years ago said the trees have become weakened and diseased since employees stopped watering them in July when the golf course closed some of its fairways and moved from a 36-hole course to an 18-hole facility.

The Ridgemark Homes Association filed a lawsuit against JMK Golf LLC in April requesting a restraining order that would put a stop to cutting down trees, while JMK asked for court permission to cut down diseased trees. The court issued a temporary restraining order, which put a stop to cutting trees not already identified in the JMK declaration, but allowed those that had already been cut to be towed away without residents interfering, according to minutes from a Tuesday court hearing.

Many of the unwatered trees being cut down are 30 to 40 feet tall and within 15 feet of houses. That makes them a liability now that winter is coming, Kehriotis said.

One storm with rain or wind could uproot some of these trees and cause damages to some of these homes, he said. We're trying to be proactive in this approach.

An arborist walked the fairways within the last week and gave a report of which trees seemed weak or diseased, Kehriotis said.

We're trying to make it a safer community, and a lot of these trees represent a huge liability, he said. And we're trying to do what we think is best of the community.

The sheriff's office responded to a call about the trees last Wednesday and wrote up an incident report but did not cite the golf course for a violation. In Hollister, there is no city ordinance protecting mature trees or requiring property owners to secure a permit before they take out their chain saws.

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Homeowners quarrel with Ridgemark over tree removal