Dearborn Heights, MI Landscaping Rules: Tree Trimming (2026)

Sec. 33-34 puts the trimming duty on the tree owner: any tree overhanging a city street or right-of-way must be cut back so its branches don't block light from a streetlamp or the view at a street intersection, and so there's a clear eight feet of vertical space above the street or right-of-way surface. The same owner must also remove any dead, diseased, or dangerous tree, and any broken or decayed limb, that constitutes a menace to public safety. The city itself has the separate right to trim a tree or shrub on private property, limited to the area right above the right-of-way, whenever it interferes with a streetlight's spread or blocks visibility of a traffic-control device or sign.

If an owner does not keep up with required trimming, the public service administrator sends notice requiring compliance within thirty days; once that period runs out, the administrator can have the trimming done at city expense and place any unpaid cost as a legal lien against the property. Because dead-limb removal and clearance are grounded in preventing hazards, the standard applies year-round rather than being tied to any single season, and it sits alongside the separate corner-clearance rule in the same section that keeps shrubs and bushes on corner lots trimmed to no more than twenty-four inches within twenty-five feet of an intersection.