Agoura Hills staff outlines proposed oak tree ordinance rewrite focusing on consistency, incentives and mitigation bank

City planning staff presented a set of proposed planning principles to guide a rewrite of the Agoura Hills Oak Tree Ordinance, aiming to consolidate conflicting rules, reduce barriers for homeowners, create incentives to plant and maintain trees, and identify alternative mitigation options where on‑site replacement is not feasible.

Principal Planner Robbie Nesivik framed the changes as six issue areas that emerged from the city’s review of existing code and public input. Nesivik said oak tree regulations are currently scattered across five places in the municipal code and include inconsistent mitigation ratios; for example, the zoning ordinance requires a 4:1 mitigation ratio in some cases while Appendix A requires 3:1 for commercial projects. “Oak tree regulations currently live in 5 different locations of the Agoura Hills Municipal Code,” Nesivik said, and staff proposed consolidating those provisions into a single, user‑friendly code section that follows the permit application flow.

Staff’s…