Cut to the quick

POST FALLS - A Post Falls woman is facing a felony charge for reportedly chopping the tops of her neighbor's trees.

The alleged hack job happened last spring - when the woman's neighbor and his family were away on vacation - and is the latest complaint in an apparently ongoing dispute between the two sides who share a property line.

Chris Greenfield, 52, has lived next to Eric Wurmlinger, 52, at Parkwood Place in Post Falls for around five years. In April, Greenfield reportedly cut six feet off a row of 10 arbavida trees that bordered the neighbors' properties when Wurmlinger was gone.

"A fence issue is a whole other thing," said Wurmlinger, who runs a bed and breakfast at the house where he lives with his family. "We didn't want a fence, we just wanted privacy. That's all this is, privacy for my guests."

Now, the chopped down trees are too short to block the view from one of the guest bedroom windows from the back patio of Greenfield's home. Greenfield had cited an old Post Falls city ordinance that trees were subject to the same height restriction as fences - around six feet - when she said she had a landscaper "trim the shrubs."

"It's so simple," Greenfield told The Press Tuesday. "It was a hedge that was trimmed."

But that city ordinance was redacted around three years ago, Post Falls police said, and trees no longer count as fence lines, and therefore can grow taller. The 10 trees, planted in 1995, were all planted on Wurmlinger's property. Some of their branches did reach to Greenfield's side, but the tops that were chopped were on Wurmlinger's side. They were around 12 feet tall before the trimming. Now, they're around half that.

"Maybe not even six," Wurmlinger said of their new heights. "Maybe in 10 years they'll re-grow, but I'm not sure. The whole center is gone (on each tree)."

The incident involves up to $10,000 in damages. Greenfield is facing a malicious injury to property charge - a felony since it's more than $1,000 in damages. The preliminary hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

Police Lt. Greg McLean said patrols have responded to several dozen complaints between the two over the last few years, "the majority from Greenfield."

The reports ranged from too many cars parked on the street, to noisy stereos and "shrub issues," - non serious complaints that usually resulted in talks, McLean said.

But this complaint exceeded those, as Wurmlinger wants the damaged trees replaced.

"It wasn't until the malicious injury complaint, that was a big one," McLean said. "The trees weren't trimmed, they were cut in half."

Greenfield said she felt humiliated that what she called a civil complaint had reached such high status. She went public with the court case in a My Turn column that ran in last Friday's Press. In that column, and in Tuesday's interview, she said she was arrested.

They "have spent a great deal of time and effort, including tax dollars, to harass and bring felony criminal charges against a 52-year-old single mother of three with no prior history of any crime, especially when this is clearly a civil, not a criminal dispute," she wrote.

"I'm dumbfounded right now," she said Tuesday. "I don't know what the hell is going on."

But police said several claims in that column weren't true, besides stating it should be a civil charge. The city fence line ordinance no longer deals with trees, and she wasn't arrested, but had to report to the Kootenai County jail in the state matter for fingerprints and a photo as required by the judge's summary order.

Since the column ran, Greenfield said she has received several calls from the public wondering about the issue.

"This needs to get out. This is a travesty," she said. "I expected to see this dismissed (Tuesday at the preliminary status conference) but it wasn't."

Meanwhile, Wurmlinger said he wants healthy trees back. He said he wants to put the issue behind him and continue to run the business he has had since the mid-1990s.