Lenexa Tree Removal has been doing tree removal in Mission for more than twenty years, and the thing this city changes is not how the tree comes down but what happens to it afterward. Mission is the address in this ring where the pile itself is the offense: limbs and wood left sitting on a lot are named in the city’s nuisance chapter, and the penalty is written to accrue by the day rather than by the pile. Every quote we write here therefore begins with where the wood is going, not with how many hours the cutting takes.

That one fact reorders the whole estimate. The curbside program will not take a removal’s material, there is no county gate to drive it to, and the lot cannot legally hold it while somebody arranges a trailer. We price the haul as part of the job, name it on the written estimate alongside the tree and the method, and leave the ground rakeable before the truck pulls off.

Twenty years of taking trees down in Johnson County and across the state line is mostly twenty years of learning which rules change at which curb, and Mission’s change at the curb. The crew that shows up is a local one on local roads rather than a franchise call center in another state, and the price we quote is a number for the whole job, wood included.

What Section 220.010(A)(1) actually makes unlawful

Ordinance 1621, passed and approved by the City Council on November 20, 2024, deleted Section 220.010 in full and replaced it with a new definition of unlawful nuisances. Subsection (A)(1) names “tree limbs, wood” among the things that may not be thrown or left deposited upon any street, alley, sidewalk, park, public or private enclosure or lot, and it closes with the words that matter most to a homeowner: whether vacant or occupied. A fenced back yard behind an occupied house is squarely inside that rule, which is not how most brush piles are thought about.

The penalty is written per day

Section 240.500 sets the fine at not more than $1,000, six months of jail time, or both, and then adds the clause that does the real work: each day that the violation occurs or is permitted to continue constitutes a separate offense. A stack of limbs left through a long weekend while a hauler is arranged is not one violation carrying one number. That is the arithmetic behind our habit of loading as we cut instead of staging the wood on the lawn and coming back for it.

No permit, and why that settles nothing

Mission’s tree protection and removal machinery sits in Chapter 240 Article IV, and it opens on a construction condition: the procedures apply prior to demolition or construction for a new commercial project or significant changes, and a tree protection and removal plan is required before a permit issues for a new commercial or significant residential project. A homeowner on a finished, occupied lot with no project underway does not need a city permit to take a tree down, and we will say so plainly rather than sell one. What binds that job instead is the nuisance chapter, and it starts binding the moment the first limb reaches the ground.

Looking for tree-removal closer to Prairie Village? See Prairie Village Tree-Removal.

Two inches at the curb, against what a removal actually produces

The city’s own yard-waste page sets the curbside rule and GFL Environmental collects to it: limbs less than 2 inches in diameter, tied with string or twine into bundles no more than 4 feet long and 18 inches in diameter, nothing weighing more than 40 pounds, and a limit of 10 bags or bundles in a week. Plastic bags are not accepted at all. Those numbers describe a pruning session, and they were plainly written with one in mind.

A removal is the wrong shape for that program

A trunk section is not under two inches, a scaffold limb off a mature crown is not under two inches, and the root plate of a wind-thrown tree is not going into a 40-pound bundle. Even the fine brush off a single mature canopy runs past ten bundles before the top of the tree is finished. Material stacked at the curb in the hope that it qualifies simply does not get collected, and it is then a pile on the ground with the nuisance section already applying to it.

The fraction of a removal that would qualify is not worth sorting, either. Separating a week’s 10 bundles out of a full canopy, tying them to 4 feet and 18 inches and setting them at the curb takes longer than chipping the same brush on site, and it leaves the homeowner running a disposal schedule for the next month. We chip what the chipper can reach and the rest rides out in the truck.

We work to the published page

Figures circulate locally that are looser than the ones the city publishes, including on the city’s own social channels, and they do not match the yard-waste page. We treat the page as the published rule and size our loads to it rather than to the friendlier version, because a crew that guesses generously here leaves its customer holding the violation.

Behind the curb: no county gate, and a cap at the landfill

Johnson County operates no public yard-waste gate at all, which surprises people who assume a metro county has one. The county landfill caps landscape waste at 3 inches in diameter, Olathe’s compost site is restricted to Olathe residents, and Wyandotte County’s gate serves Wyandotte residents and refuses limbs or stumps over 12 inches in diameter or 4 feet long. For removal-sized wood there is no free public exit anywhere inside this county, and burning it down on a lot at this density is not a disposal plan either.

Where the load actually goes

The nearest public outlet that will take it is Missouri Organic Recycling in Kansas City, Missouri, across the state line, at $10.00 per cubic yard for brush and $7.00 per cubic yard for lawn debris. It accepts logs up to 40 inches in diameter provided they are under 5 feet long, and it refuses stumps carrying dirt, which is why stump material is handled as its own line rather than folded in with the brush. We work both sides of State Line Road and the tipping is a named cost on the estimate, not a surprise discovered on the day.

The chipper is usually the access limit

Mission carries roughly 2,140 housing units per square mile, so gate width and drop zone decide more than saw size does. A compact stump grinder can be walked through a 35-inch gate and a pedestrian-gate class machine through 25 inches, while a large towable chipper is 7 feet 9 inches wide and around 10,500 pounds and often cannot reach the wood at all. Where it cannot, the material comes out in rigged sections over a friction device and a rigging block, and a spider lift or crane covers the tight inner-ring lots a bucket truck has no lane for.

Stumps are their own disposal question

A ground stump is a different load from a chipped crown: the grindings are soil-mixed, which is exactly what the recycler will not take, so they are backfilled into the hole or hauled separately rather than mixed into the brush. Depth is the other variable, and it is a site question rather than a quoted number. Several soil series mapped in Johnson County sit within a foot or two of bedrock, so we look at the ground before promising a below-grade cut.

What haul-away included means on a Mission quote

Our written estimates name the tree, the method and exactly what cleanup covers, and the removal is priced against what the tree is actually doing rather than by the hour. Here that means the tipping fee, the number of loads and the finished condition of the ground are all on paper before anyone signs, so the daily-offense clause never gets a chance to start counting against the property. The debris leaves with us on the same visit, and what is left is a rakeable site rather than a job half done.

Method before price

Crews work to ANSI Z133 for the cutting and ANSI A300 where pruning is the answer instead, and limbs over a roof or a drive come down by the three-cut method and controlled rigging rather than free-fall. Where a tree can be saved we say so and price both routes, because crown cleaning or a crown reduction on a structurally sound stem is cheaper than a removal and usually the honest recommendation. Codominant stems with included bark are the common reason a crown that looks healthy is not, and that judgment belongs on the estimate rather than in conversation.

Storm calls and street clearance

When a tree is on a house, a car, a drive or a power service we respond the same day, and anything involving an energized conductor goes to Evergy Kansas Metro before it goes to a saw. Section 240.320 also gives a standard worth knowing on an ordinary day: growth projecting over the street below 12 feet, or over a sidewalk or trail below 8 feet, is hazardous by definition, so a limb that has quietly dropped into that space is already a problem the city recognizes. We call 811 before any stump grinder cutting wheel goes into the ground, every time.

Proof, and what a finished site looks like

Coverage documents come across before the work is scheduled, not after a branch has gone through a fence, and that matters more on a compact lot where the drop zone is somebody else’s driveway. When the crew leaves, the wood is on the truck, the chips are gone or spread where the owner asked, and the ground is raked rather than merely picked over. Nothing is staged behind the garage for a return trip, because in this city a staged pile is the thing the code is written about.