Seventeen Connecticut towns

Cross from Oxford into Southbury and the rules covering your tree change, along with who you call when it comes down at midnight. The differences are not small, and they decide how your job runs.

Which utility serves you, for one. Most of these towns are Eversource, but Derby, Ansonia, Shelton and Woodbridge are United Illuminating, and calling the wrong one on a night when a tree is in the wires wastes the hours that matter.

How far the wetland review reaches, for another. Several towns regulate work within 50 feet of a wetland or watercourse. Several use 100. Monroe reaches 150 feet from a listed watercourse. Bridgewater goes to 200 feet from Lake Lillinonah, the Housatonic and the Shepaug, and then keeps going along any continuous 15 percent grade. In a town where 58 percent of the land is that steep, that clause travels a long way uphill.

And who owns the tree at the road edge. Monroe says plainly that it owns the strip between the pavement and your property line. Shelton says its right of way varies parcel to parcel and Engineering has to go and measure it. Newtown runs two tree wardens, one for the town and a separate one for the Borough, and a public tree there needs ten days of posted notice before it can come down.

It means the first questions are usually not about the tree. Whose is it, what is underneath it, how does a truck reach it, and does anybody else have to move first. On most jobs those are answered in a few minutes and the work is straightforward.

Pick your town for the specifics where you are: the ground and what it does to a stump grinder, the roads that matter, the storm record, and the local rules with the phone numbers to call.