The city is tired of NO consistency with boulevard landscaping in town (and those pesky decorative mailboxes). How dare people allow their homes to look different then their neighbors. Better charge them with criminal nuisance! (I won’t get into that). So now they are suggesting a compromise of allowing up to 20% to be landscaped, and you have to get a permit from the city (never miss an opportunity to miss out on a pointless fee).
This is how I look at it. The city owns the boulevard, but the adjacent homeowner/business is responsible for maintaining it, they should be allowed to landscape it however they want to within reason, circumstance and how the area is zoned. If the city wants to TELL us how our boulevards should look, fine. You can come and mow them and trim trees in them. But since we are responsible for the maintenance, we should have a say in what goes in them.
Of course, in this document (DOC) they show a lot of bad examples. That is a whole other ball of wax, if someone isn’t maintaining it properly, then yes, they should have to. But telling people they can’t have flowers or painted green boulders (that one made me laugh) on property they maintain doesn’t make sense, seems they are getting their panties in a bunch over nothing. But since our city is run like a dictatorship, it doesn’t surprise me. Pretty soon they will start arresting people for not mowing their lawns.