We get this certified letter form Mexico Beach basically stating that we need to have all the dead trees cut off our lot or we will start getting fined.

This is a 100'x150' piece of property about 3 blocks off the public, City owned beach.

So Mrs. Irish posts up on the Mexico Beach Facebook page that we need to have the trees cut and removed. (They are all dead from the hurricane.) From the pictures it honestly looks like about 10 - 15 dead pine trees and none of them are that big.

Well she immediately gets an email from this lady who apparently is putting contractors in touch with customers and then gets a cut for providing business leads for them. Well she sends "Juan" over to look at our property this weekend and calls Mrs. Irish back with a price to remove the trees and haul them off... $8500.

I about fell out of my office chair. That just clearly screams price gouging to me. I told her to keep looking.

She calls me back after talking to a local guy who lost about half his pecan farm in South Georgia to the hurricane and lost his house in Mexico Beach. He drove over to our lot, looked at it and told her he would cut down all the trees, dig up all the stumps and pile it all by the road for the city to haul away for $4100.

That still seems high, but is sure sounded a lot better than the first sticker shock.

Does that second price sound pretty normal?

I've got some guys from Cherokee County that have done similar work for me at the cabin and I honestly think I could send them down there and pay all their expenses, hotel, food, gas, etc... and still come out better.

I'll drive down there and do it for the bargain price of $4,000

I was wondering how long that was going to take...

Sounds like he was Juan or 2 dollars too high to me

my parents paid just over $1000 to have two oaks taken down and hauled off in North Alabama last year. Labor ain't cheap anymore. They was both near their house so they had to be done top down so that made it a little more expensive.

10-15 trees, digging up the stumps and piling them up by the road for pick up? I’d say that’s a pretty good deal, depending on how big they are. At 15 trees, that’s only $273.00 at tree. Not bad including cleanup.

I'll bet you anything FEMA is pushing the city to levy fines.
This stinks of FEMA bullschit.
I've dealt with FEMA for more than 30 years, on storm jobs from Oklahoma to New Jersey, and I've never seen them do anything but cost people money. Nothing good whatsoever.

When that F5 hit in 2011 I had to get some stuff done to our house. Insurance covered it all but FEMA had setup about a mile from my house because it was just about the path of the tornado. FEMA kept calling me and wanting me to fill out for aid so they could give me money since I was eligible due to where I lived. I explained to them that my insurance covered all the damages and they still wanted me to fill out paperwork for money. It was crazy. No wonder this country is in debt up to our eyeballs.

To be honest, I wouldn't actually drive down there. I would send two of my messicans and pay them $1500 for the total job.

Job would need a couple supervisors. You provide the beer and ride shotgun I’ll drive.

Depending on size prob 30 mins per tree to dig up couple of chain saw guys and trac ho prob be done in a day if they ain't big would they be a threat to fall on anything?

You should call your local FEMA office. The disaster money has been appropriated. They will have the funds and an approved contractor list.

$4100 does not seem high for that level of work. I've paid more for less.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get Mrs. Irish to call, but if I remember correctly they won't do anything for us, because we didn't have a house on the property and the lot was too small to qualify as a "timber farm."

They may not be able to help, but they will still have the approved contractor list.

Have you been down there? Everything is a war zone 9 months later. There’s $1m houses that still don’t have steps rebuilt to access the homes on piles. Labor is non existent. It was tough to find people before the storm and now half of them moved off and the amount of work increased 20x. I was talking to a restaurant owner Saturday who had to rebuild his whole place himself because he couldn’t get any subs. And that’s a local. It took my dad 8 months to get his homes back up and running. The same amount of work would have taken 6 weeks in Birmingham. So yes, prices are very high, it’s either do it yourself or pay a sky high price and don’t expect it completed in a timely manner.

Its real bad. We have several students at Troy from Mexico Beach area that are having difficult times just getting enrolled for Fall class cause their families finances are in a mess from the storm.

Gotcha. Thanks for the suggestion.

These are the same kinds of stories we are hearing and seeing.

What was the name of the restaurant?

Yet, you can be fined...smh