COEUR d’ALENE — One man’s twig is another man’s branch.

The city of Coeur d’Alene wants to lop off some wording in its pruning ordinance to include all tree branches, regardless of size. Anyone looking to prune a public tree will need a permit from the city’s Urban Forestry Committee under the new rule.

The current ordinance allows people to whack off branches if they are less than an inch in diameter, but the change in code wouldn’t differentiate in branch sizes.

“It wasn’t rampant or anything like that,” said Karen Haskew, city liaison to the forest committee on the people who used the current rule to reduce the size of some public trees or round them off like shrubs. “We just want to make sure pruning is done correctly.”

The new rule would be uniform to the American National Standards Institute Standard Practices, and should improve trees’ health since improper pruning can injure the seedlings and saplings.

It would not affect trees on personal property, only the 23,300 public trees in Coeur d’Alene, Haskew said.

Property owners who want to prune back an abutting overgrown public tree can apply for a free permit with the committee, which will give the tree-trimmer information on how best to do it.

People who want to reduce the size of a public tree would also need to obtain a permit from the committee.

Smaller trees, like flowering cherry trees, live between 25 to 30 years while larger trees like maples, Coeur d’Alene’s most common public tree, can live much longer.

The change will go before the City Council at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, in the Community Room of the public library.