Leaf drop is a tree's cheapest response to almost any stress, because leaves are what cost it water. So the symptom alone means only that something is wrong, and the useful question is what — the range runs from harmless to terminal. Foliar diseases like anthracnose on sycamore, ash, and maple, or apple scab on crabapple, strip a tree, look alarming, and generally do not kill it. Drought, girdling roots, a buried root collar, and construction injury drop leaves for a reason that will still be present next year. Vascular wilts — Verticillium in maple and redbud, oak wilt in the red oak group — drop leaves because the plumbing is being blocked, and those are serious. In Cumberland — Old Town Cumberland / Cumberland Historic District, Cumberland Heights and Glen Oaks Village included, that's normally a tree trimming job at $250–$1,400. Within weeks.
Why this comes up in Cumberland
Unusually fragmented for a town of 6,400. Cumberland's own community profile lists four electric providers: Indianapolis Power & Light (now AES Indiana), Duke Energy, Central Indiana Power and NineStar. Water is Citizens Energy Group, natural gas is Vectren (now CenterPoint), and sanitary sewer and stormwater are the town's own. For line-clearance work this matters directly: AES and Duke are IURC-jurisdictional, so 170 IAC 4-9 applies — two weeks' notice, no removal of more than 25% of a tree and no topping without permission absent an emergency, debris cleared within three days — while NineStar and Central Indiana Power are cooperatives and exempt.
Cumberland's canopy
The biggest and oldest trees stand in Old Town along US 40, over houses on a corridor continuously settled since 1831 — that is where a crew will meet 100-plus-year specimens with structures under them on both sides. Buck Creek carries the bottomland canopy, the east-side Hancock County subdivisions date from the 1970s through the 2000s and their canopy is mid-life, and ash has been removed across central Indiana by emerald ash borer; no published street-tree inventory exists for the town.
Marion County (town limits extend east and north into Hancock County) County rules
The Town of Cumberland code has no tree chapter and no permit for removing a tree on private property. What it does regulate: no trees or shrubs planted in any drainage easement without Stormwater Board approval; a required plat covenant keeping clear sight triangles at corners, with no trees permitted to remain in the triangle unless the foliage line is high enough not to block sight lines; and a ban on attaching signs to any tree in a public way. The critical wrinkle is jurisdictional: Cumberland only issues permits and enforces code in its Hancock County portion. Marion County properties go to Indianapolis instead, whose code requires approval from the Division of Construction and Business Services of DBNS plus the Board of Parks and Recreation before an abutting owner uses the curb-to-sidewalk plot for a tree row (the exact section number is UNVERIFIED — sources give both 645-514 and 645-561).
The tree lawn in Cumberland
It depends which side of the county line the address falls on. On the Marion County side, the plot between curb and sidewalk is city right-of-way and the abutting owner may use it for grass or a tree row only with Indianapolis DBNS and Board of Parks and Recreation approval. On the Hancock County side, Cumberland's own permit office has jurisdiction, and the town's code contains no street-tree program at all. Same street, different answer.