Answered for Beech Grove, Marion County.
The cambium — the living layer just under the bark that builds new wood and moves food down to the roots — was killed in that patch, and the tree is now conducting around a dead strip. A narrow strip gets grown over in a few seasons and leaves a scar. A strip that wraps far enough around leaves the tree partly girdled, and the crown above it thins as the remaining live tissue gets overloaded. Either way the exposed wood becomes an open invitation to borers and canker fungi that would not touch intact bark. In Beech Grove — Park Grove, Park Meadow and Beech Meadow included, that's normally a tree trimming job at $250–$1,400. Not urgent.
Beech Grove is a 1906 railroad company town whose housing splits into two waves: an original bungalow and foursquare grid laid out around the New York Central shops, then a heavy postwar fill-in that dominates the rest of the city. Most residential lots therefore carry trees planted roughly between 1950 and 1970 — now 55 to 75 years old and, on lots this size, typically growing within a few feet of foundations, driveways and service drops.
Beech Grove is one of only 23 Indiana communities in the DNR's 2008 i-Tree STRATUM street tree sample inventory, and its numbers are extreme: of 1,699 inventoried street trees, silver maple was 33.1% — more than triple the 10%-per-species industry guideline — followed by Callery pear 11.5%, apple 10.1%, sugar maple 5.0% and littleleaf linden 5.0%. Those top-heavy silver maples on small lots are the recurring job here.
No Beech Grove ordinance requiring a permit to remove a tree on private property was found, and Indiana has no statewide tree removal permit. What the city code does regulate is hazard and nuisance: the property maintenance provisions require any tree, shrub or vegetation growing where it is likely to damage a structure to be trimmed or removed, and require dead or broken trees and limbs to be cut and removed from the premises. Work in the public right-of-way should be cleared with the city first.
Beech Grove is an "excluded city" under Unigov, so despite being surrounded by Indianapolis it runs its own police, public works and parks departments — the tree lawn between sidewalk and curb is Beech Grove right-of-way, handled by Beech Grove Public Works, not Indy DPW or Indy Parks Forestry. Abutting owners maintain the strip day to day; the city sets the rules for what happens in it.
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Distance measured from Beech Grove.