City requiring driveway replacement or repair in Kansas City, MO

[Tom Rychlewski]

I bought a house in Kansas City, MO last year and noticed that the driveway had significant issues.  It has large cracks  and is uneven due to an extremely large tree growing right next to it. By large, i mean a diameter of almost 5' at the base.

when I purchased the house this was one of the first things that i looked to repair.  unfortunately the three people i had come out and look at it said that by repairing the driveway they would likely cut the main root of the tree and kill it.  Since this tree is massive, it would likely cost $10K to cut it down.  this would put me at $13K to repair a driveway and clear out the tree which will significantly impact my cash flow.

Because of this i figured it would just be easier to ignore the issue all together and deal with an unattractive driveway.  It wasn't impacting the rent or deterring renters.  

Yesterday, the city informed me that i was in violation of an ordinance to not have cracks in driveways over 1" wide and that it must be repaired immediately.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to resolve this issue?  the things that i had evaluated right now were as follows:

• remove the driveway all together.
• pour gravel over top of the driveway so that there are no cracks.
• asphalt over top of the driveway.  I figure this is a bad solution since the tree will continue to cause issues.

Has anyone else ever ran into an issue like this in the past?  Any Advice?