City and County of San Francisco Thursday, October 25, 2012
[Adjourned] >> good afternoon and welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the government and oversight committee. My name is sean elsbernd vice-chair of the committee sit intion for supervisor farrell. We are joined to the by supervisor scott weaner to my
right and we will eventually be
joined by board President Supervisor david chiu. Our clerk today is melissa miller. Melissa, could you please read the first item?
>> item number 1 is a hearing calling various city agencies to discuss the condition of street and park trees including
plants for tree maintenance in the draft urban forest natural plan. >> thank you. Supervisor, this is your item. >> thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
and welcome, everyone. Thank everyone for coming out
today. Today, today's hearing which I
called for several months ago
is about our city's urban
forest with a specific focus on
san francisco's plan to care
for, to enhance our public trees.
san francisco is home to
approximately 110,000 street
trees and approximately 130,000 park trees a sizeable number by any measure.
An urban forest is one of our city's greatest assets. It makes our city green. It cleans our air. It beautifies our streets and our parks.
it filters our stormwater.
It cools our neighborhoods on those rare warm days.
[Laughter]
>> the urban forest is an essential part of our city's fabric that each and every one of us enjoys and we must do everything we can to protect
it. unfortunately, we in this building have not always done
what we need to do to care for
our urban forest. Consecutive years of budget cuts have severely reduced the
ability of the department of public works and rec and park to actually do what they need to do to care for our street trees and our park trees.
almost to the point of neglect. As a result, both departments have been unable to keep up
with the maintenance needs of
these trees, let alone devote
resources to plant more and to actually enhance our urban forest.
We've seen the results of this. We've seen the condition of many of our street trees, which has not been great.
We've seen in our parks
situations where trees simply topple over.
It happened in my district.
Two large trees in the park simply toppled over.
Recently trees toppled over in glenn canyon and it's happened elsewhere.
we know that a few years ago in stern grove, a branch fell and
killed someone.
Dpw has given its lack of
funding, has proposed a tree maintenance transfer plan under which it intends to transfer the maintenance responsibility for approximately 24,000 street trees under its care to
adjacent property owners. This system where we expect
property owners to take care of the adjacent street trees whether or not they planted that tree, whether or not they want the tree, whether or not
they know how to take care of that tree, whether or not they can afford to take care of that
tree.
that system results in very inconsistent maintenance. Some people do a beautiful job taking care of their street trees.
Some people hire the cheapest vendor possible to take care of the street trees.
Some people blow off the
responsibility, and a lot of people have no idea that they
are even responsible for that
adjacent street tree. By any measure, this is not the
right way to take care of our
street trees and it results in wildly inconsistent maintenance
of this important asset.
So, dpw is in a bind because we haven't given them the funding they need to actually maintain
all of our street trees and it is our responsibility to make
sure that dpw does have the
resources it needs because, in my view, requiring property owners to take care of adjacent street trees is not a good
system and we need to find a
way for dpw to be able to take back responsibility for all of the street trees in san
francisco and to provide that
consistent maintenance level.
Rec and park has funding to
permit trees every 50 years or
even longer. That means that a tree on average May be pruned only once
or twice in its entire life
cycle and again, this creates hazardous situations. This is a public safety issue in addition to a quality of life issue and we need to address it.
In my view, we need to find long-term stable dedicated
funding source for our urban forest because to be blunt trees don't do well in the budget process.
with many, many priorities like
public health and housing and public safety, trees just don't
compete well.
Today's hearing is the beginning of this conversation. And we have representatives today from the department of public works, from the recreation and park department,
from the planning department, and from our nonprovefit partner friends of the urban forest, each of whom will speak
about what we are doing and what we can be doing.
These agencies have been working closely together the past six months on a study to
analyze what it would cost to properly care for our public trees. Studies began by looking at cities across the country, analyze best practices and urban forest maintenance. And then turn to san francisco
to talk about what we can do
here.
So, colleagues, if there are any -- once we have preliminary comments and I'll proceed with the department presentations. President Chiu? >> thank you, colleague. let me first start off by thanking everyone for coming together for this hearing.
This is a topic that I also, along with supervisor weaner and other colleagues, have been
hearing quite a bit about from my constituents.
I want to also -- I don't want it reiterate what supervisor weaner has just said, but I
want to simply echo the
perspective that while I appreciate the rationale behind
dpw's change in policy with regards to relinquishment, I think there's certainly been
issues that I think we need to more thoroughly vet. And I like supervisor weaner would also like to look at different funding options and different approaches to how we
do this.
This here is obviously an information gathering forum to hear from the public and issues from department staff what we think is possible, so thats as we consider different possibilities, we can be fully
informed on this.
But my staff and I started looking into this, realized
there were an awful lot of things, a lot of policies we need to think through. We also discovered that supervisor weaner had been looking into this issue for quite sometime and we're happy to join with him in thinking through these issues and hopefully working with the departments and the public to propose something that is going to work for all the stakeholders.
>> thank you, President Chiu.
so, with that I'd like to first
ask john sway from the planning department to speak.
The planning department did spearhead the recent report that was issued. And then afterwards we'll hear from other departments and from the President Of the urban forest. So, Mr. Sway. >> thank you. Good afternoon, supervisors.
My name is john sway with planning department staff, and I'm the planning manager for the urban forest plan, the city's urban forest plan.
So, we're here to talk to you about trees.
As the supervisor mentioned, we have -- in the whole city we have about 700,000 trees, and these are trees in back yards,
in streets, in parks in the presidio and other large open spaces.
and we have about 105,000
street trees. The estimates vary, but we think there are about 500,000 street trees and about 131,000 trees in the city's parks. And these these, aside from beautifying and greening the city as you mentioned, supervisor, provide a number of benefits. They clean our air and water. They reduce demand on our energy and sewer infrastructure systems.
And they just generally improve public health and mental health in the city. So, one of the biggest issues
that we've identified in the urban forest planning department so far is the lack of maintenance funding for the city's trees, for both street trees and park trees. So, one of the pieces that we've been looking into in the plan is to identify -- look at other cities and see what
they're doing in terms of
funding, municipal and other strategies of street tree programs.
And today we're going to hear from -- hear more about the financing issue. We have douglass leg from the department of public works who
is going to talk about the state of dpw's urban forestry program. And then dennis stern from rec
and park who is going to talk about park forestry.
And our consultant on the urban forest plan is looking at financial strategies for the city of san francisco to address our lack of funding for
street trees.
so, with that, I introduce
douglass. >> Mr. White from the department of public works.
>> good afternoon, supervisors.
I'm the manager of finance budget and performance at the department and have been working on this issue of street tree funding for a number of years.
with me from dpw is carla short
who has been our urban forrester for the last decade
or so.
So, under the article 16 of the
public works code, dpw has
jurisdiction of all trees in the public right-of-way, and we're responsible for managing that part of the urban forest
for the benefit of all san
franciscans. Our management includes planting, planting maintenance, and removal of trees in the public right-of-way, and we
care for the publicly maintained street trees and we're responsible for enforcing
the public works code for privately maintained trees. Because of the funding cuts
that we've taken over the last -- it's been about eight years
where we've had reduction targets in our budget, we really are no longer able to care for the portion of this
urban forest that's under our
jurisdiction.
we've lost more than half of the people who were trimming
and caring for trees which probably was not adequate in the first place. And, so, with the reality a
couple of years ago, we started to transfer maintenance responsibility of about 23,000
of the trees that are in our
portfolio to private property owners to allow us to meet our
responsibilities under the
public works code.
street trees, because they impact sidewalks, traffic and all kinds of other activities
in the public right-of-way
should be cleaned every three to five years.
With the resources that we have available right now, we're
pruning those trees every 10 to 12 years on average. So, we're falling far, far
short of the mark.
And although our resources have -- remain steady for the last year, they've continued to decline really over the last eight years. And there's a chart that I'll be showing you shortly.
This lack of regular
maintenance is causing trees to threaten safety to your property. And because we're not visiting them as often we're finding the
resources we do have being
called for not planned maintenance, which is what we should be doing, but emergency response.
So, we're finding that there's
a traffic signal or a stop sign
that's blocked, that there's
storm damage, that there's area sidewalk damage. Those are the things because of public safety that we have to
attend to first that further reduces our ability to do our planned maintenance.
>> I'm sorry. Has the department -- is their
estimate in terms of the tree
work that you do comparing emergency work versus routine maintenance? As I understand it, I know
there is routine maintenance that happens, but that the
dominant work is responding to either complaints or problems or flat out emergencies.
>> that has become our dominant work in 80%.
>> 80%? >> 80% is responding to problems. >> okay.
>> and we wouldn't -- we would have far, far fewer problems to
respond to if we were able to do our regular three to five-year maintenance cycle.
we'd be getting to those trees before they caused significant
problems.
So, san francisco, as john had
mentioned, has about 105,000,
we call it 104,000 street trees
that are planted along
sidewalks and in street medians. And for many, many years we have been responsible
for maintaining about a third of those trees. And property owners have always been responsible for maintaining about two-thirds of the trees. And, so, the problem, supervisor weaner, that you
were talking about that you
were relating to primarily tree
transfer was kind of inconsistent maintenance of street trees has actually been a problem that we've always faced.
Because there are about 65,000
trees that for many, many years have been the responsibility for property owners to maintain.
and I think all of the problems that you mentioned, including
lack of knowledge of the responsibility, is a real, is a real problem for maintaining a
healthy urban forest.
This chart shows that we, dpw, maintains about 31,000 street trees that are planted along
the sidewalk median and about 7500 trees that are planted on
medians on streets like dolores and sunset boulevard, brotherhood way, and those kinds of places. Our tree maintenance transfer program suggests that we would
transfer about 23,000 of those
trees, almost 24,000. >> does dpw maintain median trees, the 7500 there?
You can do a rough estimate. In the last five years, last eight years, how many have we planted? How many of those are new?
If you were to show me that chart 8 years ago, 10 years ago what would the number have
been?
>> [Inaudible], we planted
almost like 500 trees on sunset under a grant a couple of years ago.
And then the number of other
trees planted in medians is actually relatively small.
we did -- we probably did a
hundred trees on portola, under
a lot of places where we've
done -- >> alemeny -- >> the city did a sidewalk planting program. >> we also did a sidewalk planting program. >> emulating chicago in some ways, phil orlando correctly. >> that's right.
We did a large planting program
and most of the 7700 trees that
you're seeing that are not being transferred are those sidewalk trees that we planted
in the sunset, some in the richmond, some bayview
primarily. If I recall. >> very few street trees.
>> at the same time city hall has been cutting your street trees maintenance budget, correct?
>> city hall has been going
ashe people sometimes get upset with dpw for turning over the trees.
But ultimately this is a political issue and both the
mary and the board of supervisors, we're the ones who pass the budget. The marrow poses it, we pass it, the mayor signs it. We have to take political responsibility for funding our urban forest.
>> that's what we in the bureaucracy hope will happen,
yes.
>> this chart that I'm showing
here just shows both where the cuts have come.
The bars show that in 2007,
2008 we had 19 people in our arborist program that were dedicated to caring or these
street trees.
We're down to about 6-1/2 fte as of today.
So, over that five-year period
we've lost more than half of
our folks in this program. I should mention we've taken these cuts in the urban forestry. We've also actually significantly reduced the number of people doing all manner of things on our general fund. So, we didn't focus all of our cuts in this area.
We have far, far fewer people
doing street cleaning, graffiti abatement, gardening. We have fewer people doing pothole filling because we've been able to invest in actual street resurfacing. We haven't had quite as many potholes to fill.
This is a very dramatic decline in the resources that we've been able to dedicate with tree
care. We've also shown the maintenance cycle has been
driven up.
I want to speak briefly about
the tree maintenance transfer. And as I've said that we're adding -- we're going to be adding to the portfolio, which we do not want to do. We would prefer to keep all the trees we've been maintaining. We think department of public
works does a better job and a
more efficient job maintaining, maintaining these trees.
But we are trained to align with available resources.
the other thing is we want to allocate more equitably city-wide who has a street tree
maintained by the city and who does not. And because we can't take care
of the trees, we're hoping that private property owners will be
able to do so.
We know that this is a very sensitive process and nobody really wants to inherit new maintenance spotsv as a property owner.
We understand that.
So, we are -- before we do any transfer, we inspect all the
trees to make sure that they are healthy, that there's no maintenance required. and that the sidewalk around
the tree is in good condition. We post notices on the trees. We have notified property owners by mail.
We've been providing tree care
packages to everybody who is receiving responsibility for
maintaining a tree. We have a dedicated website and phone number that we've been using. we've been -- and we've been
holding public hearings on all of these transfers.
And all of these notices and
resources are letting people
know what's been happening -- at the hearing, relinquishment hearings, what are people, what
are members of the public saying?
>> primarily they're saying we believe this is a city responsibility. Why aren't you taking care of this tree?
It's unfair to put this responsibility on us. You know, there are a lot of people -- there are a lot of people who understand that the
city has been in pretty dire
financial straits and not
everybody with who's received a transfer notice has complained.
A lot of people have felt that
they can handle the responsibility and they
understand that situation. But, you know, they're angry
about being told that they have all of a sudden an expense that they have never had
responsibility for. We're hearing about -- we're hearing from other people and
I'm sure you'll hear today from members of the public concern about the quality of care that these trees are going to
receive.
There are people that believe
strongly that having a single entity that's responsible for maintaining the health of the
urban forest makes much more sense than this aggregated kind
of care program. So, [Speaker not understood] But what we've been hearing.
The other thing is the overall cost of maintaining trees is going to go up because if we
have -- if we were adequately
funded and are able to deploy
trucks and foresters to go down
a block and do a lot of trees all at one time, it's a lot more efficient and much less
expensive than each individual property owner having to contact, you know, a tree care
company and have them come out
to one location and make a call to do one to five trees that somebody might be responsible
for. So, that concludes my portion of the presentation and as I said, carl and I are here to answer questions.
>> thank you, Mr. Light.
we'll now hear from denny kern from the recreation and park department. Mr. Kern.
>> thank you, supervisors. As you probably surmised the challenges that the recreation and park department are very similar to those you just heard from douglass from the department of public works, but to give you a more detailed
look at rec and park, back in 2008 the department undertook
for the first time a detailed two-year study to actually,
among other things, look at urban forestry operations and first time have a database and informed estimate of the number
of trees on our 3500 acre of park land here within the city limits.
And after that two-year process
led by [Speaker not understood]
A nationally respected forestry
consultant from here, we were
able to establish that there are an estimated 131,000 trees on our park land here within the city.
That does not include the trees around park land at shaw park
and pa city of ka, nor those that are at our family camp in the high is sierra.
Currently within rec and park our forestry unit which has a
direct report to me within
operations, we have in our
current budget here a $3.6 million operating budget for
that unit and that includes 28
budgeted fte, both for tree
crews and for reforestation cus and a $101,500 [Speaker not understood].
What we can accomplish in
reforestation measures from fy '11-'12, they were able to prune 713 trees.
They were able to remove 322
trees, and they were able to
plant 87 0 trees. So, from those numbers we can
see that our tree planting
efforts are more than doubling the number of removals. We do want to point out that
those figures do not include -- this is urban forestry crew work.
This does not include work by contractors on capital projects
nor do they include our volunteer tree planting which
is a very robust effort also. With these resources, as described to you, we are forced
into what we call a reactive
tree work posture as opposed to a programmatic tree work posture. programmatic tree care where we could establish a tree maintenance cycle where you could get around to each of
those trees in an established time period throughout our
acreage of park land within the
city. And do pruning, structural
prune, that type of thing, that would actually maintain, prolong the health and condition of the trees.
And as you would imagine, would
also abate and actually prevent substantially the creation of
hazard trees. What we could do programmatic
tree care with these resources, the resulting tree maintenance cycle would far exceed 50 years
per tree.
we would fightctionvly -- finally get around to providing tree care for those 11,000 trees. In addition to operations
funding in the park 131,000 as a result of the clean green and safe generation bond
that passed, there is a $5 million urban forestry program within that bond program. And and with that money, the department did two things.
Number one, it did undertake
that two-year study that I referred to, this document
right here which is our assessment of urban forestry operations from which all these
numbers come. and it also provides context for getting to programmatic tree care. And also with the other money
we were able to undertake tree assessments on various park
properties to identify the highest park properties that had hazard rated trees that needed to baitment and also
provide project funding to undertake hazard abatement on those properties. the ones that we've been able
to complete thus far are tree
work at park side square at stern grove and throughout golden gate park. Upcoming parks that are still
in the -- in queue for those
are buena vista, crocker amazon, gilman playground and others. So, that gives you a
description of the current state of urban forestry
operations within the rec and park department currently and
our desire is strongly to transition from reactive tree care to one of programmatic tree care. You heard from dpw that the best practice standard for a tree cycle on street trees was 3 to 5 years.
There is no established
industry standard for programmatic tree care on park
land but we did look at other systems throughout the country to see what is currently being done and there is a range. They range from the seattle
park system, an 18 year cycle
for their park trees, to prospect park conservancy in
brooklyn, new york, which is a very high performing park district and their goal is five years. So, you know, we continue to do
our work in trying to find what
we would be able to land in
that range of programmatic tree
care cycle for san francisco. and we look forward to
continuing to work with you and with the planning department in achieving that goal in the future.
>> thank you very much, Mr.
Kern.
>> next we will hear from acon to present his finance study about our urban forest.
Welcome.
>> good afternoon, supervisors.
My name is sarah hurd and I'm with acom, I'm a sustain able economist and I'm going to be
presenting on the findings of the financing study that would
kitctiontionved -- conducted
for the planning department. Just a brief overview, this is
a study that focused specifically on street trees and the overriding objective was really to understand how much of is it currently costing
property owners to take care of
street trees and what would it
cost to implement a municipal program where, instead of transferring the street trees to the property owners you
bring them all under dpw's care
for the next 20 years. And, so, in addition to the benefits and costs of this
municipal program, we also explore different financing
mechanisms.
so, we started off our work by
looking at other cities. We focused primarily on cities
in california because of the financing constraints to california cities. The focus on this research was really to understand what other cities are doing in terms of urban forestry, how are they managing their costs, how are they paying for their programs.
and, so, we looked at everything from santa monica which has one of the leading urban forestry programs in the country. We looked also at portland which is outside of san
francisco, but they have a very large -- california, large tree canopy. And we also looked at san jose,
which they have a program where property owners take care of all of their street trees.
We considered a wide range. And the urban forest and the
details that go into t there is
across all cities, but a number of themes emerged from the research.
And the first one is, as douglass mentioned, [Speaker not understood] Is highly efficient. When you have a municipal program and you can go down corridors along streets, and
you only have to make, you know, one trip through a corridor and you only have to do traffic detail a couple times, a lot more efficient than going one by one responding to service calls and emergency responses which is what dpw is currently doing.
>> do you have a metric for how
much more efficient it is? >> we do, actually. It looks like if you do in san
francisco, you can save up to 50% on your maintenance. That's specific to san francisco. Eversiti is different.
I think it is sacramento who
said they can actually save 75%
if they do block pruning versus individual trees. >> density?
>> yes, and economies of scale. The next finding is that routine maintenance brings down costs.
And we've covered this already, but as douglass and carl
mentioned, only about 20% of dpw's current work is for routine pruning.
the remained erred is forest service calls and emergency service response. If you are able to maintain your trees to a certain standard and ensure that they are healthy, then of course it is going to bring your costs
down and you are going to be
saving quite a bit of money when you're not responding to emergencies and service calls
and you're also likely to see
your liability go down because your claims against the city for things like trip and falls or hazardous trees are likely to come down, too.
>> and again, do you have a metric or that routine maintenance if you -- care versus emergency care, how much do you save? For
>> I'll get into it a little bit when I further present more of the costs. But I think, you know, overall
when you're looking at the sort
of routine and the block printing all together, you're coming down over 50%. Pruning
so it's all wrapped up there.
The next major findings are
case studies is that most other cities don't pay for sewer repair.
And this is something that san francisco ha historically paid
for if a property owner finds a
city maintained tree roots in its sewers, makes a claim, [Speaker not understood].
As you can see from this chart, the number of claims and the amount of these claims that the city has been paying over time has been increasing with the exception of this last fiscal year.
And this is something that has pretty dramatic implications if you are to move forward in a municipal program.
>> the question on this.
It might be under purview, but the public utilities commission
is getting ready to do a major sewer replacement program throughout the city.
how much do we know of that replacement program impacts
this as they replace sewers, or are they also addressing the potential tree impact? Not at all?
>> no, this is a side sewer -- >> so, we won't get into that issue. >> lateral.
>> and my understanding is that san francisco, I've been told,
is the only city in the country perhaps that historically has
paid for side sewer claims
where a tree's roots impact the side sewer.
I'm told that no other city in
the country does that and that
this city has now stopped doing
that.
I'm also told that -- I'm not an expert in side sewers.
Healthy side sewers that are intact typically don't get damaged by roots, but then when
a side sewer is already in poor shape, the roots can exacerbate that.
>> that's correct.
the city we spoke with who did
not pay for sewer say it's responsible for the homeowner
to fix a leaky sewer. The tree will make it worse, they didn't start that problem,
they don't pay for that.
The final point in this is something that was touched on earlier. municipal programs tend to provide a higher standard of care.
Ideally you have a maintenance cycle where, as with property owners you're not exactly sure.
As part of our study, we
surveyed property owners to try to understand, well, how often are you taking care of your trees and what is it costing
you? And our survey actually asked people who are in front of the urban forest database. These are what you would think would be the more responsible property owners who asked for
trees in front of their home, they're interested in taking
care of t. 20% of them said they never prune their trees. We would expect that to be
quite a bit higher if you're looking beyond that survey population. The other thing you'll see in this chart is almost 60% other people that we surveyed are pruning every single year which is an over pruning situation. And that can be just as
damaging to the tree. So, we'll speak a little about the cost that we estimated for
our municipal program. We look 20 years into the future for san francisco if
they were to take over all 105,000 or so trees. And we looked at two different scenarios. The first one basically add 100,000 trees over 20 years.
And then we dialed that down and said, what if you add up the same number of trees over 35 years instead? So, that's the scenario I'm
going to present to you today because the cost seem more feasible.
And, so, in that scenario you have about 2900 trees that
you're planting every year to grow the urban forest of the street tree population on top
of all the trees you need to replace that are dying every
year, 4%, just to keep these in
with the population.
so, what you end up with is an average annual cost over the 22
years of just under 23 million to about 31 million.
And the range comes in with
efficiency. So, block pruning, just depends how many trees you can get to during a day. Ideally if you're at the high end of your range obviously your cost is going to be lower. If you can't get to as many, we looked at what your maximum cost scenario. That's what this range indicates.
>> if I can just clarify, the 2900 new trees, that's just to keep up with the trees that are
dying or that's to expand? >> that's to expand. The 4% is to keep up.
>> so, if you were to take the 2900 new trees out of the equation, what does the number
come down to, 22 to 31 range would drop down to what? >> the cost? >> yes. >> I'd have to look.
I can get back to you on that, but I can come back with that. >> that would be a general policy question if we don't
have the money to maintain, why are we adding new. Maybe we should try to maintain what we have. >> Mr. Chairman, I agree with that. And, so, I think there are different options.
And clearly if we were going in the direction of increasing the size of the urban forest, we
would not do that unless we had dedicated funding stream guarantee. In the past we had issues about planting new trees and then not budgeting the maintenance money to take care of them. I think we all want to avoid
that.
>> I'll return to that chart. And basically, what you see is your costs are increasing over the 20 years because they're tracking with your trees increasing.
So, that line on top shows your
increase in trees which is over 50% and this chart actually shows the sort of middle range of that efficiency. This is what this cost would look like over time.
And the bulk of the cost is in maintenance.
we looked at everything from planting establishment, maintenance which is routine pruning and thing like inspection.
We also looked at sidewalk
repair and what we call nonsewer claim, so claims for
trip and falls and hazardous
trees. we also compared this program to what property owners are currently paying and what they would -- how that would compare.
So, it would continue to pay.
Again, we mentioned before. Basically what we have is
currently property owners are spending between about 160,
$175 a year to maintain their trees. And we expect this to be a lowest matt just because so
many of the people that we surveyed have very young trees.
>> can I just ask, in terms of
other cities, what are some other cities doing that we're not doing? Are they -- because there are
other cities that take care of
their urban forest. Are they just more disciplined about annual budgeting? Do they have a dedicated funding source? What are they doing that we're not doing?
>> santa monica is the leading example in the country, really, I think. And they have a very strong general fund support. i think that's unusual.
And they also have strong community support that pushes for that every year. They're on I think 3 to five-year maintenance cycle in
general.
Sacramento and davis, both use their levy fees, but they don't cover all of their costs. and, so, you know, the six cities that we looked at, some
of them are actually quite stressed so they're not all best scenario case cities. There was a real need for funding in quite a few cities
with he were looking at. >> that's not just san francisco? >> that's not just san francisco at all.
We didn't find anybody that was relinquishing trees. portland was is where property owners do most of the work. They don't have the money. They would like to bring it internal but they can't afford it. >> thanks.
>> um-hm. So, back to the property owners and what they're currently paying.
They're paying about 1 06 to
$175 a year per tree. As I mentioned, this is probably low because these are
very young trees, most of them.
But despite that, you still see a benefit from -- when you compare it to what would it
cost per tree to maintain the street trees under municipal program.
And this is because you get not
large economies of scale and efficiencies as douglass mentioned when you were able to take care of, you know, a vast number of trees rather than each individual person calling on a contractor and taking care of their tree.
So, you have a benefit of
between 15 and $70.
And the other additional benefits besides the monetary are when you have a municipal
program or we assumed a program in san francisco, basically property owners wouldn't be responsible for anything and that includes liability.
So, while the sewer issue is
sort of a side issue, trip and falls and hazardous trees, the city would cover that. That's basically it for a significant change.
Trip and falls has averaged about $24,000 a claim over the
past eight years or so. It's a pretty big cost if you get stuck with that as a property owner.
The additional benefit of the problem it grows the urban forest.
>> in your sense with the city attorney's office the city would routinely get sued for trip and fall sidewalk, and tender the claim to the property owner so the homeowners insurance would then pick up the defense and presumably the rates would then
increase for that property owner the next year.
It definitely is a burden on
the property owners.
>> so, [Speaker not understood] The financing options piece, after we estimated costs, looked at what are the range of mechanisms that might be
available for the city. And we evaluated everything
from special assessments to special taxes to something like the joint powers authority between different agencies who
take care of trees. And we narrowed it down to about 3 that were most feasible.
and this would be a landscape
and lighting assessment
district oakland and sacramento
have lamps that cover their entire city.
You can do it city-wide or a parcel district or general obligation bonds. And san francisco in the last
two bonds that t has passed has put significant money in the floor tree planting and early tree care.
So, each of these three tools, while they're most viable for street trees, they're usually
not specific to street trees. Usually additional programs [Speaker not understood].
>> the only thing I want to stress, the acom study was limited to street trees. >> yes.
>> I know rec and park did a separate study on its own park trees.
For me just speaking for myself, if we were to move
forward with any kind of dedicated funding proposal, it
would be very important to me to include both street trees and park trees.
The two I think, even though technically different departments, they're still part
of the you are babe forest.
>> I'm not familiar with landscape and lighting
districts. Could you share aspects or requirements that are -- how are they different from other funding mechanisms? >> it is a special eightv district.
If you're family with special assessment district it's a version of cdc. >> do you carve out specific geographic regionses? >> you can do that or you can do it city-wide.
Oakland has one city-wide. Acsacramento has it city-wide. You're subject to all the requirements of the special assessment. You have to have an engineer's report.
You have to get majority vote
of the property owners. And typically [Speaker not
understood] Are specific to right-of-way improvements. They tend to focus on trees or sidewalkses or beautification
or any sort of range of CBDs.
>> unlike cbd it's not run by nonprofit organization set up? >> run by the city.
>> one of the other challenges with city-wide district is you have to make sure all the
property owners are getting equivalent benefit. So, if you have some parts of the city that have fewer street trees or more or different areas that are further or closer to parks, those are all things that have to be taken into account.
>> you have to show a very clear nexus between, you know, the fee you're charging and the benefit you provide just like
any other special assessment.
So, when we looked, we applied these financing mechanisms to
the projected cost. Basically what would be the impact of the burden on property owners and taxpayers to understand how much you
would basically need to levy. so, a special assessment or
parcel tax, if you focus just
on o & m, take out planting and
early tree care, everything
like tree pruning and sidewalk repair and claims, we looked at
what it would cost your average san francisco lot, so 25 feet by 100 feet.
between 43 and $60 a year as a
special assessment between 46 and 65 the parcel tax if you base it on square footage.
If you do a flat tax, it's oven
obviously higher because it's distributed evenly, 90 to $130. >> this is for street trees only, doesn't include park trees? >> street trees. >> park trees could be on top of this.
of course there is the eternal
debate in san francisco about
parcel taxes whether my 500
foot square foot condo or someone's tiny little house
should pay the same as the bank of america building which is typically how we do it. There is always that discussion whether it should be by some other metric.
>> um-hm.
So, we looked at on top of o & m, what if you covered all of your costs. Obviously this increases the impact on the financing mechanism. So, you're out between 69 and
96 on a especially assessment.
And then a parcel tax is
anywhere from 74 to $142, depending on how you do that,
whether it's based on square footage or based as a flat tax. >> and again, this is just street trees?
>> just street trees. And, so, our ultimate recommendations is you should focus on o & m. It's a smaller burden.
you're more likely to be able to pass that. It's well under $100 if you do want to layer nonstreet trees on top of that, you still have
a little bit of room for that. At the same time, gl bonds have been a good source of funding
for planting and early tree care and are additional funds available. So, the problem is with maintenance money. planting has been easier to come by. So, target your special assessment or tax to maintenance. And finally as we brought up several times, this doesn't include park trees.
So, if you want to do a similar study that would account for park trees, that would be necessary to understand how
much is in that cost. >> and I think we'd need to take a look at the work that rec and park has done and how we need to build on it.
We know that rec and park has more trees than street trees. There's also of course a variation because something
that's deep inside of a forest doesn't need the same maintenance attention, regularity that something else right on a trail where you have people walking by all the time.
so, I'm sure we'll be working
to fine tune and get good
numbers for rec and park so we
can take a local look at street trees and park trees. >> okay. Thank you.
>> thank you very much. Colleagues, if there are no further questions, before we get to public comment I'd like to invite dan ran began from friends of the urban forest to
make comments. Flannagan.
I really want to thank for the amazing work for many years during the good years and the
bad and having gone to a number
of plannings in my district. It's served as a great community building exercise. >> thank you very much. Thank you, supervisors, for having this hearing.
I especially want to thank supervisor weaner and especially supervisor chiu who
have been huge supporters of us and in addition to all the rest of the supervisors on the board. but specifically supervisor
weaner has addressed this issue
which we feel that has felt a fundamental issue that faces -- san francisco and san francisco urban forest. I first want to talk a little about reality. I'll talk about reality first. First through history. We have been around for 31
years. Ironically we started 31 years
ago when the supervisors had cut the budget for trees and they've been cutting it for several years. Five individuals decided that they needed to start another system in order to ensure that san francisco had an urban forest.
Now, you look -- now 31 years later we're in a very similar situation. so, when people said we've been
cutting the budget for eight
years for tree maintenance and tree care in san francisco, yeah, we've been doing it for eight years.
But we've been doing that -- it's pretty systemic in this
city that they do not support plantings of trees in san francisco.
Now, if you look at our city in
relation to other cities in the united states and the top 23 cities, in terms of canopy
coverage, we rank about 21 out
of 23 top cities.
At 13.7% canopy coverage versus
42% in portland.
And I think that sacramento has something like 24%. so, you know, when you're saying that we shouldn't be growing the canopy, we should be growing the canopy because there is a huge amount of benefits that accrued to the
city to the community by having a healthy and large urban forest. So, that's the first point.
The other point is that of the 105,000 street trees that we currently have in san francisco, it's really important to notice that you're losing 4% of those trees every
single year. What we didn't talk about in this study is people are
currently planting trees in san francisco is dpw, because of
budget cuts, are only planting
375 new trees a year. you have homeowners who are probably planting about a thousand trees a year and
friends of the urban forest are
planting between a thousand to 200 -- a thousand to 1200 trees a year. Therefore if you look at a
mortality rate of over 4,000
trees which is concerted,
you're looking at losing 15-trees per year.
We really have to address the financing mechanisms that have been inherent in the city for a long time. And you have to recognize the
fact that our urban forest is actually declining. It's not growing. Which brings even more attention to this issue right
now. The current reality to date
with what's happening in relink wishment, we have a lot of publicity right now how expensive it is to keep a tree.
We have a lot of people calling our office constantly saying this is a terrible thing to be doing. And we agree with them.
And that is one of the reasons
why we partner together with planning and with dpw to have
this study done with aecom. what is happening, we feel that clearly we have to go the other direction. The city has to take care of all the street trees and for
all the reasons that aecom has
pointed out.
And my remarks by saying that
we have a huge head wind of
negativity around urban
forestry because of this -- the news about relinquishment and everyone is worried about how much it costs to plant a tree and maintain a tree in san francisco. So, it's harder and harder for us actually to go out there and plant trees.
We feel that by taking away the
liability, by taking away trip
and fall, by taking away sidewalk damage, take those liabilities away, ting it will be a lot easier to convince folks in san francisco to maintain their trees.
And then if you have all the maintenance taking care of for the history of the tree after three years, I think people will be much more prone to be planting trees.
And maybe -- and I really strongly urge the supervisors
to look at growing the urban forest because the benefits that accrue are huge. And just for instance, you have
one of our least tree
districts, district 4, outer
sunset has about a 5.7% coverage of canopy. That's opposed to 14% in other parts of the city.
and we have a huge -- we have a very large aquifer underneath that part of the city that is currently not being recharged. So, the puc is interested as well as I think the city should be interested in trying to
break up as much concrete as possible to able -- to make
that district more green and also to bring the benefits back to the city.
>> thank you. You raise an interesting point, Mr. Legg. Puc has been a great
beneficiary of this work, the
aquifer had made an approach about using some of their enterprise dollars for some of this work.
>> I don't know. >> has the controller been
asked about that, mayor's budget office? >> I don't think we talked to them about tree maintenance.
They've been helping with other
landscaping -- you know,
essentially pavement to parks
kinds of -- you know, kinds of things, but not tree maintenance itself.
I don't know why we couldn't look into that.
So, I think it would be -- my
guess is it would be a long road. >> if I could ask one follow-up
question. I absolutely agree with you
that I think this issue has created a little bit of resentment around this issue around trees. i'm wondering just for the record, obviously we're having a conversation about this now. Could you talk about what I think everyone presumes the benefits of trees?
Why we need an open canopy, why this is a good thing? >> we have an interesting climate here in san francisco.
If anyone was watching the game recently, at the series -- >> I don't think anyone here was watching the giants. [Laughter] >> I don't think so. You notice there was a little bit of precipitation towards the ninth inning. And, so, we had huge rain events. In those huge rain events, basically we overcharge our sewers and we have a combined
sewer system. When that overcharges, you look at certain parts of the city and you have some in your
district where the sewage actually -- raw sewage comes out onto the street or it goes into the bay or it goes into the ocean.
So, trees are one of the great mechanism to hold that water. I think some -- if you have a mature tree, I've heard from
dpw, it can hold up to 2000 gallons of water and let it down over time.
so, that's one of the benefits. It cools the air. You were talking a little bit about before. Obviously we don't need that much cool air throughout the year but there are times.
And maybe in the future with climate change we would want to benefit from there.
it increases home values by 7%. It clears particulate matter out of the air. With the incidence of asthma increasing in certain parts of our city, it's really important to be planting more trees. Those are usually the trees that the parts of the city that don't have that many trees.
>> and for those of us who are pigmentally challenged, myself included, it provides much needed shade. >> yes. And also we forget it beautifies the city.
We all talk about the economics benefits and the environmental benefits.
But we in san francisco pride ourselves as a green city with one of the lowest canopies. What would it look like if you drove up and down the streets of san francisco if they looked
like the streets like on noe
between castro and dee boils? Those are fantastic trees. This is an investment 30 years from now.
It's a very wise investment. And one last thing is if you
talk about trees, it's the only piece of infrastructure, green infrastructure that actually
increases in value over time. doesn't decrease, it increases.
So, I think it's wise stewards of our environment here to be investing in this going forward. >> I appreciate that. Really in part because I think we're going to probably hear a lot of comment today. We've heard from city staff about the challenges of the budget and of maintaining it from a city end. Obviously from the private property owner there are challenges as well. and what I hope is not lost in this is I think we all can agree that we do need to have trees. In fact, I would support
thinking about how we do expend urban canopy with the budget and fiscal financial challenges that we have. I do hope that broader point is not lost. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, Mr. Planner. >> thank you.
>> I do want to give the parks alliance an opportunity. Did you want to say a few words?
I don't know if we have any public comment cards filled out. We do.
If anyone wishes to make public
comment, please fill out a
yellow card. Mr. Oh grade I.
>> thank you. Matt o'gragy [Speaker not
understood]. -- o'grady [Speaker not understood].
First I want to thank all of
you very strongly for your
interest and attention on this
very important issue. the tree canopy in san francisco, both for street
trees as well as for park trees; a significant contributor to the quality of
life as well as the quality of
our environment in san francisco.
And the chronic lack of funding for that important asset has been a significant issue as you have identified.
I also want to point out to you that specifically where park trees are concerned, first some basics.
I think you May very well know
from holding that the parks
alliance has done recently.
That needless to say san franciscans value their parks extremely highly.
There is a great openness to
support greater funding for the park system in san francisco both through bond funding,
knock on wood, as well as operating funding which we also know is an issue that needs to be addressed.
From our perspective, we see the chronic shortage of
financing available to the rec and parks department that denny has identified for you as part of the larger issue of the chronic shortage of operating funding in general for our park system in san francisco.
And, so, we hope that as you look further into this, you will look at it from that larger perspective of how do we
address and fix that problem,
which from last fall seeking green, somewhere in the $30 million per year range overall
in terms of operating
maintenance shortfalls for the rec and parkses department alone. From our perspective we hope you will take a look at it from that larger perspective and look at solutionses that can address that as well as the trees issue. Thank you.
>> thank you very much. Okay. So we'll now move to public
comment. Each public commenter will have
two minutes.
You'll hear a soft buzz, you'll
have 30 seconds left, and a louder bell when your two minutes are up. And we ask that you finish your sentence so we can move to the next speaker.
So, I will call names.
And they are starting with fran martin, laura [Speaker not understood].
i apologize if if I mispronounce any names, as someone who says my name is
pronounced.
Greg martany.
Laura tam. Suzanne a russo.
Rose hilton.
and bernice garcia.
>>> my name is fran martin and
I represent the visitacion valley greenway project and planning alliance. I'm a board member of the san francisco parks alliance and on tacac.
In the past on the ta prop expand tour [Speaker not understood], I advocated for more street trees and sidewalk improvements.
I'm a past soft board member.
I'm also on the [Speaker not understood] Landscape
improvement, which is an lad [Speaker not understood]. Given the current threat level of global warming and
greenhouse gases, we need to act yesterday to cool our cities which run 10 degrees hotter than surrounding country side. We have an immediate partial solution. We need to increase our urban forest on our streets, back yards, in our parks. We're in a crisis and need to
stop doing nothing. San francisco congratulates itself on being a beautiful city. and it is if you live in st. Francis and [Speaker not understood]. From a reality, our city is beautiful from a distance.
It is uninvited with a preponderance of sidewalks and [Speaker not understood] Jammed together. Compared with sacramento which has lovely tree canopies, san francisco is anemic and uninviting.
we have neglected our park forest [Speaker not understood]
To make a amends with supervisor weaner's bill to fund street and park trees. Thanks. >> thanks. Next speaker.
If folks could line up so we can move through, that would be great.
>>> my name is [Speaker not
understood] And I just wanted to thank you, supervisors, for taking action on this because this has been a budget item for
san francisco for 25 years. This has really shaken my
confidence in the city planners' planning. This is something that's really critical to us. We've all been talking about our city's beauty and our health.
I would like to add the bird.
the canopy also hold wildlife. It's a beautiful thing in my neighborhood I enjoy. I would not like to lose the trees, but the trees in my neighborhood are not small trees. I've gotten a couple bids.
It's going to be like $2,000 for our two trees. It's not $100. So, I'm just an ordinary person.
I don't have this kind of
money. I'm just -- I really applaud you guys for taking care of this because it's critical.
The other thing I'd like you to consider my homeowners association is going to have to go before a hearing which again shakes my confidence because I don't feel like we're guilty of something.
Our trees were always maintained by the city, they're very large trees. If there is anything that can
be done to halt that process of
these hearings to transfer over until the city planners have figured out what is the best
thing to do because it's a tremendous burden on our level. So, thank you. >> thank you.
Next speaker. >>> greg moritani with japantown task force. Our neighborhood has a particular interest and concern.
As you know, redevelopment took
over that part of san francisco
and when it did they maintained -- there what a tabs fern plant
and had they put in those lovely cypress tree, fast growing, but not maintained the watering. The trees in our neighborhood have been pruned from underneath. So, what happens is the trees have grown 50 feet tall, blocking views.
They now block the cover of the lighting for the street lights. So, at night people don't want to go out.
The leaves fall all year.
When it gets wet they become very slippery because those
leaves are a little waxy. We would prefer to have those trees removed, but we understand the city's policy.
We have an organization that is
willing to replant cherry trees in the neighborhood to be more in tune with japantown.
We have a group of young people
that are being provided a work service to where they are being
paid a bit to water these newly planted cherry trees.
We believe it will take time to transfer the responsibility to the homeowner. People aren't concerned about that, but in our neighborhood
the sidewalks have been upgraded by those cypress trees. And in talking with the people who have received those notices, they are now responsible, they are very concerned they will be responsible for pruning a tree that's over 50 feet tall that they never asked for. So, in essence, we believe that
there is a way, but in our community we can't provide the trees to be replaced to help offset some of the cost. >> thank you very much. Can
our next speaker. >>> I'm happy to take the podium. Thank you so much. My name is laura thatvthv. I'm on spur staff and I'm on the board of the friends of the urban forest and I live in district 4 and I have one of
the few -- one of two street trees on my block, which I maintain. And it would be great to have more. Thank you so much for holding this hearing, especially thank
you to supervisor weaner for paying so much attention to the urban
testing
testing >> thank you very much.
Next speaker. Just before you start, I have called all the cards that I have. Sue, if anyone wants to speak and hasn't filled out a card, please do so. Thank you. Go ahead. >>> thank you.
My name is cathy halenan from save jefferson street coalition. Thank you very much, supervisors, for your support and also thank you for this very important hearing. I'd like to say that san
francisco really has to be the defined permanent funding for this issue. San francisco has to be the leader, world leader as far as green planning. We are a world city and we can do it. I know I'm willing to come to other meetings and brain storm as far as financing, but I certainly second all the comments that have been made today and I hope this is the first of many.
Trees not only contribute to climate change, helping climate change but also the health of humans.
I want to make note of a study done in scandinavia five years ago where the insurance companies were going to look
into the health of the loggers in the pine forest. And they had found -- they were
going to increase the premiums
thinking their health would be affected negatively by this work. They found the pine forest and
pine world et cetera increased the antioxidants in the immune system of the workers and loggers of the forest. I'll be sending studies to follow-up on that. That's also very important.
san francisco has a very unique climate in the world. We're the mediterranean climate. Things grow here beautifully and we should be increasing our canopy. And thank you for this work that you're doing to that regard.
It also protects -- provides species and habitats for
species that's important. 97% of the old growth forests
are gone. So, urban forests are very important. And I look forward to you putting that on your agenda. Thank you. >> thank you very much.
Next speaker.
Yes, hello, my name is bernice garcia, resident of district 1. Just found out about this
meeting today so I don't have a prepared statement.
I do have an idea, though.
I am a small-time landlord, ma
and pa landlord and I currently
pay a landlord tenant fee every year.
It's a fee that both the
landlord and the tenants pay every year.
And I think this could work to
help support the tree canopy in san francisco. The tenants enjoy the parks and
the street trees as much as property owners and for the
same reason, property owner who gets dinged. so, I think this would be a good solution for raising money
and I hope it will be considered kind of a cost sharing thing because trees are
for everyone and not just
property owners.
I also want to add to that one of the features talking about
the tree canopy in portland, oregon, they will never have to water their trees. [Laughter] >>> thank you for your consideration.
>> thank you very much.
Next speaker.
>>> my name is david and I live in [Speaker not understood]
Park and I have a small company
called trees company. mostly it's sonoma, mendocino county, but I have a different question. It might have to do with some
of the people behind me.
Are the narrow lanes and alley
ways of san francisco considered as streets of city
property? [Speaker not understood] Was
that included in the surveys of what the city [Speaker not
understood]?
>> maybe when we're done we'll ask for an answer to that. But you should proceed with your public comment. >>> okay, thanks. >> yeah.
And I will say that it depends street by street, there are streets that are not. >>> we have a lot of small
streets in the city like alley ways and north beaches, places you can't plant a tree. The park has quite a few.
>> some of the alleys are privately maintained depending what they are. >>> were these included,
though, in the surveys? >> in the surveys? All street trees were included, as I understand it. >>> on the street we have. >> yes, thank you.
Next speaker. >>> my name is dwight smith, I live in [Speaker not understood] Park. I want to thank supervisor
weaner for bringing this issue to the fore.
Just a couple quick things
where I've seen some very, very
hacked up jobs of pruning where somebody, private owner has
gone for probably the lowest
possible price and you can see
that the trees have been really butchered.
The other thing is that we have a number of city trees that
have been maintained by the city on our streets and the city was just in last week and they were about 10 trees in this one little block area. And they went in, they pruned
all those within about I'd say just over half a day. So, I mean, they were really
after it.
Anyway, that's my comment and I
support trying to find permanent funding to increase the urban canopy. Thank you.
>> thank you very much. >>> good afternoon,
supervisors. I'm kiersten [Speaker not understood]. I want to thank our urban forresters that have been working hard for the decade and people who turned out to support urban forest. You've heard from everybody why it's so important. I want to echo all of the reasons why we need an urban
forest.
it's critical for livability. In this climate, we're not maintaining our urban forest. We're in a situation where
we're diminishing the number of trees, are going down in our city.
That it's so important for us to invest in their maintenance
and in growing what we have.
We can't afford to.
The economic benefits are something that we haven't as a nation looked for, but there is increasing evidence for that. You've heard some of that today. There's more out there and we're excited that you're here and talking about it. I know it's a difficult problem and I know we don't have the money to do it but we need to figure out how to.
We need to hear about what ae com has in store for us and your ideas and plans so we can work together ask to maintain and grow our urban forest. Thanks for starting the process. >> thanks very much.
Next speaker. >>> good afternoon and thank you for the chance to address you all.
My name is aaron brick and I'm an instructor at city college of san francisco.
The question of the equitable distribution of street trees in san francisco was only obliquely referred to during the comments we've heard so far today, but I'd like a chance to
observe for the benefit of you supervisors and everyone else
here that the street trees are far from well distributed across this town. And as city monies have been spent in the past for the
purpose of installation and maintenance of street trees,
that resource has accrued unjustly to exactly the neighborhoods you might suspect
would be able to fund those
operations themselves. These words probably have revealed to you by now that I
live in what I regard to be a tree desert.
and while property taxes are
the third highest line item in my household budget, I am
absolutely willing to pay more
taxes for the installation of street trees provided that some of them be in my neighborhood.
[Laughter]
>>> I live in the portola district, district 9. Thank you.
>> thank you.
That is an important point. These are not well distributed throughout the city.
Next speaker.
>>> my name is gene scheidt and I work for california urban forestry program and I want to thank you all for giving me this moment to speak.
As an ply aloe of the
department and more specifically the program, our program is tasked with
enforcing the california urban forestry act of 1978 which was
briefly spoken about which in a
nutshell speak to the rest of
the climate of the urban forest
and recognize the benefits trees provide our urban communities.
I think it has been discussed
in great detail here, you know, to arrest that decline of our urban forest, we need to really
take a stabbed and take charge of those trees and maintain those properly. Stand without maintenance planted trees only go so far.
if we have city trees out there
providing benefits to the city
as a whole, the city should take command of caring for those trees.
We had a great relace ship with
the city, not only the city's
recent park and rec grant to inventory high priority trees, but with many projects that funded urban forest.
Relationship [Speaker not understood] Completed throughout the years with assistance from state bond funds. We want to continue that relationship. We want to see that move
forward.
Unfortunately recently we weren't able to fund a project from the parks -- excuse me, from dpw to conduct an
inventory of all our trees, to realize what those benefits are. Because we're not understood monetarily, a lot of heads turn and a lot of things are realized. There is a current assessment going on and a portion of the
city now through a funding sources. i think it's only covering a
fragment of the bigger picture.
And I can always be hereof service and I'm always someone here that would love to speak further on this when given a chance. I encourage you to continue with this and appreciate everybody's efforts thus far. >> thank you very much. Next speaker. And actually let me call the
remaining cards. andrea guards. Meredith thomas. Dwight smith.
And sandee shear win. -- sherwin. >>> good afternoon,
supervisors. I'm sandee sherwin and I live in district 11.
Full disclosure, I am also on urban forestry council.
i'm not going to repeat many items already brought up today,
but wanted to speak more as a
community member in my
district, the mission terrace association as well as [Speaker not understood] Membership. At monthly meetings I'm
constantly asked questions about trees relinquishment program, where people are to go and how to come up with money
to maintain their street trees. [Speaker not understood] Are
very big boulevards with large mature trees and residents are at a loss for how to pay for that. I also hear from other members of the community that they are quite willing to pay a little bit of money in order to have
the city maintain their trees.
so, I look forward to more information coming out of this
as a result of the economic study and thank you for holding these hearing.
>> thank you very much. [Speaker not understood]. >>> good afternoon, supervisors, meredith thomas with the san francisco parks alliance. I also want to thank you for holding this hearing today
dealing with our healthy urban forest, connecting the
relationship to street trees to our park system is very important. I hope we're not going to leave behind the maintenance needs of the park system in this conversation because I think the two work together. You're right, supervisor, that
at budget time, trees aren't as well representative as public
safety and public health nor the parks despite the work you three have done. I want to underscore if we
invest in things like our park system and the live ability of our city and having green street, we reduce the costs
related to President Public health and public safety.
We let our urban forest fall behind and we're having to play catch up on public health. We're having to get kids more active and get them outside when we could have done more to invest in the park system early on. So, I appreciate your
leadership on this issue and I
hope we can finally package investment in street trees with investment in park maintenance as a whole because they're undoubtedly related and the parks land looks forward to working with you on this issue. so, thank you. >> thank you very much.
Next speaker.
>>> hi, my name is andrea guard and I live in the pan handle district. Thank you very much for holding the hearing today.
I wanted to just echo a lot of
the sentiments I've heard.
But to say that the trees that
we have are in more or less relatively good condition. We don't have a giant canopy,
but we have a relatively safe -- relatively healthy canopy. It makes much more sense to me
to maintain what we have rather than risk losing what we have and then end up with a smaller canopy, no trees, considering
how long it takes trees to grow to end up decades down the road, going, why did we do this? But the cost of maintaining what we have and growing what
we have is going to be much less than in the long term having to replace the whole thing.
And considering that the trees are actually doing very important things for us like generating oxygen in addition
to all the other things that they're doing, that they're actually something that we need for our health and health of our children in addition to property values and habitat, and esthetic beauty.
So, the street trees in and of themselves, I as a property owner, we have a tree. We do everything we can to maintain it, but we would love
to be able to learn more about
our tree and the other trees on
our street so that we can help to make sure they're maintained. I do think it is something, a responsibility of the city overall working with organizations like friends of the urban forest and the parks department to make sure the residents know how to take care of the trees that they have in their neighborhood. Thank you very much.
>> thank you very much.
Last speaker, and I've called all the cards. This is the last speaker unless someone else wants to come up. >>> this is 192 from the san francisco independent and one
of the topics is board of supervisors examines troubled city budget.
I guess we haven't proceeded
too well. I'm a [Speaker not understood] Wrote a letter in 2008 saying
that he was going to do the long-term maintenance through the department of public works.
There is no mention in there about paragraph 8 06 a that says it could be for a hearing to either plant or remove a tree.
I live in district 8. If you look at the urban forestry plan which I wish you would all read that from the beginning, I don't understand
why I got a tree because the urban forestry plan has
district 8 as the most populated trees per street mile of all.
And also the urban forestry plan, you read those, also indicates that san francisco is on the par with all other cities in the state of
california.
and then you've planted a tree
and you've taken away property by eminent domain and I've not been reimbursed. So, this is really kind of centralized planning saying we're going to put a tree there and not reimburse the property owner for it.
I also urge you to read the
harvey rose report of 2006-7 on
public works because it
stresses the 180 some page report that stresses there is a lack of performance maintenance.
They were just behind for disability payments behind park and rec.
It's a lack of decision and choices at the 50,000 foot level, we've got pledthctionv of infrastructure that needs to be replaced.
whether it's sewers, high-speed
rail, all other aspects. And my comment is where is the adult supervision in the candy
store on this?
We've went out and planted 25,000 trees, $2,500 a piece, that's $60 million. We've planted the tip of the iceberg but we didn't fund the bottom of the iceberg.
this is what is so -- I am so frustrated [Speaker not understood] Through all this. Thank you.
>> thank you very much. Is there any member of the public who wishes to make public comment? Okay. Mr. Chairman, May we close
public comment? >> public comment is closed.
So, I want to thank everyone from the departments and organizations and ae com, thank you for the great work and for members of the public for really caring. This is not just going to be a
hearing that we hold and close
and forget about. I am extremely committed to moving forward, to really get our heads around what we need
to do, what our options are, and then having that public policy discussion about priorities within our existing
budget and in terms of any potential dedicated revenue that could be put into a lockbox to fund our urban
forest and to take back maintenance responsibility of property owners. I also look forward to working with my colleagues, members of
the public, and departments to move in that direction.
So, thank you, everyone. And President Chiu. >> thank you, first of all. I want to thank supervisor weaner for his leadership on this and look forward to working with you. And hopefully trying to figure
out some good policy solutions long term. But just a couple of quick comments. I appreciate the comment that was raised by meredith thomas about the operating expenses of
our broader park and open space needs.
And while I'm open to thinking
about a separate funding stream for trees, I do wish and hope
that there is a way for us to
think more broadly than that and incorporate expenses around trees and some sort of larger conversation around how we ensure and operate expenses of
all things that have to do with
our park system as well as our open space. Secondly, do think that the comment that was made about geographic distribution is an important one. And I don't think there are any
easy solutions in how to think about how the burden of paying for this can be borne by those property owners that are closest or benefit the most from trees. But if there are any good ideas in that area, I'd be very interested in that.
I did have one specific question unfortunately the leadership of the lower poke neighbors, they weren't able to
make this particular hearing. But in addition to the department of public works, I
think it was in 2008, 2009,
there were over 100 trees that were installed in the lower polk neighborhood on polk street.
In fact, the property owners received a letter confirming that the department would take responsibility for maintenance of all those trees. And what the feedback I received and obviously what we've seen on the street is that there hasn't been a regular watering of trees, half
the trees in the planters that died or in the process of dying. Bulk of the trees have been replaced. Hardware around the trees haven't been maintained. Wondering if you know about the
situation or if I could get some answers on what has been happening in the last few years in the polk street neighborhood
and my district. >> good afternoon, supervisors. Carla short, department of
public works. Actually, the debtv of public works has been watering the trees on polk street.
They were watered as part of a streetscape project. They came with one year of maintenance funding as part of the contract.
Through the department of public works operations program to continue. we have been watering them. In fact, we did a walk through
on polk street and identified a
couple of trees that needed to have their stakes removed or backfill. We're going to be working on removing the stakes. For the most part they looked pretty good.
So, we have had people out there regularly watering them and we are continuing to monitor them. but as I said, we did do a walk through just last week. We've identified a little bit of maintenance that needs to happen and we're going to be starting to tackle that particularly removing the steaks with the hardware in the next few weeks. >> could I suggest perhaps after this meeting we could figure out how to coordinate better with the neighborhood association and making sure that we're on the same page as
to the state of some of these, some of these trees? >> absolutely. >> thank you. >> commissioner, I have a
question.
Again, one of the various inequities about the current
maintenance system and a couple of speakers raised I think an important issue that not all trees are equal and there are some trees that are pretty
massive.
and, so, as a property owner receiving smaller manageable tree, it's one thing.
But if, you know, you're on -- especially on a thoroughfare that some huge, beautiful tree
is planted but it's really big
or guy from japantown mentioned tall trees presents a much bigger burden and expense on property owners. Obviously if we have a deal system where we can take back everything that's resolved. Unless and until that happens,
do you have any thoughts about the significant discrepancies among trees? >> I think it is also important
to remember that some of these costs, if they're borne over time, they're not as massive.
so, yes, you May have to pay a lot of money to prune that tree once. If it's done well, you won't have to bear those costs for a number of years.
I think it is true that many of the dpw maintained trees tend to be larger and healthier than the trees that are currently maintained by property owners.
And that's because the city has over the years, although we've fallen off our maintenance cycle, we have done routine maintenance and we're able to preserve those trees longer.
We have been working on a program for property owners who would qualify for a loan so
that they could have a low interest loan to enable them to perform some of these maintenance activities on trees
if they are given a transfer. however, I think the message is that we do have big healthy trees in san francisco because we have cared for them in the past and really what we should be looking for is a way to get
to that overall care where we can have bigger, healthier trees all over the place.
>> and just to be very clear, the trees, 24,000 that are in
the process of being transferred, before a property owner becomes responsible, my understanding is that dpw will
go out, do the pruning, get the
tree in good shape, fix any broken sidewalk caused by the tree, and turn it over in good shape. So, it's not like within the next six months or year the property owner is going to have to be spending money to maintain. >> that's right, the code does require the tree is inspected prior to transfer.
the way the code is written no routine or major maintenance should be required at the time of transfer. If it doesn't require pruning if the sidewalk is in good shape at that time, we can transfer the tree.
If it does require either pruning or sidewalk repair, we have to make those fixes before we can transfer to the property owner.
>> and if the property owner, if dpw concludes nothing is
needed and therefore it can be transferred and the property owner disputes that, would that be discussed at one of those hearings? >> that's right. Property owners in the packet of information we send them, they're given a dedicated e-mail address, dedicated phone line and hearing opportunity. And if they're not able to
attend that hearing we can reschedule them for another hearing. they can contact us in writing or come to the hearing to present the their concerns. >> thank you very much. Colleagues, if there are no other comments, then, Mr. Chairman, I would move to continue this item to the call of the chair.
>> do that without objection. >> Madam Clerk, any other items
in front of the committee? >> no, there are no other matters. >> seeing none, the meeting is adjourned.
