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The Board of Supervisors will consider street tree legislation very soon that will have a serious negative impact on our urban forest and on the trees in your neighborhood. Under the guise of streamlining permits, this poorly thought-out ordinance contains two main areas of concern:
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The ordinance lets developers fee-out of tree planting on new projects with in lieu fees.
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The ordinance lets city officials decide to cut down any public street trees, and the public will not be able to appeal, as they can now.
Here is more background. (Go to the bottom of the article if you are already convinced and want to Take Action NOW.)
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The in lieu fee is inadequate; it does not cover the full cost of planting and maintaining a tree in its early years.
- In lieu fees often do not always get used to plant trees. UCSF put $242,000 into the DPW Adopt a Tree fund to be planted in equity areas. To date, not a single tree has been planted from this fund.
- Feeing–out eliminates the need to place infrastructure (water, power, sewer) away from tree planting wells. This will result in solid paving in front of buildings now and fewer planting areas in the future.
- Feeing-out lowers the tree standards for all projects. If feeing-out tree planting is financially beneficial for one developer, all developers will have to eliminate trees in order to compete.
- Feeing out creates more administrative work for the city (collecting & managing fees, buying and planting trees) that should be borne by the developer.
- There is no guarantee in the legislation that the funds will be used to plant trees in equity areas or that the funding will not be used in areas that are already ‘green.’
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City officials who personally dislike certain trees will be able to initiate street tree removal with no appeal from local residents. This ordinance allows a city employee to designate a tree as a ‘hazard’ tree and cut it down -- with NO appeal. In Hayes Valley, a city official designated a whole block of trees for immediate removal. The neighborhood weighed in heavily and was able to save some of the trees and even obtained a better plan for tree replacement.
- Limiting public appeals reflects the current trend by those in power to limit citizen input. The Board of Appeals is not an easy board to convince. Removing this avenue of citizen participation is part of the current efforts to deprive the local citizenry of a voice in our government.
A simple google search will tell you that San Francisco has one of the lowest urban forest canopy percentages among major U.S. cities, covering only roughly 13.7%–14% of the city, well below the 27% national average. Whether or not San Francisco has a healthy, increasing urban forest, is up to you.
Take Action Now!
Email or call your supervisor and ask them to oppose this misguided effort to reduce developer contributions and to silence the public.
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Sign this petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-san-francisco-trees?source=direct_link&
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For more background, contact tree activist Joshua Klipp at joshuaklipp@gmail.com
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