A committee of San Francisco supervisors advanced an overhaul of the city\u2019s street-tree rules Monday after months of opposition from residents and tree advocates, who say it will allow more developments to proceed without planting street trees.<\/p>\n
The ordinance, if adopted by the Board of Supervisors, would let developers of smaller projects pay a fee instead of planting street trees, and would also end independent review of trees that Public Works deems hazardous and in need of removal.<\/p>\n
The ordinance is part of Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s PermitSF<\/a> initiative, a broader effort to reduce permitting delays and make development requirements more predictable. City planners said<\/a> understaffing at the Bureau of Urban Forestry, which manages the city\u2019s street trees, had made street-tree reviews a source of delay, with applicants waiting an average of 32 days for approval and sometimes learning of tree requirements late in the permitting process.\u00a0<\/p>\n Introduced by Lurie and Supervisor Alan Wong, the original proposal would have allowed all qualifying projects to pay a fee instead of planting trees, eliminated independent Board of Appeals review of city-initiated tree removals and eliminated both department-level and Board of Appeals review of hazardous-tree removals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Supervisors narrowed the measure<\/a>, retaining planting requirements for projects that meet the Better Streets Plan<\/a>\u2019s \u201clarge-project\u201d threshold \u2014 generally those that combine a large site, substantial construction or extensive street frontage with at least 10 homes or 10,000 square feet of commercial space or another major expansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n The revised measure retains Board of Appeals review of ordinary city-initiated removals under a faster timeline and restores one department-level appeal for hazardous-tree removals, but ends independent Board of Appeals review of those hazard determinations.<\/p>\n Projects below the large-project threshold could instead pay the city\u2019s in-lieu tree fee of $2,590 per required tree. Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, would be exempt from both planting and payment requirements.<\/p>\n The funds would go toward larger planting efforts and reduce delays for smaller projects, according to the Department of Public Works. The fees would go into a separate account within the Adopt-a-Tree Fund<\/a> and could be used only to plant trees and water them for their first three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The committee also adopted nonbinding language from an amendment introduced by District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey. The amendment states that when spending the money, Public Works intends to prioritize neighborhoods with low tree canopy, such as Bayview<\/a> and SoMa. It does not establish a required allocation or deadline for tree-planting.<\/p>\n Opponents argued that giving developers the option to pay instead of plant could undermine efforts to expand San Francisco\u2019s tree canopy, which, at 13.7 percent<\/a>, is among the lowest of any major U.S. city.\u00a0<\/p>\n They warned that projects designed without tree wells may decide to place water, sewer and electrical lines beneath the available sidewalk space, making future planting prohibitively expensive or impossible.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you approve no tree now, that\u2019s no tree ever,\u201d landscape architect Katherine Howard told the committee.<\/p>\n The proposal has generated months of written opposition<\/a>. The Board\u2019s legislative file contains hundreds of pages of emails and letters, including repeated objections from neighborhood organizations and individual residents.<\/p>\n Critics also questioned whether Public Works is spending the tree-planting money already collected from development-related in-lieu fees.<\/p>\n Josh Klipp, a former vice chair of the Urban Forestry Council<\/a>, told supervisors the department\u00a0 held millions of dollars in such fees \u2014 roughly $4.5 million \u2014 and argued that the balance showed the system was not reliably turning in-lieu fees into trees.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the new fees really meant a new tree, then that fund would be empty,\u201d Klipp said to the committee.<\/p>\n Public Works did not provide the fund\u2019s current available balance or respond in detail to those criticisms at the hearing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second major dispute concerned who gets the final say when Public Works declares a tree hazardous<\/a> \u2014 that is, dead, diseased, infested, likely to fail or creating a serious obstruction.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n