participation to it there's an enormous amount of work here >> thanks dan we are going to talk about trees. and we're going to start at the beginning. so san francisco nirnl having had very few trees it's a scrub lands and grasslands and when the city was considering hiring an architect to complete golden gate park and the architect expressed not good thoughts and didn't get the job. we have seven hundred thousand trees we estimate and in city parks we have 31 thousand trees.

and those trees are actually a tremendous capital estimate it will cost about $178 billion if we replanted those trees but those trees are mature they provide $10 million a year in environmental benefits from cleaning the air and a filtering are stormwater and increase property values in the city by $100 million. the trees have environmental benefits to economic benefits. they make studies have shown they make commercial districts more importantly and reduce heating and cooling costs and their calming in our streets.

studies have shown that the trees religious crimes ease speed healing in hospital patients. so why are we doing the plan? san francisco is oven renowned as a green and progressive city but we suffer from a lack of green. san francisco has one of the smallest canopy of trees in the city. this is a picture of the canopy and how much of the city is covered by trees. compared to other cities like la and chicago and portland has twice the tree canopy of san francisco. and trees in the urban area have a difficult time. they're growing in limited u limited growing spaces and

contacted soil and the building form because of the building set back being put close to the sidewalk we can't have a lot of large canopy trees on our streets. the issue of maintenance and funding for maintenance so this she's dwp maintenance over the last seven years. their staff has been cut in half over that time. the red bar she's the maintenance going from 5 years per tree to 12 years that's pruning and it's ballooned upwards. maintaining trees every 3 to 5 years this year this is a problem for the urban forest. many of you have seen those signs in front of your home and

dwp in response to those budget cuts their transferring 20 million trees into the hands of private property owns and this is unpopularity o popular with the public. the plan is doing 3 different things we looked at long-term funding solution for street tree maintenance and was it would cost to have a municipal planting. we're conducting a tree census in 3 different neighborhood the hate ashbury burger and collected the health of the suppose for 27 thousand trees

and we want to complete the consensus and help us improve the data of the resource. the third one we're developing policy documents to address the urban forest. as dan mentioned we're working with the department of public works and collaborating with rec and park to some stent. the way the plan is moving forward it's phase one which we're in the process felt wrapping is the urban forest plan and which will be the subject of our open house next week. we're going to focus on parks and trees in the open spaces so we're identifying funding and the third phase we're looking at buildings and private properties

to expand throughout the city with the living walls and looking at walls to address trees on private properties. so the 5 goals are to grow the urban forest, protect our existing trees, better manage the trees and find full and stable funding and to gleaning you the policymakers. so the four key recommendations of the tree street plan the first one is we want to maximize the benefits of trees. we know that the city's trees, you know, each street tree absorbs about 1 hundred thousand stormwater and it keeps the urban forest absorbs gastrohouse

gases and the city grey highway gases there's a huge benefit. we want to maximize those trees and find out which trees are the best for flood areas and which trees can absorb the air pollutants we might plant those near the freeways and we want to, you know, advertise those benefits to the public to make them aware. here's an example of a sign i think this is in chicago where they're putting the signs to let people know about the trees. this will stabilize and grow the urban forest.

we understand there are different efforts in the city that are promoting removal of some trees but in general we want to stabilize and grow the urban effort to have a better canopy for the national average. we want the city to reach a 25 percent canopy and that includes planting now a trees and necessitate trees on private properties. and those maps aren't great but this is one of the biggest recommendation. we want to have a citywide maintenance program. this will offer turn the status quo of turning the trees over to private property owners. the research show privately maintained trees don't do as

well as publicly maintained trees. we would let dwp would take over the maintenance and it will help the burdens of sidewalk repairs and this is a good deal toro san francisco property owners. >> is, see the map on the left the green are those are the of you trees that dwp are maintaining and the gray are the majority of the trees and this voeflz maintaining the trees. of course, this plan is to pressure stable funding 0 sources to have that program. the fourth recommendation is 80 manager trees throughout their

life cycle. we want to care for trees before they're on our trees and after their removed fro our street we might have a tree farm in san francisco where we can grow with community groups to train them and after trees are removed instead of chip them or land filling them finding i creative ways to use them for future or building materials in san francisco. and so we're going to be talking more in detail at the lgbt center the plan will be released then and we'll have a small exhibit of trees made into

furniture >> so we have the open house and the draft plan is on line and we expect about a four-month comment period so it will be interesting to hear the public's comments. on february and march we want to return to the committee to discuss the plans and possibly ask for the commissions endorsement and we're expecting for the plan to be adapted by a reference through the rose so the rose has policies in the plan that speak to the need for a forest adaptation plan. if you have thoughts we are interested to hearing them that concludes my presentation. if you have any questions, i'll be happy to answer them >> okay. thank you. open this up for public comment one speaker card.

carolyn johnson >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm carolyn johnson the president of the san francisco forest alliance. i think this is fantastic anything we can do to promote trees in san francisco is all to the good. i want to put it in prospective. i love the fact to plant 50 thousand street trees but meantime one hundred and 70 thousand of the seven hundred trees are regarded by rec and park as invasive. every tree in san francisco is evasive. all trees are valuable and none of them should be regarded as

invasive. i agree it's worth all the money to maintain the street trees but let's keep in mind there's plans to destroy 18 thousands of them in our parks. and those trees are by and large much larger than those street trees. so while we are working hard developing the urban forest plan we need to keep in mind departments are doing things contradict to this goal. we need to be preserving exiting trees and plant more. and not removing any trees at all unless there's a danger to humans or structures. >> thank you.

>> sue hester when brian whatever his last name was the thorough of the leveling trees in the city i plant my tree in front of 20th street where i lived and i paid for someone to shape it while it was growing. that tree is still there. i now moved and i'm well aware of let a thousand trees blossom without any evaluation whether or not their appropriate is wrong. i'm familiar with the mission and you come down pulling son street and the entire lengths is beautifully their leafy and broad and that's what i planted

and when you go down 24th street and mission it's dark because it's a street of local i didn't pop trees they cut off light to the street and cut off light to the apartments on the second and third story. i hope the city is getting to the place where they're basically i would love it if 2w0ug9 street is safe by replanting the street. it's not save right now. i came up with this policy issue back in the old days when i was dealing with the center and there was a plan to do some additions on folsom street and it had been treeed. they were attracting tenants and i san francisco board of

supervisors land use & economic development committee found for the first time a planning commissioners who was ceo that people can actually go up the street and punch in a light halfway up that would she do light onto the street. because all the light up here didn't mean nothing if there's a tree as soon as possible up the light. we need to reconcile save streets and trees at the same time. it's not nuclear science and it's important for me in the mission because the mission isn't save right now because inappropriate trees were planted. i think i'm just giving a plea that the attention is paid to the relationship to light on the street and safety and street trees. i think we can balance them

because folsom street their balanced. come down folsom street. thank you >> there are no public speakers on this item. >> commissioner moore. >> i'm excited this is happening and i'm really excited we're way into the study and it's moving forward. as we're moving into completing the tree consensus i'd like to see whether or not the discussion this commission had over the years could potentially put the focus on landmark trees and preservation for trees which are in the pickup realm. their amazingly mid block trees which you see peaking over the building blocks when you are are in the street 1y5i7b9 i jane it

but if you are facing the open space which is the largest majority of the trees in san francisco their trees that have been around so long they almost have historical landmark status. but i'd like to see there's specific attention made particularly because you can't find them in a reference book. i'd like to add that as an additional thought particularly when you come to the third phase when our talking about building which i assume your including the guidance for mid block as references for other trees >> commissioner antonini. >> i agree with what sue hester

brought up about we have to be careful how we maintain trees. we have an unusual situation in san francisco relate to other places other places have trees where it gets hot and when the trees lose their leaves and whatever sun comes through. we have an opposite climate and we're starved to get light. we need adequate light it's a lot pleasant in the sun on a summer day and often overcast and getting sun a good thing, and, secondly, it makes for a healthier environment. when you look at some of our

areas where the trees are over grown around market street davison it's not a healthy environment because in many stance you can't see in the case of mount davis the trees are blocking the views. so trees are great but they have to be the right kinds of trees and we have to keep in mind as we provide this canopy and define right. just as there are many people who were concerned about shadows being cast on parks around buildings and trees cast shadows too so the right location to not block light to areas that need

light >> commissioner hillis. >> just a question for mr. sway. thank you for your presentation. the recommendation would double the canopy in the city and you showed that picture with not many trees. what are some of the ways to require in those blocks where there's no trees and private property owners >> there's two ways under the current system the property owners we could make it easier for the owners to plant trees. they work with the neighbors to solicit a group tree planting. a second if we did if the city had a citywide tree program as

part of the program the way it's envisioned that not only to maintain the 5 thousand trees we have but planting 50 thousand more trees. we'd have a coordinated approach to see what areas have the highest needs and the city would do the planting >> there are other cities that have to maintain the streets what's the cost or what does is look like total citywide. >> for planting the individuals or planting 50 thousand trees. >> all the trees in the city like some cities do do. >> it's a tiered system. jan i don't know if you remember the exact numbers but i think

it's about 20 or carla. 20 million annual >> not an enormous number and a big bang for the buck. >> people aren't planting a lot of trees because they don't want to maintain them. >> the plan recommends that all the street trees would go back to the city and the city maintenance them. currently the individual homeowners are in order to planet 50 thousand trees because homeowners won't be liable. right now the liability is stopping people >> i can walk around my block and find three or four city blocks. there's another issue is the roots to damage the sidewalk >> only sidewalks that are

damaged by the trees are included in the $20 million number. >> thank you very encouraging. >> anything else? all right. thank you very much. commissioners that will place you on item 9. t the, 2013 you want upgrade to the general plan. >> good afternoon you commissioners sue with the planning department staff. i'm here with a great team of folks. my colleagues and then my partners at the other agencies from the rec and park department

and from the port. i'm sorry to turn it over at the at the end. as was mentioned we're here to ask you to adapt a resolution to initiate amendments to the general plan for the updates of the recreation of the various elements. i'm going to pile up the power point. so just to kind of reminder everybody how we start and how we got to here. we started in 2007 i'm going to go over the outreach and the

community process. we produced the first draft in may of 2009. we sought the funding in july 2010. we produced a second draft in june of 2011 and now here in november of 2013 we've released the final draft. so the outreach started are primary in 2007 and 8 we start with the mayor's open force 86 members of the recreation and space. there were sub groups and after that task force we came up with a number of community meetings we worked with the neighborhood they lead with us 2 hundred meeting in 2008, and 9. we had a number of focus groups

we also met with the rec and park and we just went thirty to they're meeting last week. we've done meetings with the planning commission and had a number i have community groups and stakeholders groups with the individuals meeting and group meetings and a number of different groups have formed themselves. most recently, we had an open house with stakeholders and in december to release the latest draft. i want to talk about what is the role of the general plan and what's the purpose of a general plan. it's a high lovely and visionary

process. it's the challenge to make the differenttion people don't want to have interpretation and it's a 50 page document. some examples is one is, you know, the last rose said do the urban forest plan it's a separate plan and project it's where all the specification lies. another way the general plan is used is through the referrals. any project that's done on public property comes to a public or private project comes to the department and that's another way the general plan is used. like i said this is the constant struggle how do we keep the

visionary and not getting real specific. so why should we just want the elements. it's from 1986. a lot of it been done in 9 existing plan and a lot of the data is old it's not serving anyone else's purpose. we've tried to update that that i'll talk about provide some further clarity on how to preserve open space. we've added a whole objective an community engagement set out a new policy direction. a lot has happened in 20 years.

the whole street system as the open space system and we've talked about promoting the idea of nature in general. there was a little bit of emphasis on natural areas in the 1986 and now it's shifting to nature throughout the city. a quick overview of the proposed objectives. the first, i think we have a really good system right now and we're trying to make the motive of that system. if you compare it we have a good ratio of open space so it's trying to figure out the best use it means we make the most of our spaces.