>> welcome to the wednesday, july 2, 2014, san francisco board of appeals the commissioner president lazarus is joined by commissioner honda and commissioner fung our supervisor commissioner fung will be absent robert is the deputy city attorney that will provide the device and we have the legal director also joined by carla with the public works bureau of street use and mapping she's here because of the cases on the calendar mr. pacheco please go over the boards

guidelines that he do the swearing in. the please be advised the ringing of and use of cell phones, pagers and similar sound-producing electronic devices. please carry on conversation in the hall the boards rules appellants and department representatives each have 7 minutes to present their cases. people affiliated with those participants must include their comments within the 7 minutes partied that are not affiliated have up to 7 minutes with no rublths members of the public who wish to speak are asked with you node required to give a business card. speaker cards and pens are available on the wills of the podium the board welcomes our suggestions customer survey forms on the lodz of the podium

if you wish to know about the schedule call the board office. it is located as 1650 mission street room 304. in meeting is broadcast live on sfgovtv impanel a channel 78 and dvds are available for purchase at this point we'll have our swearing in process if you intend to it testify and wish the board to give our testimony please stand and raise your right hand. please note that mia any member of the public may speak without this swearing in.

do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> item one is public companion phenomenon items not on agenda. any public comment on that item? sierra club item 2 is commissioner questions or comments commissioners. seeing none, no commissioners with questions or comments item is the 3 adaptation of the minutes of june 5, 2014, >> corrections or deletions or other. >> so moved. thank you any public comment on that item on the minutes. seeing none, mr. pacheco please call roll >> on that motion to adapt the june 25, 2014, minutes. commissioner fung. commissioner hwang is absent. councilmember davis pr the vote

is 4 to zero >> item 4 is appeal number 4 christopher for the other parties vs. the department of public works upper of forest the subject is essence as incident i image i am street to richard price of a tree removal trees and for the removal of 6 trees and replanning of 9 new trees on the hearing today. we will start with the appellants. you have 7 minutes to present your case >> as i said to commissioner fung i'll start with 3 minutes talking and ray will talk.

we're here solely to hear the appeal that focuses on the removal of 2 eucalyptus trees we're not here to discuss housing or whether it's a good or bad thing or renters or anything this is simply about two trees. and this is what i'm asking you to focus on. i will also say that the required street trees in question do not mitigate the removal of street trees they wouldn't compensate for the removal there's not an issue of those trees being dangers to motorbike there's been no issue we will now have are exerts ray

that has worked with our the risk assessment of the trees and caltrain construction impact and mitigation. i'm also going to read a letter from professor joe mick bride that teaches at the you university of the california and his area is urban forestry he's the professor. the trees are important landmark trees on illinois after the industrial avenue that was planted many years ago those trees because of snaring oounl educateness serve the community and contributed to the reduction in the urban heat island by providing air and shade they're canopies are north sites for birds and humming birds they're they should be allowed to be an

important member of the community it's a historical reminder of the san francisco landscape and harassing as proirtdz of the services. the recent published urban fortey talk about the slinking tree canopy in the city currently, the tree canopy in san francisco is 13.7 percent as compared to los angeles that is with 21 percent and portland is thirty. clearly we're lacking in urban forest ray please. i'm ray the principle consulting for the urban forestry in marin county and practice in the bay area for 36 years.

i'm a panic northwest he tree careers and an international society of qualify tree careers i do the tree risk assessments as stated heeler caltrain and a number of governmental agencies as well as as well as private sector i've examined those trees it's been stated the trees are growing in a box and therefore do not have good stability actually, the major roots stand well beyond the raised bed in which the trees are placed there are all the way to the street and the adjacent parking lot and throughout the adjacent patio as evidenced from the cracks 2, 3, 4 the old black top pavement those roots radiate well beyond

the box. the people who wish to remove the trees show a break-in branch in one of the trees. the truth is that there was a recent failure of a branch but the the truth it also the owners the trees have failed to maintain them and maintenance practices can make those safe and tragic trees and continue to provide amenities a number of people in the next door apartments have asked me to view the trees from their apartments there were more than a dozen humming birds in the trees it's appreciated by the neighborhood both trees is safe trees and can

be made structurally better and more attractive with attention. thank you. >> okay. we can hear from - >> i do want you to be cognizant we have two experts one representing the university of california the department of urban forestry that has looked at the trees and given them a positive bill of height if you go against this you go against the university of california and ray who is working for the park department to simply remove trellis because it's not convention we wish you to look

at this is about the trees whether or not there's more or less housing it depends on the day and time i wish you to pay attention to those professional reports they're in your packet and they're both there. those are very significant experts that are saying those trees are safe thank you. >> okay. from the permittee holder now. >> commissioners, thank you for allowing us a few minutes i'm from the owner the future department site we're here to request you uphold the depending

permit to remove the trees to allow us to move forward with an approved project to construct 23 units this are not under the u.s. forestry ordinance and they have a poor treasure they're on private property in an area that is developed as part of the project it's easy to talk about this when you're not on the site we feel differently. after the removal of two eucalyptus trees we'll be planting 5 new magnolias and this is an image of the frontage as you can see it's a relatively unattractive footage 0 the two trees are there and our project

is imposing to make a different situation this is what it looks like in the for ground the magnolias we're going to plant this is in the planning process and unanimously approved by planning commission this will have a major redesign of the project and result in a significant loss of density we've worked to access this loss in density and the diagram i'll show shows you a 30 foot road us to be protected. is as you see this covers part of our site the result is we losing lose 5 unit that's 6 percent of the density and 20

percent of the parking spaces and in addition we'll lose 20 percent of onsite affordable housing this is under the housing accountability act it's received final approval by the planning commission we need to move forward with site activities that need to take place within the footprint of drilling and taking environmental samples and water testing prior to the site those are necessary for the building department and the project engineers to complete the project we're angrily awaiting the removal of those trees. depending issued a permit to remove the trees in january that was based on a visit to the sigh

in which dpw experts in the site said this is a fast growing and plant in below ground planter that creates structural problems they have the poor structure and show signs of previous branch failures and other things that have a future limb failure we'll also speak to this but dpw's decision was the right won those trees are located on private property and pose long term liability to sf property owners so this includes a number of improvements including planting new trees and the existing trees with in good condition and to

liability and those will have a lower density so he ask the board to uphold this permit without further delay to move forward with the site work. the sooner the trees are removed the surrender we'll make improvements to the neighborhood i'm going to turn it over to ray. i'm roy i'm a consultant ash rift also a tree assessor i'm a certified tree people the tree in questioning r in question is subject to the pruning requirements that would if you can give me the overhead it will

require that branches be reduced significantly on the ends in order to prevent breakage. what we have as a failure pattern are 3 limbs that failed an 8 inch in the middle of the photo and two 6 inches on the levied this is the close up of the limbs. there's a crow for scale in this case you have a question and this demonstrates where the two limb breaks and two above that that were similar before they telling fell that's 25 feet or there about's and weighing 2 to

3 hundred pounds coming down 45 feet over the sidewalks that's a failure partner in the tree regardless of what's been said we have a self-confident self-evident situation and he trees that are a high-risk condition when it's done it's been topped 3 times and headed again in the same manner i don't consider that to be a sustainable tree here's my card >> i have a couple of questions approximately how long ago did the limb failure curae. >> i don't know but the wood is not discolored on the 6