for street tree maintenance is broken we require property owners to maintain trees that may not have planted wanted or know how to care for or not have the ability to cake for it does not make sense and rumented in declining frees and have put forward aing plan for a street tree maintenance to grow an urban forest. this will help us protect and have a thriving urban forest this was supported unanimously by the commission. tied to development so we can make sure as our neighborhoods grow they're also getting green the legislation does three primary things first it

transfers the provisions required for planning to the public works code will streamline the review process remove unnecessary bureaucratic delay and help ensure. new developments are contributing toward a green ear city. secondly it will ensure billboard owners are not destroying existing trees to advertise. homeowners really no one is allowed to destroy a healthy tree in order to protect or to improve a view. but what we're seeing at times is that billboard companies will quote unquote prune a tree next to a billboard and destroy it in the process in order to have better visibility for their tree. >> i would like to remind everyone this is a hearing it's important we listen to each other please turn off all your

cell phones we can't allow any side conversations >> this legislation will require billboard companies to not destroy trees secondly it will require when any street tree maintenance is performed within 150 feet of a billboard the owner will have to obtain a permit for maintenance this will give dpw the ability to track the work for appropriate arborist and hold a billboard company accountable if they destroy a tree. finally it will strengthen the requirements for street tree protection to dpw prior to the commencement of construction this say simple and straightforward requirement that

will help us ensure we have the important aesthetic environmental ben pits that our street trees bring to our neighborhood madame chair with that we have deogo sanchez from the planning department here he can let us know the department's view. >> thank you welcome >> thank you supervisor diego for the -- in the case of certain types of development planning department to the effort between department of public workses and planning department to maintain the trees in development and will expand the street tree population in a fair matter after deliberating on the matter the commission adopted a resolution with the

following modification one to amend. planning department 101 c one that the party is responsible for the planning and maintenance of street trees it will read as follows maintain -- [reading] this concludes my presentation i'm available for questions thank you >> if i'm not miss taken we did make that amendment in substitute legislation if there are no other comments or questions i suggest we open up to public comment. aye team three. from friends of the urban forest you can come on up if r are

here. >> chair woman supervisors san francisco buft here krin ten abel thank you for weiner for this legislation it makes sense san francisco street trees r in decline and development is on the incline i think it makes sense to tie these two together and benefit the realm with the gross development when with it comes to billboard operators it makes no sense to have the foxx in the hen house with maintaining the street trees they destroyed public property to retain the value of their advertisement just to close here really quickly on this billboard idea i'm going to leave it with dan preman with the department

of transportation they're kind of lawment cal from the -- in front one of these super graphics or large built board i want to thank you for bringing this streamline approach that follows in line with the urban forestry to den tense maintenance from the billboard operators >> i neglected to ask carla short from the department of public works for a brief comment. >> thank you carla short department of public workses i will take a few moments to briefly reiterate they did work with the public works department

on this legislation and back and forth between two departments this legislation supports and addresses the recommendation of the urban forest plan that the board recently unanimously approved this will increase the protection of trees i hope it's the first recommendation of the first urban forest plan to be recommended and move forward in identifying a long term solution for caring for street trees this is ensuring better protection of this resource on the city treats when we have long term funding we will will in fact have healthy trees to care for thank you very much. very thank you mrs. short. and mr. flanigan >> thank you very much. to supervisor weiner and christensen bringing this ford

we will been working with supervisor weiner's office and the department and public works to bring this forward we think it's absolutely necessary to put teeth into existing policy this does that. the fact that we have so much construction going on in the city right now historically has been almost impossible to man date the developers put the trees in this way. we put the trees in the beginning process and put it in the hands of public works that can enforce the issue that is incredibly important. the other things we're sensitive to are the billboards in san francisco and how billboard owners have butchered trees we hope this is the first step to address this in san francisco. there is no reason we hold adjacent property owners responsible when we don't hold

billboard owners responsible for destroying their tree we strongly support this legislation. the last thing is we need to protect the existing trees around development in this city. if you plant a tree it takes 20-30 years to get the full benefit it's a loss if the construction firms are not taking care of those trees thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> supervisor i have a question >> just a statement from mr. flanigan thank you for all of your work on trees a couple of weeks ago i submitted consideration for the ballot a utility tax that would tax carbon based energy production for commercial buildings one of the uses for it is looking how to pay for trees so we can actually -- one goal -- we're

looking at housing as well but looking at trees as an important factor to help decarbonize the air so would love to work closely with you. we just planted trees in supervisor's kim's direct this weekend we put 31 trees in 500 square feet of gardens in your district december desperately need more trees and support. the care and maintenance of trees everybody is excited about planting but it's the care and maintenance, that is important. thank you very much. >> i want to recognize your work this weekend bringing the 30 plus trees to the tenderloin neighborhood which will go a tremendous long way toward our goals of increasing pedestrian

and slowing traffic i encourage everyone to look at their work over the weekend. >> if there is any additional. comment. >> police force -- >> sir we're talking about trees >> for religion family status change. the factors of destiny. having destiny human will and trend thank you >> any additional public on public comment item three. seeing none may we close public comment sn >> yes go ahead is there any special from the colleagues sn seeing none >> thank you for entertaining this thank you to everyone that came out i move that we move to

the full board with a positive recommendation >> all right any objection to this motion seeing no objection this motion passes unanimously. thank you. madame clerk can you call items 1 and 2 together sn >> hearing crime trends and police staffing sponsors weiner, cohen, breed and farrell establishing a population-based police staffing policy >> thank you very much. we have an overflow room we're getting open the deputy sheriff will let me know when it does become available the folks that are standing up in the back or don't have a seat i will ask that you please go to the overflow room. thank you so much. for that consideration. so let's go ahid and get started madame clerk with items 1 and 2 thank you for calling them colleagues i want to thank you for this hearing today it's an important item i want to thank supervisor weiner for his

partnership on this important issue pleas staffing is important for everyone everyone each resident here in san francisco. i believe we need to have honest public data driven conversation about what the staffing needs are. what we will be discussing today shows that san francisco still has public safety staffing needs while our population has increased over the last two years the number of sworn officers serving our residences have decreased our crime rate is the second highest amongst or peers there is not a day that goes boy by the south eastern neighborhoods i represent about public safety issues not just violent crime we have schools in

dog patch and bayview that have been targets for burglaries and increases in home invasions throughout the district. i brought with me a stack of e-mails i received from constituents there is a copy sent for the public record on this item. about the impacts of crime on their neighborhoods and just to share a few with you. there is arret patrero hill that has had a locked garage broken into twice in a day a woman was aggressively assaulted walking through a pass on connecticut street parking -- needles have been found in the parks and sand boxes there are countless other

expects of break ins tlefts and violent crimes many of these crimes have been very public you might remember there's machine so homicides in the visitation neighborhood as well as in the bayview community. it's important to recognize these types of property crimes can be prevented with adequate staffing needs they're in addition to many traffic violent crimes that have happened in several years passed. san francisco in particular district ten is growing and we have approved thousands of new units and other development the hunters point shipyard -- >> i'm sorry can we ask the sheriffs to keep the doors close ded sn there is a lot of noise coming in. thank you. >> thank you. we have approved thousands of units hunters yard ship point is one treasure island is a third.

all of which are throughout the entire eastern part of san francisco i do believe it's unreasonable for us to think staffing mandates from 1994 would be able to cover all of the new residence the goal here is today is to advance the conversation that is founded on current data and population numbers about our police staffing needs as well as from the department how they're managing growth and nonviolent crime trends we're seeing at the current staffing levels i think we're not able to kobt continue to use the out dated metric that is decades old in making smart staffing decisions both the result and resolution is calling on the city to update it's population da da and best practices from other jurisdictions to update a decade-old policy staffing

record to so we can continue to make smart decisions how best to meet the public needs of all residents i wanted to take a moment and ask supervisor weiner he has opening remarks he would like to share. >> thank you mad dam chair and for calling these items today looking at san francisco severe police under staffing we will look at a report from the controllers office on the issue and sponsored by the two of us as well as supervisor farrell calling for increase in police staffing as well z as an increase in minimum staffing level to take population growth as well as the staffing in pier

cities into account by any measure you can look at it a number of different ways by any measure our police department is under staffed over the past decade san francisco has grown by 100000 people. we have neighborhoods as supervisor cohen mentioned that did not exist 10 or 20 years ago. we have low density neighborhoods that are now high density we have many more people during our city during the day as we have record employment in san francisco and economic activity has picked up we have more cars on the road more people walking more people on transit and traffic safety needs than ever before with the unacceptable number of collisions happening on our road ways despite all of that growth despite having 100,000 more

people neighborhoods that didn't exist more activity during the day and night in our city despite all of that growth we have 250 fewer police officers than we had five years ago we have lost officers as our city has gotten bigger when you compare us with pier cities like washington d.c. or chicago other cities evaluated by the controller we are dramatically under staffed when you look at the number of police officers per capita this is not about saying we have a huge police department but with you want to make it bigger any way you look at it it's not just a little bit under staffed but severely under staffed we need to update and modernize how we determine staffing levels in san francisco to make sure we have enough

officers having too few police officers have profound impacts on sub safety with too few officers we don't have enough to walk beats not just in some but all of your neighborhoods if i had a dime every time i'm at a community meeting and somebody says to the captain we want a beat officer here or here the captain said i agree with you i don't have an officer to assign here i would be a wealth withe man i'm not a wealthy man. we want strong community policing in san francisco. that is something i think we have unanimity across the spectrum in san francisco we want community officers to do community policing which means they have be out walking beats when we have a police staffing shortage one of the first things that goes is having enough beat officers walking the beats knowing the residents knowing

the merchantings knowing the communities having too few officers means less traffic enforcement we don't have nearly enough traffic enforcement in this city even though we have more vehicular traffic we need more enforcement in this city and we need it everywhere not just spot checking traffic enforcement or triage we're doing now too to short staffing it means focus on property crimes the controllers report validates this in years we have had explosion of property crimes ranging from vandalisms to break ins to burglaries we need mrufr police officers, to get there. staffing is 1,790 officers we're projected to reach that number

by 2017 or 2018 growing from our current force 1,730 active duetty police officers thank you to the mayor and police officers we have had -- we will hit that 1971 number it's good we're doing that but it's not enough. that 1971 staffing number is no longer applicable in san francisco that was established in a charter in 1994 more than 20 years ago when we were a smaller city 100,000 less people neighborhoods that didn't exist and so forth. our population has grown by more than 30 teen % since 1994 if you do the simple math and increase 1971 by 13% that is over 2200

officers that's what we're proposing in this resolution today to set 2200 as our goal in terms of minimum police staffing we're projected to go by another 150,000 between now and 2040. if we don't modernize our police staffing goals the shortage of police officers will only get worse and we will pay the price in terms of neighborhood satisfactoriy this number of 2200 is not just based on adjusting the 1971 number up by 13% population growth other analysis comes to the same conclusion in 2008. the police executive firm or perf achieved improving policing in our city this is in 2008.

increasing 2,200 police officerses when it was our city was smaller than it was today. if you compare per capita to all pier cities and average per capita just the average of those cities we're way below if you just take us to the average that gets us to over 2,200 officers so any way you measure it we're under staffed and 2200 is reasonable indeed our projected growth in the future as a conservative starting point for police staffing so this goal is not going to happen over night it's only going to happen when per severance consistency in our budget process but it's a good goal to have. i want to mention two things madame chair and turn over to colleagues we're in agreement we

need strong accountability from our police department we have the office of citizens complaints i'm very happy that the mayor has proposed additional funding for occ occ needs to be able to do it job i have seen in this roll and as deputy city attorney occ doesn't have the resources it needs it needs those resources i'm pleased the mayor has included funding for body cameras for police officers we want strong accountability but strong accountability doesn't mean having too few officers we need to have both. i also just want to say obviously whether municipal if i thinks increasing staff costs money i have fought hard in the budget every year funding for health services senior services

transit and parks public safety is important as well we need to adequately staff this function. madame chair thank you. after comments we have several speakers >> thank you i want to announce the north light court is the overflow recommend. avenue loss sn >> thank you chair cohen colleagues we're united on one thing ewith want san francisco to be and feel safer this past weekend as i was walking home from the bus someone threatened to harm me. i didn't know who he was he didn't know who i was i understand that a lot of you feel such threats on our streets i have had my car broken into two twice since i was supervisor

one time at m clak mark and one outside of my house i understand what a lot of residents feel having your car broken in to or being physically threatened or harms puts fear in your daily life. often the response to that fear is greater police enforcement i understand that you know police enforcement is a necessity. we have to have the folks that work very hard at the ris why of their own lives to support our safety i'm just not clear that the best approach to looking at what the size of our police department should be is based on what the population size of our city is i believe that should be a factor but i don't believe it should necessarily be a driving factor when we have many other

thick things we decide what our staffing level should be in san francisco. we should be looking at are we doing the right deployment of officers our precincts manage growth and adjusted to do that. and public safety working collaboratively on police staffing should be. what are the result of increasing police officers going to be in terms of justice in courts and san francisco and the people getting into our courts sn are we going to see a huge increase of not only rests that happen but people get locked up in our jails what cost is that to the city to do all that police and judicial work and incarceration and probation that is a huge cost we can't expect to have if we put more officers on the street we have before us

this next year the next two years eight academy classes i believe that the 1971 number that has been in practice is actually a charter amendment that should be at that number in practice it's a guideline we have reached that 1971 number rarely the last time we were there in 2009 for a few months before we were hit with a large number of retirements since we have had those retirements we should be filling the ranks to make sure we have adequate number of staffing we haven't been there in a number of years let's get to the adequate number staffing through the proposed academy classes and think of a multidisciplinary approach what the size of the police department should be. that too me makes more sense

than the growth of population or neighborhoods that didn't exist. if we have housing in san francisco we can make adjustments to our housing that is something we have the ability to do fe we're strarting a whole approach that will lead to a large number of polices i think it's $10,075,000 for a new officer you multiply that by say 200 officers adding every year in inflation it gets to be a large number. we have to consider that as what is an efficient use of resourcing for policing oakland and san francisco have the only ones that have minimum staffing levels in the controllers report i didn't see in the controllers report if property crimes mean a higher increase in property crimes means we have to have police officers what is the real