but there's a high degree of urgency but i do have something to show people by the end of 2022. >> thank you mister kern, i appreciate this presentation . and i'd like to welcome the publicutilities commission up . >>i did have a few questions . i appreciated your overview to the reckoned park urban forestry work and i understand it's really what we've done on maintaining the significant tree population canopy of correct and park but you did state that there's a reforestation goal of two for onereplacement whenever a tree is removed . i was just looking at the urban

forestry annual report orurban forrester report . i think it shows on one table that wreck and park removed 159 trees and planted 128 in the last report. so it seems like that's not meeting the two-for-one report reforestation goal and i was wondering if you could comment on that. >> supervisor, let me look into that. my performance datashowed we did meet it but let me check and see . the numbers that youjust quoted , yes we would not have met the goal with these numbers . let me see if i can see what's going on here. >> chair: it was in the 2019 2020 urban forest annual report. and then just i'm trying to understand how that works. for example there was that

massive water main break that flooded the main area and there was major damage to the hillside. i understand there'sa dozen or more trees that will have to be removed and replaced . so in that situation how does the two-for-onereforestation goal work ? >> that's a goodquestion and something we've been intimately involved with after that unfortunate catastrophic water break , i do want to say the puc has taken full responsibility and they're out theredoing the complete restoration work . the south slope of stern grove require the removal of 63 trees so that's going to give me a new target of 126. the trees are out and you may

have seen the big crane, we had to lift them off the steep grade. we are now in slowstabilization planning and work right now . as soon as they have reestablished the ability we will then start plantingon it again . i don't know. we will probably plant more than 63 then. i don't think we're going to plant all 126 because as we say we have to plant so as they grow they thrive but we're working on that planting plan right now but i would say off-the-cuff there will be at least 63 ceilings, young trees put in there and we will be actually working with the puc establish that watering cycle as well so they thrivebut it's in work right now . and those which we do not plant on them really we re-stabilize,

they will be planted elsewhere in the parks. >> chair: so the goal would be to do 126 tree plantings at the site and then also in other areas. >> it would be to replant the slope. it may not be100. it may not be 126 . we don't know the exact planting plan but we will have to look at the ability of the slope on where we want to put them. the goal here is to restore over time sterngrove. that look and feel and maintaining the growth . it's going to be years of them growing into their maturity there and we will have to planting plan here i hope within the next several weeks of how many are going to go in. >> chair: assuming you replace

still oneto one replacement of those trees that have to be removed , either with there also be a plan to plant an additional 63 trees where else? on parklands inthe city to meet the two-for-one reforestation ? >> is our performance metric. they look about every year so since we know there's thethree came out , 126 going in but probably a couple different sites. >> thank you. >> thank you supervisor. i think it's just me you and supervisor stefani now. with that i'd like to welcome emily lamb who is the acting deputy assistant of external affairs to give us a brief overview . about the planting and

maintenance and watering program at the puc . >> good afternoon supervisors. let me try to pull up the deck. great, can you all see that? >> yes. fantastic. >> one really quick if you don't mindme taking a second . i have a personal connection to the topic today so my parents operated in a small business for over 30 years in san francisco and i do actually remember when they came and asked if we want to planttrees outside and they did put to outside our business when they are still there . they're doing well so it's nice to see the programs arestill continuing. with that i will delay any further .again, welcome. i'm from s.f. puc. here i have a map of ss puc's properties that contain mostof

our trees . much of the land we own in san francisco offers credit for the operations of our utility systems. we don't have a lot of street trees but we do have vegetation and trees in the public facing parts of ourfacility . we have approximately 4000 trees and half of which are at lake murray said and as we spoke about earlier they are maintained byreference parks . >> you so much. i know the colonel will look into this but how much the work order is to wreck and park and how much of that work order is for tree maintenance and removal and reforestation. >> i don't have that off the top of my head but we can look into it.

okay. our responsibilities are focused on trees updated on sf pc properties. many of them which are in watersheds or reservoirs. we also evaluate trees and take actions as part of our operational maintenance or as part of our water power and wastewater capital projects . and i'm going to go over and show youexamples of properties . here's a list of our big locations so lake merced i think most people know where that is. southeast portion of san francisco. lombard reservoir which is located at lombard and high and keep park to the same as lombard street. o'shaughnessy track which is located on the west side of the ball hard. as it meanders from the drive out to boswell and into the glen park neighborhood. the sunset reservoir which is located on between 24th and 28. and to talk about the last four

pieces i'm going to show you this map actually. so as we spoke about before there's behind our reservoir where half of our trees are located at about 28 acres and then clarendon with the reservoir across the streetfrom clarendon elementary . then some reservoir twin peaks reservoir which are on the twin peaks. so we always strive to comply with all local san francisco requirements andplans for trees . we have achieved arbor and he closely coordinates with public works urban forestry staff on key decisions and actions. so as approximately 2000 trees that are under our care and maintenance we do involves removal of dead trees. we generally only water trees that are not yet established . i would consider a balanced

tree health, operational conflicts and use of space so what may work in our right-of-way may not be perfect on top of the water reservoir. we also remove trees to ensure water breaks and complied with fire safety. and some of the tree maintenance issues involved our local water reservoirs. so whether our class spaces are classified as california divisionof safety of dance because of the longer large waters behind the wall . and the division of safety over the orbital dam issued in 2013 have gotten a lot more strict about removing trees and then we explicitly prohibit these plantings. so in those cases we replace them with lower impact native vegetation that's the division of safety alas. and then when we do replant trees weuse the city's plant life . the city urban forestry plant

at the vegetation management plan. one example is that trees shrubs andother native plants we recently planted along the avenue isaf. in collaboration with the area residents . so we try to meet very seriously our responsibilities to environmental stewardship and sustainability as the resources entrusted to our care and always in line with local food hubs. any questions? >> i do have a fewquestions . your map shows thewest side of the city and not the east . i know a lot of work is going on at the southeast treatment plant and there's also a part of thecity i represent , the northpoint plant and wondered what you have to say about those and why you're not on the map.

>> only because most of the larger lands where we actually have the treatment arelocated on the westside . not any other particularreason . >> . [please stand by]

. >> that was long overdue, i think, and i'm glad that we

were able to take that on. it was something that, i think, was good for the city, and it came about as a result of our effort and came about with an estimate of how much it would cost to maintain the trees so we could see how much would be needed to pay for this bond measure, which was prop e, the one before by voters in 2016, and it was approved by a 79% rate and created a set-aside from the general fund of about $19 million that gets adjusted based on the current budget. go ahead. >> supervisor peskin: i'm sorry, but when i went on look and looked -- on-line and looked for the urban forestry

plan, it looks like it was finalized a couple of years later, in 2014. the one on-line says may 2014, so i assume the original one was in 2012, a couple of years earlier. the one that's on your public works website says there were 105,000 trees, but i keep seeing this 125 or 124,795. do you know what the delta on that is because one thing we all seem to agree on is we're not planting enough new trees in rights-of-way in d.p.w.s jurisdiction. what's the difference between 105 and 125? >> sure. i think it was the understanding that we had 125,000 trees, but that was without doing an inventory, so

once the inventory came back, it was more than expected. pleasantly surprised, but the history of the plan was that it was years in the making and then finally adopted in 2015 by the board, but the plan was completed before that census. >> supervisor peskin: got it. thank you for that clarification. okay. >> so i think you mentioned that before. there's a lot more trees, which also includes trees in open spaces, trees in the median. so to start, we had to hire, pick up equipment, and issue contracts, so that was our blitz at the beginning, and the hiring was a challenge. as we know, it's a bureaucratic

system, but it was a priority for our city to make this happen. we currently have 18 arborists, but there's been a year-long freeze of hiring which has recently thawed out this week. recently, we had our first arborist exam, and we're excited to bring on new staff. we have nine positions approved and hope to hire all of them. we started putting in orders and started getting that at the start of the program, but then last year, we cancelled all of our equipment orders because of the funding crisis, and we wanted to make sure that we had enough funds to pay for employees salary -- employees' salaries. during the shelter in place

order, everybody paused briefly and then began resuming work once they had safe protocols for social distancing. but we held off hiring while things were up in the area, but now that things are going to normal, the delay certainly tripped us up. >> supervisor peskin: yeah, we can't certainly blame you for covid. >> thank you. i'd like to talk to you about our maintenance and framework, just to give you a sense of how we prioritize things. we broke down the city into a series of key maps or grids, and this was a way to look at things in a more tangible way to highlight which parts of the city had the greatest number of tree issues based on our census data. so we focused on the red and

orange key maps first, and we've completed nearly all of this, fortunately, and now we're starting to move into those yellow, light green, dark green areas, which are the lowest priorities, but we want to move onto them. the chinese elm that you see in front of you, we wanted to prune those trees like this almost leaning up against a house. the very common question that i understand it when a person says, a branch is touching my window, it's keeping me up at night or when are you going to get to my tree, i agree. we're trying to deal with it, trying to get to it, but we're also trying to deal with these really difficult trees first so we can eventually get to everything.

if we stay on track by doing it block by block, we're a lot more efficient than running around to individual requests. but that's not to say that if -- if there's a genuine safety issue, we do want to drop everything and focus on that so that we're grateful for the information we get from 311, but we're often explaining our prioritization. so we inherited trees that were in various conditions with the head in proper care over the years or in growing spaces that need a lot of work, or we have trees that are declining or struggling and need to be removed. understandably, when property passed, homeowners paused their tree work because it was expensive. they knew we were coming, and

we've got a growing backlog, and we've got to tackle that as quickly as possible. but as much as we do that, accidents are happening and failures are happening that we're continuing to respond to. one of our continuing focal points is sidewalk damage, so root work creates a tripping hazard, and we also want to address the damaged sidewalks. it's a much slower process through the backlog. it's hovering around this 11,000 to 13,000 trees per year

mark, and last year, with covid, it definitely had an impact, but fortunately, with covid, our work is outdoors, so we were able to continue with that. going forward, some of our key maps have a lot of small trees, so it looks like our numbers went way up, that we could prune a number of small trees very quickly, and then, we have larger trees to this is something that has been a milestone for us. at june 30, the end of the fiscal year, we marked to getting to half of our trees, and if you've seen my urban forestry presentations over the years, we were at 47%, and we're finally at 50%. those key maps or grids are trees that we have pruned and

making sure that our contractors did everything. and then, the active sliver is where we're working right now or just recently finished and are going back to look at the contractor work and verify it was done properly. and that upcoming wedge of the pie is where we're issuing contracts and checking with our crews to make sure which key maps they're able to go to next and working that property ranking. so to recap our progress, this is to date, so even more information since june 30. we've pruned 54,409 trees. if you had a large tree that needed to be removed at your cost, it could be many thousands of dollars, and it makes sense that, with the

passage of prop e, if the city can do it, it makes sense to leave it to us. and we're grateful for folks leaving the pruning to us because we want to do it professionally. as far as the sidewalks, this is a massive number of 535,000 square feet of sidewalks that we've repaired. i know in context, what does that mean? what's left to do? that's something we're still working on. we have a backlog of thousands of square feet to do, but how many is left, that's something we're still gathering, something we're still working on. fortunately, our inventory gave us sites with uplifts, so we're able to focus on those, but every day, we're getting calls on sidewalks with uplifts that we want to triage or address. one way to deal with it is to

slice it, where a contractor comes in with a grinder. the root may continue to grow and lift it up, but at least we can come in and make it safe for the time being, compared to a full cost or full repair. then, i'd like to talk about our tree watering. this is a very critical part of what we do to keep trees alive. as a coastal california city, we have the wonderful weather with no rain, and the rest of the country can plant trees in fall and then get some natural rainfall, cooler temperatures, trees established, and then, they're good for the rest of their life, and it's unfortunately not the case for us. it requires weekly watering visits from us to care for them. we have a staff of watering people that are watering tuesday through saturday. they go out early in the

morning to take advantage of the reduced traffic volumes. they fill up their tanks with water from hydrants or, in a couple of locations, use recycled water, and we'd love to do more of that. we fill a gaiter bag, and at the bottom of the bag, there's a couple of holes, and that slowly saturates the soil. to give you an idea of how many trees our crews are watering, they're watering roughly 1200 trees a week. they have a water truck, and they're doing 500 trees a week. our biggest partner for watering is clean city. they are a grant recipient,

grant partner of ours, and they are doing -- at the moment, they're doing 1800 trees, and we're adding another couple hundred trees to their list through an amendment right now. the benefit through our partners is we require them to have workforce development programs, so it's great job training, and it keeps these trees alive, and you can see, in the matter of a year, multiplying those weekly visits out, it is,000s a year, 213,000 weekly visits. >> supervisor peskin: and do all of these new plantings need to be watered once per week? >> yeah. >> supervisor peskin: so they all need to be watered once a

week. >> they've planted trees, and normally, we water them, but they recently got a truck about 1.5 years ago, so they're able to water 500 trees. but whatever they don't water, we water. >> supervisor peskin: okay. that's a little different than what mr. weidenmeyer said. maybe we can clear this up, because that's been one of the sources of my confusions or questions. if d.u.f. has planted 5,000 trees, most of them are in