we don't expect a young treel to have 14 feet of clearance, but eventually they'll have required clearance over the sidewalk so our reluctance to approve stems from the fact that if we let everyone remove their trees now and start over with new trees we'd have no mature trees because most of the public when faced with the costs to maintain them are on a budget and they want to remove the tree and start over and set the clock back on maintenance costs so we're trying to keep a gate keeper and keep these larger trees in the public right of way. >> what about the issue of safety, high winds and prawns falling. >> on mission street we have a number of very tall mexican sand palms and we have top trun those every couple years to prune off the lower deld prawns. in the right wind condition when the prawns detach from the tree can blow quite a bit in the wind, pick up some speed and at the base of the mexican sand palm it has sharp thorns at the base of them. if queen palms don't have those bashes on them and prawns -- you're more like lil to prawn those off in time because they'll start browning

>> with the plum treel that was there is? talking to neighbors, our next door neighbor lived there through the ordeal. my wife said the homeowner admitted it to her. >> thank you. >> we can hear from the department now mr. buck. >> good evening commissioners, chris buck, acting urban forester with department of public works. i'm at a tree hearing on august 25, 2014 and the findings of the department were outlined in order number 182947. the department supported keeping the trees in the tree basis. i have app few photos, but the basic findings are although i.t.'s unusual to have four trees crammed into a single tree planting location, the four trees are coexisting rather well. we'll go to overhead. some of the lower prawns could be pruned to provide more clearance for the pedestrians so pay sis for denial was that we felt that with some pruning and improvements this would be a very adequate path of travel for pedestrians and motorists. one recommendation would be to allow the removal of the smaller sand palm circled in red on

so the application to remove one treel turned ed into an application to remove two trees, the street tree on the left and the one on the right in this photo. the public right of way is approximately designated in the red line. everything to the left of this image is in the right of way. the property line is approximately where this red line is located so the olive tree is within 10 feet and would require a permit in order for park merced to remove that tree. the tree on private property, the significant tree is dead and if the tree was larger we would have posted a 15 day emergency notice on it, notice of hazard to expedite the removal of the tree. the 15 day notice allows the department and property owner to remove the tree in a more expeditious manner so that hazard can be addressed. typically that's what we do, but again, the tree's not that large so the relative hazard based on the smaller size of the tree was not present and knowing that we get a lot of protests and want to be consistent we did a 30 day notice on a dead tree. the street tree shown -- i have another photo we rece