Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240713

Maps. First on the left just a general location of the mount sitro open reserve. Mount sitro is located under the sitro tower tv antenna and right about in the middle of the city where you see the green hexagon. The right map is a closeup of the mount sitro open reserve just to the left of the ucsf campus there. The open space reserve is over 60 acres and on those 60 acres we have about 5. 5 miles of Public Access trails. Some other statistics ill mention real quickly, theres about 900 feet of elevation gain across this property. Those are beautiful trails in those trees and giving great views. We also have over 10,000 living trees in the reserve. We also have between 200 and 300 residents that live in the housing facility up at the top top of the mountain. The history is the mayor in 1885 he donated 13 acres to create the ucsf campus there. In 1953, decades later, ucsf purchased 90 additional acres, including the area that is now the open space reserve on mountain sutro. And in 1976, the uc regions designated that as permanent open space, designating this the mount sutro open space reserve. That reserve is maintained and the trees on it and our priorities are multiple. First off, we want to ensure of course the safety of people and structures in and around the open space reserve, which includes our own students, faculty, patients, whatnot, the neighbors also. We want to maintain the reserve as permanent open space, as designated by the regions back in 1976, and that means including Public Access to the 5. 5 miles of trails in it, improving the ecosystem, the biodiversity within the open space reserve. So, for example, since 2008 by ucsf policy, we have allowed no use of any herbicides in the open space reserve and we do no tree work during mating season. We also want to submit to the transparency and the Community Planning principles that were used in developing and finalizing in 2018 the open space reserves official Management Plan. That open process and review involved a technically Advisory Committee of experts that met several times, community meetings, tours of the trails, and whatnot. One of the groups that we worked closely with that we heard earlier today are sutro stewards. They are a Nonprofit Community organization that helps maintain trails and restore habitat. In 2016 they provided 5,000 person hours and that has been maintained at the same level. They are a native planting garden at the top. There is many events that they hold as well as the ongoing maintenance work. So ucsf does do quite a bit of fire hazard mitigation. We have ongoing projects all the time, removing ongoing projects and duff. We trim leaves and remove these ladder fuels, trip and control the canopy itself. And clearing the avenue a minimum of three times a year because of the presence of power lines. We have special projects where we created a buffer zone between the preserve and buffer areas. We were focused on reducing the tree canopy to prevent canopy fire emission. They like the blackberry bush as much as i like the blackberries which is great, because it helps with maintaining that vegetative matter under the trees. In 2019, the goats have come back to do more 4 acres. Were doing fire abatement and nearby structures and planned for this year, in fact, coming up in the next few weeks, a picture of what the trees look like under nike road, named after the missile site and not the shoes. Thats planned for this year. I want to point out many resources that we have that go into a lot of detail around the open space reserve and the registration Management Plan for it. Theyre all located on our website. You can find the vegetation Management Plan itself there. You can find an f. A. Q. Document about it to summarize it. We have posted there the Environmental Impact report that was done through that open community process. Information about the public process thats been used, linked to the sutro stewards and other organizations that are helping us with this whole effort, calendar of events, trail maps and whatnot. I hope that provides an overview of what the space is and how ucsf is managing it. Im happy to take any questions. Just a quick question. Did you work with the San Francisco Fire Department in terms of having them go in there to look at things that you might have overlooked . I will say my office coordinates with the San Francisco Fire Department. We also have station 20 up on clarendon and olympia. We have oriented them to the campus and the science going on. There is more work that we can do around wildfire. So youre saying you would be open to having the fire martial go in there into the area yes, and we have our own campus fire martial two and the two of them know each other very well. Happy to collaborated in that way. Not to jump into a fraught topic, but i have sort of lost track how the city and others are dealing with the balancing of native versus nonnative plants and what to do with the eucalyptus. Now i think the plantings that were doing are a blend of 75 eucalyptus and 25 native species. If you want to correct me, you can. I am the Ground Program manager for ucsf and i am the manager for basically the project manager for mount sutro. So, yes, were removing dead and dying trees. We have a lot of dead trees. Part of the plan is to plant more trees. We mix it up with nonnative trees, with different types of trees, because of the plan thats built by the community. Thats what 50 of the community wanted this. Parts of all those trees are native trees that we incorporated in the plan. At the same time you saw the picture of the blackberry and things like that. We were trying to remove all the blackberry. There is a lot of fuel load in it, but the goal is to actually remove that normative blackberry permanently and reintroduce mobile diversity to our program and our plan. Hi, i was the coordinator for the Management Plan. I want to say a couple things about our approach when we developed the plan. One was we said at the time we had 90 eucalyptus and we needed more biodiversity to improve the whole ecosystem. But at the same time we had a lot of people in the community who loved eucalyptus. What we said is we would preserve the historic eucalyptus stance. Sop at the time it was 50 eucalyptus and then 50 native trees to increase the biodiversity. Thank you. Okay. So just really quickly we feel good. Is there another question you had . Im just wondering i guess i had this stereo type of view not being native. In a dry climate, they really do dry out. When be they catch on fire that they actually explode . The eucalyptus trees in particular, yeah, i think theyre generally recognized as a greater hazard than the nonnatives. Yeah, i think maybe the fire martial will really talk about th th this, they dont explode, but they have they can release their seeds in a foul way during fire and they produce a lot of debris. Were reintroducing some eucalyptus species that dont have that amount of debris that the bluegum has right now. I think the glu bluegum is full of debrises. In my mind, it seems something to think about. I guess i asked the question why are we even planning 50 eucalyptus. Why dont we just plant all the new tries to be more native. You may not have the answer. Yes, i am the campus fire martial. Understanding how Vegetation Management works in a wildland urban interface, theres a lot that goes into it, but from the basis we really do try to protect the wildland interface from sfrures and people and roads and things like that. Nowhere will they tell you remove all the vegetation. Its Vegetation Management. Part of that is respecting the biodiversity aspect of it and part of it is saying where the fire starts and where it expands. Taking care of the items that mr. Freeberg brought up about removing the dead materials on the bottom, clearing the duff, controlling the latter fuels and fitting out those canopcanopies thats what we can do. I believe ucsf is following those same practices and trying to respect that. I think its hard to see when folkses like yourself and myself have been through Oakland Berkeley hills fire with that same interface where we saw 50 eucalyptus trees blowing up. Really what that is is where the fire storm starts taking on its own environment and velocity and had spreading, thats what were trying to do is thin that out, where you cant build up that power and force, especially around houses and streets. Its not specific to native versus nonnative. Its about the overall forest or Vegetation Management. Thank you for the explanation. Thank you very much for your presentation. Im going to try to move this along. Thank you for coming here. Next up i would like to ask the trust. I dont have a presentation, but i have a short statement. I am the forest manager of the trust. The presidio in San Francisco is unique. Its a pork and a former military post which now combines opportunity for the public to explore history, culture, and nature in a densely populated area. The interior of the park is managed by the trust. This is primarily the inferior of the park. There is also the National Park service and the ggnra which manages the remainder of the presidio. The open space of the presidio is a mixture of a natural and Historic Landscapes bordered by homes. Minimizing the threat of wildfires to the presidio, its visitors to the park and the adjacent community is of great concern to the trust. The highvalue trusts increase the value. There was recently a Risk Assessment and a wildfire Management Plan. It was found that the overall level of wildfire risk throughout the park is low. Thats the good news. Both as a result of concentrated Vegetation Program which has been implemented over the past 10 to 20 years since the park was created and because of the cool, moist climate found in the presidio throughout much of the year. Standard trees have been thereined, lower branches have been pruned. Grasses have been mowed and or grazed as we heard in the last presentation. There are specific locations throughout the park where forests have been restored resulting in vegetation which are not as vulnerable to ignition. We have reforested 40 acres throughout the park and many more acres of Natural Lands throughout the park. I dont believe there is a historical record to my knowledge of fires here and to the knowledge of people who have worked in the past. During our recent Risk Assessment we modelled the fire activitied and the fire throughout the park based on many weather scenarios. This took into account all the different vegetation types mapped. Our model wildfires are expected to luren with low intensity even under the weather conditions in the park over the past years including the most recent drought years. The fires are not likely to travel far beyond roads, parking lots, grasses, or lawns. Any embers that would be produced would fall into locations unburnable or in locations that could be extinguished easily with tools. This is a result of our consultant putting all the information into our fire models and this is information gleaned from the fire assessment. The some of the following actions will help to reduce the hazard and risks to the park and our surrounding areas. We continue an Ongoing Program to create and maintain defensive space around structures in the park. We heard some of that from the previous presentation as well about Defensible Space and the recommendations. We will conduct continue to conduct training on wildfire intervention and protection concepts and weve had some meetings in the past year about wildfire bringing in some of their neighborhoods. Weve conducted prevention programs. We have incorporated messages about the past dry spell. We do conduct annual fire extinguisher training and we conduct annual fire inspections throughout the presidio. We inspect all fire detection system and inspection all fire systems. We dont have a fire martial, but we do have an Emergency Services director and interfaces with the San Francisco Fire Department. Some additional examples, we recently conducted Defensible Spaces, and were continuing to manage that according to the recommendations. The public should see some of those reactions. There is a tree crew that performs all of our tree crew and maintenance in the park which i manage. We are currently thinning out some of our eucalyptus stands and thinning out the tree health and vigour to help with the fires. Many of these are in addition to ucsf and we have looked at their Management Plan and taken their best practices and are applying them to our park as well. In the past year we have trimmed and pruned along the utility lines and corridors. We own all of our own infrastructure. Were responsible for maintaining our infrastructure. We have had contractors come out this past year and prune all of our line miles throughout the park. Weve seen positive results just in this year alone. There was a question about how we officer face with the San Francisco park. The Presidio Trust has a construction for Fire Response Services with the Fire Department. This includes Fire Response Services with the department itself. The Response Time is fir from five to seven minutes, ten minutes maximum in the park. On an annual basis the trust provides information to the park on fire response. So they are familiarized with the layout of the parks and the infrastructure in the Presidio Park itself. That is a brief overview in the trust and if there are any questions, i would be happy to answer some of those. How did you do this assessment, did you hire a consultant and how did the assessment go down . I was hired into this position roughly two years ago. Im relatively new to the trust. Some of you may know the previous forester, peter erlich, he was there for many years. There was a change in my position and my superiors position at the same time. There was work on the aftermath on the fire in the Berkeley Hills that was mentioned earlier. She put together some of the plans after that fire for uc berkeley. So we brought her on board and gave recommendations what to do and what were not doing well enough and where to go from here. We initially had a vegetation Management Plan that was designed and approved back in the 2000s when the park was initiated. That has some language about Fire Management how to manage for fires in the park, but our new plan goes into much more detail. Looking at our current weather conditions and including in implementing those spatial measures as well. We are developing and starting that program already, but its going to take time for us to move throughout the entire park before we can say the entire park has met those requirements by cal fire. How much has that cost . This Management Plan is roughly 25,000 to get an assessment and a Management Plan in hand. Do you guys have a relationship with the San Francisco fire martial or are you on your own . No, we do. Our Emergency Services director couldnt get it today, but he is routinely in contact with the personnel over at the Fire Department. Thanks. Thank you for your presentation and keep up the good work. It sounds like youre really managing the area the way it should be managed. Thank you. Were trying our best. The first city park is rec and park operations. Good afternoon, supervisors. I am the director of operations and eric is pulling up our presentation here. Weve got a couple of things i want to run through you once up on the screen. We want to describe how our procedures are largely focused on our over 1,000 acres for open space. How theyre operationalized in the field and how they are consistent with our park values on Natural Resource preservation that makes it an alignment with the previous alignment on biodiversity. I will cover a couple of our resources and challenges in doing these things. We dont have it on the screen [ overlapping speakers ] the first chart i want to pull up here, this is a i know that the Fire Department is going to show you this map as well. This is the San Francisco department of Emergency Management and cal fire, fire hazard severity zone map. You can see that San Francisco is depicted there and as per cal fire criteria, San Francisco has a low wildfire risk and some areas of fire risk, but no moderate or extreme. On the righthand side for comparison weve inserted the sonoma county, the same map for them where the horrific kinkaid fire was. You can see their circumstances are markedly different. I only put those up for context since we were talking about wildfire, the circumstances very wildly throughout the state and there is a point of comparison in how the city compares to the most where the most recent wildfire in california just occurred. For us, our best practices, first and foremost, we consult and stay aligned with the San Francisco Fire Department on we consult with them on their recommendations and we want to stay aligned with the fire code. In particular, we want to stay aligned with the state line on this which i know the Fire Department is going to mention. The title descriptions in title 19 where they describe Defensible Space wherein the wildfire abatement and vegetation abatement, youre trying to create 30 feet around structures. So this is a large part of how we handle our wildfire abatable in our unmaintained and natural areas is that we look at this in terms of adjacent Property Lines to Residential Properties and these types of things to be able to create that defensive space in the case of a fire starting. We look through the fire Property Photo here and conduct Vegetation Management removal in the mayjune time frame in advance of the wildfire season. That includes removal of vegetation and dead wood from structures and properties to create that 30foot defensible area and the focus is on flammable material, not on green shrubbery or trees, but those things that are high and have a high probability of a flash point. We also believe this type of management of vegetation is consistent in trying to also balance park and Land Management with biodiversity with other Sensitive Habitat preservation which is part of our mission. Thats the proactive approach we tabling every year. On the reactive side if the department receives a complaint or a flagged situation, we immediately dispatch staff out there to evaluate it, take a look at it, and if we see a credible fire hazard, we will do that Fire Management abatement at that site. We maintain a list of properties where we do this, especially where we have an adjacent residential parcel shared Property Line so we can keep up with this. If we find new spaces, we add them to that list. Because that is the list we start with every year to do the wildfire abatement. Those are enumerative and proactive approaches. On this slide you can see places where we do some of this work every year, glen park, glen canyon and others as well. Another example of this taking glen canyon and glen park as an example, you can see we have highlighted on this overhead of Glen Canyon Park four areas where there is an yachbt line to the park line. When we do this in glen canyon itself, these are the four areas where we manage this through those practices we just laid out there. So if we get public complaints, 311 requests, if the Fire Department contacts us with something they heard, we go out and check it out and to maintain this Immediate Response to any suspected fire hazards. On the resources and challenges end, the there have been small fires in our parks by and large, it pains me to say this, but we do have legal encampments in the park from time to time. There have been arson events or just uncontrolled if they started the fire for cooking or whatever, it gets away from them. To date these fires have been small. The Fire Department has been wonderfully responsive in getting out there. In our end we now have three environmental staff crews that go out to look with our park rangers for areas where this might be occurring to get this cleaned out and to make sure theyre not going to be posing any kind of fire hazard while there. The resources we have right now allow us to do the effort they have ongoing. Its basically shared with our urban forcery division, by our Natural Resources section, and all the gardners that we have in all our parks and open space know how to handle this stuff and also how to participate in our abatement procedures. That summarizes my presentation. Id be happy to answer any questions. A few years ago, the board i guess supported the Management Plan for trees. [ overlapping speakers ] from your department. Yes. Our significant Natural Resources Management Plan addresses all of this in its very large context about urban forestry management, Vegetation Management, and these types of things. How i know that during that time there were many trees that were identified as probably dead or not very healthy. They were supposed to be i guess taken down. Has that happened . Every year, supervisor, we have several tree assessments where we take a third party. One of the leading companies, actually internationally, theyre placed here in pleasanton, they go out the and do an entire analysis and identify the trees and give recommendations on whether they should be removed, pruned, monitored, or if theyre suitable for preservation. We do about six of these a year, depending on the size of the property. Then once the assessment is in, the recommendations on those assessments comprise the work plan from our urban forestry unit the following year. And the in terms of working with the Fire Department, have they gone out with you to look at in particular, i mean if not all, seeing as you have a consultant, but in regards to the innovations that you may have in the residential area, even 30 feet sounds like not much of a clearance. Between you and i is about 30 feet, i believe. We consultant the Fire Department on a casebycase basis. Its not an issue of regular meetings. As issues come up, we meet on site and see and discuss it and see what our analysis is. But if i guess my question is to be proactive, why wait for the issue. Are there opportunities for rec and park to work with the Fire Department to actually go out and do look at some situations and see what recommendations they might come out with . We actually chartered one tree assessment which was to address specifically adjacent Property Lines, which is more universal throughout the city. So it wasnt specific to stern grove or specific to glen canyon. It was a set of specifications how to manage adjacent lines between parkland and Residential Properties, that urban park face. Im pushing this because i know rec and park has a lot of the parks. Many of them in my district and many in other supervisors districts are concerned, and i would love to see few like to identify any hot sots. Wed be happy to do that. Thank you. As we mentioned mainly our approach is ke decree ating tha creating that space around buildings and structures. For trees we try to thin as space allows. What i want to know is what specifically you have done in the park . Have you done that or are you planning to do that . Have you used goats . Do you plan to . What are the aggressive strategies you have employed in glenn canyon and mi and mcclaro. We have done those things. It is around the Defensible Space. To my knowledge, we have not used goats. Managing grassland or trees within the property has not been our approach. It has been looking to find out where the areas we have to create that Defensible Space. You know we have had fires over the last couple years, not even in the areas that are over leo o what is the word . Vegtateed . Grassland fires. If you go to the forests the discussion about the ladder. There is a lot of under brush, a lot of area that could be trimmed and pruned. I want to hear you talk more about what you plan to do there in the future. We need to anticipate that those fires had been blown over, you know, a lot of the park would have gone up in flames. I will be straightforward with you here. We have to look at that. We dont have a current plan at present. Given the Climate Change discussion, given the fire discussion here, we are trying to hit the right balance. I dont have specifics to share with you for the park. It would be great if you could follow back up with us. Thank you. I already asked public works. This small area that jumps out on the map in terms of hazards. It is outside of your park. For the record i want to work with public works on that area as well. Can you catch me up on where the park is and this thinks about native versus nonnative . We are at the point. We dont remove whole forests. We know within our parkland, not the city as a whole, there are three predominant tree species. We woman age it through would try to thin the forest as we can so that it is thriving better, it is more resilyet, that type of thing. Augusthere are those who hate ad love the augus the th it. It is part of the species here in the city and trying to manage through thinning, pruning or deadwood removal so that it will do the best it can. Are you planting new . Not to my knowledge. You know, in the presidio they have a wildfire Risk Assessment shaping the management of their land. There is, i think, i know a great deal of anxiety, as i said earlier and concern from People Living around some of these very woody areas, you know, a, about whether the 30foot standard is the right one for a city as dense as San Francisco. B, if that is being adhered to in the ways it should be. I know you are having sort of casebycase consultation with the fire marshal. I wonder if it would make more sense to have a more kind of comprehensive check in on whether the standard rec and park is using is the right one. I think it would be meaningful to residents to know that there had been an outside check from the fire marshal or through an outside assessment, yes, San Francisco publicly owned properties are good, manage understand the appropriate way and brookly hills is not going to happen here. The record. We believe we are managing it is right way. I have not seen the presidio assessment. They will also evaluate low to moderate risk which aligns with the cal fire. The hazard assessment as well. It seems to be, you know, cohesive to me. We are always happy to seek thirdparty validation and to test best practices to make sure that they are still best practices. Thank you. Thank you. Next up i will bring up the Public Utilities commission, and that will be joh john and damon. Good afternoon. The ss p. U. C. To talk about our in city Fire Prevention measur measures. We want everyone to unbopped p. U. C. Land we have lake merced in the southwest portion of San Francisco. While the pc is the owner of the area, actually, rec park takes care of the main affairs. I wont touch too much on the lake. We have the reservoir land. We have the track. That is mostly o on the west sie of the boulevard as it comes down towards glenn canyon. Not the east side but on the west side, which is your district, supervisor yee. Then we have sunse sunset reser. These bottom four. The next slide. I am not sure if everyone knows where they are. We also have four areas, all in a close together location within San Francisco. To orient everybody on the left of the photo we have the laguna reservoir. That is one of the larger areas in the city. We dont quite have large areas like pc opened and san mateo counties. We have large watershed lands. There are 27. 75acres. We have number two on this slide here. Right across the street from clarendon elementary school. We have the Summit Reservoir up the hi hill. Then we have our twin peaks which is number four. The only reservoir feeding to the emergency firefighting water system. I want to orient everyone to where they are located. What are the proactive measures we are taking on these lands . Removing leaf litter, underbrush, creating fuel breaks 30 to 100 feet, managing grass lands and shrubs. Tree trimming and removal of dead trees. What is really important to us is working with neighbors to identify Property Ownership and responsibility. A lot of times these are old lands with old, old real estate maps. It is my land or p. U. C. Land . We went with a constituent recently around confusion whose land it was. We meet with the homeowners to make sure it is very clear. What are the more reactive measures . We work with sfpd and city agencies to get homelessen camp meantceenemeant cleaned out. We established ongoing relations with neighbors, not funneling through the general p. U. C. Phone line, while that is great for a lot of calls, we want direct contact t to damon and his crew. They can speak directly to our experts. They know the lands and concern in the area. We do a lot of those consultations. They have his cell phone number to come on out there. The local Fire Department to know the ins and outs of the lands. Some of those lands are steep, hard to get to, we want to make sure they know the best weighs in and out, also to review what we are doing with Vegetation Management and firefighting strategies. If there is any support to change maintenance on our land to increase ability to fight fires, we are looking forward to doing those tours. In the past it has been too long now to do them again. What are the challenges . Biggest fire threats are from campfires, folks starting fires within our property. Working again with police to make sure fences are upandin shape. We need to train staff to have training in the realm of fuel management. We have folks up country with this skill set. We need to make sure we are hiring folks with thi with thise and training folks. We have adjacent unemployment private property. Laguna is a well example. Our land and the homeowners land is well maintained. There is private property teen our land and the homeowners. They wont be able to develop it or maintain it. You have the area unmaintained. Looking forward to getting guidance from public works and teaming up with them to get guidance so we can address those problem areas. I am happy to answer any questions. This is good. I am familiar with district 7. I believe this last issue seems to be the problem of what you are dealing with. Something that we need to be concerned about. Why are you here . I have some handouts matching this. Good afternoon, supervisors. Port Government Affairs manager on behalf of the executive director joined by the executive director for maintenance. Unlike our sister agencies we feel good about our fire risk. Looking at the map on the opaque projector we have three different types of properties that fit what was requested for this hearing. The first in dark blue are three types of undeveloped properties. They are all on the city side of the embarcadero. All of these within 30 feet of commercial or residential districts. They are all paved. Others for the theater project. Rather than fire risk we feel like those make good fire breaks and offer some protection. With the exception of the south being the giants ballpark parking lot. Thithis is the purpose of the hearing. Second what appears in light green here. The improved parks are mostly irrigated landscape. It mitigates fire risk. For the most part these are on the water side of the embarcadero. We have a large fire break. For us. The prevailing winds are easterly blowing offshore. If there were a grass fire they would move toward the water, not away from it. This has been graded and road ways are added in and prepared for leasing. Really nothing left. Vegetation has been managed. At the port, unlike other agencies, we dont have stands of trees for the 7 and a halfmiles of water front we have less than 2000, some of which are on the properties on the maps. Seasonably we take down the grasses on the waterfront that are not more fully developed. Then we also have, you know, most of the land is rented where we have in the leases requirements to maintain the grounds. We keep an eye on that. Enforcement action there. We also work with dhsh on homeless encampment resolutions as potential source of fire. Seasonal removal of shrubs and grass that gets over globe i grn over grown. It is how we work with the Fire Department, we host a fire boat. Pier 70 and mission rock will include the extensions of the city atlarge. We are fortunate to have a fire marshal colocated at the port. Ken coghlan is a great asset. We are in close communication with him. I have tom carter with us. He can answer any questions about our maintenance practices. With that we are happy to answer any questions. I dont have any questions. It looks like there is a chance of anything from the port igniting any major fires probably a low percentage. Thank you very much for coming and presenting. Next is the department. I somehow skipped department of public works. Did i call you already . Are you here . There you are. Department of public works, are you here