Appeal asks for massive treeplanting in this era of climate emergency, and trying to figure out how to sequester carbon. Finally, the ficus order fails to make up for the loss of canopy at Washington Squares in terms of tree species, size and proposed planting schedule. I would like to ask Telegraph Hill dwellers and all largescale removals going forward, because they didnt this time around. Yet, we are the largest, oldest, best known Neighborhood Organization in north beach. If the city wants to build a relationship of trust, and transparency, especially after what happened at the playground on the loss of our little fore forest, it makes sense to work with the neighborhood. Now, we have heard all of us are the replacements of choice for the ficus along the 600 block of columbus. We were not consulted as to the species, even though all of dusn that magnolias, i hardy evergreen street tree, which sequester ten times more carbon, and they soak up four times more stormwater. We would like to be consulted on these kinds of decisions. Thank you. Thank you. We will not hear from mr. Carnes. Welcome. Would see i have my talk slides on this thing. Here come the marines. We can see it. Its on our screen. Has my time started . Good evening. My name is lance carnes, on the north beach resident representing save north beach village. We have appealed the order to remove seven ficus trees at Washington Square. Every report shows the trees need trimming, not removal. They are significant asset to the neighborhood, and San Francisco. We ask that you nullify the d. P. W. Order. Here is a map of Washington Square showing the trees next to it. You see the green trees there. The last tree on the lower right was removed last year. These are the subject trees. The map is part of a large amount. In a few man minutes i will contrast these green trees with a large amount. This is the sidewalk you consider as a neighborhood asset. The sidewalk entries next to the park are used daily by hundreds, even thousands of people. Locals who move up the neighborhood, and visitors on their way to and from fishermans wharf. Without shade trees this would be a miserable possibly. They post of the trees for removal late december, 2018. They were given a removal hearing date in late february, 2019. During the eight weeks between the posting, and the hearing, we stood next to the trees and asked passersby to sign a petition supporting retaining the trees, we managed to get 503 petition signatures which we submitted in our removal hearing. The neighborhood is very engaged in these trees. There a couple of comments from residents. The comments are by some of the elder residents in the neighborhood. Im getting long pause when the tooth myself. Long in the tooth myself. To establish the condition of the trees which they want us to believe are ready to fall down and kill somebody. We obtained arborist reports. This first one is from, the report found for the renovation in Washington Square park, if you can see, at the bottom here, the proposed action is no treatment needed for these trees. The second report we got was a citywide tree survey which was done in 2017. The city paid 500,000 for the survey. The data came in and these were the seven trees, pointing at the screen you cannot see that. The seven trees, the recommended maintenance for all trees was large tree, routine paren preowned. When a citywide survey was done, it was released as a spreadsheet. I got a copy of that. I started analyzing some of the trends. You can all dial into in your spare time, when you get home tonight. It has articles on the trees. There broken up by supervisor district. You can look at certain types of trees, and you can lobby your supervisor to manage the trees better. Lets see heres how this whole thing began with an email from u. S. Superintendent carla short to forrester chris barker, last december she said we need to get these posted. The park is undergoing renovations in. This will be the best time for us to remove these ficus. They are trying to accommodate the renovation of the park. They did post them for removal, and then they did an inspection about a week later. I dont if you can read this here, but the person who went to inspect, wrote on the road inspect with no reason. Shouldnt you be inspecting first, and then posting removal . Time remaining, one minute, oh my. This is a map of all of the trees in the neighborhood that are Public Safety hazards. You can remember them map i showed you before. It is surprising to me why all of these trees that need attention, why they would concentrate on these trees here that just need pruning. I would say they are barking up the wrong trees. Since there is no safety hazard mentioned, d. P. W. Has a policy they dont like to remove trees unless its absolutely necessary for Public Safety. In conclusion, we havent found any factual evidence that these seven ficus trees are a danger. Three arborist reports show that they are. Heres a final they are not. Heres a final slide. Thank you, sir. You will have time in rebuttal. Will now hear from the department. Mr. Brock. You have 14 minutes. Good evening, commissioners. Chris brock, San Francisco public works. Thank you for staying here so late. Great respect for everybody in this room, yourselves included, the last 20 years, i dont think there has been a tree situation i have not been aware of, either for frans urban forest, or as inspector from the city, and as an urban forrester, manager of the urban forest. We will talk about it. I think when you look at the last year or so, to someone looking at trees, observing replacements patterns, it looks a little sketchy. By the end of the presentation, i want to point out that there is significant steps moving forward, and the trees are coming. Let me get to that. We did evaluate these trees. We evaluated trees in an email, just to jump right to it. Our superintendent emailed me and said we need to look at these trees. What mr. Carnes didnt relay, as i replied. I would like to visit the site to check the trees myself with susan, we can confirm the recommendations before posting removals. Susan, we can look at our schedules. So, would we approve a tree for removal without reviewing it . Categorically now. Going back to my brief for this evening, we did evaluate the seven trees. There has been a lot of activity out there, its been very unfortunate. There has been a number of things, over the last three years that have occurred out there. One is a very serious injury. The other is renovation of the park, playground, and of course i come to you yet as once city family, but saying okay, i joined us later in the game. My task was to evaluate seven ficus trees along columbus avenue. It is unfortunate how and when i come in to do that. When mr. Irving said this Canary Island pine were amazing pine trees, some of my favorite in north beach. I love that little corner. I hear her. Public works has heard loud and clear, the frustration the community has felt about things gone at the park. If i had a choice, i would say do not ask me to evaluate any ficus trees adjacent to the square park. When i find those trees, please trees, have really good structure so we can keep them. The last thing we want to do is initiate removal in north beach, first of all. Secondary not adjacent to a park that its had a lot of activity. That is some of the background of how we got involved. At the hearing in february, our superintendent, carla short, testified that the trees do remove several removal criteria for ficus trees. The trees have poor structure, some with and without included bark present. The directors order, decree removal criteria was issued in 2014 to have public works that exhibit the structural concerns. Ficus along columbus avenue and lombard streets, San Francisco north beach, citywide have experienced large stone failures. Many residents are aware of these maintenance challenges. Our department recognize the important roles that large trees serve within our urban forest canopy. And the value of these specific trees add to the site by creating a buffer between the street in the park. These trees also create a pleasant environment for people waiting for the bus, and for folks using the sidewalk. Many of them visitors from around the world. But that said, as the manager of street trees, we need to keep Public Safety at the forefront of our decisionmaking. We need to acknowledge when trees have poor structure. Our bureau was asked to evaluate the trees with any necessary maintenance to be done at the same time as the park renovations taking place. To reduce impacts to residents and businesses. During this evaluation process we determine that the Structural Health of the trees is poor enough to warrant the removal. My supervisor, carla short who is our superintendent is the one involved with the community meeting, im not here to counter mr. Irving. If we miss Telegraph Hill dwellers that is unfortunate. There have been community meetings, and it just seems generally like we are usually pretty quick to dial in with Telegraph Hill dwellers or the supervisors office. Also, our superintendent has been the one to meet with both appellants over the last few months. Again, i want to be clear that there was no directive from someone related to park renovations to get out there and approve trees for removal. Whenever theres a project as you know, it is important that we dont finish 90 of evaluating a site and then leave street trees unattended to. When the street gets repaved, we do not want to hear two years later that someone wants to replace the water main. Those are the conditions for us doing out there. There are concerns raised about whether or not proposed tree removals and ficus, at large meet sql requirements and we do have sql clearance through the 2014 urban forest plan which accounted for anticipated the need to remove trees at the outset of our implementation event. At this. Has come going to go ahead and move on to our powerpoint, and then we will come back to this. If we could go to overhead, please . Excuse me, to the computer. So, im not going to blow over this, i want to go through the individual trees. This is the same powerpoint that carla short, our superintendent presented at our public works hearing. There she stated again, of course we did evaluate the trees ahead of time. Over this past eight months we have had four of our six inspectors, two of them we lost two other municipalities. Another one was on leave for six months, and another was on maternity leave. So, at the time the evaluations that were written up, i see it, that is not a very detailed evaluation. I evaluate these trees myself on site. I compared with our superintendent, she has been to the site. That is why she was quick to say removal in her email to me, i had not been out there, so i said okay, let me evaluate. We have evaluated them. Again, often we get a request when we are talking about removals, if something fails or there have been issues near that site, right. On this row of trees, there were eight ficus. The first ficus have been removed, they did have multiple branch failures several years ago. We did go ahead and post removal notices on the first tree. That tree was removed, so now there are seven trees that remain. Tree one did have failures. In my brief, not in this powerpoint, that is the first two images that show wide angles of attachment when you are viewing it from the street. On the backside you can see there have been multiple secondary stem failures. So, looking at the individual trees, this was the first of the remaining seven trees. It was obviously competing with the tree to the right of it, so now it has filled out since this image was taken. It has very poor structure throughout the canopy. This is the tree that was removed, and it was the eighth tree. The remaining trees all have very poor structure. We do consider alternatives for removal, that is the first thing we consider when reevaluating any tree. That was considered, it was also reviewed and discussed with the director following the hearing in february, before the resulting decision was issued. Going through the trees, these are ficus trees that show co dominance stands, narrow angle attachments. Some included bark, some without. This is where we are seeing trees fail across the city. This tree is contacting the guy wire, so these two. Heres to stems that are rubbing against each other. Often when we are looking at, can we prune this, can we remove that branch or that stem. It is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes we are like sure we can take that one branch often we can be good. We dont feel that way in this case. Again, narrow angles and attachments with included bark. This is where we are seeing trees fail to all the city. It is unfortunate that it is such a high profile location in San Francisco. Again, we dont go looking for trees to remove. Its also not an ultimatum on every ficus. There are plenty of trees that the thirdparty census is recommending for removal that we are saying, we think we can work with that tree. Yes, there are trees that they have recommended for pruning where we said actually, no, were going to override that well make make our own decision. It is true that we have a bit of a mixed bag. We have done some look at the data, and looking at three of our grid maps, there are more ficus that we are downgraded from removal to pruning. Its not a narrative that we have heard and a lot of other cases, that we are just out there cutting all of the ficus down. Again, showing a lot of the stems, included bark. One thing i will show photos of, too, there are two large playing trees inside the park here behind the subject tree. They are really starting a crowd, they are Pretty Amazing trees. Collectively they create a nice buffer for pedestrians. When we look at phasing removals for pruning only, it is really hard to get trees established. We have 22 streetlights on a bus shelter where we need to space and a replacement trees out for each other. That is not the reason we are approving trees for removal. We were into consideration when we initiated these removals. It is purely on the poor structure of the trees and where these trees are failing. Again showing co dominance stems with included bark. This is an example of a tree that is too close to the street light come on bus shelter. I have a diagram of how we would space these out. This shows the larger trees in the background, and again co dominance stems with narrow angle attachments. One of the things that we would do, after the trees are approved for removal. It was shift the replacement tray locations towards the curb. So we can increase the path of travel between the trees in the parks. Right now the trees are almost sort of in the middle of the sidewalk. In this diagram shows you come on the left side the existing condition of the layout. On the right side is what is proposed for you to be to shift the basins toward the curb so we can create a wider path of travel. This is not the reason for removal. If approved for removal, this is what we want to do, to increase the path of travel for pedestrian. Right now, if you look at the subject trees. They are somewhat floating out in the middle of the sidewalk. This is not a removal consideration, this is a consideration regarding the layout. If we were to leave some trees, not others, we are leaving trees in the middle of the path of travel. The issue is not having a structure to work with that we can hang our head on and say, yes, i can make this recommendation, step away and expect the tree to remain there sound for a long time to come. Regarding replacement species, we do have a diagram here. With the large flatness trees we need to give consideration to the fact theres no vertical growth above those trees. Impacting several trees. They are very vertical, tall, fastgrowing. The idea with the olive. You have time in a rebuttal. I have several questions actually. The last time you were before this body, you were not before this body. There was a case where you did not provide a brief to show up department. That was a while ago. A month ago. Want to know what happened . We had a continuance on this case. I would have to look at that. Looking at the trees. First of all, roughly, how many ficus do we have here in the city . Well, it depends on what your point of time references . Lets say theres about 7,000 ficus trees. How many on the list for removal . We are going through block by block and dilating them on key maps. On our website we explain how we are essentially looking at six by six block square areas, and evaluating trees. I cant tell you right now, how many we are going to remove citywide, by the end of this year, or next year. Is there a list . We have a list of trees. What happens is, we have a 35 year earnings cycle as established. We are systematically looking at the worst first throughout the city, the largest trees come the largest quantity. We are evaluating those in advance of the trees being maintained by either internal street crews or private contractors. That is what i refer to when i say our key maps. You do not have an idea . It is literally key map by key map. 500, 1,000 . I do want to put something on the overhead, this is important. Im sorry, its 11 00 oclock. All of us have to move our cars actually. On this overhead, the question is about ficus. Not every ficus is a removal candidate. It is casebycase. We are upgrading a large percentage of ficus. Are we looking at the wrong thing here . We need the overhead, not the computer. They went to bed. Basically, what we are saying, comparing three grades. We upgraded 32 on one grade, 21 and another, 50 on the third grade. I am here to dispel a little bit. There is this Rolling Thunder of ficus removals. Am still trying to get a number, im sorry. You have 7,000 trees, which of the 7,000 trees this late at night i dont we have several hearings coming up this fall about ficus. My next question is, ive been on this body for seven years, ive seen a lot of ficus trees. Looking at the pictures that are here, that if things i like about that particular location is the center sidewalk. The ficus that we see that are earmarked for removal have been hit by postal trucks, uhauls, fire trucks. Whereas with the exception of the tree that is initially been removed, i dont see that. If youre talking about co dominant, that is a feature of the tree. That means every ficus tree in San Francisco would be on immediate removal is. The other thing that usually comes before this body, is that ficus tend to be onesided, because theres usually a building and they outgrow them. Where