DPW and the StreetTreeSF BLA Report

NOTE: There will be a public hearing on DPW/BUF and the Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) Report on the StreetTreeSF Program, Aaron Peskin and Gordon Mar will be presiding.

PSNS Committee, Friday, November 19 at 1:00pm.

Ours is the fourth of four items.  Hopefully the first three items will go quickly (Liquor and Cannabis licenses).

Connect to the remote meeting:
WATCH SF Cable Channel 26, 78 or 99 (depending on provider)
WATCH LIVE www.sfgovtv.org

PUBLIC COMMENT CALL-IN
1 (415) 655-0001 / Meeting ID: 2493 569 4649 # #

Written comments:
Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee
Clerk: John Carroll
(415) 554-4445
john.carroll@sfgov.org

 

Use any of the following points in your Public Comment or written comments.

 

Summary of the BLA report:

SF is way behind on tree maintenance,
Did not service trees in poorer neighborhoods the same as in richer ones (equity),
Has zero growth in its number of city street trees, and
Has antiquated and error-prone tree data systems.

Without better tree management SF will never have a thriving urban forest.

Add your personal comment, e.g. I’m really disappointed that StreetTreeSF has not grown our urban forest

LCarnes slides for Public Comment

 

Full report: The SF Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) Report on Department of Public Works StreetTreeSF Program , June 14, 2021.  Start reading at p. 40.

 

Independent Study with Similar findings

Matthew Gutierrez, Expanding SF’s Urban Forest  Spring 2021  Masters Thesis, UC Berkeley City Planning
His findings and recommendations are similar to those in the June 2021 BLA Report.

 

Summaries of points in the BLA StreetTreeSF Report:

p. 40
5.  StreetTreeSF is not on track
to meet its initial program goal in 3–5 years but projects it will finish in eight years.

p. 50
7. Opportunities to Improve Equity
The program did not consider social and economic distribution of services.

p. 61
8. Street Tree Canopy Growth and Geographic Distribution
Phase I of San Francisco’’s Urban Forest Plan established the goal of growing the City’’s street tree population to reach 155,000 trees by 2034.   But the number of new street trees planted each year is not enough to account for annual tree mortality, much less increase the number of trees to meet the Urban Forest Plan’’s goal.

p. 71
9. StreetTreeSF Data Limitations
BLA found that the current data management systems used by StreetTreeSF produce unreliable reports for basic measures of tree work completed. This lack of data reliability has led to inaccurate public reporting and hinders the program from accurately tracking its progress over time.

 

In short, SF is way behind on tree maintenance, did not service trees in poorer neighborhoods the same as in richer ones, has zero growth in its number of city street trees, and has antiquated and error-prone tree data systems.

Without better tree management SF will never have a thriving urban forest.

 

Independent Study with Similar findings

Mathew Gutierrez, Expanding SF’s Urban Forest  Spring 2021  Masters Thesis, UC Berkeley City Planning
His findings and recommendations are similar to those in the June 2021 BLA Report.

 

Other studies:

Lance Carnes, BUF Recomendations  February 24, 2020
Procedural and database recommendations.  Sent to BUF Superintendent Carla Short, no response.

Lance Carnes, BUF Lack of Data Integrity and Responsiveness  March 9,  2020
Sent to DPW Director, no response.

 

 

What can be done?

With apologies to SF Giants fans, Los Angeles is on the way to having one of the finest urban forests in the nation.   They are using a carefully-developed tree management plan (see p. 16 at LA 2018 UFMP), and the services of industry leader Davey Tree Company.   Davey has a staff of tree management experts, who can advise on all aspects of an urban forest including planning and budgeting.

Using Davey’s services might be the most cost-effective way to get SF’s tree data into a unified Tree Management System (TMS) and provide SF with 21st Century tree management tools.

Below is the public website Davey’s TreeKeeper system maintains for LA.   Note the tree benefits at the left, which is updated each time the tree inventory or search location is changed.  Click on the website thumbnail below to view the live website.

Zoom in and out, click on a tree to view its data.