Shortly and commissioner president ann lazardus and commissioner swig commissioner Bobbie Wilson will be absence this earning set the record straight is robert bryan and at the controls the leg assistant gary im boards executive director were were joined by representatives from the city departments that have cases before this board. Sitting in the front row is chris buck urban forestry the Public Utilities commission of urban forestry at the table is assistant Zoning Administrator corey representing the Planning Department and the Planning Commission walking the room is senior bickering john updyke he with mark wall will be representing the please be advised the ringing of and use of cell phones and other Electronic Devices are prohibited. Please carry on conversations out in the hallway. Permit holders and others have up to 7 minutes to present their case and 3 minutes for rebuttal. People affiliated with these parties must conclude their comments within 7 minutes, participants not affiliated have up to 3 minutes no rebuttal. To assist the board in the accurate preparation of the minutes, members of the public are asked, not required to submit a speaker card or Business Card to the clerk. Speaker cards and pens are available on the left side of the podium. The board welcomes your comments. There are Customer Satisfaction forms available. If you have a question about the schedule, speak to the staff after the meeting or call the board office tomorrow we are located at 1650 mission street, suite 304. This meeting is broadcast live on sfgovtv cable channel 78. Dvds are available to purchase directly from sfgovtv. Thank you for your attention. Well conduct our swearing in process. If you intend to testify and wish to have the board give your testimony evidentiary weight, please stand and say i do. Please note any of the members may speak without taking the oath pursuant to the sunshine ordinance, and thank you. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony youre about to give will be the whole truth and nothing but the truth . I do. Great. Thank you very much commissioner president honda and commissioners two housekeeping items 6 ab those are appeal numbers which are appeals of a building and a plumbing permit on pillsbury street they have been brawling and regarding item 10 at 30th street that is for an altercation that was the subject of that appeal that has been cancelled the appeal was cancelled that item was dismissed and item number one general Public Comment time, members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items. With respect to agenda items, any general Public Comment seeing none, move to item 2 commissioners questions or comments. Commissioners id like to wish everything wealth and happiness for chinese new year. Any Public Comment on item 2. Seeing none, move to item 3 when is the boards consideration of considers of the minutes of the january 2016 meeting. Any changes or additions can i have a motion. Motion to accept. Motion from commissioner swig to adopt the minutes that i am on this minutes. Seen on that motion with commissioner president honda on that motion. Commissioner lazarus and commissioner Vice President fung is absent as commissioner wilson that wares carries with a vote of 3 to zero. Commissioner president honda wait to move on to item number 4. A water a second. A short recess then. Order and well start with the appellant please step forward you have 7 minutes to present your case to the board. Please speak into the microphone. Thank you for looking at our detailed appeal. Would you speak into the microphone please. Thank you very much for looking over the appeal which we spilled our board with documentation and i think we have a reasonable request to 0 postpone the case later in the year perhaps at the end of spring no urgency no kind of danger their perhaps collapsing tomorrow that is documented not only by our arborist the leading expert on trees particular and the eucalyptus trees which we know quite well, i submitted a tremendous amount of documentations with it and why he inspected the area on october 22nd and from the 11 trees he recommends 4 for removal and as you can see on the documentation all the other trees does not remove dont remove do not remove no imminent dangerous our association was mentioning they have to arborist we paid 20 two arborists never a second arborist completely from the bureau of Government Affairs but no second arborist he doesnt exist the finding of the last time we had the meeting here from public works that matter you can find on the order where we also stated the removal is not actually requested i connected 26 snatches from individuals with a petition they signed they knew what they were signing and very polite and signed out of theyre free will 26 people are against the cutting but i know with the appeals process the other party they have 4 people that are for removing the trees and so i talked to mr. Keller and said any objections for removing these 4 trees i say i do not have but i cannot speak so far the other people that as i understand the petition you better get in touch with them and send them the documentation i dont know if this was the case i dont believe it was and also were waiting as of this day for documentation we has good photographs and at the hearing a point source mentioning the different trees and actually never put my measurements or detail in it we trust 3 times the documentation we never received that due to the fact that we have 26 individuals that are against the removal of trees and since i do not represent any danger it was stated several times the the arborist or arborist joe mcbride it is reasonable that it be postponed and we waiting for the springtime this morning i have deposition here we photographed new sprouts coming out of the trees and they are reasonable healthy why theyre not new trees the past they removed six or eight trees and never replaced them they tried to remorseful those trees in july without any preempt and suddenly they removed the cart from the tree company and they were gone then later somehow didnt apologizes but get the proper permit and the tree company had tagged for removal and they tried to do with without a permit which most likely the trees in our area were removed without permit and the past years but they never respected them by law will replace them within 6 months i left you the documentation of the eucalyptus trees that are dying this is here if july from the newspaper about the Public Defenders Office joe mcbride that speaks for itself and also the other parties bryan murray of that log company is mentioning on page 8 appellant is a sole San Francisco homeowner opposing the removal is true and on page temple they typed one on line three and four a person and using the word misinformation on page 10 at the bottom it is also not true absolutely well, i dont know want to use derogatory language not correct we appreciate from the board if they can see the point from our arborist and so we can hopefully looking forward to springtime when the trees were more revived and more will grow. Thank you. Thank you. Okay well hear from the permit holder now. Good evening. Im American People attorney at ignoring den and reece we represented st. Francis hov responding to a appellants appeal before you tonight i want to state that st. Francis wood is made up of approximately 51 exactly homes many of whom came out to Public Meetings held by the Parks Committee i have shannon a member of actually both the committee and braid and speak to the public hearings or meetings that were held to kind of vet it landscaping plan of which the 11 tree removals are part of shes her to attest to the fact if there was Widespread Community involvement with respect to the 26 snatches shannon will speak to the fact shes people spoken to some of landscaping plan and will withdraw their name from that snatch in responding to appellant i nodded he had one support letter in his appeal that support letter was from someone not the hov a homeowner not from the hov this is alluding to my comments on page 10 no support letters within anyone from st. Francis hov 5 hundred and 15 homes is quite a few of the a homes between santa clara are about 46 trees of the 46 trees 11 were identified by certify ooshtd steve and steve keller part of bureau for urban forestry i understand theyll speak together as well both mr. Keller and the arborist have identified trees to be removed for public reasons and once the certified arborist report and the opinion of mr. Keller they had to act their computed with a Public Safety issue to do so as part of a 200 and 50,000 landscape theyll remove the 11 trees and submit 20 or install 20 red maple trees that are pretty extensive and large trees serve as a beautification for the area part of their order aside from Public Safety that is the primary reason to maintain the overall feel and character and beautification of the area these trees are dying they want to kind of want the landscape plan into the future so thats basically, what the motivate is aside is from Public SafetyPublic Safety first and a longrange planning for yerba buena avenue theyve heard from a number of homes from yerba buena avenue and everyone is in support of comforting that street bringing the new trees and the new scholarship plan and enhancing the area, of course, it will help to enhance Property Values and so forth so a lot of reasons for that doing it it through a public process and neighbors were allowed to come out like tonight so youll hear from steve over and over man he is here he believe theyll be entitled to 3 minutes and could you please stop the clock this is not correct i want to understand you use ours time permanent representatives include mormon association are party to the appeal the officers of that association or Board Members are considered represented by i they canned speak under Public Comment any individual that you the homeowners organizations associations has hired an arborist will be considered a representative and need to speak under the time allotted under the 7 minutes speak separately and great, thank you well have mr. Over and over mrman come upy to talk about that but without further ado, what mr. Orman found i think that will coffer it is also not repeating so without further ado, heres under orman. Good evening im steve orman a landscape certified arborist and a tree risk assessor our by the united arborist i was hired by the st. Francis association for the past 4 years i was a landscape manager and basically, i oversee the contractors, the tree contractor and Landscape Contractor and do walk through once a week throughout the property assessing the trees and the dollar story plants the reason that im here is because the yerba buena is a street to believe relandscaped and i do walkthroughs with another arborist who is the owner of northern trees and during the walk through we noticed the trees were declined and hazardous youll see later in the photos these trees are not healthy any tree that has a target is by definition a hazard and those trees will have homes and vehicle and parked vehicles so i advocate as much as thats part of my job to advocate those trees its not my job to take down the trees but when a Public Safety hazard we apply for permits and go through the process we have homeowners here that have been innovative been through the process represent the homeowners and yerba buena that they agree the finding with the citys finding those trees are hazardous like i said im not there to take trees down i dont want to take down trusts e tries but preserve what we have with were in a process those trees are over one hundred years old it is time to take out the hazardous trees and install new trees thank you. Thank you. Mr. Buck. Good evening, commissioners chris buck urban forestry are public works general summary from our department we think this request for removing 11 trees is reasonable a number of trees across the properties at st. Francis wood at the staff level we received the application for removal we evaluated and found the trees are in declining health we approved that for the public works hearing and another that hearing steve our ooshtd provided testimony about the condition of the trees and the departments decision the result from that hearing to approve the trees roller it o removal the appellants brief focuses on the drought concerns weve been in drought situations for a long time an el nino winter this winter not likely to have two el nino winter back to back from the trees get a punch if the irrigation there guess decay present injuries present and some of the branches and general reduced vigor i dont think an el nino winter is enough to help the trees this is very reasonable request to approve for removal the 11 trees st. Francis wood that manages a lot of trees across their domain and this is the first time in a while weve received a tree application from them regarding the species the red maple the large tree at maturity a different look and feel a lot of the trees in st. Francis wood are eucalyptus are evergreen, however, we defer to hoa whenever weve initiated the plan for new trees along the block every time we remove an individual tree even when like Market Street or delores you know that you can expect to plant a similar species Everyone Wants to say choose their own tree it is like when youre in Elementary School if you give one period of time a cookie you need to provide everyone with what they want id like id rather decide on one tree so im imaging the board there at hoa has done a lot of enough outreach to build that consensus the tree itself is it does better in warmer sunny micro compliments within the city it has wind protection there with that weve are approving that supposing species for replacement a different look and feel to that block and over time my assumption when the other trees are eventually removed for legitimate reasons this will be red maples. St. Francis wood as demonstrated a commitment to maine i maintaining the trees the neighborhood it is a heavy tree im here to reiterate those are reasonable trees to remove approve for removal and the species decision it is a large statute species that hoa and st. Francis wood is proposing you dont think i dont see an issue of Planning Department of red maple and keep it flexible from the board condominiums to a species what if that species didnt do well in 6 months and were stuck into a species decision that well need to possible come back for a decision on so in my brief he put i want to put that out there we want to accommodate as many people as possible but st. Francis wood as made a decision on the species we ask that will deferred to our department and st. Francis wood with that, thats all i have to say that evening. Mr. Buck whats the life of the existing species you want to approve. The lifespan a difficult to project in an urban environment my sense that trees is there thirty to 40 years old some of the eucalyptus planned there is different on each the block on st. Francis wood i said say an average lifespan upwards 50 years the low end is thirty years and red maple are similar in the fact they are not a fast growing tree but a longer lived species not as weeping or drop i didnt theyre open they let light the winters and the canopy the wind will keep the cannon from two dense not a dense canopy but openness to the red maples thats a little bit of the span of the life of the maple the permit holder said those trees are over one hundred years old it is one thing about age it is very different to tell unless our counting the rings im not familiar with a lot of the gonzales of st. Francis wood but i mean they maybe 50 years old. The question mr. Buck the appellant mentioned several trees were removed without permit will you or your Department Look at that. Ill have to double check with steve kelly know there is an acknowledgement some location along yerba buena avenue 20 replacement trees an acknowledgement that weve confirmed some planting not been replanted by st. Francis wood i think generally, if there is an issue something that can, looked at some stranger boundaries something about kings law they dont acknowledge certain renovations these trees are significant trees our jurisdiction extend within 10 feet from the curb line no jurisdiction over the right away but significant trees jurisdiction go there their attorneys may explain that better but the reason we have a hearing those trees are 10 feet of the curb line not street trees it is possible some trees are further away dont require a permit before i need to check with our staff at the office but my sense theyve been committed to replant trees and absolutely look at any thoughts of trees not getting replaced. The second question i dont i dont. No, sir the brief the box size. The requirement is a minimum of 24 inch respected tree a general requirement minimum requirement it is typically what we recommend when people are moving trees through no fault of their own no fixtures it is part of a plan by st. Francis wood to revisit the landscaping on those trees in that sense our department was looking at to make a larger recommendation based on really on the fact that is reasonable route maintenance. Explain how large is the 24 inch box. It is approximately 2 feet by 2 feet square 36 same thing theyre getting a thicker trunk a year or two years of growth the 36 inch box youre getting one or two years additional growth about a one or two, 2 year jump start. In height wise. Height can vary quite a bit red maples are at all and a but a 24 is 8 feet tall tops to the tip and 36 inch box tree is potentially could be 10 feet to 12 or 1 feet max the height is negotiable it is the trunk. Question mr. Buck to clarify do you want the permit potentially changed to take out the red