A committee of San Francisco supervisors advanced an overhaul of the city’s street-tree rules Monday after months of opposition from residents and tree advocates who say it will allow more developments to proceed without planting street trees.
The ordinance, if adopted by the Board of Supervisors, would let developers of smaller projects pay a fee instead of planting street trees, and would also end independent review of trees that Public Works deems hazardous and in need of removal.
The ordinance is part of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s PermitSF initiative, a broader effort to reduce permitting delays and make development requirements more predictable.
City planners said that understaffing at the Bureau of Urban Forestry, which manages the city’s street trees, had made street-tree reviews a source of delay, with applicants waiting an average of 32 days for approval and sometimes learning of tree requirements late in the permitting process.
Introduced by Lurie and Supervisor Alan Wong, the original proposal would have allowed all qualifying projects to pay a fee instead of planting trees, eliminated independent Board of Appeals review of city-initiated tree removals and eliminated both department-level and Board of Appeals review of hazardous-tree removals.
Supervisors narrowed the measure, retaining planting requirements for projects that meet the Better Streets Plan’s “large-project” threshold — generally those that combine a large site, substantial construction or extensive street frontage with at least 10 homes or 10,000 square feet of commercial space or another major expansion.
The revised measure retains Board of Appeals review of ordinary city-initiated removals under a faster timeline and restores one department-level appeal for hazardous-tree removals, but ends independent Board of Appeals review of those hazard determinations.
Projects below the large-project threshold could instead pay the city’s in-lieu tree fee of $2,590 per required tree. Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, would be exempt from both planting and payment requirements.
The funds would go toward larger planting efforts and reduce delays for smaller projects, according to the Department of Public Works. The fees would go into a separate account within the Adopt-a-Tree Fund and could be used only to plant trees and water them for their first three years.
The committee also adopted nonbinding language from an amendment introduced by District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey.
The amendment states that when spending the money, Public Works intends to prioritize neighborhoods with low tree canopy, such as Bayview and SoMa. It does not establish a required allocation or deadline for tree-planting.
Opponents argued that giving developers the option to pay instead of plant could undermine efforts to expand San Francisco’s tree canopy, which, at 13.7 percent, is among the lowest of any major U.S. city.
They warned that projects designed without tree wells may decide to place water, sewer and electrical lines beneath the available sidewalk space, making future planting prohibitively expensive or impossible.
“If you approve no tree now, that’s no tree ever,” landscape architect Katherine Howard told the committee.
The proposal has generated months of written opposition. The Board’s legislative file contains hundreds of pages of emails and letters, including repeated objections from neighborhood organizations and individual residents.
Critics also questioned whether Public Works is spending the tree-planting money already collected from development-related in-lieu fees.
Josh Klipp, a former vice chair of the Urban Forestry Council, told supervisors the department held millions of dollars in such fees — roughly $4.5 million — and argued that the balance showed the system was not reliably turning in-lieu fees into trees.
“If the new fees really meant a new tree, then that fund would be empty,” Klipp said to the committee.
Public Works did not provide the fund’s current available balance or respond in detail to those criticisms at the hearing.
The second major dispute concerned who gets the final say when Public Works declares a tree hazardous — that is, dead, diseased, infested, likely to fail or creating a serious obstruction.
The ordinance would retain a 15-day period for residents to object and request a hearing before the Public Works director. But the director’s decision would become final, ending the current right to appeal to the independent Board of Appeals.
That was, itself, a compromise.
An earlier version would have eliminated both the director-level appeal and Board of Appeals review. District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood moved to restore the first appeal after residents challenged the planned removal of seven mature ficus trees on Waller Street. A second review concluded that four could remain while three should be removed.
“That review happened because my office asked for it, not because the code required it,” Mahmood said.
Public Works officials said prolonged appeals can leave dangerous trees standing. They cited a row of ficus trees near the Main Library, where one tree failed during an extended appeal, and another fell onto Grove Street in 2023 after the Board of Appeals declined to authorize its removal.
But Board of Appeals officials said the city was trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
Executive Director Julie Lamarre said four appeals of city-initiated tree-removal orders had reached the board since 2024, but two were withdrawn. Of the two remaining cases, one is still pending.
“We’re just puzzled because there’s really not a problem here,” Lamarre told supervisors, describing the effort to eliminate the board’s review as “baffling.”
The ordinance is expected to go before the full Board of Supervisors after its August recess.
I’m really sick of these so called “moderates”. We’ve issued permits, lowered affordable housing percentages, changed zoning laws, and now we are not requiring trees in order to beg the real estate industry to build here because Scott Wiener put in a poison pill regarding building housing. This is ridiculous.
It’s frustrating because the core message of the urbanist movement, that we should shift towards more urban infill housing instead of car-dependent sprawl, is absolutely true and an important part of the climate solution. But in San Francisco this has become co-opted by the moderate faction to justify increasingly absurd policies. When density becomes an excuse for planting fewer trees, just because some developer said not planting trees will save him a few bucks, we’ve lost the plot. We should be expanding transit and funding social and affordable housing and rent relief to make car-free or car-light living in SF more affordable to more people. Not taking away trees.
Lana, the moderate voters are a majority in this City. Are you suggesting that a majority should not get the policies they wish for?
one thing the nimbys and the yimbys can agree on is that we all want more trees. this city has totally deprioritized them. this seems like ill-conceived legislation that nobody asked for, but gives lurie another instagram post about how he’s making things “better” (worse)
Speaking of Giants and trees, y’all know that the Giants and the City are going to mow down dozens and dozens of huge, mature trees at Crocker-Amazon to put in 5 (count ’em five) locked fence turf baseball fields. Even more of a joke, a city expert testified that a grass field doesn’t contribute to biodiversity so turf is no problem.
Basically, San Francisco is clear cutting and flattening a park to put in a corporate tournament facility plus a huge parking lot for the attendees thereof. Again, no problem. It’s not where rich people live.
So why not just fund the Bureau of Urban Forestry????
I share everyone’s frustration. Our urban forest needs funding. But the city’s budget shrank and has required painful cuts. I’m still devastated over defunding medical treatment for very sick babies at SF General. Remember the good ole days when Mayor Newsom pledged to plant 1 million trees in the city? And now the BOS is considering allowing developers to pay into a fund in lieu of planting a tree–the opposite of plantimg 1 million trees. Remember when the city allowed developers to pay into a fund in lieu of including BRM housing on site–so the city would have to build them (where?) and manage them (how?)? Considering the history of how these things turn out, why is the BOS even considering this?
Actually the budget that was just passed is the largest ever. It’s just that priorities have shifted.
The in-lieu fee grows with inflation and is currently set at $2646 as of 7/1/2026.
I would suggest poking around the Tree Canopy website (https://treecanopy.us). Trees are essential to the health and well being of all living things in an urban center.
Something tells me that developers will now have permission to plant trees for curb appeal and living standards in some neighborhoods, and not bother in others.
Is the BUF still planting trees or has sapling implementation turned over to FUF, a private business who puts non-biodegradable plastic ads on three sides of each twig planted?
FUF must be sad about the prospect of all that lost revenue!
The conservative YIMBY faction has sold out and is selling out the future of our city.
Nothing “moderate” about these people!
And why is it government sees nothing contradictory about cutting down trees elsewhere and even letting trees be felled galore in the former Arboretum (now rebranded as a “botanical garden” with its founder’s name removed from the formerly public space she helped fund.
Thanks for the information. I did not know the Strybing name had been removed from the arboretum. Darn, it makes me think the worst about the original donor and I hope it’s not true. Also, I appreciate your pointing out FUF’s use of plastic that must change. I hope FUF has not turned into a greedy business. When I served on the board it was a can-do feel-good crew. Then the ED (nothing to do with Ruth Gravanis) skipped after emptying the bank account. Each of us had to chip in $1200. It was a lot of money back then.
Trees are key for healthy cities! New study in Chicago found that as trees disappeared from urban neighborhoods, these areas experienced higher mortality rates. San Francisco needs to make tree planting and expanding our urban canopy a priority to keep people healthy!
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GH001651
In a new study, Northwestern University scientists tracked death rates and fluctuations in tree canopy cover across an 11-year period in Chicago. They found that areas experiencing greater losses in tree canopy — land covered by trees’ leafy crowns — also experienced higher mortality rates, particularly in the city’s hottest neighborhoods.
The findings suggest cities should prioritize protecting mature trees alongside planting new ones. Given the myriad health benefits associated with trees, tree maintenance has become even more crucial as human-caused climate change drives more extreme weather and intensifies heat risks in cities.
I’m sorry, is the city so broke that we can’t afford to plant trees now?
Speaking of which, how much does it cost to plant a tree? Is this knowledge obtainable?
Perhaps we should look at the hundreds of millions of dollars we give to “nonprofits”? If only there were a local journalism organization to investigate this sort of thing.
Friends of the Urban Forest google it costs nothing.
Trees are nice but the City does not need a tree policy. When I bought my house 30 years ago, I paid for a sapling to be planted out front. Now it is a large and mature flowering tree. No city agency was involved.
Bob, good on you for doing that. But trees are a public benefit and shouldn’t depend on every resident or building owner being equally thoughtful and having the resources to do that.
Also, I don’t know about 30 years ago, but today, it does require a City permit to plant a sidewalk tree, which is the only option for those of us who don’t have front yards. And that makes sense because we don’t want trees interfering with utilities or needed access space on the sidewalk.