Last week, San Francisco’s Board of Appeals ruled 4-0 to stop the Department of Public Works from removing a healthy, decades-old sycamore in Potrero Hill.
But it may be one of the last times the board is able to do so: Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposed street-tree ordinance, which goes up for a vote at the Board of Supervisors today, would eliminate Board of Appeals review for trees classified as hazardous, giving Public Works sole jurisdiction, and accelerate the timeline for other city-initiated removals.
The ordinance is part of Lurie’s PermitSF initiative, a broader effort to reduce permitting delays and make development requirements more predictable. Public Works officials have argued that the appeals process can leave dangerous trees standing longer than they should.
The fight comes as San Francisco struggles to expand one of the sparsest urban tree canopies of any major U.S. city.
Critics of the ordinance are pointing to the appeal last week as an example of the role the appeals process can play as an independent check on city removal decisions. Last week, the Board of Appeals urged supervisors not to strip it of its authority to independently review certain city-initiated tree removals.
The Potrero case centered on a roughly 25-year-old sycamore at Rhode Island and 19th Streets, which Public Works made plans to remove in order to install an ADA-compliant curb ramp.
Josh Klipp, a certified accessibility specialist and former vice chair of the San Francisco Urban Forestry Council, appealed the removal. He proposed several alternatives to Public Works’ plan, including moving the crossing closer to a nearby bus stop, installing a raised crosswalk, or modifying the ramp to work around the tree.
He also saw challenges with the proposal as it currently stood. Nineteenth Street dead-ends at Rhode Island Street, which drops steeply down through Potrero Hill.
The proposed curb ramp would bring people onto the sidewalk immediately near the crest. Klipp argued that wheelchair users would find the location difficult, and potentially dangerous, because the ramp would emerge beside the steep downgrade hill.
Public Works did not submit a brief responding to Klipp’s appeal to the board. But at the appeal meeting, Public Works accessibility coordinator Kevin Jensen disputed Klipp’s assessment.
He told commissioners the crest offered pedestrians and approaching drivers the best sight lines, and that moving the crossing farther downhill would give drivers less time to react. Nearby driveways, the slope and sidewalk dimensions also made the proposed location the only feasible option, he said.
Jensen said he learned only two days before the hearing that he was expected to appear, and asked for a continuance so the department could provide a fuller report. Commissioners declined. Vice President Rebecca Saroyan said Public Works had failed to meet its burden of proof.
Klipp said the existing appeals process gave him time to obtain Public Works records and prepare a detailed brief. Those records, he said, showed that 792 days elapsed between the project team first identifying the sycamore for removal, and Public Works ultimately approving its removal.
“Part of the reason I was able to do such effective advocacy is because I had the time to do a records request and write a thorough brief,” Klipp told Mission Local Monday. Under a compressed process, he said, “we don’t get to have those informed conversations.”
The sycamore was not classified as hazardous, so the pending ordinance would not eliminate an appeal like Klipp’s. It would, however, shorten the filing window from 15 days to 10 and require the Board of Appeals to decide the case within 30 days instead of 60.
Critics like Klipp also worry that eliminating those appeals could encourage the city to classify more contested removals as hazardous. Hazardous removals would still receive an internal departmental review, but residents could no longer appeal the final decision to the independent Board of Appeals.
During the Potrero hearing, Board President John Trasviña asked whether the sycamore could someday be deemed hazardous because it impeded wheelchair access, and voiced concern that the board might then “never see this matter come before us ever again.”
At the same meeting, commissioners voted 4-0 to oppose eliminating their review of hazardous-tree removals.
The same day, the appeals board sent a letter to Board of Supervisor President Rafael Mandelman, arguing that the term “hazard tree” is broader than an imminent danger: Trees posing an immediate threat can already be removed without appeal, under a separate emergency provision.
In the letter, the appeals board noted that it has heard just two appeals of city-initiated tree removals since the beginning of 2024. Commissioners said they could accommodate faster timelines, but called eliminating independent review “unwarranted.”
Dan Feldman said his family planted the sycamore in 2000 after his wife, Emily Roberson, a soil microbiologist and native-plant advocate, sought out a native species that could provide shade and wildlife habitat.
Feldman said he first learned the tree might be removed after spotting a city arborist outside his home in March. He called and emailed the city seeking information about the tree’s removal that went unanswered, he said.
When Dan Feldman learned that the appeal had succeeded, he cried, he said.
“I went out and hugged the tree.”
Thank you for this awesome reporting Sarah! Unfortunately, the Board of Supervisors voted to pass the street tree amendments today, eliminating the right to appeal “hazard” tree removals, and wildly compressing remaining tree appeal rights (the only such permit appeals subjected to this timeframe). That said, my Mom didn’t raise a quitter, and this beautiful Earth deserves our love and advocacy. This isn’t the end of the conversation, just the beginning of a new one, and I invite anyone who cares about our trees – and all the life they sustain – to join me. Josh
Nice work Josh. My dad saved countless trees/forest tracts, but there was one tree in particular he collected over 1,000 signatures to save. It was (is) a Mulberry tree, which is often considered a “junk tree”, or as the city of Peoria public works employee put it at the time, “not of any real value.” The girth of the tree is over 15′, larger than the locally famous, 500-year-old giant Burr Oak of Peoria, aka the “Sentinel on the Hill.” In the end they carefully dug around the roots and packed them behind the retaining wall that was installed in order to widen the road. I just did a google search and the tree still stands, surviving the road work:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/364291941298401/posts/1572912983769618/
(The photo makes it look rural, but it’s actually in the middle of town. Whoever posted credits the “citizens of Peoria,” but he missed that my dad spearheaded the effort and collected those signatures)
The tree is structurally deficient – see the split branching from the trunk… clearly it was hacked by utilities maintenance at some point. it may look healthy but that tree will split in two with any amount of wind in the future… btw – Platanus sp. are not all called Sycamore, the native sycamore grows in swampy lowlands (not on city streets).
That’s how they grow and a slight crease in the trunk is readily apparent in many online pics. It’s possible that tree was accidentally topped as a sapling, but doesn’t really matter. Here’s a photo example of similar trunk creasing in a much older Sycamore:
organicplantcarellc.com/american-sycamore-platanus-occidentalis/
It’s been as windy as windy gets already without splitting or falling down so your prediction is not seeming terribly well-founded. You can’t really assess that from a single low-resolution still anyway if serious about risk assessment. You have to go and inspect it with a real arborist. Prognosticating from a photo alone is silly.
Trees deserve rights, especially large old trees that are fixtures of the community.
SF is becoming a fascist hellscape.