San Francisco supervisors continue charter measure to transfer street-tree maintenance to city and create $19 million fund

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on July 28 continued public hearings on a proposed charter amendment to transfer responsibility for street-tree maintenance to the city and to create a special Street Tree Maintenance Fund funded by an annual city contribution of $19,000,000, adjusted each year for changes in aggregate discretionary city revenues.

The measure, described by board staff as the fourth draft of a charter amendment, would also require the fund to pay for maintenance of trees on San Francisco Unified School District property and sets an election date of Nov. 8, 2016 for voter consideration. "This is an effort that has been going on for many, many years," Supervisor Avalos said, thanking colleagues and community groups involved with the proposal.

At the public hearing, Tom Gilberti, a member of the public, urged caution on placing budget decisions in the charter and emphasized maintenance rather than new planting: "Generally, I'm not in favor of budgeting at the ballot box. The proposed property sales tax revenue is for maintenance only and not growth of the urban forest by 55,000 trees that's contained in the urban forest plan. I stress maintenance of existing trees." Another commenter clarified that the charter proposal, as described in public materials, would "only be for the care of trees, and it's not for the planting of this 55,000 extra trees." The commenter added that "if more trees are planted, there's enough money in the plan to take care of additional trees." Both remarks were made during the public comment period for the item.

Board members said the item would be brought back the next day for further consideration. Supervisor Avalos moved to continue the hearing to July 29 at 10:30 a.m.; Supervisor Weiner seconded the motion, and the continuance was approved "without objection." The hearing was recorded as held and filed at the July 28 meeting.

The draft amendment and related materials on the board's agenda say the charter change would establish the responsibility and create the special fund; the proposal’s text, implementing details (such as fund administration and precise indexing methodology for the annual contribution), and potential impacts on other city revenues were not specified during the July 28 discussion. The public record and board materials identify Friends of the Urban Forest as one of the community organizations involved in the initiative.

The board also considered a procedural motion to shorten the waiting period between a charter amendment's first appearance on the agenda and the board's order of submission to the electorate; the motion to modify board rule 2.227 for the street-tree file was approved unanimously in a later roll call. The item will return to the board on July 29 for further action and possible placement on the November ballot.

The measure would require voter approval before becoming operative; no final ballot placement or adoption took place on July 28.