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 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.
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