On Monday, January 11th, I attended a presentation on the DRAFT prioritization for the Hazard Tree Abatement Plan of the Neighborhood Park Bond. This is the basic plan in which RPD’s urban forestry expert outlines the work that Rec and Park will do with the $4M allotted by the bond. The consultant, HortScience, walked us through the rationale and data used to determine which parks will get priority for hazard tree work.
There are a few important things to keep in mind here:
1. The $4M of bond money for tree work will not fund everything we need done in our parks.
2. HortScience feels pretty strongly that the $4M will cover a forestry plan that will be based on the assessment conducted on all of the parks. This city-wide assessment will give us valuable data so we can know what each park needs. HortScience is going to try to help Rec and Park's tree crew move from being solely reactive to tree failures, to be able to do more preventative maintenance.
3. In addition to covering an assessment of each park and the planning, the $4M should also cover the parks, or portion of larger parks, identified in priority group 1.
4. Not all parks need hazard tree work but all need maintenance, and the priority list will reflect hazards that must be taken care of immediately.
5. Most trees fail during storms, and most severe injures caused by failing trees occur on properties adjacent to parks, or on roadways, causing car crashes. For that reason, HortScience is emphasizing that hazard work should happen first near roads or structures where people tend to linger. HortScience has not prioritized tree work in all playgrounds, for example, because they feel there is a greater likelihood that people will be driving on the road, rather than be inside a park, during a storm.
The group who attended the tree presentation on Monday included NPC, Parks Trust, SF Environment's Urban Forestry program, Nature in the City and the California Native Plant Society. The group felt that while the consultant had strong rationale for his recommendations, we all wanted to see the detail on how they decided which parks were put into each of the three priority groups.
Rec and Park is going to revise the report to reflect their prioritization decisions. For now, I invite you to send feedback on the overall plan and approach. RPD would like to present this to the Commission on February 4th. Please review the draft documents below and send your input or questions to Karen Mauney-Brodek: Karen.Mauney-Brodek@sfgov.org or (415) 831-2789
Click here to read the DRAFT Tree Hazard Prioritization Plan
Click here to view Rec and Park's presentation, "Tree Risk Area Identification and Prioritization" (PowerPoint)
