When Palo Alto leaders enacted a new tree-protection ordinance last year, their goal was to protect and expand a treasured city asset: its canopy.
On Wednesday night, however, members of the city Planning and Transportation Commission suggested that the new law may have gone too far and supported trimming the ordinance to give homeowners more flexibility to remove trees that are in poor shape or whose presence would compromise development plans.
The commission became the latest to weigh on the proposed revision to the tree ordinance, which was enacted in June 2022 but which came under increasing scrutiny after scores of trees collapsed around town during last winter's storms, in some cases damaging homes. As a result, the council is set to consider numerous changes, including exceptions for trees that are deemed "incompatible with immediate environment," that are seen as a "detriment" to adjacent trees or that have un unrepairable canopy that encroaches on a home but that does not currently meet the city's criteria for "hazard."
During its discussion, commissioners repeatedly acknowledged that trees, for their many benefits, also bring risks and that local law needs to do a better job in accounting for these risks.
"My sense is this ordinance really prioritizes the lives of trees over the lives of our citizens," Commissioner Bart Hechtman said during the Wednesday discussion. "I think we need to strike a better balance between those two and the way we do that is with a little more flexibility."
Ben Lenail, a resident of Crescent Park, received a jarring reminder of the danger that trees can pose to humans when a large oak fell on him as he and his golden retriever, Hazel, were out in Rinconada Park on Oct. 24.
Lenail, who uses a mobile scooter to get around, was out with Hazel near the tennis courts close to Walter Hays Elementary School when he heard a crack above him, he told this publication. Before he could move his scooter out of the way, the tree toppled on him.
Lenail said he was thankful that the trunk and the tree's larger branches missed him and Hazel. He remained covered by leaves and smaller branches until students, teachers and administrators from Walter Hays, which was just getting out, ran over and helped him get out from the foliage.
"I think it's a miracle that I wasn't really hurt. I had a few scrapes and cuts on my hands and neck, but other than that, I was completely unharmed and so was my dog," Lenail said in an interview.
Lenail said he saw no signs that the tree was dead or diseased, though it seemed to him like the tree toppled because its branches were not pruned properly, he said.
Leah Russin, who has been critical of the tree ordinance, shared with the commission her experience from last March, when a Douglas fir fell on her Barron Park home during a storm and caused major damage that is still getting repaired. She had tried to get the tree removed earlier in the year but her request for a permit was denied after the city's new law took effect in June 2022.
While the ordinance already has provisions for removing trees that threaten or cause damage to a home's foundation or eaves, Russin argued that it should also consider circumstances in which a tree poses a danger to people — and not just to structures.
The city currently requires an arborist report confirming that a protected tree is diseased or hazardous before it can be removed. Russin said that predicting that a tree might fall is at times impossible.
"I strongly believe we need much more flexibility and the revisions proposed by staff are not sufficient," Russin told the planning commission on Nov. 8. "There is nothing in the ordinance that allows … removal if a person or property is at risk. The reality is we can't tell."
Commissioner Cari Templeton sympathized with this view and similarly suggested that the city ease some of the existing restrictions on removing trees. In some cases, she noted, it may be hard to tell that a tree is diseased or poses a danger.
Templeton alluded to the recent incident near the Rinconada tennis courts and made a case for having more flexibility to maintain the intent of the ordinance "without causing people to be frustrated or unsafe in their own homes."
"It's frustrating because we all have good intentions with this ordinance: we want to protect our canopy. Palo Alto has one of the most beautiful canopies, we are really lucky. But we also have to understand that we're having unintended consequences."
The ordinance that the city passed last year raises the number of protected trees from about 81,720 to about 224,100, according to Urban Forester Peter Gollinger. It does this by designating all trees with a diameter of 15 inches or greater as "protected" (redwoods, with a threshold of 18 inches, are the only exception) and by adding four species — bigleaf maple, incense cedar, blue oak and California black oak — to a "protected species" list that previously only included the coast live oak, the valley oak and the coast redwood.
The city's Parks and Recreation Commission, which helped craft the ordinance, last month supported staff's proposal to ease some of the restrictions on removal. The planning commission similarly endorsed the changes, though planning commissioners were more critical of the new law and its impacts on both public safety and development projects. While the planning commission didn't take any votes, members generally agreed that the changes proposed by Gollinger are reasonable and that further adjustments may be required down the road.
Vice Chair Bryna Chang noted that the new ordinance, for all its imperfections, is far superior to the law that was in the books before it was adopted. The new law, she said, brings Palo Alto "up to par with other cities." Without it, she said, the city "would look terrible and it would be an embarrassment."
"I think the challenge is that the only way to bring the risk down to zero is to have no large trees that can fall. And I don't think that's what we want," Chang said.
She also raised concerns about giving developers too much discretion to remove trees that don’t fit in with their building designs. The new changes will explicitly give planning staff the discretion to authorize tree removal for major development applications. Chang said she was concerned that some may game the system by proposing designs that don’t sufficiently protect trees, knowing they will get the city's permission to take them down.
Dashiell Leeds, organizer at the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter, similarly took issue with a clause that allows trees to be removed in large developments as long as its removal is deemed consistent with the goals of the city's Urban Forest Master Plan and the developer commits to having an increase in canopy in 15 years.
"It seems like, in effect, in large developments no tree will be safe and no other provisions would apply to large developments," Leeds said.
Gollinger noted that discretionary approval of tree removals is already part of the city’s process, even if it’s not explicitly mentioned in the ordinance.
"This is something we’ve done in the past when we reviewed a project," Gollinger said. "It has to make sense. We’re not going to sign off on a wholesale removal of trees, but if removing them and replanting them makes sense in the long term, that’s what this is here for."
Comments
Registered user
Old Palo Alto
on Nov 9, 2023 at 11:54 am
Registered user
on Nov 9, 2023 at 11:54 am
Trees are one of the few ways within our direct control to fight climate change, and native trees are particularly important. Valley oak trees are a keystone species - a species on which many other organisms in an ecosystem depend, such that if it were lost the ecosystem would change drastically. Valley oaks support approximately 300 animals, 1,100 plants, 370 fungi, and 5,000 insects and invertebrates.
It is shocking to hear histrionics like "My sense is this ordinance really prioritizes the lives of trees over the lives of our citizens" from a Planning Commissioner. If that were true, surely he would have done everything possible to rid Palo Alto of cars, which are infinitely more dangerous to people than trees.
Protecting and growing our tree canopy, particularly critical native, is a really hard problem, as the city becomes more densely built out. But that is what we should expect our Planning Commission to focus on, not scaremongering on behalf of developers and oversize McMansions.
Registered user
Old Palo Alto
on Nov 9, 2023 at 8:55 pm
Registered user
on Nov 9, 2023 at 8:55 pm
@M should we prioritize the preservation of a single tree over the life of a human being? Is maybe what the PT Commissioner was getting at. And How many live oaks were milled into to planks to sustain humans under one now “historic” home build in Old Palo Alto ?
It is hard. No pun intended. Yet denying humans the dignity of a home is tragic and yes, unsustainable. Our climate is directly impacting yes the native oak insect and the human mammal (all mammals) absolutely.
Our unhoused local humans are our starkest visual reality of a climate change economy — entirely human engineered. So as much as sick dolphins & seals are washing up on our shores or Oaks are dying from sudden oak disease, not building will save us, either.
Pushing this crisis downline to exist over there is not taking climate action steps. It’s but making it worse ...
I am reminded of places on earth where our toxic addictive electronic device garbage ends up for the birds and children to pick thru for scant pennies.
Let us stop buying into the latest iPhone version of nothing. but link g the pockets of the mega rich. The Palo Alto Giant Tech hubs, including Tesla are sucking up all the remaining juice, weakening our outdated electric grid further, drying up the soil.
And those humans not tethered to a power cord are the first to socio economically perish from, yes their climate action, of not “connecting” to a grid. Marginalizing this population, a forced life without and yet deemed as “misfits” .
What we can do is provide a more balanced approach. And yes sticking 2000 units of housing where there is zero canopy coverage on a flood plain, on. Freeway and a wastewater treatment plant is not climate solving but climate change producing. Dispersing housing within the canopy is.
Registered user
another community
on Nov 10, 2023 at 11:55 am
Registered user
on Nov 10, 2023 at 11:55 am
Here's the irony: a city that wants to preserve shade at the cost of human lives, yet would likely deny an unhoused person the right to rest or nap beneath a shady tree.
I've seen better canopies. Right up ECR in Menlo Park, for one. For decades, the ECR strip there was drab at best. And yes, the swarm of development has impinged on open space. But at least part of their planning was to include trees. Why can't we do that?
PA's future developments are devoid of trees and they will stick out like sore thumbs just like the recent developments. PA is becoming a hodgepodge of lego buildings that will never meet the Historic Building elements, thats for sure. Not all trees are the same. They require regular maintenance by someone who is familiar wiith hundreds of trees and knows how to care for them. Perhaps this agency could provide an assist: >Web Link Local arborists.