City Staff Bid Allowing Developer to Cut Trees
Ends With Bauters' Rebuke
Information Hidden From Commissioners
Council Member Pounces on Staff, Saves Trees
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Council member John Bauters (on right)
He has a 'Loraxian' view of the urban forest but he's
thankfully, more effective than the actual Lorax.
Photo Lea Suzuki/SF Chronicle |
Emeryville was on track heading into the February 25th Planning Commission meeting to allow the cutting of nearly 176 trees associated with Hollis Street's Biomed development proposal but for the actions of Councilman John Bauters who, citing a City statute that protects privately owned trees, forced the city staff to save 90 trees following their initial recommendation for removal. After the City Hall staff prepared their report that mistakenly gave the Commission a green light to kill the trees, Councilman Bauters, monitoring the Commission, wrote a February 24th email excoriating the staff for failing to reveal to the Commission their option to save the trees as is preserved in Emeryville’s municipal code.
The Planning Commission, in response to Mr Bauters’ email, voted to save many of the trees that would have unnecessarily been cut down if they had listened to the staff. A sharp eyed Councilman John Bauters, noting the error in the staff report, ultimately managed to save 90 trees from being cut outright but further got an agreement to plant more trees than what the staff had asked of the developer – 45 trees in all.
The tree cutting, as first presented by Emeryville Planning Director Charlie Bryant, forwarded Biomed's desire to cut down 22 public street trees associated with their development proposal as well as 154 trees on their property, as they had requested. The public street trees are protected by Emeryville’s Urban Forestry Ordinance (UFO) but privately owned trees are not. However, a section of the municipal code does provide some protection for privately owned trees in Emeryville but Mr Bryant failed to notify the Planning Commission of that. In the case of the proposed Biomed facility, the Planning Commission's hands are not tied as Mr Bryant indicated in his staff report but rather, the law does grant the Planning Commission an option to save the privately owned trees there.
Councilman Bauters, who is operating with the Biomed project as a private citizen due to proximity conflicts, quoted Emeryville Municipal Code Section 9-4.503(c) that outlines the process for the discretionary review of a project on private property involving existing trees. Mr Bryant, in his staff report, did not reveal to the Planning Commission the following from 9-4.503(c):
“For projects on private property that require discretionary City approval, the Director, Planning Commission, or City Council, as the case may be, may require that existing healthy on-site trees be preserved and incorporated into the project unless this is shown to be infeasible.”
Mr Bauters, calling the omission “an appealable error”, stated the City of Emeryville had failed to consider the feasibility of preserving on-site trees. He questioned the motives of the City for hiding information that could lead to saving trees adding, “from the beginning, the application has been presented, considered, debated and developed with the presumption that their preservation was a foregone conclusion.”
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Emeryville's Biomed Center of Innovation™
View looking south at Hollis Street |
The Planning Commission after receiving Council member Bauters’ email asked the staff to provide the information that had been denied them and upon receipt, they voted to save 77 of the private trees and they went on to insist 13 of the 22 proposed publicly owned street trees be saved, also at Mr Bauters’ request. The staff had insisted underground pipes associated with the construction of the Biomed project would necessitate the cutting all 22 public trees, a conclusion the Council member showed to be false.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time the City staff has ruled public street trees be cut in error. There has been a pattern and practice of giving Emeryville’s decision makers false information that would rule in developers’ favor regarding cutting down our trees. In 2018, the staff told the City Council that the developer of the Sherwin Williams project be allowed to cut some 14 trees, again owing to underground pipes; a falsehood revealed by the Tattler. In that case, the staff hid a critical arborist report from the Planning Commission that they likely would have cited to save the trees. After a protracted public battle, the trees were mostly all saved.
Mr Bauters also caught the staff falsely advising decision makers to cut publicly owned trees before the February 25th debacle. In 2016, he managed to save 21 of 30 proposed tree removals associated with a PG&E pipeline renovation project on 53rd Street after the staff had told the Planning Commission to allow all 30 trees be cut. The staff was forced to remove the agenda item at Council member Bauters’ behest after he demanded the legal agreements and maps showing pipeline proximity from PG&E. Eventually, it was revealed that there was no agreement with the City as staff had claimed, and that the pipeline PG&E thought was under the sidewalk was in fact under the middle of the street.
