Land Use Committee 2/8/23

We are recording.

Thank you.

The February 8, 2023 meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It is 2 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Morales.

Here.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

And could you call on Councilmember Nelson again?

I see her, but I can't hear her.

Councilmember Nelson.

I think that we should mark her as present.

And if you could call on Councilmember Mosqueda one more time.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Present.

I can see Councilmember Nelson, so we're calling her present.

By present.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

We have six items on today's agenda, five of which are appointments to the Seattle Design Commission.

And one is a briefing and discussion on Council Bill 120509, some small changes to the registered tree service providers legislation.

Before we begin, if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the hybrid public comment period.

Four items on today's agenda.

Clerk, will you please play the video?

Hello, Seattle.

We are the Emerald City, the City of Flowers and the City of Goodwill, built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when they registered online and used the meeting ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

A reminder, the speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused or if the process impedes the council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the city.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in Council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open.

and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

Thank you.

Clerk, do we have any in-person public commenters?

We do not have any in-person public commenters.

We're gonna go to the online public commenters.

We have four people signed in and present, Alicia Ruiz, Barbara Bernard, Steve Zemke, and Sandy Shetler.

We will begin and roll in that order.

So if you are listening and want to provide public comment, you still have time to do so as long as you register and sign in now.

With no further ado, we will have Alicia Ruiz, followed by Barbara Bernard, Steve Zunke, and Sandy Schettler.

Welcome, Alicia.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Alicia Ruiz.

I am the Seattle Government Affairs Manager for the Master Builders Association of King and Sonoma County, and I'm calling in today to express our full support to the amendments of Council Bill 120509, the Tree Service Providers Bill.

I think these amendments are were very needed.

I think that the original bill caused some unintended consequences.

And so thank you, Chair Strauss, for taking a second look at this and making these needed amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alicia.

Up next is Barbara Barnard, followed by Steve Zemke.

Barbara.

Hello, council members.

This is Barbara Bernard.

I want to thank you for continuing to find ways to protect Seattle's urban forest.

Your committee's work creating the Tree Service Provider Registry Bill really helps with that protection.

Since Council Bill 120509 is still in discussion for amendments, would it be possible to consider some potential changes to the suggested amendments?

The first one I was thinking of is to add a week to online posting.

This allows for equal access to everyone to the information.

We know that many of Seattle's residents that are in underserved populations don't necessarily have access to easily get to a computer during Monday through Friday during the work week and they use it at the library when possible.

So I think that would be very important to make sure underserved communities have access to the information.

And the second one is if we could have a printed or posted notice in a visible spot while the tree service providers are on site.

This would reassure the community about the work that's being done, and it eliminates the conflict that happens between a tree crew and the public.

Specifically, I'd like to share an example of why that's really important.

Last year, there was a news report on Kyro 7, you might remember by Deborah Horn, and it showed an unpermitted tree cutting, and a tree service provider was actually endangering a young woman who was standing under the tree while they were still delimbing the tree.

This is while tree advocates were calling into SDCI to report the illegal cutting.

So when residents have to call in to report suspicious tree removal and they don't see a posted sign saying it was OK they risk the confrontation and we just don't want to see that kind of escalation happen.

Having the online posting one week like I said really allows neighbors to verify that the work is legit and it doesn't result in needless calls to SDCI to see if a permit was issued.

So thank you, these small changes will really help end the conflict and any negative feelings that are generated in the neighborhood.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara.

Up next is Steve Zemke, followed by Sandy Shepard.

Welcome, Steve.

Thank you.

This is Steve Zemke speaking for TREPAC and Friends of Seattle's Urban Forest.

We appreciate the work that has been put into modifying the version that you put out Previously as we think that a lot of a lot of the concerns we have have been taken care of.

We do note that trees 6 inches and greater actually comprise 45 percent of the trees in the neighborhood residential zone according to the Seattle Forest Ecosystems report done in 2012. So we're still you know 65 percent are not covered that are on on residential zones.

Want to support the one week.

uh, provision as, uh, three days is a very short time frame.

Uh, you might want something in that the- I don't know if there's something in there and the permit is good for, you know, a month or two months or something so that, uh, if- if the- oh, if the- if the, uh, work changes in terms of the demands of the- of the tree service providers, they don't have to keep refiling it.

Um, do you wanna bring up an issue of, topping of trees that I think is relevant to what you're doing here that actually SMC 2511 does not say topping is specifically always prohibited as it does in 2509070 for you know so there's different parts of the code out there some places it says it's strictly prohibited but I think you should look at it.

It says tree removal or topping is prohibited in the following cases.

except as provided in 2511-030 which gives a bunch of exemptions.

So I think it's appropriate to say tree service providers should not be topping any trees in Seattle regardless of where they are because it winds up creating more hazardous trees than are a public hazard.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Up next is Sandy.

Welcome, Sandy.

Oh, hi.

Yeah, this is Sandy Shetlar.

Thanks, Dan.

I wanted to thank you for listening to the community and experts on the Urban Forestry Commission to make thoughtful amendments to the Tree Service Provider Registry.

And I strongly support having arborists post on site while they're working.

That was my daughter that Barbara was referring to.

So either taping the notice of tree work to their truck or putting it up on a sandwich board, To the average person, it's really hard to tell the difference between legal and illegal tree work.

And most people are extremely uncomfortable walking up to crews running chainsaws and chippers to ask questions, and workers don't appreciate being interrupted.

So having a posted notice solves this problem with little effort.

And then changing the advance notice to online is a fantastic idea.

Folding it into the existing system that SDOT has been successfully using for nine years would be even better.

And it would also reduce the siloed management of Seattle's trees.

But in the meantime please consider making this notice period a full week instead of three days.

That way people who work long hours have an opportunity to stay informed about the trees in their neighborhoods.

The mapping tool is a great idea.

and will answer the need for people to get more accessible information about trees in their neighborhood.

Thank you for your hard work to save Seattle's big trees.

Thank you, Sandy.

And IT, can you confirm there are no more public comment registrants present at this time?

There are no more registered public comment registrants online at all today.

Well, thank you, son.

At this time, seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

And with that, Clerk, we're gonna read in all five appointments at the same time so that we keep it smooth rather than get clunky here.

So our first five items on the agenda are a briefing discussion and possible vote, code for vote, on appointments 02445 through 02449, the appointments of Ben Gist, Kevin O'Neill, Phoebe Bogert, Adam Amerheen, and Jill Crary, to the Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 28, 2025. Clerk, will you please read the short titles into the record?

Appointment 02445, appointment of Ben Just as member of Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 20, 2025. Appointment 02446, appointment of Kevin O'Neill as member of Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 20, 2025. Appointment 02447, appointment of Phoebe Bovert as member of Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 28th, 2025. Appointment 02448, reappointment of Adam Amron as member of Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 28th, 2025. And appointment 02449, reappointment of Jill Curry as member of Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 28th, 2025. For briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, Naomi.

We are joined by Michael Jenkins from the Office of Planning and Community Development for the discussion of all of the appointees.

Michael, thank you for joining us here in Committee Chamber and Council Chambers.

Would you like to give us a brief background?

I know we have a deep background on the Design Commission, but the viewing public, could you give us a brief description?

I'd be happy to.

I'm always happy to talk about the Seattle Design Commission.

I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Chairman.

≫ First, just thank you for, you know, bringing forward for confirmation these appointments and reappointments.

Since 1968, the Seattle design commission has advised the mayor, city council, and city departments on the design and environmental aspects of capital facilities, projects that seek We have 10 commissioners that are representative of architectural and design professions as well as a fine artist and a at-large member who typically has expertise in the development process.

We're here today to seek council confirmation of the appointment of Phoebe Bogart as our landscape architect.

Ben Gist as architect.

Ben is not able to be here today, either in person or virtually.

He's literally on a plane today, but he sends his regrets.

And then finally, Kevin O'Neill as our transportation planner.

We're seeking reappointments of Adam Amran and Jill Crary in the urban planner and at-large position.

And finally, Jill Crary has been nominated to serve a one-year term as chair to the commission, a position that she was unanimously nominated by her fellow commissioners.

I'm pleased to forward that name as well.

That's wonderful.

And Phoebe and Kevin are here online.

And of course, I'm sure you'll have questions.

That's wonderful.

So we'll start with, we'll just go through these with order in order.

Ben is on an airplane.

Would you like to talk just a little bit about him?

I'd be happy to.

And again, he sends his regrets.

He's literally on a plane because he started a new position heading up the Seattle office for Carrier Johnson, which is a, Kevin, or excuse me, Ben comes to us with 20 plus years in architecture specializing in mixed use and single purpose architecture.

excuse me, G2 architecture, where he was one of the local principals.

He has also significant experience in working with the local AIA chapter and advancing professional development for both emerging architects and architects who have had significant experience in the field, again, focusing on mixed use development, single purpose development.

We're really pleased to have someone of his background and experience joined the commission.

And again, he sends his apologies for not being here today.

Not a problem at all.

Colleagues, any questions about Ben?

And then we'll move on to Kevin.

Seeing none at this time.

Kevin, it is exciting to have you with us today.

For both Phoebe and for Adam, Ben, I haven't had the pleasure of getting to work with you very directly.

Both Kevin and Jill have been people that I've looked up to here in the city for doing big things.

and so it's just really exciting to have you both here in committee today.

Kevin, having worked at SDOT in the street use, you know, with street use, can you talk to me about the role for the Planning Commission regarding transportation and street use as it influences the built environment.

We all know the reason the Planning Commission is so important to me is this creates the built environment and the built environment is what we experience every day and it impacts our quality of life and our outlook in the world.

So Kevin, please share any thoughts that you would like.

My question is how does the street play into the built environment in your perspective?

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, and good afternoon, Councilmembers.

That's a great question.

I think the street environment plays into the work the Sale of Design Commission does in a couple of ways.

One, as you're aware, many projects, even private development projects that the Design Commission reviews and then subsequently the Council often reviews, have streetscape improvements adjacent to the site.

That are really important to the kind of the quality of the public realm and the quality of how the private development integrates with the public street right of way.

Obviously, light rail stations, which the sales on commission reviews a lot of those the access improvements.

To the station, so people can get to those stations safely, whether they're a pedestrian or a bike rider are also really important.

And finally, I think, um.

As the transportation planner on the design commission, your transportation systems are systems as you're aware.

So, thinking about how street improvements at a particular site.

For a specific development project that the design commission might be reviewing.

It's really important to think about the context and the context within the built environment and how that.

Street design for the project integrates with what's happening up and downstream is a bike.

improvement adjacent to the site consistent with bike improvements down the street going both ways.

So those are just some of the ways I think the street environment and transportation generally is really important to the work of the Design Commission.

Well said, Kevin.

Colleagues, any questions for Kevin?

I'm seeing none.

Council Member Nelson, please.

Hi Kevin, it's good to see you again.

I think you're eminently qualified and would be a great addition and asset.

So thank you.

You raise a point that when I was staffing the land use chair was always an issue, which is that it seems like transportation planning and land use planning don't happen at the same time.

And usually land uses is after.

So just because it's harder, I suppose.

But anyway, I'm really happy that you touched on those.

And obviously your history gives you, puts you in a good position to address that fundamental issue.

So.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Well said, well said.

Kevin, thank you for your willingness to serve on the Design Commission.

Your expertise is invaluable here.

Up next, anything else, Kevin?

No, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, friend.

Up next, Phoebe Bogert.

Phoebe, while I don't know that we have worked closely together, you worked on one of what I believe is the best-designed parks in the city, Gimminskop Park on 14th Avenue Northwest.

I'm very excited to have you here with us at the Design Commission, and maybe you could talk a little bit about your work on that park and how it changed and informed the community, but also please feel free to share anything you'd like about the work that you've done and what you would like to do here on the Design Commission.

Yeah.

Thank you, councilmember worked regionally, worked in Portland, and brought that firm back up to Seattle, which is called Place.

So, have a nice depth and range of working with integrated design firms, such as Miss Thun, and landscape architecture and architecture and interior design, and then working for a primarily landscape architecture firm now.

I have practiced in the region for just under 20 years, a little under.

I went to University of Washington for a graduate school and actually grew up in Seattle.

So actually in a couple of weeks, we'll be at Seattle Design Commission reviewing Garfield Superblock, or I'll be kind of sitting in as a new member of the commission, and that's my alma mater.

It's very near and dear in my heart, just the public landscape and the public realm of Seattle and kind of watching it grow up and me grow up with it as well.

Gmenskip is actually also a great example, I think, of what we're talking about, of that intersection of public realm and really kind of taking back pieces of the city for the public.

So, Kamenska, if people are not familiar with it, is 14th Avenue, which is this kind of weird carriageway in Ballard.

And the Neighborhood Association actually just had a very robust background behind it.

to advocate for that to become a public right-of-way and a park within that, you know, well, excuse me, a park within that public right-of-way.

So it was a really interesting collaboration with SDOT, with Seattle Parks and Rec, with the Neighborhood Association, and kind of getting something new to be a new lexicon for linear parks in Seattle.

So I think that kind of looking at those interstitial spaces and how we experience the public realm on a day-to-day basis is what makes me excited to do my work every day and be part of the Design Commission.

That's wonderful.

Very well said.

I mean, I can't, I guess, focus on this enough.

Having a park in a street is not a usual thing.

Colleagues, any questions for Phoebe?

Seeing none, your work speaks for itself, Phoebe.

We're excited to have you on the commission.

Up next is Adam, and I know Adam can't be with us.

Michael, would you like to say a few words?

Yeah, Adam, you know, we're seeking Adam's reappointment for a second term in our urban planning position, like a lot of planners.

Adam wears a number of hats.

He's an urban designer.

He runs actually his day job is leading elements urban design group and we started working with Adam in that capacity before he joined the commission leading urban design solutions for the Mon Lake lid.

and for the Portage Bay Bridge investments.

And so when he had an opportunity to join the commission after that work was completed, we were, needless to say, thrilled to have that expertise.

He has a range of public and private clients that need district master planning, infrastructure planning and design.

Like I said, projects like 520 and the LeMond Lake Lid and his firm is continuing with the Delmar Lid.

That kind of expertise doesn't come along to us very often, so when someone wants to re-up for another two-year term, we're very happy that they're willing to do that similarly with Jill.

So, thank you for considering Adam's reappointment today.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Michael.

Colleagues, any questions for Michael about Adam?

Seeing none, I am very excited to now get to speak about Jill Prairie.

You were appointed through our committee during the pandemic when we couldn't meet in person.

And I just at that point felt like it was such a missed opportunity to get to see you.

So I'm really excited to have you here following and getting to work, you know, near you is the best way that I could say, watching how you and Robert redeveloped and changed Seattle Center to be so incredibly welcoming, to be really a 21st century space, reimagining what could be there, and just watching how bright and lively it is there now with the monorail, getting folks from Sound Transit with the redevelopment of Climate Pledge Arena, but what people don't see necessarily, those are the big things that they see because they function really well, but all of the work that it took to get those partnerships there with the ballet, with all, with the theaters, I mean, I can't even count how many organizations there are on that campus.

And it is our central park in a lot of ways.

And it's our community hub.

And success is never by accident.

And I see your fingerprints all over it.

So I guess with that, is there anything that you'd like to share with us about the Design Commission and how your work there at Seattle Center influences and your perspective here on the Design Commission?

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

I retired from Seattle Center right as the pandemic was beginning.

And so it was an interesting transition.

One of the things I knew was that every single project that we ever took to the Design Commission, Design Commission made it better.

And we took some very, very complicated public-private partnerships that had money leveraged in very interesting ways.

And those partners learned a lot too.

Bringing those private interests to discussion and brainstorming about what the public realm should be was a very good experience for all of them.

So I was really excited to be a member of the commission.

And the things that we've done the last two years have been great to be involved in.

We've done a lot of work on Sound Transit and Sound Transit 3, and so we're just very, very excited to look at how it touches the public realm and how we can hopefully, again, take a very, very complicated, multi-headed beast and focus on just making it better to be in the public realm.

John Gerstle PB, Applicant Olympic Committee Chief of Staff brought back to the city who people who really understand not only how capital projects get funded, but how they actually get built.

We don't get that kind of expertise very often.

So the fact that Kevin and Jill are willing to stand and spend time to do that for the city again in that capacity, that's so valuable for the work that we do.

And then I think as Jill alluded to, making sure that the work that we touch becomes more valuable.

That happens because of people who, all the people that you're considering today, but in particular having Jill and Kevin's expertise and understanding how the city works makes that, I think, much larger.

Yeah, and also to have Phoebe being able to do a comparison and contrast to our neighbor to the south, right, like having both of these major cities and with SDOT, but also, I mean, Jill, you negotiated deals with the most powerful people in Seattle.

Tried, yes.

You did.

I mean, like we are all reaping the benefits from it.

And I didn't realize that role that the Design Commission played in those negotiations.

And so it is an incredible honor to have you, Phoebe and Kevin, joining us.

I think that this is really going to be a dream team.

So I have pontificate, I have done a lot of talking.

Council Member Peterson has a comment and I'll ask for other colleagues in just a second.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And Jill, with your expertise for decades at Seattle Center, you've seen the city government move from an at-large council member system to the hybrid system we have now with the seven district council members.

So, you know, just really look forward to the design commission's work and the interplay with the on the ground expertise of the district council members when we're building out the sound transit stations, where they're going to be located exactly.

I know in Seattle Center, that's a big concern.

So, you know, consulting Council Member Andrew Lewis on that would be important.

And just because in my district, I was really fortunate in our sound transit too to have a couple of stations open up.

I think it's really important to have that conversation with the district council recently and having that on the ground discussion with those district council members will be really important so that all the disruption that occurs will be mitigated with the communications and the input from them.

So I'll put one plug in for Sound Transit Station at Seattle Center, which is Panda Printing, is located where I think one of the desired stations is.

And if we could find them a home on Seattle Center's campus, they are the last and best place to have your film developed.

And yes, I am that analog that I still have film developed.

So that's the plug that I'll put into you, Phoebe, Kevin, and Jill.

Colleagues, any other questions at this time?

Or appointees, any final comments now that we've had a bit of discussion?

Not seeing any, I'm just gonna, you know, what is centrally focused for me is that these are volunteer roles, not being compensated for time spent, and they're incredibly important roles for our city.

And I just really wanna thank everyone for spending your time to make Seattle the best place that it can be.

With that, I move to recommend confirmations 02445 through 02449. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointments 02445 through 02449. Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales.

Yes.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

Appointments 02445 through 02449 pass.

And we'll be at the full city council for a final vote on February 14th, a nice Valentine's present for you all.

You do not need to attend if you don't want to.

And we're just very excited to have you on board.

And Michael, also thank you for ensuring that there is no lapse between previous members leaving and new appointments coming in.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Really great to see you.

And thank you, council members.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Up next is our final item on the agenda today is a briefing and discussion on Council Bill 120509, which would amend the requirements for the registered tree service providers.

Clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

Council Bill 120509, an ordinance amending requirements for registered tree service providers for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And we're having our tree service providers join us here.

It's my understanding that Urban Forestry Commission co-chairs Josh Morris and Becca Newman and Laura Keel should be with us, although I'm not.

Oh, there's Josh.

Hello, Josh.

Hi, Josh.

Hey, how are you?

And we also have Patty Bacher here as well.

For this discussion, we are joined by Yolanda Ho from Council Central staff, as well as Kelsey Allen and Andrea from our High Road Tree Service providers here in the city.

And first up, Yolanda, do you have a short presentation or would you like to bring up the bill and I can kind of run through what these changes are?

I can provide a short presentation if you would like just to get everyone on the same page and then we can take it from there if that sounds good to you, Chair.

That'd be great, thank you.

All right, let me get that presentation up.

You can see it okay?

Yes.

All right, great.

All right, so we are talking about Council Bill 120509, This will be an overview of the tree service provider.

I will provide an overview of the tree service provider registration requirement that the city began implementing last year.

Do a brief recap of both the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections Registry and Seattle Department of Transportation's registry programs for tree service providers.

describe the council bill before you and highlight the substantive differences between the pre-introduction draft that was discussed at the December 8th meeting last year and the current bill before you, and note some potential impacts of the proposed legislation.

So last March, the Council passed Ordinance 126554 that created a requirement that tree service providers register prior to conducting commercial tree work on private property in Seattle.

and that would be registering with the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections.

This legislation defined commercial tree work as major pruning, removal of trees larger than six inches in diameter at breast height, and assessment of the health or hazard risk of trees larger than six inches diameter at breast height, also known as DBH.

This specified requirements necessary for tree service providers to register with the city, such as an arborist certification, commercial liability insurance, These requirements match those of the Seattle Department of Transportation's Tree Service Provider Registry.

It also required hiring entities of tree service providers to post a public notice the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco, the city So SDCI, the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, is responsible for developing and implementing this requirement.

And in August, SDCI launched the Tree Service Provider Registry and required that all tree service providers register with the city by November 10th.

They also issued a director's rule 8-2022 to support administration of the registry last September.

So just a quick comparison of SDOT and SDCI's registration requirements.

You'll note that the requirements are largely the same.

The SDOT's program is just for those who do tree work in the public right-of-way, and that has been in place for about a decade.

The one difference I would note is in the public notice timeframe, and these differences are due to the intent of these notices.

SDCI's notice is for notification purposes only, whereas SDOT's notice is intended to solicit public comment so that staff will take that into consideration when determining whether to issue a permit for tree removal in the public right-of-way.

So no one has any questions, I'll keep moving.

And so on to Council Bill 120509. This would rename major pruning to reportable work and use that same definition for major pruning that is already codified in the Seattle Municipal Code Title 15. It would require that commercial tree work in environmentally critical areas be subject to the requirements of the tree service This was unintentionally left out of the original legislation, and ECAs, as they are known, are these geologic hazard areas, kind of landslide, liquefaction-prone areas, steep slopes, flood-prone areas, wetlands, habitat conservation areas, and abandoned landfills.

It would remove the requirement to physically post a public notice at or near the work site and instead require that SDCI post these notices for services providers.

It would require that tree service providers have tree renewables and reportable work at least three business days in advance online.

And that SDCI would be required to create a map-based tool by the end of next March to help people more easily find such notices.

It would require that tree service providers have their city-issued registration number clearly and makes also some technical corrections and clarifications along the way.

So just noting, since there was a pre-introduction draft discussed in December, the key differences are that this council bill does not include the exemption for work on hedges and fruit trees, and it does not include a definition for hedges.

It redames major pruning to reportable work, as I described previously, but does not make any changes to branch size thresholds or the percentage of branches that may be removed as compared to that definition.

It adds a requirement for commercial tree work in ECAs to be subject to the tree service provider requirements and it restores the public notice requirement, but changes it to online only.

and then it adds the definition for commercial vehicles based on the definition that is already codified in Title 11 and adds a requirement that the business name and phone number be on the rear of the vehicle in addition to both sides.

So potential impacts are that tree service providers have found, have discussed, well, as this regulation has gone into place, even though the hiring entities are the responsible party for posting the notices, tree service providers have taken on this responsibility to avoid any penalties levied on anyone.

And this has caused companies to hire additional staff to drive around the city to post these notices, which does add costs to their businesses and has, you know, increases vehicle emissions.

So, reviewing this physical posting requirement in advance of doing the work will eliminate these burdens.

Companies will still be required to submit information for the notice, but the burden for ensuring that the information is posted as required will shift to SDCI.

The proposal would also require that these companies have their business name and phone number on their vehicles and clearly display their city-issued vehicle registration number.

Commercial vehicles in Seattle are already required to have their business name permanently displayed on two sides of the vehicle.

Adding the rear of the vehicle does not seem to be a huge additional burden.

registered tree service providers with a plastic windshield sticker upon registration and when they renew their registration, so it is clear that they are currently registered with the city.

That is one possibility.

In terms of residents, as some have noted, I've seen some emails and at public comment.

Having a physical notice on site does allow residents to easily tell if a tree service provider is registered and has followed proper procedure.

These physical notices do help residents distinguish between illegal tree removal versus one that has been permitted or is allowed by right while the work is in process.

So changing this notice requirement to an online only platform will require that residents have a smartphone, with them or to access a computer later to determine if a tree service provider has provided the required notice.

Tree work notices are already available online through SDCI's public notices portal, but the interface is not entirely intuitive and there is no summary currently available for these notices.

The Council bill would require that by the end of March next year, SDCI provide the public with an online mapping tool to make it easier to find these notices, similar to its existing Shaping Seattle website, potentially.

SDCI could also consider providing a bi-weekly email summary of notices to interested residents, similar to its land use information bulletin that currently exists.

And on to racial equity.

As was discussed last year during committee's deliberations around creating the new registration requirement, workers in the landscaping services industry, which includes tree service providers, are disproportionately Latino or Hispanic.

And so this proposed legislation is intended to reduce the administrative burden and cost for tree service providers by changing to an online notice system.

Through my research, I did find that smartphone ownership, onto kind of changing topic to residents, that smartphone ownership is fairly ubiquitous at the national level at or around 85%.

And this does not significantly vary by race or ethnicity.

So most people would have access to these online notices through their smartphones.

However, those who are 65 years or older and those who are low income are less likely to own smartphones or have access to a computer or high-speed internet.

And so thus, they would have less access to these online notices.

And in terms of implementation, these tree notices are already available online.

So SDCI has already met the intent of this legislation before you, but creating a new online mapping tool may require some additional, will require some additional staff time and potentially additional resources.

If the SDCI requires additional resources beyond what they have in their current budget, they are expected to include any requests in either the 2024 proposed budget or possibly earlier in the mid-year supplemental, depending on their timing.

And SDCI would also need to educate permit applicants about changes to commercial tree work in the environmentally critical areas, but this effort should be relatively minor and should not be a major lift for them.

And with that, I have completed my presentation.

Thank you, Yolanda.

I'm going to just do a quick summary of your very good presentation to note that the changes in this bill are changing the posting requirements to require, legally require them to be online, as well as inclusion of a map to make it be able to be easy to navigate.

I was just talking to Council Member Peterson before this meeting got underway about my desire to initially have it just with the permit map that SDCI already has, but I do think that it is important to have it as a separate map, and understanding that there are a number of forthcoming changes in the next month with the tree ordinance, giving SDCI the time that they need to be able to really effectively create this map in a good way, while also understanding that if SDCI is resourced properly ahead of next year that they can get this done sooner.

You know, we put it at the end of the first quarter of next year because if we are going to give them money in the next budget cycle, they're only able to use that money in January of next year, giving them three months or less.

But if there's a way that we can get it going faster, we're always welcome to it.

Requiring the vehicles to have Arborist's TSP number and city-issued registration number Rather than requiring the notice be posted on the tree, having essentially notice on the truck always allows people to know whether or not these are registered arborists or not.

There was some major pruning is a technical term.

We used it as a general term.

And so just changing that to reportable work, I think solved some of the issues there.

Adding in environmentally critical areas as well.

I know after talking to this group of amazing arborists that there are some other changes that are desired as well.

I think let's hold that for the second portion of this discussion.

I'm gonna first open it up to colleagues, then I'm gonna hand it over to the arborists to share how has this bill worked and what's not working.

what's good and bad about these changes, and then Josh, I'm gonna pass it over to you to do the same, then we're gonna come back.

So with that, colleagues, any questions, comments, concerns, out the gate.

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

So I really like the existing law, since I helped to draft it, and, um, in the, with this council bill, the basically amending the existing law, I really do appreciate SDCI's work in getting the registry started, also having online already the ability to to look these up if you know to look for them.

So just want to appreciate the department for their work.

Interested, I do like the idea of posting on the vehicles.

I think that's already done for a lot of these companies, but I'm glad we're memorializing that.

I do want to hear from the Urban Forestry Commission.

Thank you for inviting them to today's meeting, but just want to kind of better understand the rationale for the changes.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, Council Member Nelson, Morales, or Mosqueda?

Seeing no questions at this time.

Thank you, friends.

Arborists, would you like to, I mean, take it away.

I mean, maybe if you could start by introducing yourself, what company you work for, if you want to include your certifications, it's always welcome.

And share with us how has this bill impacted your work, what's gone well, what hasn't gone well, and then maybe speak to these changes would be helpful.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss, and thank you so much for inviting us to be here.

I want to thank all the council members for taking the time to listen to us and members of the public for attending, especially the members of the Urban Forestry Commission.

And I would also like to thank Yolanda for that wonderful recap of all these proposed changes.

I think we each have a little prepared that we'd like to say, but then I think the most important thing we can do is just be here to answer the council members' questions.

So I want to save some time for that.

And we're here to help and just to help you understand our industry and our business a little bit better.

Anyway, my name is Alan Taylor.

I grew up in New Hampshire, and I attended school for forestry, but it's actually the mountains that brought me to the Pacific Northwest, and it's the trees that have made me stay.

I've just absolutely fallen in love with the trees that we have out here.

My dad, Malcolm, one of my heroes, actually, as a member of the New Hampshire House in the 1970s, worked to create New Hampshire's first real wetlands protection legislation.

And in doing that, he worked with a number of different interest groups, including contractors in the state of New Hampshire, environmental groups, and also a number of political coalitions to make that happen.

So I've got a very interesting roadmap in my family's past for how these sort of things can be done, how they can be achieved, and that legislation is still in force.

So it's something that inspires me to this day.

Thinking of certifications, I'm a board-certified master arborist with the International Society of Arboriculture and then also a registered consulting arborist with the American Society of Consulting Arborists.

Those are sort of the two main groups that you can be certified by as an arborist in the US.

One of the first things I want to get at is just sort of dispelling the myth of what an arborist is, because I think, unfortunately, if you see arborist depicted in you know, any TV shows or movies that generally is not a very accurate depiction.

And I worry too that in this whole discussion, we're running into a situation where what people imagine arborists do is very different from what we actually do.

And I think all the council members here could agree that we don't wanna judge them as politicians by what some of the worst politicians out there do.

So hopefully we, as arborists, can be judged by who we generally are and not the worst amongst us.

But in the most general sense, we're here to moderate the relationship between humans and trees.

And as somebody who really loves trees, I think that's just an amazing job to have.

There's just so many threats to the urban forest right now, and that's why I'm really excited that we're here discussing ways that we can help protect trees and make things better for the residents of the city.

Illegal tree cutting and removal is definitely one of those threats, but there's an incredibly long list of other threats that we're facing right now, and I think we're gonna have to be We're also not here to say we think all regulation is bad.

proposing this legislation and we'll get to it in a minute.

We've got a very sort of details oriented look at it, but there's some really good kernels here, especially just the idea of a registry.

It's pretty crazy how low the bar is to entry in arboriculture.

Anyone can just call themselves an arborist.

You don't have to pass the bar or anything like that.

So just having some sort of base requirements for folks doing this work in the city, we think is really good for some work.

I'll get to it later, but we think, unfortunately, you missed some folks in thinking of who this would impact.

But just generally, the licensing we think is really good, penalties for companies who have significant infractions on city tree codes, that it is good to have teeth that can punish companies in addition to the folks who are hiring them.

And the one thing I want to say is that even in the most cynical, purely business-oriented sense, growing the urban forest is good for us.

I think there are a million reasons that go beyond that for why we should grow the urban forest.

Especially when we go to tree conferences and the like, we'll just go on and on and on until everybody's half asleep about how wonderful trees are.

But I just, I've spent my entire life working with trees and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think they're the most incredible organisms.

So growing the urban forest is good for us and we think that most of these regulations are real net positive.

There's just some details that we want to get to.

So on that on that note, I think one of the most critical details that was missed is just how big a role landscapers and horticulturalists play in terms of managing the trees within the city.

Alan, can we come back to what more needs to, I wanna focus on what's worked and hasn't worked in the bill as written.

And then this amendment, because I've got a list of other things that we've talked about.

So if we could stay focused just here and then we'll get to that in just a moment.

Okay, so it's now a good time to talk about notices and, you know, specific timelines, along with that.

Okay, because that clearly that's one of the big pivotal points in all of this is like, how much time do we need for notices?

How should they be placed?

Where should they be placed?

The way to conceptualize this is, for one, we are supporting notice posting for tree removals.

That is just across the board significant tree removals.

We want folks in the neighborhoods to feel comfortable that what's going on is legit.

Logistically, it works a lot better if the notices can be placed on site by the crew or if there's a digital option.

The whole three day in advance thing, it really has become a major issue for our industry and caused a lot of hardship and increased costs because so much is caught up in before it was major pruning, now it's reportable work.

And many of the jobs we do, for instance, at my company, well, we do some jobs that are a couple thousand dollars.

We do a lot of jobs that are like $500, $700, that sort of thing.

Sometimes we do two or three of those a day, and sometimes you have last-minute cancellations.

So you have a job that's just, say, pruning Mrs. Jones's fruit tree, and you had a cancellation on Tuesday, and here it is Monday, and you're trying to figure out what can I do.

And if you're following the rules, essentially you have to find a job that either falls entirely under that threshold of reportable work or major pruning to fill in, Or, you know, in theory, you have to let your crew go home early and suffer a big loss of revenue for the day.

So I think in all this, it certainly seems with the public comments and people being concerned that that's a huge layer in all of this, and I can even imagine a two track system where maybe for tree removals, there are additional requirements for notice posting, but just know that it has created immense hardship, especially for those of us who mostly prune trees, and often those jobs are much smaller, and so the logistical costs that are added to those jobs are much greater relative to the overall cost of the job, whereas if, say you have mobilized for some monster tree removal because there's a hazardous tree that's unsafe and it's big and in a challenging spot, advanced notice posting is not that big a deal.

So I think that's one of the key things that we want to get across is that for a lot of this, it's just not scaling super well.

And one example would be when I know the intent of the legislation was to require the homeowners to do the posting, but another thing we're having issue with is that by failing to post, it could risk our ability to work in the city if we lose our TSP license.

And that for probably two or three dozen companies would mean instant bankruptcy.

So just that threat to livelihood is a big deal.

And then just thinking of how, okay, so you have a gap in the schedule or something like that, how is this whole notice posting thing gonna work out with it?

So I think that that's a really big piece of the puzzle for us and then looking at the public comments.

Let me see, you want to take over for a minute?

Sure, my name is Andrea Starbird.

I'm an ISA certified arborist, municipal specialist and tree risk assessor.

I am one of the project managers at Seattle Tree Care.

I come from a tree consulting background.

When this legislation was introduced, I was living in Council Member Peterson's district and was in early contact about some of it.

So I think, thank you for the registration.

I agree with Alan's comments.

We're grateful that it's here.

I agree with Alan.

We support posting notice for tree removals, posting notice for pruning has been challenging and I'll let Kelsey speak to that a little bit more.

We do support the idea of posting our TSP number on our trucks.

One thing to note is that a chip truck doesn't actually have anywhere that you could post anything on the back of it.

It's completely open with just a bumper.

So there's not, I would request that we change that to just the left and right sides and not the rear, because I think a lot of companies would have a really hard time actually meeting that requirement.

One of the other challenges that hosting three days or three business days in advance is that, you know, clients who have trees that they haven't noticed require pruning or neighbors who can benefit from having a team of qualified individuals already mobilized to the site.

Their costs are increasing really significantly, whereas if I have a team of arborists working on site, we've posted notice for what is essentially very small pruning work with the two inches and 15% canopy.

If we have a very small amount of work that is just above that threshold, including removing a dead branch the way that the code is written right now, we can't reasonably add that on without leaving the site, charging our clients additional mobilization to return to the site later.

resubmitting or submitting additional notice.

It's increasing costs on the ground for not only our overhead, we did hire additional staff to help post these notices, but it's really increasing costs for tree owners.

Something that I've noticed in my conversations with folks is when we're pruning or helping people manage their properties for long-term is that people don't want to plant trees anymore.

They I walked them through kind of the code restrictions and where things have gone and what they need to plan for and right tree right place and I became an arborist because I really believe in protecting Seattle's urban forest and I want to help people manage their trees and maintain them safely and people are really afraid of the costs associated with tree care and that while the intent is very good.

I think that The notice requirement in particular has really started to increase those costs.

We would be in full support of posting notice while on site.

And if that includes leaving notice afterwards, I think that's something that we would be open to discussing.

It's just the advance notice has become a really big logistical challenge.

I have other aspects of the legislation that I've gone through as a municipal specialist.

I love city code, especially in terms of urban forestry.

So I have gone through and kind of point by point have things, but I would like to pass it to Kelsey quickly and then I come back to those when needed.

Sounds great.

Yes, just as my colleagues here have said thank you so much for the opportunity to be here to speak with you and provide our input.

My name is Kelsey Grunewald and I am an ISA certified arborist as well as the co-owner and CEO at Seattle Tree Care, but I'm also here today representing the newly formed Seattle Arborist Association.

We represent over 28 arborist companies working in Seattle as well as 83 ISA certified arborists and 200 other workers related to our field of arboriculture.

We prune over 21,000 trees in Seattle annually and This legislation honestly felt like it came out of nowhere.

None of us knew that it was coming down the pipeline.

I recognize that it was posted and we could have had the opportunity to provide input before it was enacted, but nobody that I've spoken to did.

So one benefit is that the arborist community is getting together and further aligning so that we can help support good tree code in the future.

I would like to highlight the comprehensive plan Seattle 2035 as was updated in 2022 and states that our goal is to make the city more equitable, livable, sustainable and resilient for today's communities and future residents.

The City of Seattle Urban Forest Management Plan aims to return our canopy coverage to 30% and ensure that our urban forest provides equitable access to ecosystem services, economic opportunities, and health benefits offered by trees.

As a owner of a local tree service company for the past 15 years, I just want to offer my insight into how this new TSP code is at conflict with our equity goals as a city.

As Alan and Andrea have both already mentioned, it has driven up the cost of tree care.

For example, if a resident has a hazardous tree that they need to have removed, which is a financial burden in the thousands of dollars, and that doesn't even include the cost for the permit itself, they now need to have a third-party company come in and prepare the tree removal application and permitting for them.

This is an undue unnecessary burden for homeowners to have hazardous trees mitigated that are very well threatening their personhood, their kids, their property.

Basically posting the notice in advance and the administrative burden of it, even for something as simple as a annual apple tree pruning project drives up the cost of tree care.

The policies that drive up the cost of tree care disincentivize ownership and stewardship and planting.

As Andrea said, we hear regularly from citizens that they want to remove a tree because maintaining it is too expensive.

A borer culture also offers a solid career pathway to a diverse workforce, and our policies should support the creation and development of these green jobs.

The urban forests of tomorrow need arborists and will need arborists even more than they do today with the increased threats that are currently facing our urban forests.

So operating under the threat of removal from the TSB for two potential clerical errors and posting notice incorrectly is an incredible burden on our companies.

In general, the current tree protection code is quite vague.

For example, the exceptional tree threshold is based on an out-of-print book.

So until we update the overall tree protection code, placing this burden on us for two violations and you're out is unfair in my opinion.

Landscapers and horticulturists are often the entry point into a horticulture and the TSP puts many of them out of compliance.

At Seattle Tree Care, we have almost 40 people working with us.

We are women.

We are people of color.

We come from all walks of life and economic backgrounds.

And when we prune thousands of trees every year, there is a strong possibility that we will make an administrative error on the notice.

Why should everybody's job at my company be on the line?

This does not feel like a penalty that fits the violation.

A company has to grow to a certain size in order to have the infrastructure to support the training and development of its team members at scale.

In the past six years alone, my company, Seattle Tree Care, has funded and supported the ISA certification of 17 employees, as well as provided lots of other critical training around safety and proper tree care.

On the other hand, as a larger employer, we complete more projects every year and are much more exposed to potential violations.

I'd add also in that our work is somewhat seasonal.

We don't always know which projects that we will be doing a week or two weeks from now.

As Alan mentioned, cancellations happen.

Things happen in people's lives and we want to be able to have our team members go someplace to work the next day rather than telling them, sorry, we didn't post notice properly.

There's no job and we're not paying you today.

We've experienced that this year where a crew has finished up early, a customer has canceled, and we don't have work that we can have our employees do because we haven't posted notice.

We pride ourselves as an organization on keeping our team members employed full-time and year-round, and we think that this is the commitment that is needed to grow the next generation of arborists and offer living wages to our diverse workforce.

If the intention of the TSP code is to rid the city of the bad actors, the tree cutters coming in on the weekends, let's not inadvertently take down the companies that are working hard every day to learn and grow and do the right thing.

I guess I'd just end by saying that we held our first meeting of the Seattle Arborist Association last week.

We wanted to ensure that everybody aligned before the three of us had the opportunity to speak with you all today.

And even though we put out the invitation only a few days ahead of time, 17 people were able to attend and we all very quickly came to unanimous agreement around our points to the tree protection code.

So we would love to stand as an organization that can help support the city as hopefully the overall tree protection code is updated, but specifically right now the TSP.

Thank you.

I'm a small tree care company and in addition to involvement with what appears to be a budding seal arborist association I'm also here to represent the interests of all the arborists who are members of plant amnesty, a group many of you probably know.

20 different arboricultural companies and consultants and all carefully vetted by the organization and I'm here to also speak on their behalf.

Thank you, Alan.

Josh, I'm gonna turn it over to you now.

Josh Morris, co-chair of the Urban Forestry Commission.

If you could give us just summarizing how the Urban Forestry Commission is feeling about how the original law is working, how you're feeling about these changes, and then we'll hold conversation about any potential other changes for later.

Josh, I really appreciate receiving the letter from the Urban Forestry Commission.

It was very clear and helpful.

So Josh, please take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I am Joshua Morris, co-chair of the Urban Forestry Commission.

I serve in position number seven, which is the NGO representative.

The Urban Forestry Commission has not yet had a chance to review in commission the proposed changes, but we had taken a look at the first set of proposed amendments And we had three major concerns at that time.

The first was exemption of hedges from post requirements or reportable work.

And that appears to have been resolved in the current proposed set of amendments.

We were also concerned about some inconsistency in definitions of major pruning and what had been proposed in the tree service provider amendments.

and what had been established in code elsewhere in the Seattle Municipal Code, which was also inconsistent with industry best practices.

And we were also concerned about the removal completely of a posting requirement.

So I think the commission is going to be really pleased to see that an online posting system is being proposed in this set of amendments.

The commission has historically for a long time been advocating for much longer public posting requirements up to two weeks consistent with how SDOT is running their system.

But definitely, I'm really excited to hear about the Seattle Arborist Association.

I've got a chance to meet Alan and Andrea at a couple of Urban Forestry Commission meetings online.

And I think we have a lot to learn from them.

And I regret that the Urban Forestry Commission meets at such an inconvenient time.

And I'm looking forward to figuring out a way that we can all find more convenient times to meet and learn from each other.

Thank you, Josh.

Anything from this current bill that stands out as a hazard to you?

Thank you for that question.

And my apologies for everyone here.

I have a rule in my committee where I have bills before the committee twice before we vote it out.

So this is the first of two opportunities to have this discussion.

So this is so that I validate and know that everyone has received the information and has had time to process and bring any amendments if desired.

So if you don't have an answer now, that's okay.

We will ask you again in two weeks.

I would absolutely echo the call from Sandy and Steve for day of posting requirements.

We do operate largely on a complaint based system, and there is a passionate tree advocate community out there who are willing to confront tree service providers and interrupt their work.

And so if we can come up with a system that isn't onerous and burdensome on the people who are caring for our trees, but that does keep community members at ease and notify them when legitimate tree work is occurring.

I think that's something that could be really helpful for all of us.

Thanks, Josh.

Colleagues, any questions for either of these panels?

Councilmember Peterson, take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Appreciate the discussion here and I'm already hearing some common ground with some of the public callers, what Josh from the Forestry Commission was saying and what some of our arborists here were saying in terms of day of posting.

I think it's important to note that this might be something to add to these amendments.

I've also heard, you know, trying to bifurcate the heavy pruning, which we'd be calling reportable work, but bifurcating that from the removal, which is a more serious situation.

I was, the Master Builders Association called in in support of it, and that sort of threw me off a little bit.

but the bifurcating the removal perhaps having a little bit more time online notification for a major removal versus just the pruning.

So there may be a way to nuance this a little bit.

I did want to speak to the issue about the timing of the original bill that was introduced in October 2021 and we adopted it several months later, March 2022. Um, and then it became effective in November of 2022. So I think there was in terms of how long it takes for us to pass bills that was posted online for a long time.

So, um, but, but happy to get this additional input today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council member council member Nelson.

So I have a question for you, Joshua, because you are a service provider.

Are there a lot of...

Just to, Council Member, to clarify, Joshua is on the Urban Forestry Commission working for the Seattle Audubon Society?

Yeah, that's right.

Alan, Kelsey, and Andrea are our hosts.

All right, I have a question about, does Seattle have Are we limited in the number of tree service providers in town?

Are there a lot of people to do this work?

And the reason that I asked is because I'm hearing some discrepancy over how many days is a good amount to post online.

I'm just trying to get a sense of is part of that because if you have to post it online for a certain amount of time and then an arborist gets an offer for another job, then you could lose your place in line.

I'm just trying to get a sense of what the capacity is in Seattle.

And I just want to signal that I have no position on this.

I'm just trying to get a sense of where the issues might lie.

And the arborist in chamber will definitely be best suited.

Yeah, sorry.

Thanks so much for the question, Council Member Nelson.

I think your question really goes in two different directions.

One is how many tree service providers are there, and then the other is...

Who are licensed and reputable that one would want to do this work, etc.

And does any of you have the most recent numbers on that?

54, I want to say, but that includes maybe 20 consulting arborists.

So as of right now, there are 65 registered tree service providers on SDCI's list that is published.

However, there are a good number of them that are consulting services only.

So they don't actually do any pruning, removal, et cetera.

Okay, thank you.

We're also sort of operating under the assumption that a lot of companies are perhaps still operating not as TSPs within Seattle, but there's not actually very much enforcement.

And that's one of our concerns is that by creating these rules and then not having a lot of enforcement funding to go behind them, what happens is we sort of get punished for complying.

But then if others are able to continue to operate with impunity, then It just makes us less competitive relative to folks that aren't following the rules.

So, the whole notice posting thing that we're approaching that more of a, this is an internal process issue that's got us really stressed out because it might cost us our ability to work in the city, whereas there is a growing number of tree service providers, but, you know, One of our concerns with the discussions around fruit trees and hedges was just that there are likely a lot of horticultural companies that prune trees that may not even know the supplies to them and likely are in violation of code as it currently stands and would also have a hard time becoming TSPs due to the requirement.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions at this time?

Councilmember vice-chair Morales, please take it away.

Thank you.

I wonder if Yolanda could just speak to that issue a little bit of the capacity of our departments to enforce and what it means for our staffing needs so that people are able to operate in the city if they are allowed and are not operating or at least that this is being enforced if there's something happening that is not allowed.

Um, as you may be aware, the city is mostly a complaint based system.

So we don't, we don't have a lot of folks out there who are, you know, there's obviously no proactive enforcement, so there's no 1 going out and kind of checking to make sure people are posting things as more.

if we have alert neighbors who are calling the department noting that there is tree work happening but no notice visible right now currently, right?

And so I think the city has kind of that limited enforcement capacity and they really do rely upon our residents to kind of alert them to if there is someone kind of illegally operating either in the right of way or in public and private property.

So it is, you know, there's there's kind of the, how much does the city want to spend on, you know, kind of enforcement issues versus kind of hoping for compliance, and I would say, you know, I talked extensively with SDOT, and they, you know, at least from what I understand from SDOT, and maybe those practitioners may correct me, but SDOT is really focused on compliance, right, and so it's not about the penalties, but about really working with the tree service providers to make sure they understand the regulations, right, because having folks out there doing the work incorrectly is far worse than, you know, just because those who are less likely to comply often will continue not complying, right?

And so I think the city's, at least as that stands, is that trying to get folks into compliance so they can be doing the right thing is far better for the city than penalizing folks.

Can I have a follow-up, Chair?

Yeah, take it away.

It's all you.

Please say you're done.

Do you have any sense then of how and whether the materials that are provided to help educate service providers about these rules are available in different languages.

If the people who may be speaking to somebody on the street as something is happening speak other languages, I guess part of what I'm wondering is Given that we know many of these service providers may not speak English as a first language, I wouldn't want to see people getting penalized, certainly, if they don't understand.

And in order to help them understand, are we providing these things in languages that our service providers speak?

From what I know right now, it looks like everything is the interface is in English.

For instance, the has kind of shown us how 1 would enter the notice information that that appears to be solely in English.

And when I've looked online, all I've found is primarily English.

So I think that is an area where.

STTI may need to consider kind of expanding its materials and the translation to provide additional access.

I mean, I think that is, you know, worth talking about and kind of understanding where the need is for that.

And then my next question would be, how much does it cost for us to make sure that the materials that we need the public to understand are translated into the languages that the public needs?

I think that's something we want to ask the departments, right?

So those translation services, you know, what kind of materials are they thinking of?

I know with SDOT, they have a street tree manual, right?

That's available online again in English, but at least it is one comprehensive kind of document that lays out what's happening.

And I know SDCI has kind of various pieces of information, but I do not know to what extent they're all translated.

So that is something we can certainly follow up on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Colleagues, any other questions at this time?

Seeing none, I'm going to move us into the next portion of this conversation, which after meeting with you this last week, Alan, Tracy, Kelsey, and Andrea, there were some other issues raised.

And so I just want to provide some space in this committee If I don't have, I forgot my notebook in my office, so this is all going off of memory.

Let me see if I've got the list correct.

Changing violations to sustained violations so that there's not a worry of getting a violation that doesn't actually stick and it counting against you.

The issue about horticulturalists.

The, within posting on vehicles, currently SDOT and SDCI have two different numbers.

How do we merge that?

Understanding Deadwood, enforcement, which you mentioned, and then third party consultation.

Did I miss any there?

Want to start down the list?

Roll, this is all you.

I should have taken notes.

Take it away, Alan.

The third party consultation last point you had is a really good one for us to talk about.

That was a requirement of the new ordinance, which actually I think there are some really good kernels in there and there are situations.

I think this is in a lot of ways.

I see us drawing lines between SDOT and how SDCI does their enforcement, and this would actually align SDCI much more with SDOT in that if I, as a tree service provider, and I'm also registered SDOT tree as a service provider, think that there's something wrong with your tree and it should be removed, I can submit that as an opinion and as part of a permit application to the Seattle Department of Transportation, and one of their arborists, arboriculturalists, will review that and make sure that what I'm saying makes sense and doesn't sound fishy.

Now, if they think what I'm saying sounds fishy or isn't supported by photographic evidence or just doesn't make sense, they can ask for third-party review.

And that just seems like the most reasonable way to go about all this.

Andrea spoke to earlier the costs associated with removing a protected tree in the city, say an exceptional tree.

And right now, I mean, just before you even talk to an arborist about actually getting the work done, you're looking at $500 to $700 for a consulting arborist report and $430 for an SDCI review tree review.

And this might be a stone dead tree that even a lay person could look at and say, boy, that probably ought to come down.

It seems unsafe.

Our friends over in Bainbridge actually have a permitting system where if you want to remove a healthy tree, there's a hefty fee that goes along with that and it subsidizes hazard tree removal permits to really ease the burden.

But in looking at these burdens of tree ownership and tree stewardship, I don't even like using the word ownership, especially when it's something that might outlive you.

I view it more as a stewardship.

That's really one of the major issues we run into.

especially just dealing with your average person.

The two things they find most surprising are one is if your tree is obviously dead, you have to pay a bunch of money to get permission to remove it.

And the other one is that even though the tree in front of their house is public property, they're required to maintain it.

That's a whole other issue for another day.

I see that.

So again, your last point, we just think that there are absolutely bad actors that have abused the system and there should be checks to make sure that that doesn't happen.

But for encouraging people to keep trees around and to not.

create an undue burden especially for historically underserved communities I mean I'm, I'm down in Skyway and I do a lot of work in the south end and just dealing with some folks in their inner valley it's you know it's it's tough when you sort of work them through all the costs that can go along with dealing with their trees sometimes.

Andrew, I'm sure you have something to add.

Yeah, to add to Alan's points.

So I used to live in Councilmember Peterson's district, but now I live in district two.

So I live in Hillman City and I have a neighbor with a dead tree and it's too expensive for my company to come manage it for them.

And I just look at it every day and I.

It's a challenge, third party reporting is consistent to request at the city's you know, asking after a review.

So there are other municipalities around, Kirkland, Cambridge Island, the city of Burien, Mercer Island, they all have exceptions where the city reviewers can request a third party review, kind of to Alan's point, if there's something suspicious happening, or they don't really think that the level of assessment was enough to justify a removal.

We, as the budding Seattle Arborist Association would like the code to be changed to say at SDCI's request or director's request or the reviewing arborist's discretion whether or not a third party arborist report is required.

Another example beyond just a dead tree is a tree that is really obviously in conflict with infrastructure.

I have a client currently who has an exceptional tree, but it's a tree that's exceptional at a small size, so it's 10 inches diameter.

And it is growing on top of two roofs.

So the tree was planted too close to the house.

It's a small tree.

The removal cost alone is probably like $800.

The city permit for the hazardous tree removal permit is $451, which was changed this year.

It's the permit cost plus the new technology service fee that's applied to those.

And they technically require a third party arborist report.

So they need to hire a third arborist who's on the TSP list to come out and photograph the tree.

I mean, it's very obvious in photo evidence that this small tree is growing on two roofs and we couldn't prune it.

The homeowner would love to keep the tree, there's just no way.

We'd have to remove too much of it, it would constitute removal anyway, but a tree removal that's very straightforward and obvious and reasonable in managing our urban forest goes from $850 to well over $1,600 in no time.

So if a third party report could be requested at SDCI's discretion, I think that would be a good amendment, save people money.

And also help weed out kind of the more bad actors.

That does require that SDCI would be more funded because there are only two Arborists, I believe, who are reviewing these reports at the moment.

I think that there are four total, but SDOT, Yolanda made a good point.

They do enforce well, but they have six arboriculturists who are working full time.

SDCI, I don't think, has the ability to request this as is at the moment or to spend the amount of time with reports that they need to to actually call through and request additional assessment.

In addition to that kind of the other challenging thing in the code was the requirement for a permit or a third party report for pruning an exceptional tree in the case of it being a hazard.

There is only one type of permit in the city of Seattle for tree.

It's hazardous tree removal permits.

There are not any others that exist.

Technically, there is no pruning permit available with SDCI.

So something else that we had contacted Council Member Strauss' office about was actually striking or asking to strike the pruning portion from that.

I think that's, yeah, number three.

Okay, I'm sure that we can find it, but just striking the pruning a hazardous tree if it's exceptional.

That stipulation is because there is nothing in the code that makes that possible at the moment.

And one good thing to add on there when it comes to the Everything surrounding pruning I know we've had some back and forth about whether or not we can refer to national standards and it's a little funky we actually found a place in the code where the NCA 300. national printing standards are referred to.

And one thing we really want to encourage the Council to do is just please defer to national industry standards and terminology whenever possible.

Some folks that are way smarter than us put a lot of effort into creating those and they just make everyone's lives so much easier and if we can just For instance, if the rule is simply, and I actually believe this is part of the new TSP ordinance, that you must prune to the ANSI A300 standard.

I mean, just that alone, if people actually just do that and follow that, the level of pruning quality in the city will go way, way up.

And then speaking to enforcement, Andrea was mentioning only the two arborist typically reviewing reports, these bad actors know that the SDCI field enforcement people who there isn't even a single SDCI arborist that works in the field, like, well, just take a moment how that's kind of crazy that they have so much say over how trees are managed on public property in the city and there's not a single one of them that goes outside an office.

But also the bad actors know that even the standard construction inspectors don't typically work weekends and don't typically work holidays.

So it is a common practice to do that work on a weekend or a holiday.

And then even if the concerned citizen calls it in, you can destroy a monstrous tree in two hours with a chainsaw.

That's something that took a hundred years to grow.

So in the absence of that effective enforcement, we really haven't protected more trees.

And that's been a big theme in this whole discussion, right?

are we making tree protections better or worse?

And the thing is the notice requirement doesn't change anything about tree protections.

I'm really excited that it sounds like we're updating that.

I mean, with what everything the council's working on and potentially the mayor's office.

And I think as much as we want to play a role in what we're currently talking about today in the TSP ordinance, more than anything, we just want to say we are here as a resource as all of that gets updated.

Because I think a lot of us are just worried that we're missing the important stuff and getting caught up in some things that aren't making quite as big a difference.

Even the exceptional tree protection ordinance itself, I love big trees.

I agree with Council Member Peterson that a good tree is a big tree.

He wrote something like that recently.

The bigger, the better, I think.

I love climbing trees, the bigger, the better.

But without small trees, without young trees, we do not get old trees, we do not get big trees.

there's a whole bigger discussion to be had here.

But I think more than anything, as this code is implemented, and Peterson, just to give you, sorry, Council Member Peterson, just to give you a little better perspective on how this all came out, SDCI didn't finalize the rules on how we had to do all this stuff until one week before it was implemented.

And it required things like collecting diameters of trees that we intended to prune, which I often there's like a typically a 30 to 120 day lag between when I visit a site as a salesperson arborist and when my company actually does the work.

And so now all of a sudden, we're being told we have a week and there's all this information we don't have.

And oh, by the way, You need to post these notices and also it's sales services portal so it's awful.

So just just to give you a little perspective there because certainly the we missed the ball, not knowing about this legislation that you'd proposed and not acting on it more but it the actual implementation and it felt very rushed and and that's one of the reasons why the agricultural community has been so activated around the issue.

So.

It just might help to clarify as well that a typical practice for an arborist is not necessarily to measure a tree for pruning.

If we're going to a property and we're just going to be pruning the trees, we aren't necessarily measuring them, which is why Alan saying we would have had to go back to all those sites and take measurements.

We're always measuring them for removal, though, of course.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And to your point about how much we might be taking off a tree or not, it's just a really hard thing to come up with any hard rules on.

I look at a lot of trees where If we were to remove more than five or 10% of the live foliage, that would be really risking the long-term viability of the tree.

And that's especially a lot of those bigger mature exceptional trees.

But then there are other trees such as overgrown hedge trees or fruit trees that routinely have 50% of their foliage removed, and that's totally fine.

It's gonna be just fine.

In a lot of instances, they need it, otherwise they'll outgrow their available space.

So it's just a very hard thing to create any sort of set rule on.

And that's one of the reasons we had mentioned things like...

And one of the big thoughts behind increasing some of these thresholds was the idea that if we just bumped the threshold for reportable work up a little bit, it would really exclude a lot of those horticulturalists that right now we think are just sort of unwittingly operating illegally, because it's very hard to shear a hedge and not remove 15% of the live foliage, but that's a totally acceptable thing to do, and there are 100,000 hedges in this city, and arborists only take care of usually the big ones that are hard to reach.

So that was the idea.

It sounded like there was some concern with the Urban Forestry Commission about what impact that would have on our canopy coverage area in the city, but it We need to recognize that these are things that are going on nearly constantly and and the big thing we want to avoid is just a situation where it's like one of those rules that everyone just ignores, because it's impossible to follow.

And a lot of this just feels like it's it's ending up in that situation where then you're really just.

have companies that are rolling the dice and going, well, am I going to get unlucky and somebody reports us?

But that's what we're worried about with all this.

And we're thinking if there's some exclusions to what is reportable work, that that would help make it so a lot of these companies are in compliance and able to do the work they want to do while we're more having some regulatory authority over the work that arborists do, but it, you got to consider horticulturalist landscapers, landscape architects, there's a lot of people who are touching the urban forest in Seattle, and it's not just arborists.

So to kind of follow on to Alan's point there with I know that the Urban Forestry Commission where this letter was drafted, I was participating as a just a member of the public listening in on that meeting and thank you to Joshua who was I was typing this at the time, and I remember Stuart, who is the only arborist, I believe, on the commission was not present that day.

And I know that the Urban Forestry Commission was operating on a tight timeline trying to get this turned around and back to Councilmember Strauss's office.

But something that had come up during those conversations was not understanding the request for the ask for the increase in from two inches to four inches for determining at the time major pruning, but now reportable work and the increase from 15% to 25%.

So to kind of speak to Alan's point there is our request in that increase is separating kind of the arborists from horticulturists, but also that on most trees, a two inch cut or not necessarily removal of a two inch diameter branch, but making a two inch cut on a mature tree is not considered major pruning.

Four inches is well within what could be considered normal best practice.

Same with 25% removal depending on the tree.

The current ANSI A300 standards have actually been updated to omit blanket kind of pruning percentage requirement, they were amended in 2017, they removed the 25% kind of threshold because it actually encouraged a lot of tree care folks to over prune trees to that 25%, which in some cases is acceptable best practice in some cases isn't so.

When we're evaluating trees to prune, we are taking into consideration the size, species, the objective of the pruning, and from where we stand as people who are caring for the trees day in and day out and do understand best practice, increasing those to four inches and 25% is aligned with best practice, presuming you are following ANSI A300 standards.

and the other restrictions that are already laid out in the Seattle Municipal Code as far as, you know, no topping, no removal of trees on ECA's above six inches diameter, et cetera.

Part of the other reportable work piece that Council Member Strauss pointed out as the part of our kind of punch list here was deadwooding, is that the way that the code reads right now is it says removal of branches two inches diameter or greater, and we really would like it to be amended to include live branches.

It frequently happens that I can't see from the ground that there is a dead branch in the upper canopy of a large Douglas fir tree.

And when I send a climbing arborist into the tree to take care of that, they can't remove that branch if it's larger than two inches, if I didn't submit notice properly.

And really, it's a hazardous branch, or could be.

It might not be imminently hazardous, but it is more likely that that breaks out later.

So hoping to add live branches, live roots, live canopy.

We would ask that we increase to four inches and 25% but willing to discuss that further.

The only other piece I wanted to point out with the normal and routine pruning is actually not defined anywhere in Chapter 2511. It's only defined in Chapter 2509, which is the ECA code.

So it's not in the tree protection code.

And the definition in the ECA code says normal and pruning maintenance means for trees, shrubs and other woody plants compliance with the American National Standards Institute A300 pruning standards.

So I think just differentiating between the two is a little bit vague in the way that the code is written right now.

And a really important distinction to draw here, too, is that we take no issue with the major pruning, minor pruning thresholds with SDOT trees.

Those trees are public trees.

They're a public resource.

And we think it's totally reasonable that SDOT has their permitting requirement that goes along with any sort of major pruning.

We're just thinking that in the private property context, maybe we could look at it in a slightly different light.

Really well said.

Would you, do you want to join in with anything?

Are you feeling good?

I mean, like really well said, Dean.

And with that, Josh, I don't know if you've got any reactions to what you've heard today.

Feel free to jump in anytime.

It's floor is yours.

Thank you.

It's really great learning from the arborists here.

So thank you for enlightening us.

I am not an arborist.

I'm not a practitioner.

And it is regrettable that Stuart wasn't able to join us on the meeting we were having this discussion.

So I'm looking forward to going back to the commission, and sharing what we're learning here today and making our recommendations better and stronger.

The one thing that I would have a little bit of concern about is deferring to SDCI for third-party reporting.

Unfortunately, SDCI doesn't necessarily have the best reputation among a lot of folks in the tree community, tree advocate community.

I've seen evidence of SDCI willfully not enforcing its own code.

And so that would give me a little bit of pause.

And I'd love to kick this idea around with some more folks, because I also hear the point that it's potentially a burden and increasing the cost of work when it may be quite obvious that a tree needs to come down.

So that's the only thing that I heard that I'd like to keep thinking on.

But yeah, thanks again to everybody here.

Yeah, Josh, if you've got a better entity, please let us know.

I think, you know, SDOT has a good reputation in this world, and that's partly because the street trees have been regulated for so long.

We haven't regulated private property trees except for in ECA's significant and hazardous trees.

So, you know, there's a lot of new ground being planted.

Is that right Councilmember Peterson?

What's the new ground being planted here?

Colleagues, do you have any questions about what the Arborist Association has brought forward just now as potential further amendments?

All right.

the Seattle Arborist Association.

Is that set up already?

I mean, is that a 501c3 or have you...

Not yet.

Are you still...

Okay.

All right, we'll look forward to learning more.

I guess just as a quick closing comment, the thing I just need to stress more than anything else is that we need to support and encourage tree planting.

End of story.

That is the single most important thing that we can do to help Seattle's urban forest.

We need to plant more in planting strips, we need to plant more in right-of-ways, and we need to plant a lot more trees in our private property spaces.

Because despite our best efforts, we are living through a large-scale die-off in Seattle's trees, even in areas that are completely unaffected by development.

We have a lot of invasive pests either here or on the horizon, and climate change is really wreaking havoc with a lot of our established mature, especially native trees.

And so in everything you do, I just, I urge the council, let's protect old trees, but if we don't encourage people to plant new ones, and this is the forester in me coming out, the forester walks into the woods and gets excited about the little trees that are growing out of the understory.

The overstory is very important, But if all you do is assess the health of your forest by looking at the big old trees, it's like walking into an elder care facility and using it to determine the health of a society.

We need to have young trees.

We need to have a robust nursery of healthy young trees coming along.

And many of those trees are not going to be the same trees that historically have lived here.

So thank you so much for taking the time to listen to us.

And I'm sure we missed some details.

So we are here as a resource and please feel free to reach out.

We would just love to be able to, we're happy to have a seat at the table and we really are just here to help.

Yeah, and I want to thank you as well because I know when we originally had this bill going forward, I was kind of cold calling arborists to try to get opinions because I didn't know who to call.

And oftentimes what we find in legislative work is that people don't, and we see this with sound transit, right?

People don't speak up until it impacts them, right?

Because you are busy people.

You have lives, children, families, work.

And so I just really appreciate you being able to come back together in a forward focused, how do we make this better perspective.

It's been very helpful and enlightening, because I'm not an arborist.

the laws that we pass here impact Arborist's work.

And so, colleagues, for the, just for timeline, we are gonna have this bill back before us in two weeks on the 22nd.

Josh, we'd love to have you back.

Kelsey, Andrea, Alan would love to have you back as well.

Colleagues, please do, if you have amendments, earlier notice the better.

Don't walk anything on.

So I am going on vacation next Thursday.

So if people could please get me your amendment ideas earlier by maybe early next week, I can work with you on that.

in my absence, but since I've been deep in the branches on this one, I feel like I would really, I would like to work with folks on any sort of ideas for providing amendments and things like that before I head out.

So I just want to let you all know early that I will be not at the February 22nd meeting, but I am here to help you with amendments and hope to get those in good shape before I head out next week.

Thank you, Yolanda.

I am going to make the request that people notify you of an amendment idea.

It does not have to be flushed out, but notify you of an amendment idea by Monday.

So we've got three business days, which is the same amount of time that we are requesting notice for tree removal.

With that last question of the day for the arborists or for Josh, what is a tree's favorite drink?

Water.

That was my answer as well.

Root beer.

With that, this concludes the Wednesday, February 8th, 2023 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

The next regularly scheduled Land Use Committee meeting will be on February 22nd, 2023 at 2 p.m.

Thank you for joining us and we are adjourned.