Overview
- San Francisco Public Works cut a homeowner’s $50,000 penalty to $6,475 on the condition he hires a certified arborist to carry out a five-year recovery plan.
- The fines followed his trimming of five trees to meet an insurance request, but the city says those trees sit in the public right-of-way and fall under the StreetTreeSF program.
- An inspector cited illegal “topping,” which means cutting main limbs back to stubs that can weaken trees and shorten their life, and first recommended $10,000 per tree before a senior reviewer said the trees could recover.
- Paul Dennes appealed and said he never received notice of the 2017 rule change and that city photos were misleading, while Public Works says it has done years of outreach and denies doing any extra pruning by his home.
- The city urges residents to let the Bureau of Urban Forestry handle street-tree work or call PG&E for power-line clearance, and a certified arborist says confusion over sidewalk tree ownership is common and the fines feel steep.