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HAMMITT Bob <br /> From: MEDLIN Johnny R <br /> To: FINNEY Kevin P <br /> Cc: ETTER John F; BELLMORE Mike; MCVEY Fred; LONG Jack E; HAMMITT Bob; <br /> PLAMONDON Scott F; ARGENTINA Eileen <br /> Subject: RE: Urban Forester, Tree Preservation and PIC processes <br /> Date: Friday, February 02, 1996 8:14AM <br /> Hi Kevin, <br /> I'll try to respond to your questions. <br /> 1. The tree preservation code (6.330) says we should be doing more regulating of the felling of trees than <br /> we are now doing as part of the building permit process. Particularity, by code a permit would be required <br /> for ANY tree removal on a commercial or industrial site and anything more than 5 trees on a large <br /> residential (>20,000s.f.) site. This is true if they are going after a building permit or not. <br /> This requirement has been in the code for years (10 + ?). <br /> That being said, the reality is that no one has ever got much involved in the review of trees when someone <br /> is going for a building permit on private lands. (The focus has always been on regulating the removal of <br /> trees on undeveloped lands to insure indiscriminate removals do not occur.) When a development is <br /> controversial (Hyundia, Amazon housing, etc.) and someone at the PIC or the political body asks for a tree <br /> removal permit review then we perform such a review is done and permits issued if appropriate. It needs <br /> to be clear that we only do this on request. We don't have the staff to get any deeper into this and I <br /> suspect no one else wants to take it on. A couple of months ago Scott, Chris Andersen, and I met with <br /> the Mayor to discuss this issue. We left that meeting with the above as an understanding and that we <br /> were not going to propose any additional staffing to do more tree review on private lands in the building <br /> permit process. However, there is the expectation that we won't miss impacts to City owned street trees. <br /> I believe the meetings we conducted a couple of months ago resulted in a process which has been put into <br /> place through Eileen's and /or Transportation's staff to insure these are identified and referred to the Urban <br /> Forester for issuance of permits as needed. <br /> We are not proposing any staff increases either here at PWM or at the PIC to take on additional tree review <br /> work over that we are already doing. This could change if councilor such as Shawn or Barbara can <br /> influence others to their views on this issue. <br /> 2. It is our desire to have tree permit intake occur at the PIC (one stop shopping) instead of at PWM with <br /> the plans then being referred to PWM for action. At one time I had agreement from Gretta and Eileen on <br /> making this happen once the PIC was relocated to the Atrium and the new permit computer tracking <br /> program came on line. To make this happen we were going to modify the fee structure to pay for the <br /> intake and do some training with Eileen's staff to provide a very minimal level of counter support. (I'm not <br /> at all sure where that is now with Greta gone and I understand the new system never was implemented.) <br /> 3. We are trying very hard to be responsive (with limited success) to the review of PUDs, subdivisions, site <br /> reviews, and privately developed public improvements in regards to tree issues. Our feeling is that we get <br /> the most (bang for our buck) benefit to the Urban Forest by commenting at the earliest stages of land <br /> development prior to the owners getting fixed in their minds how they want their development to occur <br /> instead of trying to get them (or force them) to change their minds at a later date. <br /> 4. The Maintenance Division HAS proposed in the FY -97 budget the addition of a PWM staff person to <br /> work out of the Atrium. Please be clear that this is not solely a person to help with tree review. If <br /> anything that would be limited to approximately 15% of their time. The intent (and manner in which the <br /> person is funded) is to help Public Works Maintenance in performing development reviews. Such would <br /> include Urban Forestry (Scott) tree issues, Parks Planning (John Etter) with park issues, and Maintenance <br /> Planning (Fred McVey & Jack Long) with street, sanitary and storm sewer issues. The exact workload <br /> distribution would be determine once we implemented the position and evaluated how best to integrate <br /> PWM into PIC activities. <br /> This proposal was approved and forwarded to Execs by Chris Andersen with the understanding that the <br /> person hired would NOT be used to take on new work, but would be used to allow some of the review we <br /> currently perform here at PWM to be performed at the Atrium which would increase our level of <br /> responsiveness and would give us a more direct involvement in the PIC /Planning process. This is a move to <br /> Page 1 <br />