Preserving Native Trees Citywide
In Which: We highlight some small interesting tidbits. Fees for City services start going up next year. And pay for Staff and Council get a bump in the next month.
Small Updates
A number of small, but noteworthy, things happened during the City Council meeting that you may want to know about.
Cesar Chavez Commons
During the proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month, a push for a Cesar Chavez room was made by a representative of La Alianza de Hayward. The Hayward Public Library Director then said that there is “space set aside for our Cesar Chavez Commons.” It wasn’t clear where this space would be, or what purpose it would serve beyond being another thing named after the UFW organizer in Hayward.
Public Comment Gets Heated
A member of the public, Peggy Gurnsey, had harsh words for the City Council on Tuesday. While going through a list of complaints about the Downtown area—including the state of C Street, paving, and tree removals—Ms. Gurnsey’s complaints built to a shouted condemnations of Council. She complained that she hadn’t been personally notified about things happening throughout the City.
Ms. Gurnsey has spoken out against Districting at pervious City Council meetings. She seemed to be worried about her reduced influence on City Council if Districts are enacted. During a later agenda item, Ms. Gurnsey apologized to Council for her outburst.
Mayor Proud of Commission Advocacy—Sometimes
During the official appointment process for new and continuing Commission and Task Force members, Mayor Salinas took a moment to highlight advocacy from the Keep Hayward Clean and Green Task Force (KHCGTF). He said that KHCG pushed the City Council to enact a public smoking ban, in an effort to reduce the number of cigarette butts. It was a result of “advocacy from Keep Hayward Clean and Green,” he said. “You guys have touched every department.”
The scope for both the KHCGTF and the Community Services Commission (CSC) were cited as reasons for starting an ad hoc committee to review the Appointed Officials Handbook. Members of Council have explicitly expressed concern about official advocacy from the CSC—most notably around the now-defunct Community Advisory Panel to the Chief of Police. The Mayor, at least, seemed quite proud of the advocacy from the KHCGTF, despite his opposition to advocacy from the CSC.
Tree Preservation Update Incoming
The City is in the process of updating its Tree Preservation Ordinance. There are already many rules in place around preserving trees in Hayward—a Tree City USA as designated by the Arbor Day Foundation. The updates focus on a few different areas:
Expanding protection to mature native trees in back yards of homes—currently these are not covered by the ordinance
Establishing a Heritage Tree designation: “Trees with exceptional qualities”, including size, age, aesthetics, and/or horticultural, biological, or cultural significance—Staff get to determine what qualifies
Mitigating tree canopy—when trees are cut down, replacement trees need to replace the canopy cover
Adding an in-lieu fee for off-site tree mitigation—sometimes trees just can’t fit, and the money can be used to plant trees in low-canopy areas, which are usually also low-income
Revising the removal permit cost—right now it’s the same cost whether you remove 1 tree or 100 trees
Reduce the duration of permits—right now permits are good for a year and it can be difficult to follow-up to see if things were done correctly
Staff wanted to see if Council was okay with the direction they’re heading before coming up with specific numbers and policy proposals, which would be the next step.
Council Thoughts About Trees
Councilmember Zermeño, unsurprisingly, had some thoughts about trees—though many of them were outside the scope of the ordinance. He was in favor of all the recommendations and said he joined City Council specifically because a tree on Soto was causing accidents and removed. He pushed for several different tree-related initiatives.
“I know there are more than 30,000 trees in Hayward,” Zermeño said. “I want to tell people there are a million trees in Hayward.” He also wanted more trees downtown on A Street and C Street. “Can you imagine, had they decided to tree A and C, what we would have now? Because B Street is just tremendous.”
Councilmember Andrews asked about tree relocations, and Staff said that it was okay, but not a great solution. “In general,” Staff said, “we would rather see a tree stay in its location, if it’s thriving in that location.” She also pushed to involve 100k Trees to be more involved in the process. “They should just possibly be kept in the loop because we get a lot of advocacy from them,” Andrews said, “and might be a preemptive move to make sure they’re included so you don’t get surprises.”
Councilmember Roche asked if the ordinance covered street trees or other municipally owned trees. Staff said that they’re looking to add exclusions for “life safety”—dangerous trees or trees in a wildfire risk zone—but that the ordinance is primarily intended to deal with private property. “I think it’s critical that we preserve as many of our native trees as possible,” she said, supporting the ordinance.
“It needs to hurt,” Councilmember Roche said, “if you’re going to take out that many trees. And maybe there’ll be a reconsideration of how that development is going to happen.” She pushed Staff to consider ways of accelerating the timeline of reaching 20% canopy coverage for the whole city. She said that replacement may not be aggressive enough. “I’d say yes on being more aggressive on the replacement part.”
Councilmember Syrop agreed to needing to be more aggressive with tree replacement. “Old growth trees store more CO2 than new growth trees,” he said. “So a replacement isn’t a simple replacement… So it’s not a 1 for 1 trade, it’s actually a downgrade.” He also suggested more resident involvement in the process, potentially gamifying information gathering rather than using Staff time.
Planting trees in under-treed areas was also something Councilmember Syrop wanted more certainty on. “I think a guaranteed percentage of what the in-lieu tree replacement should go towards—30% or 50%—are in these areas that have 13% or less tree canopy.” He also suggested allocating a certain percentage to key economic corridors.
Councilmember Bonilla wanted to make sure that the in-lieu fee wasn’t the first choice that developers reach for. Staff stressed that the purpose of the in-lieu fee is to be high enough to not be the first choice. They’ll potentially make the off-site cost higher or mandating canopy replacement, but nothing is set yet. He also suggested offering grants or some assistance for tree maintenance, as it can be quite expensive for larger trees.
“We have to find a way to do some pretty extensive community outreach,” Councilmember Bonilla said, “related to whatever changes we make to make sure that our community is aware of what’s being put in place.” Councilmember Goldstein agreed that education will be important for compliance. Councilmember Roche gave suggestions on framing the benefits of trees in ways homeowners would understand. “I think a large part of this is a continued education about what it does for their property value.”
But Councilmember Goldstein positioned environmental preservation as being at odds with housing development. “We’ve got competing interests here,” he said, “we’ve got the sustainability and environmentalism kind of competing against a housing crisis situation.” However, the two need not be at odds. With the in-lieu fee option, denser development can free up land in other areas around the City—moving from single-family development to townhomes would house the same number of people on 1/3 the land.
Mayor Salinas asked, “What if the tree in the backyard is a problem tree?” He gave examples of shedding or fire hazards—though healthy native trees wouldn’t fall in either category. Staff assured him that the ordinance wants to make sure that any removal is mitigated—canopy is canopy. The Mayor then drew attention to the correlation between canopy cover and income. “This is why we’re doing this,” he said, “because clearly the lowest income neighborhoods in our city have the least amount of canopy cover. And we all know the benefits of a tree.”
Fees Are Rearranging
As reported before, the City is adjusting many of the fees they charge for various services throughout the City. The highlights of the changes are:
Changing to take into account inflation and increased staff pay
Adding a credit card fee for transactions over a certain amount
Doing a new analysis every 5 years
The fees go into effect on January 1, 2025.
Council Glad For The Budget Help
Councilmember Syrop celebrated the fee changes. “I’m happy that we’re increasing these fees and staying up to date with the actual costs it costs the city to provide these services to our residents,” he said. He stressed the importance of a balanced budget and said that the fees could bring in up to $1,500,000. “These aren’t free services to provide, necessarily.”
Councilmember Bonilla expressed similar feelings. “[The people of Hayward] want high quality services from the City at reasonable rates and for reasonable taxes,” he said. “I think we’re doing that.” He highlighted that the average change was an increase of only around 1%. “The modest increase in these fees make sure that we recover our costs,” Councilmember Bonilla said, “but more importantly, maintaining high quality services for our community is important.”
Mayor Salinas framed it as the City finally collecting its due. “There are some fees that the City has foregone for many years,” he said. “There are activities that we have been covering for many years that has cost the City a lot of money.”
Pay Going Up For Everyone
The City Salary Plan was also adjusted, to reflect recent bargaining agreements negotiated by SEIU 1021, IFPTE 21, and HAME. The largest changes were from equity adjustments—making sure that employees were being paid around area median for their jobs, compared to other local cities. Some also went up because of the living wage ordinance, including City Council and the Mayor’s salaries.
Councilmember Syrop, the Council liaison to the Personnel Commission, framed the pay increases as a way to improve staff quality of life. “A lot of what these salary increases represent is our commitment to creating a work environment where employees feel like they’re being paid adequately,” he said, “so that we can retain talent and reduce burnout in our City.”
Although the City is simultaneously worried about the budget, Council seems to understand that it may have to come from increasing revenue, not cutting costs.