Around 11am last Friday, a large tree limb fell from a eucalyptus on Park Presidio, blocking the northbound lanes of traffic between Clement and California.
The photos were taken by blog reader Kay V., who is also a member of the Yahoo! Group “Boulevard Neighbors”, comprised of residents that live alongside Park Presidio Boulevard. The members use the group to inform each other about issues with the parkway, including the condition of the trees, landscaping, crime and homeless encampments.
The group is also in close contact with SF Rec & Park gardeners about the condition of the park, and often have workdays to help with maintenance tasks that the city can’t cover.
Recently, Rec & Park re-cut a pathway through the western stretch between Lake and California Streets, cutting back overgrowth and clearing homeless encampments.
But downed trees and branches is not unusual – many of the eucalyptus along the road are decades old. In previous years, it was typical of SF Rec & Park to tag problem trees and remove them regularly, but that’s become less frequent as the city has tightened its fiscal belt.
Thankfully, actual people have not been harmed when the trees or their branches decide to take a dive, but a few cars took a beating when one toppled over in July 2009.
The fallen trees are just a symptom of the poor state of the parkway, of which the city is all too aware.
Recently, Park Presidio Boulevard was ranked as the #1 worst performing park by the City Controller’s office in its annual report on maintenance performance at San Francisco’s public open spaces.
The maintenance scores are based on in-person evaluations by Recreation and Park Department staff and city auditors. Each park is given a score between zero and 100, with rankings based on factors that include litter, proper irrigation methods and tree upkeep, according to The Examiner.
A park that scores above 85 percent is considered to be in good upkeep. The Park Presidio Boulevard received a score of 41.3. The next worst, Pine Lake Park on Sloat, scored 72.4.
Kay V. hopes that the city will treat this latest fallen tree incident as a wake-up call and make needed improvements to Park Presidio Boulevard.
“This incident is yet another confirmation about the deplorable conditions of trees along Park Presidio Boulevard…Hello Phil [Ginsburg]? Hello Eric [Mar]? Hello Ed [Lee]? Are we a priority yet? If not, what will it take?” she wrote in her email to the Boulevard Neighbors group.
Sarah B.
I wish they would remove them once they are tagged. My husbands car ended up under one of these trees last year. The city ended up paying for it, but how many trees could they have cut for the same amount of money they ended up paying us?
That’s just an accident waiting to happen….
Nick Pagoulatos from Supervisor Eric Mar’s office here. We are in conversation with Rec. Park to improve the condition and maintenance of Park Presidio. I will update you all on the status of this conversation in the next few days.
It’s incidents like this that turn people against trees. Instead of remediating hazardous trees by pruning or removing them, SFRPD goes around cutting down non-hazardous trees in parks. So we end up with fewer trees – but more problem trees.
I didn’t know that area was actually considered a park, I thought it was a wooded area where the homeless live. When are we going to address the homeless population in SF?
Park Presidio Blvd is considered a park??? Other than the name includes the word “Park,” how on earth is it a park? Freeway is more like it.
It’s a park – it’s green, and you can walk in it, or you used to be able to walk in it before it became overgrown and filled with all sorts of trash. Although there are cars rushing by on both sides, it is quiet inside this park, and there are birds and green growing.
The primary problem is that Rec & Park has zero licensed Arborists on their payroll. Groundskeepers and Gardeners (different skill sets) are not qualified to manage trees. Gardeners can do some light pruning but anything involving a chainsaw requires expertise in the tree species.
The Arborist positions were eliminated so that funding could be transferred from Rec & Park to be used by the Health and Human Services Departments and various non-profits serving non-infrastructure. The Park Presidio trees were trimmed by an outside contractor and supervised by the contractor’s Arborist for the first time in three decades about seven years ago.
Based on what I see in the picture, someone unqualified “cleared” trees without understanding branch loads. Most of the “maintenance” done on Park Presidio is performed by Groundskeepers who operate mowers and call DPW to remove trash. This is the equivalent of going to the barber when you have a migraine.
How sad that Park Presidio is in such bad shape. I used to live on 14th Avenue near Anza, and it was just lovely. I guess this is what happens when the Rec & Park budget for gardners is cut to ribbons. It needn’t be this way. The funds are there, but right now the RPD staff is top-heavy with lots of well paid bureaucrats, and not enough boots on the ground. There’s gotta be a better way.