CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING AGENDA PACKET

Page 2 of 4 businesses, and property owners to analyze what updates would be reasonable for property owners, benefit the city’s urban forest, and be comparable to surrounding cities. DISCUSSION The proposed amendment to the tree preservation chapter of the municipal code is the first major revision in the 50+ years the code has been in effect and will help guide the management of the city’s urban forest for many years to come. After the City Council directed staff to revisit the proposed ordinance changes, City and Dudek staff spent considerable time conducting further analysis, benchmarking Pleasanton’s ordinance versus other cities’ ordinances - both locally and with other California cities with similar urban forests and population - and reviewing the data from years of enforcing the current ordinance to determine what impacts certain changes would have. The goal of the additional analysis was to have an ordinance that was sensible, based on the tree removal requests the City receives, defensible, based on state law, comparable to similar cities and other Tri-Valley cities, and beneficial, based on the health of the urban forest. Staff met with the Tree Preservation Ad Hoc Subcommittee on three occasions between March-October 2024. The first meeting was held to review the input received at the March 5 City Council meeting and discuss recommended ordinance modifications. At the second meeting, the subcommittee and staff members reviewed and discussed proposed changes to the ordinance based on the guidance received at the first meeting and discussed next steps. The third meeting provided an opportunity to review the draft of the ordinance with changes aligned with the discussions at the previous meetings. Following the last Ad Hoc Subcommittee meeting, staff met with the Heritage Tree Board of Appeals, and then finalized the language with the City Attorney’s Office to help ensure the ordinance changes were clear and defensible and properly organized and effectively presented. A final draft of the revised ordinance is now being presented to the City Council. Notably, because the ordnance text was reformatted and reorganized, a redlined version would not have been effective in identifying the substantive changes. Instead, the recommended amendments are incorporated into the revised ordinance are outlined below and will be presented during the City Council presentation: • Make the ordinance simple and easy to understand o Simplified and defined language o Clarified penalty structure o Reorganized sections on development (major vs. minor development) • Make the ordinance more consistent with surrounding communities o Change the definitions to preserve “protected” trees rather than “heritage” trees o Redefine heritage trees to be unique/special trees o Remove the 35-foot height definition for protected trees o Protect tree sizes in line with surrounding cities o Create penalties commensurate with those used by cities in the region • Provide more flexibility for removal in ordinance to accommodate unique situations due to fire concerns, the construction of accessory dwelling units, and where trees are damaging property with costly repairs Page 102 of 126