San Francisco Public Works opens the City's first street tree nursery, an initiative that focuses on expansion of the City’s urban forest, climate protection and workforce development to benefit underserved communities.

San Francisco is awarded a $12 Million Federal Grant to plant thousands of new street trees to fight climate change and provide green jobs

At the northern edge of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, the Southeast Community Center opens as an oasis of community-building against an industrial backdrop.

The state-of-the-art Animal Care and Control facility opens to serve the City’s animals and the humans who care for them.  

Fireboat Station No. 35 opens at Pier 22 ½ as a two-story, 14,837-square-foot facility built on top of a steel float anchored by guide piles, allowing it to rise and fall with the natural tide of the Bay, king tides and projected sea level rise.

The COVID-19 global pandemic saw Public Works employees, as designated essential workers, on the front line of the City’s response with creativity and flexibility by reprioritizing resources and deploying staff where needed to keep San Francisco clean, safe and resilient.

San Francisco voters approve a ballot measure to split Public Works into two, creating a new Department of Sanitation and Streets to focus on street cleaning, tree care and other operations functions. However, before the split was fully implemented, voters went back to the ballot and reversed course in 2022 to keep the department whole. Both ballot measures created two commissions.

Margaret Hayward Playground reopens following a $28 million renovation that transformed the beloved 6-acre park in the heart of the Western Addition into a modern hub for recreation.

Proposition E is approved by 76 percent of voters, allowing Public Works to care for the City’s nearly 135,000 street trees and fix tree-related sidewalk damage under the new StreetTreeSF program. 

First Navigation Center opens in the Mission District on a former school site. The innovative homeless shelter aims to move people living in street encampments into more stable housing.