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Chico Tree Advocates Campaign For More City Trees

Marc Albert

Chico’s street trees are hurting. Age and drought are certainly taking their toll, but penny pinching and official neglect are making a bad situation worse.

At least that’s Charles Withuhn's argument. This local Lorax hopes that with enough public pressure, elected leaders will find the money to reverse course.

“The last six years, we have cut down way more trees than we have planted.” he said. “In 2014 we cut down something over 200 trees and planted 14.”

With the recession and local financial crisis, the horticultural advocate has begrudgingly accepted that trees haven’t been atop the priority list.

But with Chico in a better financial position, Withuhn has launched a campaign urging the public to pressure elected officials on the subject.

“This is an issue that strikes to the character of our community and the very livability of Chico,” he said.

While officials may not completely embrace his agenda, Assistant City Manager Chris Constantine acknowledged that room for improvement exists.

“When you have one tree crew, it makes it very difficult to tackle the thousands of trees we have citywide,” Constantine said. “And so we can’t get out and inspect trees on an annual basis, we can’t go [do] formative pruning citywide — there’s a lot of things you’re not able to do.”

City administrators have proposed no new hires and no additional resources for tree maintenance or planting in the budget set for discussion Tuesday. Withun hopes that the 2,000 postcards he sent out urging locals to weigh in with councilmembers will cultivate a different outcome.