Fall is a messy time of year. We have two sycamores and a ton of oaks. They have been shedding like crazy, and I look up there, and there’s still all these leaves. If only I could spin them into gold.
I love valley oaks, and we have a lot of them, they give us a lot of shade and comfort. But sometimes they cause problems. Eversince we bought our house, we’ve been watching a pair of oaks along the front of the property growing further into the saggy old power lines running down the street. They were there when we bought the property, and as much as we’ve wanted to cut them, we just happened to know a guy who got his hands blown off when he messed around with power lines. So we leave that shit to people who get paid a lot of money to deal with them.
Something else we noticed when we bought the place – those two trees have been marked for removal a number of times. Many of you have seen this – different colors of spray paint, different symbols, right on top of each other about midway up the trunk, year after year. We’ve even been contacted by PG&E about those trees, several times – telling us the trees were scheduled for removal. We’ve waited, and we’ve waited, but nobody ever shows up to do the work. They are touching the power lines.
Something else we noticed since we bought the place, no matter how we’ve cleaned the place up, our insurance has gone up gone up gone up. Over the last few years they’ve really been jacking it, and they’re saying it’s because of fire hazard. And not just our place – the city of Chico has been called on the carpet. And I feel the city has moved pretty slowly – the park running right through my neighborhood is a giant mess of non-native volatile plants, shoulder high dead grass and dead and dying trees hung with ivy. All the goats did was spread the poison oak. Have you ever seen poison oak catch fire? Yes, Chico, in it’s entirety, is a giant fire hazard.
Then, about six months ago, we actually got a printed notice about a tree PG&E wanted to cut down. That’s something new! My husband made an appointment to talk to the guy from the consulting firm hired by PG&E, because they said it was along our driveway and we wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause any problems for our tenant. The consultant came over and took a walk with my husband and they discovered that the suspect tree was actually in our neighbor’s back yard.
As of today it’s still there.
So we were pretty excited to have this young man from PG&E show up in our yard this morning to ask us if he could cut down one of our marked trees. We told him, we’d seen them marked again and again, we’d been waiting for years. He seemed genuinely concerned about how far they’d grown into the power lines, he said, “I hope we can get them done before they get much higher…” So my husband asked him when he thought we could expect to see anybody. He looked a little sheepish, and then he said, “you might see somebody about January…” And then he complained that about eight months ago, the city of Chico put some sort of moratorium on PG&E cutting or removing trees. What?
You ever heard that expression – teasing the monkey in the cage?
UPDATE: After I heard from other Chico residents who have had the same/similar experience with either PG&E personnel or their contractors, I looked at the city code. I don’t know what to think – who’s lying? I know it’s not the people who’ve contacted me here. Read this:
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/chico/latest/chico_ca/0-0-0-12992
Yes, we have a “tree preservation ordinance”. But it doesn’t apply to our private homes. “This chapter applies to (a) all undeveloped private property within the city…” It’s for developers of undeveloped properties. In fact, we’ve had licensed tree companies remove large trees from our property in Chico without any sort of permit. We’ve cut down more than a dozen sick, dying and dead trees ourselves over the years. Why would the utility companies need a permit to remove dangerous trees?
Listed under Exemptions, are city, county, state, and school properties, parks and cemeteries, as well as “Tree work performed by public utilities in public utility easements or public rights of way… public utility easement means wherever there’s a PG&E power pole, including on your private property.
Why would PG&E need permits to remove trees that are growing into power lines? Anywhere?
I don’t know who else to ask – I called the city at (530) 896-7800, and reached a recording that told me to leave my number and somebody would call me back. On Thursday afternoon at 2:30. So, how long am I on the hook for a callback? That’s what I call a public worker’s way of fucking me off. They also have an email – parkinfo@chicoca.gov Is this just another dead end? I’ll let you know. If you guys are still having this problem please contact the city and between us maybe we can get somebody to pay attention before the town burns down.
