State Admits Felling Trees Was Mistake

State transportation officials admitted Wednesday they erred in cutting down 25 trees in Woodland Hills and promised to give property owners a chance to save trees slated for future removal.

The state will announce chopping projects in advance and permit nearby landowners to take steps to spare trees from the ax, said James L. McCullough, a senior Caltrans maintenance engineer.

The pledge came as Caltrans officials faced Woodland Hills homeowners angered by the removal last week of a row of ash trees on Topanga Canyon Boulevard between Burbank Boulevard and Marylee Street. Officials said the mature shade trees were uprooting the sidewalk and creating a hazard for pedestrians.

He Ordered It

“I’ll be the first to admit we made a mistake by not contacting people and letting them know what we were doing and why we were doing it,” McCullough said. He said he personally ordered the trees removed.

McCullough said Caltrans does not plan to replace the downed trees. But he said his agency will let a nearby condominium association plant new trees if the group will promise to maintain them.

Kristian Vosburgh, an aide to Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), said she will meet with top-level Caltrans officials this week in Sacramento to see about getting the agency to plant new trees.

La Follette, who was in Sacramento Wednesday, said the trees were a tremendous loss to the neighborhood and must be replaced, according to Vosburgh.

Caltrans workers said the 15-year-old trees were a hazard to the sidewalk next to the boulevard, known as California 27.

“The trees were raising the sidewalk and breaking the curb,” said Bob Street, the supervisor of the Caltrans crew that chopped them down. “They were too big for boulevard trees.”

Street acknowledged that only one section of sidewalk actually had been lifted and damaged by a tree root, however.

Caltrans officials said they ordered the chopping because they do not have the manpower to continually return to prune away offending roots.

Loss of the trees was particularly irksome to 106 families living in a condominium complex next to the sidewalk. Some of their two-story townhouses are now unshielded from boulevard traffic.

“We’ve lost a lot of privacy. You open a door of these homes and you’re right on the street now,” townhouse resident Jaime Gonzalez-Duke told McCullough. He said his condominium association will investigate signing a tree-maintainance pact with Caltrans.