City Awards Contract for Removing Silk Trees

Some of the 20-year-old floss silk trees lining the sidewalks of Harbor Boulevard will be cut down under a contract awarded Wednesday to a Carson company.

The City Council hired Damon Construction to remove 24 of the 73 trees, lower about a dozen street lamps, add 12 lights in the medians and place six more lights with directional signs on the sidewalks of downtown Fullerton.

In addition, a bus turnout lane will be cut in front of the Bank of America building.

The $97,000 job is expected to be completed by Labor Day, city officials said.

The trees are causing damage to sidewalks. All but three will be replaced with pink tabebuia trees.

The others are on the sidewalk in front of the bank, where the bus turn-out lane will be.

In other council action, officials established an ad-hoc committee that met for the first time Wednesday to discuss school safety issues.

The committee’s members are Mark Miller, the city’s traffic engineer; Lt. Al Burks of the Police Department’s traffic division; Traffic Commissioner LeAnn French; Richard Dilluvio, Southern California Auto Club’s public affairs specialist; and Marsha Henkes, Fullerton’s Parent Teacher Student Assn. president.

The panel’s goal is to map out safe routes for students traveling to and from schools across the city, officials said.

Also, the council voted to ask California Department of Transportation to remove the Nutwood Avenue pedestrian bridge that connects Cal State Fullerton and Pacific Christian College, rather than retrofit it for earthquakes. Keeping the bridge would require extensive retrofitting that officials from both campuses and the city said is unnecessary.