Whittier Council Rejects Pause on Tree Plan Despite Hours of Public Opposition
A leaked recording of the city manager helped fuel a rally before Tuesday's vote.
“This is our town, we live here, we vote here.”
On September 8th, in the middle of a near 100-degree heatwave, the people of Whittier gathered in front of City Hall to protest against the city's plan that could lead to the removal of healthy trees throughout the City of Whittier.
After a leaked audio of City Manager Conal McNamara explaining that the only thing keeping the ficus trees from the chainsaw was the word “healthy”, a plethora of organizations across Whittier gathered together to organize the recent rally to try and encourage the current city council to pause the plan.
The Whittier Urban Forest Management Plan (UFMP) is meant to replace the city's Parkway Tree Manual (PTM), the rulebook that's guided how Whittier plants, maintains, and removes trees on public property. The former city council suspended the PTM back in October 2025, saying it needed to cut down on the city's liability exposure.
That same fall, the California Insurance Pool Authority (CIPA), the city's own insurance provider, sent a letter recommending Whittier get rid of the tree manual for good, warning that keeping it around could put the city's standing in the insurance pool at risk.
