{"id":401028,"date":"2026-07-16T18:05:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/401028\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T18:05:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:05:38","slug":"city-of-bakersfield-has-committed-500000-to-more-trees-but-how-best-to-spend-that-money-thats-the-sierra-clubs-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/401028\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Bakersfield has committed $500,000 to more trees, but how best to spend that money? That\u2019s the Sierra Club\u2019s question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 Where would we be without trees? Trees are vital natural assets to human life. They provide us with food, oxygen and wood for construction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">They protect the environment, purifying the air by absorbing pollutants. They beautify and mitigate urban heat by providing us with shade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">For those reasons and more, the Sierra Club \u2014 among other organizations \u2014 is calling for the Bakersfield City Council to make optimal use of this fiscal year&#8217;s half a million dollar tree fund. Tree advocates want the council to give the public the chance to weigh in on a number of issues related to tree policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Eddy Laine, who spoke to the city council about the tree fund Wednesday afternoon, said this is a golden opportunity to refine city tree policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-ylk=\"slk:120-year-old downtown oak damaged by disease, arson taken down;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;outcm:mb_qualified_link;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/us\/articles\/120-old-downtown-oak-damaged-153511536.html\" class=\"promo-link__link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0120-year-old downtown oak damaged by disease, arson taken down\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;We want the community&#8217;s ideas,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This was a community effort to get the $500,000. We want them fully engaged in the process to decide how the funds are spent. And yes, the more trees we can plant, the more volunteers, of course. But we need a process, a simple process, in the next few months.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Every year, in addition to planting trees, the city trims and removes trees. The Sierra Club would like to see a policy that spells out when and under what circumstances trees are removed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">They want the community to be able to weigh in on which wards within the city benefit from new trees, and how best to use that half a million dollars to get the most trees possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The city was not expected to act on the Sierra Club&#8217;s recommendations Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-ylk=\"slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KGET 17 News.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kget.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KGET 17 News.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 Where would we be without trees? Trees are vital natural assets to human life.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,36609,161015,19583],"class_list":["post-401028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-planting-trees","tag-the-sierra-club","tag-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}