OROVILLE – Jeff Bunnell, president of The Oroville Initiative (TOI), reported to the Oroville Council that his group had completed two picnic shelters, installed tables and were planting trees and adding information signs at the Similkameen Trailhead.

At the May 7 council meeting Bunnell said, “Pacific Northwest Trails has been in contact with me. We contracted with them last year to produce the signs, they are kind of a carbon copy of what they have up there at Whistler Canyon, but on a smaller scale. They are in production now, one for Triangle Park and one for Kernan Road,” said Bunnell.

Bunnell said they should be up by the end of this month and that the PNT wants to do a photo op and have the local paper cover the event and take pictures of them and the people involved in the project.

“Along with that, today we finally set the picnic tables in the picnic shelters (at the Trailhead). Tomorrow, we pick up our trees from Baker’s Acres. We’ve got about four big arborvitaes, a couple of maple trees and some flowering grasses that are going to go around both picnic shelters to offer shade during the hot part of the summer,” said Bunnell.

He added that TOI was putting in a water system because the young trees must get enough water to seat themselves in the sandy soil at the trailhead.

“It’s looking good,” he said.

At the same meeting, Bunnell discussed TOI’s efforts to join with the city in building pickleball courts, as well as adding more horseshoe pits, with the aid of a grant from the Highlands Community Support Coalition.

For more on the May 7 council meeting see this week’s print edition of the Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune.