Chicago Bureau of Forestry Feeling the Budget Pain
For the last several years and until the end of 2009, the City of Chicago has had a program to make free tree mulch available to city residents. A bureau within the Department of Streets and Sanitation, the Forestry Bureau manages Chicago’s trees. Every season thousands of trees in Chicago are damaged by wind and storms. Each year this results in thousands of tons of wood debris that is mechanically shredded into wood chips. Invasive species in the last few decades such as the Dutch Elm Fungus, the Asian Long Horn Beetle and more recently the Emerald Ash Borer, made these piles of wood chips a liability.
A few years back some resourceful people in the bureau had the idea to process these wood chips into tree mulch. This was in effect a pasteurizing process that heated and softened the chips so that all beetle larvae and fungus were killed. The city then created a program that allowed city residents to request free wood chips for their parkways, community gardens and even private property. A neat closed system that allowed to the city to get rid of its’ wood chips and city residents save money and waste in their landscaping efforts.
That was of course until the Chicago’s fiscal deficit made it necessary to make dramatic cuts in spending. According to a manager at the Bureau of Forestry the Department of Streets and Sanitation has cut 160 drivers including 28 drivers in forestry. Those 28 drivers now ride on the back of city garbage trucks. In the fiscal triage of the current budget crisis, garbage removal must take priority over tree mulch.
None the less, the equipment to process the chips and the trucks to transport them are still there, there simply are no personnel to operate them.
This raises a question, if the budget crisis is prolonged (and it is expected to be) is there a way of ordinary citizens to be able to participate in this program to keep it going? As other city services are at risk of being cut, does it make sense to turn to volunteers? The answer is not easy. Unions that have contracts with the city may not like their jobs being replaced with volunteers as it puts the return of those jobs in jeopardy.
If Chicago is to make it through this budget crisis with something that at least resembles the quality of life that citizens have come to enjoy, these questions must be looked at.
Comments