There are many fall traditions. One of the more interesting will begin Monday, when truck-fulls of landscaping workers drive through some of our older neighborhoods for a couple of weeks, admiring the trees that are just beginning to change color.
My wife and I enjoy the same sort of thing when we drive around the Arboretum. Unless you’re a member, however, that can get a little pricey, and I don’t think they offer discounts by the truckload, so driving the workers around town is cheaper.
I’m being sarcastic, of course, for those who can’t tell. The truckloads of workers are out there to collect fallen leaves and cart them away. They always begin the program early, however, leaving them with little to do unless they climbed the trees and plucked the leaves off them.
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When the leaves finally fall, what we’re supposed to do is rake them into the street. There, they will be consolidated by men with rakes and brooms who walk ahead of a big vacuum truck that sucks up the leaves and anything that managed to find its way into the street with them. Hopefully, the workers walking ahead of the truck will separate out the toys, flying discs, shoes, cats, etc., that got mixed in with them.
That can take many days, however. In the meantime we’re left with dangerous single-lane streets unless we drive through the piles of leaves. Do that at your peril, if you wish, but I never do it.
Over the years, I’ve seen many things hiding beneath the piles, like bottles, a bicycle, bags of trash, and a metal rake lying with the tines up. Heaven forbid that someday some silly little boy will hide under a pile, thinking it’s a funny thing to do.
Obviously, I think this is one of the more questionable things we do. Leaves represent a tremendous investment the tree makes in nutrients. What they’re intended to do is fall to the ground, rot, and return those nutrients to the tree, which can use them again to grow new leaves next spring.
What sense does it make to cart them away, then go out and buy fertilizer? If the fallen leaves offend someone’s aesthetic sensibilities, all he has to do is mow them or mulch them when they’re dry, and they virtually disappear. That’s what we have done for years.
And, of course, that month of leaf collecting labor and transportation has to be paid for by taxpayers, whether they want the service or not. People should at least be allowed to opt out, as they can for recycling.
Despite the recent garbage and sales tax increases, which are a lot larger than people realize, the city is still trying to fill a $1.8 million hole in the operations budget. So apparently desperate are they for cash that they plan to collect $38,000 for meeting space in the Municipal Center that was previously available for free. This is appropriate, they argue, because organizations like the Park District, that until recently used to have meeting spaces people could use for free, now charge for them.
So why should tax dollars be used to provide meeting space? Because the taxpayers built the stupid building for public use, not just to warehouse bureaucrats, that’s why. What’s next, parking meters outside City Hall? The scandal is not that the city doesn’t charge, but that the other tax-dependent organizations, like the library and the schools, do. Who do they think paid for all their stuff?
The city probably won’t even get their precious money because I think most of the organizations plan to tell them to take a flying leap. I don’t know how much they spend on leaf pickup, but you can bet it’s many times that. Meeting space or dead leaves. Which advances the interests of the community more?
Bill Mego is a freelance writer for the Naperville Sun.