Winnetka officials negotiating with their counterparts at the Forest Preserves of Cook County have once more revamped their design proposal, in hopes that the Forest Preserves will let Winnetka store stormwater on its property, Winnetka Trustee Chris Rintz told colleagues at their April 6 meeting.
The latest floodwater detention plan he and other village officials want to offer the Forest Preserves for review lowers the number of trees that would have to be cut down on district land, something Rintz said was important to the district.
Rintz said Forest Preserves officials weren’t willing to waive tree removal fees, which Winnetka had suggested in a proposal offered after Rintz updated the council on negotiations in February.
That plan, designed by Winnetka flood control consultants Strand and Associates, would have routed flood water to preserve land that is largely inundated with water after storms anyway, Rintz said. Winnetka officials, including Village Manager Robert Bahan and Village Engineer Steve Saunders, thought that could have convinced the Forest Preserves to waive some tree removal fees, he said.
“They said that while they saw the logic in our request, it was difficult for them to take exceptions to their current ordinances relative to trees,” he said. “As a Winnetka resident, I couldn’t appreciate it, but as a local lawmaker, I get it. We make laws with the intention that they are going to be enforced, and we set fee structures with the expectation that applicants pay the fees.”
The village went back to the drawing board to lower the number of trees targeted for removal, he said. Winnetka had already lowered that number from about 2,500 to around 260, Rintz said: “In version three, we found a way to save about 50 more trees.”
The newest trees saved would also be larger ones that would have cost the village high fees to cut, such as big poplars and cottonwoods, Rintz said.
Forest Preserves administrators who looked at the rough draft of the latest plan iteration have told the village it could assemble a full proposal around the concept, Rintz said.
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“This doesn’t require waivers of any kind,” he said, adding, “I think this will also be embraced by advocacy groups (such as Friends of the Forest Preserves and the Openlands conservation organization) because clearly we’re taking down fewer trees.”
If the Forest Preserves likes this design, Rintz said he thinks the two parties could create the rough draft of a memorandum of understanding that each government could take back to its constituents for feedback.
“This doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods. There are a lot of moving parts” to completing an agreement, Rintz said.
Trustee Scott Myers asked if the new design would be attractive as well as effective. Rintz said it should be attractive not only to the Forest Preserves, but to the general public as well.
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