The Evanston City Council might go out on a limb later this month to save the city’s 3,000 elm trees.
City officials will discuss several proposals to fund an inoculation program for Evanston’s battered elm tree populations at a budget workshop Jan. 29. But the proposals, which could call for increased taxes, have drawn the ire of some tree activists who say there should already be plenty of money to go around.
But some aldermen caution that the $1.1 million necessary to vaccinate all of Evanston’s elms is not a number to take lightly.
“I have some serious questions as to whether that’s how we should go after the problem, or whether that’s how we should allocate our resources,” Ald. Edmund Moran (6th) said.
Other aldermen have indicated that they strongly favor a vaccination program. In September the City Council opted to immediately vaccinate 100 high-risk elm trees.
The pressure to vaccinate all of Evanston’s elms became particularly intense this year after Dutch elm disease killed a record number of trees. City staff projected in June that 800 trees could be killed by the disease during the summer.
There are several different methods the city could use to implement an inoculation program, according to a preliminary budget report. First the city must decide whether to vaccinate every tree in a single year or to stagger the vaccinations over a period of three years. Then the city must determine whether to cover the entire cost or to share it with homeowners on a mandatory or voluntary basis.
The vaccine needs to be administered every three years to be effective, meaning Evanston would have to continually commit money for future vaccinations.
Doug Gaynor, the city’s director of Parks/Forestry and Recreation, said if the council wants to save as many elms as possible, it would be best to vaccinate them in a single year.
“If you were to inject half the trees in one year, the other half that are not injected are vulnerable,” he said.
Evanston has about 3,000 elm trees on public property and an unspecified number located on private property, city officials said. The proposed funding options are only applicable to public trees, but Gaynor said officials also will present a plan for private trees at the Jan. 29 meeting.
The budget report stated the city can raise property or gasoline taxes to get money for the program. It could also allocate funds generated from the high number of building permits that were sold in the past year. It could even decide to use money that Northwestern gave the city when the university purchased an office building at 1800 Sherman Ave. in November.
Any of the options would be financially sound, Evanston Finance Director Bill Stafford said.
But Virginia Mann, co-founder of To Rescue Evanston Elms, a group that has been advocating a public vaccination program, said the funding source for such a program should be clear.
It costs $3,500 to cut down a mature elm tree, Mann said. Since vaccinations will virtually stop elm tree deaths, she said, why not use money slated to take down diseased elms to fund the program?
“There is absolutely no reason to raise taxes,” she said. “Injecting the elm trees would not spend more than what they spent tearing them down.”
Reach Mike Cherney at [email protected].
