No truly 'green' city should flounder so over nature's basics

I felt sorry for the man. Elgin City Councilman Mike Powers wasn't too happy with a recent column in which I'd suggested a big budget goose egg in public works manpower growth over the next five years indicated something less than a high priority and a change in attitude.

When the original column ran, I was merely noting that the big zilch was hard to ignore after all the election promises made. By the time poor Powers got here to try to rearrange my thinking, though, I was buried in leaves the city hadn't picked up in 16 days. That made me disinclined to believe much had improved since poor services had cost two council members their jobs and put him into office.

Despite its colorful brochure explaining when it would pick up leaves, the city simply skipped my neighborhood the week of Thanksgiving. Ours wasn't the only one. A tour of the east side showed many buried in leaf piles instead of turkey leftovers. Not only was this not an improvement, it was regression. Workers had always come during the holiday week in previous years, albeit not on perfect schedule.

Not this year. When the city was inundated with visitors, when parking was even more necessary, the city forced its residents once again to explain to visiting family members why they accept such poor services.

"We simply can't count on the city," I told Powers. "And we shouldn't have to call somebody to complain."

For my neighborhood, this is the most important service the city provides. We don't have a significant crime problem, Waste Management picks up our garbage regularly and we're all long-resigned to the crappy street. The 100-year-old oak canopy ought to make our needs pretty easy to see. But of course, that presumes one has their eyes open and feels some obligation to serve.

Powers wasn't thrilled to hear my tale, but since he'd driven through my neighborhood Thanksgiving week, he'd seen the piles of leaves. What he didn't know was that no one ever came to get them. He said he was working on his promise to improve services, but that he still didn't believe more full-time, city-employed manpower was the answer.

"We have to develop more of a service mentality," he said. And in public works, he thinks emergency on-call teams of contracted people who can help temporarily after a thunderstorm or a late leaf drop like this year or a huge winter storm make more sense than adding full-timers.

There's merit to his thought, as long as somebody at city hall can actually recognize an emergency when they see one. But he's right, we don't need more people sitting around twiddling their thumbs 360 days of the year, working hard for five and soaking up big pensions.

And quite honestly, I'm not convinced more people will change the results anyway. This is about attitude, a "can do" spirit that used to pervade the public works department, but has been lost over time.

Even more amusing is that Elgin's current marketing mania is that it wants to be a "green" city, which to me means it wants to work within the needs and limitations of the natural world.

Well, in my natural world, green leaves turn brown in autumn and fall to the ground by the tarp load. They don't fall according to the city's schedule and they don't mysteriously disappear if the city ignores them for two weeks.

A city in tune with nature? A city serving its residents? Tell it to your marketing consultant.