[Trees-executive] Wednesday's Sierra meeting

[j-beauch at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu]

Carl and Mike Brunk gave excellent talks at Wednesday's Sierra Club 
meeting at the Illinois Disciples Foundation. Unfortunately, the turnout
was very poor, which I guess we can blame on Spring Break. From our group
we had Carl, me, and Audrey.

But at least this way it was more interactive, and I think all of us 
learned a lot. Carl gave a complete summary of how we got to where we are 
and what we are currently doing, in addition to all of the bad things
about the tariff. One of the best summaries I've heard so far.

Mike spent a lot of time talking about what the cities are trying to do to
get a better tariff, stuff that they've been keeping pretty hush hush. He
is well aware that IP's services have been getting worse. For one thing,
they've been hiring companies that pay their people very poorly and there's
a lot of turnover, as opposed to the way things were in the old days when
they had their own aborist staff. For another, they now have a four year
cycle, where they try to cut too much, instead of a two year cycle where
they used to cut much less. Plus, it's obvious that they are cutting much
further away from the lines than they used to, and they don't allow any
folliage over the lines. Jerry's "vegetation management creep" is real!