That's poetry

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

Two lines. They were written by poet Joyce Kilmer in 1913 and I memorized the poem as a class assignment by my third grade teacher, Mrs. Penzkover. Fortunately most of the class was ahead of me by the time it was my turn to recite. But who knows if I would have remembered more than that first line over 40 years later if I hadn't had to memorize it, just have read it.

In 1913 Wilmette had grown from prairie, farmland, or swamp. There were a few trees to go with the few homes.

This week the village passed an ordinance mandating a tree canopy of 35%. It runs 8 pages. What's Wilmette's current tree canopy, painstakingly quantified by UIC students? Almost 50%, the laissez faire level, up from zero when Wilmette was founded.

The truth is, homeowners like trees.

What's the greatest threat to Wilmette trees? Dutch Elm and now Emerald Ash Borer disease. And the Village of Wilmette.

So this ordinance is purely symbolic. But if the village insists on passing symbolic ordinances, please, brevity is preferred. Especially if this ordinance is to serve as a model for other communities.

Rather than 8 pages of bureaucratese, (if memory serves), Trustee Swanson said it nicely at the board meeting on Tuesday...

Plant a tree in the front yard.

Plant a tree in the back yard.

Two sentences. That's poetry for you.


Related post: Prickly Public Policy

UPDATE: Ok, Ok, for the record, the village does plant lots of trees in the parkways, which accounts for a good percentage of the canopy cover, they do have a village forester, and Wilmette is a Tree City USA. I'm still a grouch, though. 8 pages. And I'm still mad about the trees at the library and Mallinckrodt being cut down in such a sneaky way.