With patches of crumbling pavement and some places piled with leaves, the North Branch Trail that slices through Chicago’s Caldwell Woods is a virtual obstacle course for cyclists. Southwest of there at Tinley Creek Woods by Orland Park, the rest rooms are nothing more than crude outhouses that appear as if they haven’t been attended to in months.
At the Ned Brown Forest Preserve near Rolling Meadows, beer bottles and snack wrappers bob in the ripples of the lake.
Yet just south of there at Busse Woods, a forest preserve that officials said attracts as many visitors in a year as Yellowstone National Park, the grounds are well-groomed and the facilities range from 11 miles of wooded biking trails to a full-service boating center to toilets that flush.
Throughout Cook County’s 68,000 acres of forest preserves, conditions are as varied as the topography. While some preserves are the jewels county officials envisioned when the forest preserve system was created 86 years ago, others suffer from neglect by the county and abuse from visitors who vandalize and litter the grounds.
The conditions in the preserves are underscored by a list of about $30 million in deferred maintenance projects. The backlog of projects, first compiled by the district in 1997 and submitted to the Cook County Board, outlines numerous repairs from repaving parking lots to renovating pavilions. Two years later, the list of improvements is unchanged.
So frustrated were municipal officials in the south suburbs with what they said was the district’s spotty record of maintenance that this summer they began touring their local preserves, compiling a list of problems they say need to be addressed.
“The point we’re trying to make is (the lack of maintenance) reflects on the overall image of the region,” said Midlothian Mayor Thomas Murawski. The cracked parking lots and overflowing trash bins he’s found at Midlothian Meadows are perfect example, he said, of the district’s failures.
District officials say such improvements can’t be addressed because money has grown tight since the state imposed a property-tax cap on the agency in 1995.
In some places, visitors say the situation is so bad they have taken it upon themselves to do the work of maintenance crews.
“Conditions have been like this for so long, people have come to accept it, said Chuck Thompson, a Mt. Prospect resident who organized a clean up of the lake at Ned Brown preserve earlier this year that netted 200 bags of trash. “Our feeling is that more can be done. We won’t stop until more is done.”
Members of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association say because there are no big-ticket recreational attractions in their area, many of the preserves in their region get less attention than places further north such as Busse Woods where restrooms have running water.
The man who oversees the forest preserves, Joseph Nevius, disputes the notion raised by some that the Forest Preserve District is resorting to a kind of redlining, paying more attention to the northern suburbs than the south.
Yet he conceded the district has struggled to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to maintaining the preserves.
“We’re utilizing the resources we have in the most strategic areas. . .” he said. “We have to pick up the things that are worst first and do those to the extent that we can.”
Still, he said, the fact that 40 million people use the preserves every year is testament that “obviously we’re doing something right.”
The district operates with a budget of $127 million. The Forest Preserve District Board carved $16 million of that for maintenance. The maintenance budget has shown only small increases during the last four years and the number of maintenance employees has remained the same.
The largest chunk of that budget covers personnel costs for the district’s 424 maintenance employees. After subtracting those costs, little more than $4 million remains to pay utility bills and maintain the system’s 285 miles of bike, horse and hiking trails; 503 picnic groves and shelters; 44 lakes and rivers; and 10 golf courses.
How that money is distributed throughout the district is not easily traced. The district does not budget specifically by individual preserves or divide the money equally among the system’s 12 divisions, officials said.
The deferred maintenance includes $18 million for restoration of parking areas and trails, $8.5 million for structural repairs and $5.5 million to improve natural amenities, such as lakes and rivers, according to district documents.
The only way to address these improvements is to raise funds, said Cook County Commissioner Herbert Schumann. He supports a $150 million referendum proposal to increase revenues for land acquisition and capital improvement programs.
“The problem is the county is so cash poor . . . and we have barely enough money to maintain what we have now,” Schumann said. “Opening the lines of communication with mayors and municipalities to see that the land is kept up is something we can address immediately. As for long-term improvements such as getting away from outhouses, upgrading picnic facilities districtwide, that depends on doing a referendum.”
Frank Mole, assistant superintendent of maintenance for the district, contends workers do an adequate job of day-to-day cleanup.
“Just because we clean the bathroom at 7:30 a.m. doesn’t mean it’s going to be clean at 7:30 at night,” said Mole, who does on-site supervision of maintenance crews. “We can’t stand outside a restroom and replace a roll of tissue just as it runs out. We try to keep a handle on things, but some things you can’t do anything about.”
Bill Granberry, superintendent of maintenance and operations for the district, said the problem lies with users of the forest preserves.
“It’s the patrons that come to the forest preserves and leave them looking like they do,” Granberry said.
Calumet Grove on Chicago’s South Side may be one example of that problem. Visitors to the preserve have to sometimes walk gingerly through picnic groves to avoid stepping on syringes.
Granberry said during summer months, the primary responsibility of the 252 grounds workers– 107 in the northern region and 145 in the south– is to tidy up restrooms and picnic groves from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.
As for repairs, the rule of thumb for workers is to patch up or simply remove broken picnic tables or unsafe outhouses. Most repair work is done in the fall and winter.
Maintenance officials said how much a preserve is used dictates how often it will be maintained and upgraded.
Though forest preserve officials say they are doing their best to improve conditions, some municipal leaders maintain it’s not enough and have begun collecting evidence.
Orland Park officials deemed overall conditions of four local forest preserves “overgrown and unkept with less than desirable garbage pick up,” with the exception of Lake Tampier Forest Preserve, which “appeared to be better maintained than others,” according to a survey compiled recently.
Riverdale officials found rusty car parts and appliances dumped in Whistler Woods. Many of the discarded items had been there for at least a year, said Gerald Smith, Riverdale village administrator.
In Chicago, a year-old survey compiled by the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation–an organization of 2,500 riders– said the 20-mile North Branch Trail that runs from Caldwell Woods to the Chicago Botanic Garden needs repaving and shrubs as well as tree limbs need trimming to improve visibility and safety.
“We try to improve every year,” said Nevius. “And that’s our message to our employees and to the public. We hope the public will respect the preserves and realize anything they do to the facilities . . . is creating additional expense on the district.”
