‘I feel like I’ve done my part in planting other trees, and this is one I’m not comfortable where it is,’ Kristina Pierce tells city committee
By Bob Seidenberg/rseiden914@gmail.com
A northwest Evanston homeowner will have to wait a little longer for a decision from the city on whether she can remove an elm tree from her backyard, which is currently leaning over a neighbor’s garage.
Members of the city’s Human Services Committee were deadlocked 2-2 on Monday over whether to grant Kristina Pierce’s request to remove the elm from her property on the 3400 block of Park Place.
They agreed to keep it in committee for the time being, instead of bringing the item before the full City Council for direction or voting the request down.
If the committee had chosen one of those alternate paths, then the homeowner’s only recourse under the city’s private tree ordinance would be to appeal the ruling to the city manager.
And, “if we send it to the city manager, he has the same information we have,” Councilmember Bobby Burns (5th Ward) said during Monday’s discussion.
Burns agreed with others that the best course would be to table the issue, giving staff time to develop a “rubric,” or additional guidelines for the committee to use in deciding such cases moving forward.
The situation with the elm won’t change that much in the meantime, he noted, with it growing only a few inches per year.
Committee members voted 4-0 in support of tabling the matter.
Staff to explore other guidelines for weighing variation requests
Pierce, a single parent and the mother of two young children who hadn’t been able to attend previous discussions on the issue, addressed the group during public comment.
She said after the meeting that she was fine with the committee delaying a final decision.
Committee members have acknowledged what they see as flaws in the original private tree ordinance. At the meeting, Angela Levernier, the city’s tree preservation coordinator who came on after the ordinance’s approval, sketched out different scenarios to strengthen it, including criteria used in other places.
Responding to an email after the meeting, Pierce, who is an elementary school teacher in a nearby town, said, “it totally makes sense not to rush it, it isn’t necessary for it [the tree] to come out immediately. At this point, I think using my elm as a method for working through some of the kinks of the ordinance is doing more good than the committee either denying it or approving it.”
Further, she wrote, “I want to reiterate that I am in support of protecting our canopy …just not at the expense of a homeowner or damage to a neighbor down the line.”
“Elms can degrade super fast should it end up infected with Dutch elm when it is much larger,” she noted. “I feel like I am playing with fire with this tree. My second grader phrased it well and said, ‘If that tree falls down on ___’s garage, we are charging the city for a new garage for her!’ So even he gets why this is silly and how we are trying to be proactive and neighborly.”
Ordinance came in with strong support
With strong backing from the environmental community, City Council approved the ordinance in September 2023. According to one study, at least 70% — and likely closer to 80% — of the tree canopy in Evanston is located on private property. Until the ordinance was approved, trees on private property were not regulated by city code, except for those on property greater than two acres in area.
In August of last year, Pierce became the first homeowner to file a request for a variation from the ordinance in order to remove her elm tree.
In a letter in support of the request, she said if the situation is left as it is, the elm in due time “will indeed become a hazard. I would like to remove it preemptively before damage is done to my neighbor’s property and before it becomes too large and incredibly expensive to move.”
“Removing it now will allow birds and other critters to find homes in the nearby maple or arborvitae trees. Soon the other trees on the property will grow large and they will find shelter there as well,” she said, noting that her neighbor backs the request as well.
Staff brought the request to the committee for further review after a city arborist did not observe any decay, structural defects or other conditions suggesting the tree is at risk of imminent failure, wrote Levernier.
Trees as the only ‘infrastructure’ where benefits increase over time
Under the ordinance, if the tree is removed, the homeowner would be required to replace it with 9.5 trees or pay a fee in lieu of trees of $1,900.
“And large trees are exponentially more beneficial, and that’s because of their large quantity,” she told the committee. “So in reviewing this [the ordinance], the basis was the small and medium trees would need protection until those large trees age out, and then they would be there to replace it.
“So what this ordinance does is it protects the benefits and services that the trees provide,” she told committee members. “You know, we have some trees that are 350 years old in the City of Evanston. They’re treated more like infrastructure, roads, sewers, and they’re the only infrastructure that the benefits increase over time.”
