I’m adding my voice to the many who are hopeful that the village will return to the leaf pickup system we had before the bagging experiment. I call it an “experiment” because experience has now shown that there are substantial drawbacks to bagging. It’s not so much that bagging is extra work for residents (although it certainly is), but that half of the leaves that fall off parkway trees fall in the street. That might be OK if the contractor swept the streets every week during leaf pickup season, but they didn’t. On our block (1150 Clinton) the street was swept the first week of leaf season (and then the big pile at the end of the street was left to compress and freeze later in the season). But it wasn’t swept after that, so the leaves matted and compressed, slowly migrated to the gutters, and caused major flooding every time it rained hard by blocking off the sewer covers.
If the village needs a different contractor for leaf removal, I’m all for it.
Jane Barabe
Oak Park
