Parks and forestry urge hires, contractor funding to address tree removals, vacant‑lot maintenance

The Parks, Recreation and Forestry leadership team told the Budget & Public Employees Committee on May 12 that staffing shortages are forcing the department to rely on contractors for mowing, vacant‑lot maintenance and hazardous‑tree removals, and that targeted hires and professional services funding would reduce backlog.

The department’s director summarized the division’s scope—110 city parks and roughly 3,200 park acres—and introduced commissioners who detailed staffing and program gaps. Parks Commissioner Kim Haegley said two permanent utility-worker positions were missing from her initial budget reconciliation but that the administration planned to restore them from another account. She asked the committee for funds to contract mowing for one large regional park (Carondelet Park) to allow city crews to focus on smaller neighborhood parks and event needs.

Forestry Commissioner Alan (Alan/Allen) Jankowski described recruiting and retention challenges for tree-trimmer positions and said the department is supplementing staff with contractors. He told the committee the forestry office requested expanded funding for per‑performance and professional services to increase vacant‑building and vacant‑lot rotations and to remove hazardous trees. Jankowski said capital money already allocated for tree removal (including an ongoing ash‑tree removal program) has paid for large removals; he estimated roughly that an additional $500,000 in contracted services could remove about 1,000 trees. He said the department’s current queue included thousands of trims and removals (Jankowski estimated several thousand work orders for removals and trims across the inventory).

Committee members pressed for specific priorities. Commissioners said the highest operational returns would come from (1) restoring tree-trimmer and equipment‑operator hires to run a debris program in‑house, (2) funding contractors to shorten vacant‑lot and vacant‑building cutting rotations, and (3) adding utility workers to maintain parks, trim grass and stage events. The department noted it had obtained some capital equipment (front loaders, roll‑offs and skid steers) but lacks trained operators to run that equipment without the requested hires.

On other items under the department umbrella, the committee heard that Soulard Market remains a near‑full vendor market and that approximately $2.4 million in capital work—tuckpointing, roofing, electrical, plumbing and exterior repairs—has been programmed to stabilize the market building over the next year; Brightside reported continued graffiti removal and neighborhood beautification activity and asked that a $60,000 CDA grant be applied to citywide graffiti eradication efforts.

Ending: Commissioners asked the committee to prioritize hires for tree trimmers, heavy‑equipment operators and utility workers and to consider targeted professional‑services funding to reduce long maintenance cycles and backlogs; they agreed to provide the committee with detailed counts of pending removals, trimming workloads and contractor estimates for additional work.