To the Editor:
We are normal, kind of boring people. We bought a house in a nice town with a good school district. Our children are involved in a variety of activities, as we are. We try to be good people, go to church, donate to those in need, pick up trash, hold doors and things like that.
Every year we fix things a little. We add to the landscaping, mulch, bushes, annuals, perennials and what have you.
Our house backs up to a retaining pond. When we moved in, at the end of our yard was 20 feet or so of mud. We called the Sycamore Park District, but they didn’t know when they would do anything. We needed to keep our yard from sliding into the lake, so we ordered rocks, sod and grasses.
The rocks stabilized the water’s edge, the grasses slowed water flow and kept geese away, and the sod made a nice edge. Eventually, the park district laid sod all around the pond. Neighbors moved in, and we all had the lake stocked with fish.
We plant a few plants on the edge of our yard: tomato, pumpkin, pepper and cucumber. We set a park bench down by the lake. Some mornings, I get up and see families fishing out there.
A few more years passed, and the park district had a plan to develop the edge of the ponds. They paid for a plan. We dig up our garden, move the grasses, and had our children load up buckets of rocks so the lake front is clear for the new plantings. Three years later, the park district has done nothing. It is eroding away.
Now we have a new administrator running our park district. He said grass is not the correct edge for the pond. He is correct. But the park district doesn’t have the money to correctly landscape the ponds. They do have enough money to hire a lawyer in Naperville to send out nasty letters telling us to clear the lake fronts of shrubs, weeds and other plants.
Sycamore may be a small town, but we have big government and big politicians. They can spend money paying for landscaping plans, they can pay administrators, they can flex their muscles and tell us we have to do what they say or they will sue ... perhaps then they will properly landscape the ponds.
Agnes Carson
Sycamore
