The city of Jefferson continues to receive grants to help replant its inventory of trees.

City Administrator Scott Peterson says Jefferson Tree Committee recently received a $5,000 grant from the Alliant Energy Community Tree Planting Program. He is very pleased to see the amount of progress the Tree Committee has been able to make over the past few years to repopulate the trees in the easements of the residential areas.

“We have a very large and active Tree Committee here in town. It is really something to see and something that turns around and has immediate benefits for our community. Because they have been real aggressive in trying to get trees replanted after the derecho and after this Emerald Ash Borer. They’ve been real aggressive about that.”   

Public Works Director Dave Morlan gives an update of where the crews are at with the number of trees left to remove from the public easements.

“We’re almost done. There’s probably 15 trees or so (left). They’re all the ones that have power lines running through them, they’re up next to buildings and that sort of thing. When we go in and take trees down we’re able to do it most generally fairly quick, you know an hour or an hour and a half with the equipment we have now. These are ones that are going to take four hours or a full day depending on how much is in the power line and stuff like that, you know how much you have to drag out of a yard. So, we’re getting there.” 

Peterson adds that the plan for the Tree Committee is to plant the estimated 49 trees later this spring where the group left off this past fall, starting along Locust Street and working their way west.