U of I Extension consolidating offices, cutting staff

More details have been announced on the reorganization at the University of Illinois Extension. This affects Chicago gardeners and green-space advocates because the extension, and its Master Gardener program, are a major source of support for community gardens and public open space projects as well as being a basic source of horticultural advice for gardeners. It fundamental goal is to make science-based information from the University of Illinois available and useful to all the people of Illinois, through education and volunteer programs.

Downstate, the extension mainly provides information and technical assistance to agriculture, its traditional role. Most Chicagoans, if they can identify the extension at all, probably think of it as the agency that runs 4-H programs or identify it vaguely with farmers. But in fact it does much more and its programs have been rapidly changing in recent years, especially in the urbanized counties in the northeast. For example, the extension provides nutrition education programs in poor communities, financial education and science programs in schools.

The extension is strapped for funds as yet another effect of the Illinois legislature's infantile failure to deal with the state's budget problems. The collapse of state funding has already caused the extension to cut its $65 million yearly budget, and the hope is that by consolidating it can save another $7 in the 2011 budget. According to its press release, the extension has received no state funds for this year. Here's a story from the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana.

Every state agency is being forced to make cuts. Many very worthy programs and agencies that provide essential services are gasping because the state has failed to pay them what it owes and some may be lost altogether. But I happen to care especially about extension because I'm a Master Gardener myself, and a gardener.

So, what about this reorganization? In the Chicago area, Cook County remains a stand-alone unit, which seems reasonable to me, since Cook alone has 43 percent of the state's population. But everywhere else in the state, where units have been organized by county for a century or more, they are being combined two or three or four counties to a unit.

Lake and McHenry will be combined. So will Kane, DuPage and Kendall. So will Will, Grundy and Kankakee. Here's a map.

The roughest part is going to be the personnel cuts later in the summer. Of course, the whole point of the reorganization is to save money by cutting staff; salaries are the major part of any organization's budget. I'm told all extension staff will have to resign in July and then, if they want to stay, have to re-apply and compete for far fewer jobs. This includes veteran horticulture educators with decades of experience and knowledge supporting Chicago-area gardeners. Some are considering retirement to avoid the ordeal.

There are no specific numbers on the staff cutbacks; it depends, in part, on how many people retire. And we won't know who stays or goes until the fall.

For us, this means there will be fewer knowledgeable and experienced folks to help gardeners. Master Gardeners will have less staff support. Services we've come to depend upon may not be there. And people I've known and worked with for years are in jeopardy.

Is there anything that can be done to prevent this? Well, you can push your local legislatures to get a responsible budget together, so the state can provide at least some funding to the extension and other state and nonprofit agencies.

But we have to face it: This is a changed world, in which there is a lot less money than there used to be (or we thought there was, anyway). Even if Illinois magically came to be governed wisely, smoothly, efficiently and honestly for the first time in its history, there aren't near enough taxes being paid now to fund the state the way it used to be.

And though I'm heartsick for friends in extension who may be unemployed in a few months, I can imagine long-term benefits from this shakeup. It will force the extension--a bureaucracy that traces back to the founding of the University of Illinois in 1867--to re-examine the way it does business and its priorities.

Its original purpose was to extend useful information from the land-grant university to the farmers who were the taxpaying constituency in the state. But the state has changed a lot since 1867. It is no longer a state of farmers. It's still mostly farmland, but that farmland is owned by far fewer people. Sure, those remaining farmers still need the extension's help. But the vast majority of people in Illinois now live in suburbs or cities.

Folks like us have other priorities for information, technical assistance and support from the University of Illinois.

I am concerned about urban ecology. I am concerned about climate change, and how it will affect people and landscapes and natural areas all over the state. I am concerned about how water in managed and wasted in our landscapes and our homes. Watching the consequences of our oil-dependent lifestyles wash up in Louisiana, I am concerned about how we--all of us, including farmers--can learn to use less energy and produce less pollution.

I am concerned about how people eat in a global food economy. I am concerned about what happens to urban land. I am concerned about how an aging population can live in the coming years in sprawling suburbs with no public transportation.

I am concerned about how city dwellers can make the most of urban space, especially for gardens and local food production. I'm concerned about children who grow up ignorant about how the natural world works and disconnected from nature.

All of these topics are being researched and discussed on University of Illinois campuses. We want to know what they are finding out and what practical ideas they have. Maybe, in the long run, this reorganization will shift the extension toward some of these priorities.

But for now, the extension--and Chicago gardeners--are going to feel some serious pain.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.