Some wards in Calumet City seem to have overspent their tree-trimming budget.

Severe storms and the Public Works Department outsourcing work have driven up costs, several aldermen said during a heated Finance Committee meeting on Thursday.

The 6th, 5th, 3rd and 1st wards are at about the spending limit or above, 5th Ward Alderman Gerald Tarka said.

He said trimming is a basic service for residents and he wants "to make sure that's going to happen and not have myself or anybody else end up with a black eye with overspending of the budget by double the amount," Tarka said.

After the meeting, he declined to say how much over the budget the ward trimming program is.

"It was the directive of (the mayor's) office to send every trimming out (to a private company). That's what I was told," he said.

Mayor Michelle Markiewicz Qualkinbush said that was not her directive. She said public works can't trim close to wires, which is why certain jobs require a private company.

Tarka and 4th Ward Alderman Brian Wilson said the work done in their wards have come back with outside purchase orders, compared to past years when much of the tree trimming was done by public works.

Residents are "suffering" because it costs more to send the job out, takes longer and it's "eating up" the budget, 3rd Ward Alderman Thaddeus Jones said.

"The job goes out, it comes back and it's a $500 trim," he said.

According to the appropriation ordinance, the mayor and each alderman have a $9,000 budget for tree-cutting service for the fiscal year May 1, 2007 to April 30, 2008, and the Public Works Department also was allocated $55,000 for tree cutting.

"The storms are what really caused me to overspend my budget," 1st Ward Alderman Ed Gonzalez said, adding that "when there are limbs hanging and it's a danger to the public, it's a safety issue, so we just have to have the money."

Aldermen who need more money for tree trimming can get funds from wards that didn't use all of their tree-trimming budget, Qualkinbush said, and also can use funds from her tree-trimming budget.

The mayor said she planned to talk with Interim Public Works Commissioner Jay Embrey and analyze how funds have been spent, and told 6th Ward Alderman Nick Manousopoulos, who is chairman of the Public Works Committee, to look at the issue.

Embrey and Manousopoulos on Friday did not return calls for comment.

In a phone interview, Communications Director Eric Schneider said the Public Works Department "does a number of jobs, like tree-trimming, paving alleys and many other city beautification projects" and has been busy resurfacing alleys.

"If public works is very busy with other projects, sometimes things will be sent out to private contractor," Schneider said, adding the city will revisit the issue in an upcoming Public Works Committee meeting.