Massive and Destructive

Hey all, I’m looking for some advice here. Hopefully not controversial.

We have a massive lemon-scented gum at the front of our property (just a tad over 4M from the main house structure). The tree was here when we bought the block, and it’s fairly young (the guy who lives here before us, planted it about 50 or so years ago). It’s a big beautiful tree… but also a tree that waaaay too big for a residential block.

The issues are many: - gum-nuts everywhere (which my mother slipped on, fracturing her ribs) - leaves everywhere (clogging up everything from down pipes to cars) - falling branches of all sizes (which have taken power lines out, and also damaged part of our house) - roots pulling up the sidewalk - tree kills most plans around it (grass, shrubs, hedging, flowering plants) - tree is also seeping some sort of black goo - No birds nest in this tree - we spend about $2k every 2-3 years to have the canopy trimmed back

We’ve brought this up to council, including getting a petition signed by our neighbours, to remove this tree. We’ve even offered to donate 10 trees to council to be planted in the local parks. However, all responses have basically been the same recycled letter, stating “Greenscape”.

We’re at our whits end. The tree is beautiful, but the mess, damage, trouble it causes far outweigh any benefit of “greenscape”.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Are there any avenues we can take with council to help get it removed?