The two Evanston aldermen whose districts border Northwestern University’s campus met with NU Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine earlier this month. They hoped to convince him to contribute $1 million a year to the city in exchange for fire services provided to the university.
NU’s response was a staunch, “No.”
The university rejected the proposal because NU already pays up to $5 million in taxes to the city while being exempt from property taxes, Sunshine said. Council members wanted NU to contribute an additional $1 million to help Evanston pay for its $140 million deficit of police and fire department pension funds.
In an e-mail response to Ald. Cheryl Wollin (1st) and Ald. Elizabeth Tisdahl (7th), which was posted by Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) on her message board, Sunshine wrote that NU pays more than $1.5 million in annual taxes for which NU gets “little if any service from the city.”
Among these taxes, Sunshine listed the natural gas use tax, parking tax and athletic contest tax, of which NU is the only payer. All of the tax revenue goes into the city’s general fund, and the council can use that money for whatever it chooses, including funding the pensions, he said.
“We are already contributing much more annually than what they are asking for in taxes,” Sunshine said. “That revenue is completely discretionary to the City Council.”
The fire department responded to 567 calls at Northwestern buildings in 2007, Wollin said. That number of calls amounts to slightly more than $1 million in services.
“Obviously I was disappointed because the city is in a difficult financial situation with the funding of the police and fire pensions,” Wollin said. “We were basing our appeal on the amount of fire responses to Northwestern property, and so we thought we had a very logical, factual basis for our request.”
Aside from the economic contributions NU students and their families make to Evanston restaurants and hotels, the university has also been increasing city revenue by selling land back to Evanston, Sunshine said. NU now owns about 160 acres of its original 500. The property that has been sold back to the city of Evanston is generating about $5 million in annual property taxes, he said.
“The city needed money, and under the state constitution we were preempted from paying real estates taxes,” Sunshine said. “But we understood the political realities and sold off a ton of land.
“Frankly, it’s much easier to forget about that or ignore it, and I fear some individuals do that.”
Tisdahl, who has made improving town-gown relations a top priority, said NU has bought more land since she has been on the council. She asked for the additional $1 million because NU should be more of a contributing member to the community, she said.
“We always argue about how much Northwestern thinks they contribute and how much we think they do,” Tisdahl said. “When you live in a community, you contribute to all of the community’s needs.”
Although the aldermen’s plea has been rejected, Tisdahl hopes the city will appoint a Blue Ribbon Commission, which would develop better working relations between Evanston and NU.
Tisdahl pointed to the agreement among Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the city of Cambridge, Mass., in which the universities make payments in lieu of taxes to the city and contribute additional money if property is taken off the tax rolls.
“Sometimes the City Council blames our budget problems, most of which are our own making, on Northwestern,” Tisdahl said. “Then Northwestern saves money by not contributing. We need to end this 100-year war and start behaving in a civilized manner.”
