While students were on Spring Break, the Evanston City Council made key decisions about a proposed downtown 49-story tower, the city budget and immigration issues.
At a council meeting last Monday, developers for the Fountain Square tower proposal asked the council for another week to revise the plan, possibly to shorten the height of the tower design, before the council voted on it.
“I think if they had a vote on the tower, it would have lost 2-7,” said Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th).
The proposal for the residential and commercial tower at 708 Church St. will be discussed at the council meeting Tuesday, April 8.
Although the developers didn’t specify what their revisions would entail, some council members suspect that a shorter tower plan is in the works, Bernstein said.
The height has been one of residents’ biggest concerns about the tower since its proposal. At 523 feet, the building would be the tallest in Evanston, almost double the height of the Chase Building at Orrington Avenue and Davis Street, currently the city’s tallest building.
But Bernstein said the height of the tower is not the council’s main concern.
“Some of us said, ‘Hey, it’s not so much the height, but the benefits to the community,’ ” he said. “And what they purported as benefits to the community, many of them were illusionary benefits.”
Although the revised proposal will be discussed Tuesday, Ald. Delores Holmes (5th) said a decision probably won’t be reached.
“I doubt (a decision) will be made,” she said. “We do discuss things and weigh things. We listen to developers and opponents and proponents and take all of that into consideration before we make a decision.”
Two weeks earlier, at the March 10 council meeting, tensions erupted when Mayor Lorraine Morton announced she had vetoed the budget that aldermen had been working on for months and approved Feb. 27.
Morton was concerned about a 7-percent spike in property taxes to pay for police and fire pensions. But the state informed city officials they were not funding the pensions adequately.
Though past contributions have not been enough, Morton felt the council was now putting too much money into the pension fund.
“Apparently the former actuary was at the far left side of reasonable, and the current actuary is at the far right side of reasonable,” said Bernstein, who added council members wanted to pay their portion to the fund at a higher level now to reduce interest payments in the future.
City Attorney Herbert Hill told the council that Morton’s veto would prevent the city from spending any money until the veto was overridden or a new budget was adopted because the city is required to finalize the budget by the end of February.
After 90 minutes of debate, the council members decided unanimously to override the veto.
“We didn’t want the city to shut down and not be able to operate,” Holmes said. “It was already past the budget time.”
At the March 10 meeting, the council also passed a resolution asking Congress to reform its immigration policy. Three different resolutions were proposed to the council by Aldermen Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd) and Edmund Moran (6th).
Both of Moran’s resolutions were defeated.
After an extended debate and two amendments, Jean-Baptiste’s resolution, the last item of business, was passed at 2:10 a.m., approaching the record for the longest City Council meeting ever.
“(Assistant City Manager) Judy Aiello said if we wanted to stay a few more minutes, we could break the record,” Holmes said. “We were ready to go home.”
