This article is the second installment in a five-part series analyzing the future of the university.
It’s a phrase that gets bandied around by bitter Evanston residents, ambitious politicians and the occasional college guidebook: town-gown relations.
Northwestern students might not notice any tension on the weekly trip to Burger King or even the occasional trek south of Davis Street. But under the surface, some Evanston residents are upset about taxes.
NU and its students rely on city services on a daily basis, but don’t pay property taxes.
“We’ve been trying to convince them to do the right thing for a long time, and they haven’t been interested,” said Evanston fireman Dave Ellis, who called the university’s treatment of the city “egregious.” “We’re optimistic that with the new president, there’ll be a chance for a new dialogue.”
Officials in Williamstown, Mass., the host city of Williams College where incoming University President Morton Schapiro has been president since 2000, said he has a history of strong town-gown relations.
But whether Schapiro will be able to bring the same goodwill to Evanston is debatable.
“There needs to be some effort made by both parties to decide that they would like to change the nature of the adversarial relationship,” said Fourth Ward aldermanic candidate Howard Hartenstein. “I don’t think it’s gonna be easy because I think there’s a big history there.”
Rocky History
Authorities incorporated Evanston as a municipality in December 1863. They named the fledgling town after John Evans, who had helped found Northwestern University about a decade earlier.
The charter specified that the university, like all American colleges, would not have to pay property taxes on its land.
For the next 125 years, the two bodies worked together with some success. But the relationship hit a low point in 1990, said former Ald. Stephen Engelman (7th).
That year, some Evanston City Council members proposed a tax on each NU student’s tuition. The council barely passed the measure, but it did not have enough votes to override a veto by then-mayor Joan Barr.
Still, to prevent future scares, the NU administration persuaded the Illinois General Assembly to pass legislation outlawing “tuition taxes.”
During the next three years, a new mayor, Lorraine Morton, and a new university president, Henry Bienen, took office. They worked well together until 1999, when Ellis formed the Fair Share Action Committee – a group of citizens dedicated to persuading NU to pay for the services it receives.
On a community referendum posed by the committee in 2000, 84 percent of Evanston voters said they thought NU should pay more.
In response, Bienen said, “I want to make it as clear as possible that I won’t do it.”
Relations soured later that year, when NU sued the city to block the creation of the Northeast Evanston Historic District, which included many university properties.
In a 2004 settlement, NU paid $700,000 as part of a deal to remove 14 properties from the district.
“The university and the city have really had troubling communication ever since,” Engelman said.
Last February, Alds. Cheryl Wollin (1st) and Elizabeth Tisdahl (7th) met with NU Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine in hopes of convincing him to contribute $1 million to the city for fire services.
Sunshine declined, or in the words of Ellis, “showed them the door.”
How NU Stacks Up
NU administrators reject the notion that their contribution to the city is unusually low.
“The university has sold off a tremendous amount of land,” said Sunshine, who described town-gown relations as mostly “wonderful.” “I’ll bet you a nickel, if you look at all these other schools, you won’t find another that did that.”
He pointed to an 11 percent tax on NU sporting events, building permit fees and other community initiatives, such as the free consulting campusCATALYST offers to local nonprofits, and added that the university has a great working relationship with most private institutions in Evanston.
In 2008, NU paid almost $6 million to the city for various taxes, water payments and permit fees, according to numbers provided by Lucile Krasnow, special assistant for community relations. Overall, the impact of NU’s presence was more than $150 million.
While the 2009 Princeton Review ranked NU as the college with the 15th “most strained” town-gown relations in the country, some students said the disconnect is more talk than reality.
“Some people are telling us we don’t have a great relationship,” said McCormick junior Jessica Swenson. “But when I go into town, I don’t get that feeling.”
Mayor Morton agreed.
“We wouldn’t be a city without Northwestern,” she said.
In choosing not to make direct payments to the city, NU is in the majority of American universities.
Some Ivy League schools, such as Harvard University and Yale University, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, choose to pay millions of dollars of payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs. But Williams College does not – it pays property taxes on dormitories and works on projects of “mutual interest,” Town Manager Peter Fohlin said.
Most universities say their contribution is their impact on local business.
A Unique Opportunity
This year, town-gown relations could enter a new chapter. For the first time since 1970, NU’s president will assume office in the same year as Evanston’s mayor.
That gives Schapiro a chance to turn things around, Ald. Steve Bernstein (4th) said.
“The change in administrations might start something for the better,” he said. “I’m hopeful things could be resolved.”
Tisdahl, a candidate in April’s election, often says she would like NU to contribute millions more. Fellow candidate Jeanne Lindwall has called for the same, while Barnaby Dinges and Stuart Opdycke have both campaigned more on cooperation rather than direct payments.
Those asking for more money often do so for political gain, said Ald. Edmund Moran (6th), the longest-serving member of the City Council, who is retiring this year.
“The point is not to just go to NU and complain and say, ‘Give me money, just write checks to us and we’ll be happy,'” Moran said. “The much more productive approach is to say ‘You have things that can help us, we have things that can help you. How can we put these together?'”
That’s the approach Bienen has always sought, the current president said in February. He said relations had “vastly improved” during his tenure.
“We’re never going to be the budget fixer of last resort, I’ve said that 100 times,” he said. “But I think inside the parameters of what it’s been, it’s pretty good.”
Schapiro indicated he wouldn’t be changing Bienen’s policy.
“I can’t look tuition-paying parents in the eye and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I gave your tuition away because it was a good idea for the town to do some festival or build a new jail or something,'” the 55-year-old said. “For me, it’s always been enlightened self-interest – what’s really good for Williams College that also supports the town.”
Bernstein suggested Kellogg School of Management students offer free consulting to the city, in return for receiving credit for their work. It would be a “win-win” situation and save the city “millions of dollars,” he said.
Sunshine said the university would be willing to consider the idea. If residents have any others, “all they have to do is pick up the phone,” he said.
For his part, he said he is hopeful Schapiro will be able to find new meaningful ways for the bodies to work together.
“I expect our new president will fully understand the value of being a good citizen,” Sunshine said. “He should try to look for opportunities for the university and the city to mutually gain on things and to be constructive.”
