Several residents at Monday’s city council meeting clutched homemade baseball-style scorecards and busily ticked away at them throughout the conference.
The “goal setting meeting” imposed a system through which each alderman triaged a list of 39 issues facing the city and whittled them down to a top 10.
The aldermen and Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl presented their lists and City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz tabulated the results, as did many audience members who wished to compare mind sets. The streamlined list revealed economic development to be the council’s top priority.
“I think it’s the only thing that made everybody’s list,” Bobkiewicz said. “Communities have cycles. We’re seeing indications that the general economy is beginning to change. Evanston needs to be prepared for that next upturn. This was the beginning.”
In presenting their lists, many aldermen broke down and combined categories, in many cases to reflect an economic angle.
Ald. Coleen Burrus (9th) encapsulated the views of her colleagues when she presented her own shortlist.
“I won’t break the trend,” Burrus said. “Number one: economic development, number two: economic development, number three: economic development.”
The final list of issues contained 12 items, which included green issues, capital improvement program planning, federal, state and regional affairs, and lake front development.
Improving relations with Northwestern also made the cut.
“The donation of the fire engine is a very good step forward,” Tisdahl said, referring to the $550,000 the university has donated to the city to be put toward a new fire truck. The council also discussed NU’s willingness to contribute lobbying services to the city.
After the meeting, Bobkiewicz said he would present the issues at upcoming council meetings in alphabetical order.
The city’s budget, which will be written and released in the coming weeks, also made the shortlist, though some residents said they were concerned with how it would be prioritized among the other items.
Though the city’s budget promises to be addressed promptly due to its early alphabetical status, Junad Rizki, a resident and city government blogger, said he did not think enough aldermen recognized the issue’s relative importance. Rizki marked off a score card throughout the meeting, comparing where his priorities converged and differed with those of the council. He said the council had not been clear enough in determining which of the remaining items were of the most importance.
“I didn’t know this was going to be the format of the meeting, but there were some issues I wanted to keep track of” said Rizki, who has previously campaigned to be an alderman. “The question is how much they weigh everything. They need to start cutting things and they don’t know what to cut.”
Jeff Smith, a local state representative candidate, said municipal government is in some ways a microcosm of state government.
“There’s an interconnectedness between what the city of Evanston is trying to do and what the state of Illinois is required to do,” Smith said. “Budget looms over everything.” He also said he appreciated the climate action plan being in the top ten.
In future meetings, the council will evaluate the issues from Monday’s list individually.
“Congratulations, everyone,” Tisdahl said at the meeting’s end. “We have goals.”
