Evanston is analyzing census data in preparation for redrawing ward boundaries to account for population shifts, City General Planner Craig Sklenar said this week.
Although the city’s population grew by 247 people in the past 10 years, Sklenar said he was expecting more growth. The lack of significant population increase brings to light some issues that the city has been working on.
One of these issues is population decline in the 2nd, 5th and 8th wards.
The 2nd and 5th wards include a lot of off-campus Northwestern student housing. When the city begins to redraw its district boundaries, which it does after each census, it may take population and economic issues into account as well as the student population, Sklenar said.
When the city last redistricted in 2003, an alderman proposed boundaries that would further break up the student voting bloc. NU students fought to protect the voting bloc, and the NU campus is currently split between the 1st and 7th wards. NU’s Associated Student Government anticipates involvement in the next redistricting process to ensure students’ voting power remains intact.
“If we don’t get (students) out in the polls, and they’re not interested in the issues, there’s no political sway that will help us convince City Council that we do care,” Ethan Merel, ASG’s external relations vice president, told The Daily in September.
The 2nd, 5th and 8th wards have also seen a lot of housing foreclosures. There is a direct correlation between population decline and the number of foreclosures, Sklenar said. When the data was collected, almost 9 percent of housing units in Evanston were vacant. The number has nearly doubled since the 2000 census.
In January 2010, the federal government awarded the city more than $18 million in funds to help revitalize foreclosed properties and reverse the population decline. The census data highlights the importance of the housing grant, Sklenar said.
Although the census data spans the past decade, Sklenar said the downward population trend occurred mostly in the last five years and could be a result of the downturn in the economy.
“There have been so many financial issues going on (in the past five years),” Sklenar said.
Despite the population decline in some wards, the population in the downtown area grew by about 20 percent. Sklenar said there may be some redistricting in this area once the city finishes its complete analysis of the data.
Although the city lost residents in some wards, Sklenar said he sees the overall population increase as a positive. The city receives $980 per person per year in federal funding. With the increased population, the city will receive about $242,000 more each year.
“This, to me, is reversing the trend of population loss over the last 50 years,” he said.
While Evanston’s population grew, Chicago, Cook County and Illinois all lost residents. Population growth in Illinois slowed to about 3 percent in the past decade, and in December officials announced Illinois will lose one seat in the House of Representatives, the AP reported.
