Plastered among dozens of other index cards with community ideas scrawled on them, two suggestions inked in colorful marker caught a volunteer’s eye Saturday afternoon at the Evanston150 Community Kick-Off Rally.
The first one read, “People in Evanston should be nicer to each other.”
And the other? “Evanston should have a magic airplane.”
While implementing the latter recommendation might prove difficult, Evanston150 steering committee member Marybeth Schroeder said she thinks the first tip isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem for the community input project to commemorate the city’s 150th anniversary in 2013.
“I thought the creativity (in those two ideas) was great,” said Schroeder, senior program officer of the Evanston Community Foundation. “‘People in Evanston should be nicer to each other.’ That’s an interesting germ of an idea there.”
The free event at the Levy Senior Center, 300 Dodge Ave., easily surpassed organizer estimates and attracted more than 700 attendees between noon and 2 p.m. Saturday, said Stephanie Kulke, the project’s director. Television host Bill Campbell emceed the initiative kick-off, and local performance groups, including the Evanston North Shore Community Choir and the Tierra y Luz De Mexico Dancers, showcased their acts throughout the two-hour runtime.
The real draw, though, was the opportunity to interact with a wide range of residents and contribute to the ongoing community effort, Kulke added.
“It was a really, really big party,” she said. “The crowd was so diverse.… It looked like Evanston.”
Northwestern spokesperson Al Cubbage, who also sits on the steering committee, agreed that Saturday was a “wonderful day” with “great enthusiasm” from those in attendance. He said he was approached with a “broad spectrum of ideas,” ranging from a goal of having all Evanston third-graders reading at grade level to the installation of revamped sidewalks with permeable stone.
Examples of community improvements included biking paths and a form of a planned neighborhood with common facilities, Schroeder said.
But both Cubbage and Schroeder added that the initiative’s next challenge is involving another sizable population in Evanston: the NU student body.
Cubbage said he hopes to have an on-campus idea session slated for between now and Memorial Day.
In addition, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 spokesperson Patricia Markham confirmed that she had spoken with the steering committee Monday morning but that “nothing definite” has been coordinated yet.
“We have 16 schools and we have to figure out an interesting way to pull this together,” she said.
Cubbage added that another approach to incorporating youth input is choosing an NU student for the selection jury, which will be responsible for picking 10 ideas out of all those submitted in the fall. But because the majority of the jury’s vetting will occur during the summer months, that strategy may have to be revised, he said.
“We’ll see how it works out,” Cubbage said. “In the best of possible worlds, we really want to have a Northwestern student there.”
Once the selection committee is finalized in the beginning of July, the members’ first task will be to narrow all idea submissions to 100 ideas, which will then be presented for a community-wide vote. The committee will then pick 10 out of the 30 ideas voted through.
Even if residents’ suggestions aren’t picked, they can still benefit from the community exposure their proposals have received, Schroeder said.
She added that this inherent quality sets Evanston150 apart from similar projects aiming to compile local advice.
“What’s a little different is it’s truly broad-reaching and doesn’t exclusively belong to one organization,” Schroeder said. “This is really the community.”
The next Evanston150 idea-generation session is scheduled for May 12 at the Evanston Public Library. The application to serve on the selection jury, which is open to anyone age 15 or older, can be downloaded at www.evanston150.org.
