In addition to casting ballots in the presidential primary Tuesday, local residents weighed in on three ballot questions specifically for the Evanston community.
Voters narrowly rejected a proposal to build a new school in the 5th Ward and also granted the city permission to pick a new power supplier for all residents. A majority of voters also said they wanted to dissolve Evanston Township in a non-binding advisory referendum.
School proposal fails
Voters in Evanston/Skokie School District 65 nixed a proposal to build a school in the city’s 5th Ward. About 55 percent of voters rejected the $48 million bond proposal, according to unofficial results from the Cook County Clerk’s website.
The referendum called for $20.6 million to build the new school and another $27.6 million for additions and improvements to existing schools in Evanston.
State law requires that a binding referendum must be offered to the voters of a community before the construction of any new school
Proponents of the new school have brought the social justice aspect of the issue to the forefront of discussion, reminding school board members that the 5th Ward is the only ward that has not had its own neighborhood school since Foster School shut down 30 years ago as part of desegregation.
They argued that residents of the 5th Ward should build community around a school of their own instead of sending their children to diversify other neighborhoods’ schools.
“We are out of integrity as a community right now,” said D65 school board member Jerome Summers at the Dec. 19 school board meeting. “We say we love our diversity, but we do not walk our talk.”
School board members who opposed the ballot question cited greater taxes and concern about the future achievement levels of a school in a neighborhood that has been historically minority-majority, with higher numbers of low-income residents than other wards in the city.
The enrollees of the new school would have been mostly from low-income households, according to D65 school board member Richard Rykhus, who said the demographics of the proposed school would have been 63 percent African-American and 30 percent Hispanic.
Energy aggregation gets green light
Voters overwhelmingly supported a referendum granting Evanston the authority to arrange for supply of electricity for residential and small commercial retailers. With all precincts reporting, 73 percent of residents voted in favor of the proposal, known as Community Choice Electricity Aggregation, according to the Cook County Clerk’s website.
Evanston now has the authority to “bundle” or combine residential and small business electricity accounts and shop for electricity providers that have cheaper rates than current supplier Commonwealth Edison.
A recently enacted state law gave municipalities the right to aggregate customers in order to seek out alternate electricity suppliers, as long as they offer voters a chance to weigh in on the issue through a binding referendum.
Currently, ComEd has a franchise agreement with communities across Evanston to be the sole deliverer of electricity. However, all customers in Illinois have the option of choosing their energy generator from a list of licensed and registered parties.
Now that voters approved the ballot measure, the city will move forward with soliciting proposals from alternate energy suppliers and plans to make a full evaluation of potential suppliers’ qualifications, said Catherine Hurley, Evanston sustainable programs coordinator.
“For example, are they a fiscally sound company, have they done aggregation before, where are they getting their energy supply from, what types of fees would they want to charge for customers who decide they want to switch out after already being included,” Hurley said. “Those are the types of factors that would all be considered to pre-qualify any suppliers.”
By aggregating customers, the city will be able to save money by streamlining the new suppliers’ marketing, advertising and outreach efforts, Hurley said.
In addition to seeking lower rates, the city may consider purchasing a cleaner energy mix than that which ComEd currently provides, which is a combination of coal, nuclear and some renewable sources, Hurley said.
Most residents want Township dissolved
Evanston residents voted to continue discussions of whether to dissolve Evanston Township and have city staff adopt traditional township duties. According to the Cook County Clerk’s website, 67 percent of residents voted in favor of township dissolution.
Because the issue could not gather enough votes in the Evanston City Council to produce a binding referendum, the question placed on the March 20 ballot was only advisory and non-binding.
Evanston Township and the City of Evanston share the same boundaries and the Township trustees are the members of the city council. The township’s two main responsibilities are funding general assistance grants and advising citizens on appealing their property assessment, according to the city’s informational guide to the referendum.
Proponents of township dissolution argued that the township government added expensive and inefficient levels of bureaucracy to government, costing taxpayers unnecessarily.
Ald. Jane Grover (7th), who voted to put the question on the ballot, said although the city has “encouraged and supported any efforts by the township to find ways in which (it) could reduce administrative costs,” the township to still costs taxpayers about $400,000 every year.
“It’s a fact that for the last two and a half years, the Human Service Committee, which is an aldermanic committee, has been looking closely at the administrative expenses of the township government,” Grover said. “By my estimates, it looks as if about half of the township’s budget goes toward administrative overhead, and half of it goes toward direct client payments and services.”
Opponents of dissolution, like Evanston resident Padma Rao, stress the township’s key role in aiding members of the Evanston community through general assistance, arguing that the current structure of township government works well and should not be changed.
Rao moderated a meeting in late February scheduled by City Clerk Rodney Greene where residents unsuccessfully tried to remove the advisory referendum on township resolution from the ballot.
