After a summer spent entrenched in line edits and wording debates, City Council approved the last edits to the Envision Evanston 2045 draft comprehensive plan and set a tentative final review for November on Monday night.
The process encompassed six special City Council meetings and two public hearings over almost four months. The final edits come nearly a year after the city released its first Comprehensive Plan draft in November 2024 and five months after the Land Use Commission recommended Council adopt the plan.
“I want to just thank all the members of the council and the staff and community for providing a ton of effort and time and input throughout what has been a very methodical process,” Mayor Daniel Biss said at the meeting’s conclusion.
After the final draft has been released to the public, councilmembers will have at least two weeks to review it and vote on it as a special order of business at the next regularly scheduled council meeting.
Biss noted the special item would appear at the city’s Nov. 10 regularly-scheduled meeting at the earliest, though he remarked that it was “a little ambitious.”
The final 51 planned edits to the document were left over from the Sept. 15 meeting, leaving the nine councilmembers to vote on edits from the plan’s housing chapter and appendix, as well as additional consent agenda items.
Several of the remaining proposed edits for the plan, primarily suggested by Ald. Clare Kelly (1st), with some contributions from Alds. Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th), Matt Rodgers (8th) and Juan Geracaris (9th), passed unanimously or upon some deliberation.
Some of the most prominent suggestions to the plan arose from councilmember input emailed to Biss throughout the meeting.
Ald. Parielle Davis (7th) suggested and passed a motion to “evaluate and develop solutions” addressing underlying cultural factors that she said were contributing to the housing crisis. Council unanimously approved the edit, after which Davis unsuccessfully attempted to revive a previous iteration of housing goals last discussed on Sept. 15.
On the issue of Comprehensive Plan guidelines, Ald. Tom Suffredin (6th) proposed the directions be “applied and implemented as appropriate on a ward-by-ward basis.” He added that he trusts staff to add the sentence to the plan wherever they deem fit.
Suffredin said the decision-making power, in terms of which guidelines are applied to each ward, lie in the hands of “the people who live there.”
Nieuwsma countered the suggestion, adding that he was concerned the city would end up with “nine different zoning flavors” across the wards with such a flexible guideline.
“It’s important that at the end of this process, we have a holistic plan that works for the entire community and we don’t have a Balkanized zoning system based on wards,” Nieuwsma said.
Suffredin’s measure passed 5-4, with Ald. Bobby Burns (5th), Kelly, Suffredin, Davis and Rodgers voting in favor of the motion.
The plan almost faced an additional setback toward the end of the meeting due to a motion from Davis, who proposed referring the plan to the City-School Liaison Committee for review, to address community members’ increasing worries over pending school closures in Evanston/Skokie School District 65.
While City Corporation Counsel Alex Ruggie cautioned against the move, calling it “procedurally very not recommended” to make the referral in the midst of the public hearing, Davis held fast to the plan’s impacts in the midst of school closures.
“I still think that every aspect of the comprehensive plan actually weighs very heavily on the children in our community, and the way that our community is built,” Davis said.
While Kelly immediately agreed with Davis’ motion, citing growing resident concerns, Ald. Shawn Iles (3rd) argued that residents of all ages have had plenty of time to provide input on the comprehensive plan while school closures were on the horizon. Nieuwsma and Geracaris, the sitting members on the City-School Liaison Committee, also noted that it does not have the policymaking powers to advise on a 20-year roadmap for the entire city.
The move to delay the plan for a referral ultimately failed 6-3, with Alds. Suffredin, Davis and Kelly voting in favor.
While Iles mentioned he’s also received messages from residents worried about school closures, the comprehensive plan should be the key focus.
“We have worked on this plan for a long time. This is, what, the sixth or seventh meeting?” Iles said. “I am also getting emails from people who are saying it’s about time that we act on the plan and that we move forward.”
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