City Council voted to adopt six goal summaries for this term at its Monday night meeting. The council reviews its goals annually, and they are used to guide council members in creating work plans and organizing quarterly updates.
“Everything up here has a plan that works with it — the economic development, Evanston Thrives, climate action plan,” Ald. Matt Rodgers (8th) said, mentioning the city’s recently-approved comprehensive plan. “That’s our overarching goal here.”
The goals focus on climate action and resiliency, financial and operational performance, public health and safety, parks and infrastructure, housing affordability and economic development. Their summaries are slightly more specific, outlining goals like expanding housing supply, retaining local businesses and implementing fiscally sound policies.
During public comment, some community members said they were unsatisfied with the goals and their implementation, claiming the council had begun acting on them before their formal approval.
“I do also want to urge you to sort of detail out, in terms of the housing goals, to expand affordable housing supply,” Evanston resident Kiera Kelly said.
Ald. Clare Kelly (1st) argued the goals should be more broad and shorter with their summaries. Ultimately, they were unanimously adopted with some wording changes.
The council voted to replace “fossil fuel pollution” with “greenhouse gas emissions” in the climate action and resiliency goal summary.
After some council members suggested one phrase in the housing affordability goal be changed from “housing supply” to “housing options that are affordable,” the council voted to revert to the goal’s original wording in a 5-4 vote. Afterward, in a compromise, the council unanimously agreed to strike the word “supply.”
“We have one goal and that’s really to deliver city services to our residents as cost effectively as we can, as efficiently as we can, and as well as we can, and all of this kind of falls underneath that,” Rodgers said.
The council will revisit the goals with more specific action items during its next meeting on Feb. 23.
City Council also authorized the city manager to apply for a federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant that would fund early stages of a transportation infrastructure project to reconstruct Sheridan Road and South Boulevard between Juneway Terrace in Chicago and Chicago Ave.
According to Assistant City Engineer Chris Sous, the grant funds the preliminary stages of the project with about $3.4 million and stipulates no further commitment to build the project. Moving ahead with the project would cost an additional $18 to 20 million, according to Sous, but the city would apply for other grants to cover 80 to 100% of those costs.
“I think it’s a great opportunity. You never know what you’re going to get until the end. Then we say, ‘Yes, we like it,’ or we may say we don’t.” Ald. Krissie Harris (2nd) said. “But you don’t know that until you accept the offer.”
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