Evanston’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan Implementation Task Force is preparing to provide its input on the ongoing overhaul of the city’s zoning code overhaul, even as the development process for that updated code and comprehensive plan — dubbed Envision Evanston 2045 — falls further behind schedule.
The task force hoped was hoping to get the new plan and code’s table of contents, at the least, by October, so its members could get some sense of how much of their input ended up in the first draft, which was previously expected to be released later this month.
But during a Wednesday task force meeting held at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, Cara Pratt, the city’s sustainability and resilience manager, said the table of contents wasn’t ready in time for the meeting, and that the city has pushed back the release of the initial draft to November.
Meanwhile, the Land Use Commission, which is helping to develop the new zoning code, asked the task force, the Environment Board and the Preservation Commission to give their respective feedback during one of its upcoming meetings. Several task force members said at this week’s meeting they were frustrated because they didn’t know what exactly they were being asked to comment on, and wouldn’t know until the meeting packet is released — something that, under the Open Meetings Act, must happen at least 48 hours ahead of time.
After a long discussion, the task force agreed to work off of the city’s referral tracker, a list of priorities that elected officials want Evanston’s legislative bodies to look into. The list includes Envision Evanston-related requests to the Land Use Commission, and the task force agreed that the requests that line up with their own priorities would be a logical starting point.
Envision input
The CARP Implementation Task Force is a subcommittee of the Environment Board specifically created to keep track of Evanston’s progress toward the goals outlined in the Climate Action and Resilience Plan (the eponymous CARP). Both the task force and the board weighed in on the Envision Evanston plan several times over the summer, but at the September meeting, several task force members said that, based on what they heard at community workshops, they worried that their major priority — making sure sustainability was woven into every facet of the new plan and zoning code — was getting overlooked.
At the time, Pratt reassured the task force that she and Kirsten Drehobl, one of the city‘s sustainability and resilience specialists, would continue to ensure that environmental sustainability was part of the conversation.
During the Wednesday meeting, Pratt said that Land Use Commission Chair Matt Rodgers hasn’t settled on when exactly the task force will be invited to give input, but he will give the group a heads up ahead of time. She said that, while the first draft of Envision Evanston should be ready by the end of October, it won’t be released to the public until November.
When asked whether the task force will be able to get an early look, Pratt said that no advisory board, committee or commission will see the first draft ahead of time — and the task force and Environment Board are no exception.
“It will be public for everybody,” she said. “Generally, for anything the city puts out, public is public.”
But to the task force, the fact that they won’t know what they might be discussing until two days before meeting with the Land Use Commission was precisely the problem. That doesn’t give the task force enough time to get together and figure out a response, members argued.
“We have no idea how this was reacted to so we can have a further discussion,” said task force member Hal Sprague.
“I would suggest we’re operating in the dark,” said task force member Jerri Garl.
Action steps
Task force member Paula Scholl, who also sits on the Environment Board, suggested that waiting until the draft is released and taking the time necessary to review it would address those concerns.
“Having time to prepare those comments would be very helpful,” she said. “Otherwise, we’re kind of flying by the seat of the pants.”
While Garl said this was the solution she was hoping to reach, Sprague wondered aloud whether the task force’s feedback would end up having any value anyway.
“I don’t understand what it does and how it moves the needle one way or another,” he said. “I don’t feel good about this being the only thing I got to do [as part of Envision Evanston].”
Garl also wondered if the task force would be able to share input that’s not related to zoning, or if its purview would be restricted to that.
After some further discussion, the task force looked through the referral tracker and picked out four Envision Evanston-related referrals to the Land Use Commission where they thought their input would be the most important. The four items they picked out include:
- Eliminating parking minimums, which got a frosty reception at the Land Use Commission’s last meeting
- Revising the zoning code to make it easier to set up outdoor dining and green spaces
- Increasing the tree canopy
- Changing the city’s project approval process to encourage multimodal transit use and make the streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
The task force agreed to come up with ideas on those four referrals and put comments together by next week, in time for them to be included in the Oct. 10 Environment Board meeting packet.
As for non-zoning priorities, the task force broadly agreed it was important to keep pushing for sustainability goals even if they don’t make it into the comprehensive plan.
“We’re not going away after the plan is done,” Sprague said, “and we were there before it.”
Climate task force to give zoning recommendations to Land Use Commission is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.