The CARP Implementation Task Force, a subcommittee of the Environment Board, will spend the next few weeks reviewing the revised version of the Envision Evanston 2045 comprehensive plan, even as some members worry that their input won’t make much difference.
The original version of the plan was released last year on Election Day, and the revised version was released Feb. 21. The revisions took feedback the plan received from the public and various city committees into account — most notably taking out language encouraging higher-density housing and backing away from eliminating parking minimums.
The Land Use Commission asked several city committees, including the Environment Board and the task force, to weigh in on the initial draft, and it’s now asking those bodies to weigh in on the revised draft. This time, it gave them until April 4 — a more generous deadline that they got in the past.
During its regularly scheduled March meeting Wednesday at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave., the task force agreed to propose more concrete changes to plan language this time. And while several members wondered whether their suggestions would result in meaningful changes, they agreed it was better to try.
The task force is expected to give a presentation during Land Use Commission’s April 9 meeting.
‘Better’ but ‘jumbled’
Task force member Jerri Garl said she had a chance to read only the first three sections of the revised plan — and she had mixed feelings about what she saw.
“I’m struggling internally with conflicting feelings about it,” she said. “This is so much better than the previous draft, we got a lot of good stuff in it.”
But Garl thought that the chapters seemed disconnected from each other, leading to one chapter to “miss the whole concept that another chapter has.”
Task force and Environment Board member James Cahan said he was concerned that “climate change wasn’t explicitly addressed under the environment section.” He agreed with Garl that some parts of the plan are “jumbled.”
Task force chair and Environment Board member Katarina Topalov said that the at times skeptical reception of the last presentation made her wonder if suggesting changes was worth the time and effort.
“I don’t want to do things that are pointless,” she said. “I don’t want to spend time on things that are not going to be heard.”
Task force member and Environment Board co-chair Matt Cotter noted that the public feedback section of the revised plan referenced the original suggestions, and at least some suggestions influenced other sections.
‘A lot has been improved’
“I think a lot of it has been improved, a lot has been [revised], and seeing the difference between Draft 1 and Draft 2, I think what we’ve done wasn’t pointless,” he said.
Garl said that, while the document did acknowledged the feedback, she wasn’t convinced the rest of the plan reflected that feedback.
“If you extract that section and look at actual policies — I think, to me, that’s the part that matters, more than, ‘we heard you, this is what you said,'” she said.
Several task force members expressed frustration with the way the document is organized. Throughout the meeting, they raised something that they thought wasn’t in the document — only to discover that it was actually in the document, just not in the spot where they expected.
Task force member Hal Sprague, who was upfront about not having read the second draft, suggested the plan should include ongoing review more often than annually, like a monthly review.
He also argued in favor of a stronger language around environmentally sustainable measures, replacing “encourage” with “require.” Sprague said he was worried that, if the language wasn’t strengthened, future administrations would have grounds to ignore those parts. “it takes away someone else’s argument that we shouldn’t do it,” he said.
After discussion, the task force agreed to recommend that change.
‘Red line version’
The task force agreed to create a “red line version” with specific changes, and an “explanatory memo” on the top. All members would be able to provide suggestions, and Cotter would put them together into a single document.
The task force spent much of the meeting discussing timing of the process. The issue, Topalov explained, was that the Environment Board usually meets every second Thursday of the month. If the task force wanted the board to sign off on their suggestions, it would have to get feedback in by March 11 to comply with the Open Meetings Act. But they could also do what they did with a presentation to the Land Use Commission on the original plan — the board simply voted to give the task force the authority to prepare a presentation on their own.
The task force ultimately agreed to take the latter approach. The advantage, Topalov noted, was that the deadline falls after their regularly scheduled April 2 meeting, so they would be able to review the letter and sign off on it.
CARP task force sounds off on revised Envision Evanston is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.