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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 2001 - 2005DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Tuesday, January 16, 2001 Civic Center - Council Chambers 6:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Moran, Rainey and Newman STAFF PRESENT: Roger Crum, Bill Stafford, Doug Gaynor, Harvey Saver, Paula Haynes, Bob Domecker, Jay Terry, Charles Minninger, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Mayor Lorraine Morton, Alderman Drummer, Alderman Bernstein, Alderman Wynne, Carol Moschandreas, Karl Gromeiski, Dave Hodgeman, Richard Seaman, David Ucker, John N'kchel, Charles Smith, Mark McKewin. Mort Denlow, Marion Flynn, Susan Cantor, Lonnie Wiebe PRESIDING: Alderman Rainey CALL TO ORDER Alderman Rainey called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. and apologized for the delay in starting the meeting as the aldermen had some business that had to be attended to. She informed the audience that panhandling will be the first item on the agenda followed by Parks and Recreation unless somebody representing Lakefront Overnight Walk or the Township was in attendance. In view of no one being in attendance affected by either of those issues Alderman Rainey noted the agenda will follow as written. II, APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF DECEMBER 4, 2000 The minutes of the December a. 2000. meetina were unanimously anDroved f4-01. Ili. REVIEW OF ORDINANCE 105-0-00 AMENDING SECTION 9-5-0 OF THE CITY CODE PROHIBITING AGGRESSIVE PANHANDLING Alderman Rainey noted this ordinance amendment has previously been before the Human Services Committee and is now on the floor for discussion. Those who wished to speak regarding this issue were called upon. Karf Grvmelski stated he has been watching the Council and the City debate this issue for quite some time over the cable and has been very concerned with the way its been handled. It seems to him this ordinance is based on an ordinance used in Indianapolis and he does not think their ordinance applies to our community. Indianapolis is the thirteenth largest city In the United States and he believes Evanston is the thirteenth largest city in Illinois. Indianapolis has the Indy 500, the Brickyard 500. the U.S. Grandprix, and several other events which would cause panhandlers to come and try to get at the people attending these functions which he thinks is the reason for their ordinance and does not think we should apply the same ideas here. Mr. Gromelski said he has lived in the south and whether you go to Texas or Louisiana they have a different way of handling panhandlers, they do it on an individual basis. As he understands the Council is considering creating a law that is going to apply to twelve to fifteen people and this law is going to apply to all 80,000 citizens. You are considering making a law that is going to apply to everyone because there are twelve bad apples. In the south when someone is unwanted they take care of it on technical issues. For example, Officer Steinhoff talked about beggars defecating and urinating on property, which he believes we have laws against and for which they can be put in jail. Wendell Thomas talked about breaking an entering and robbery which he thinks we also have laws on the book against He would propose that the City go after these twelve bad apples and make them follow the law. He believes we have laws that we could go after and get them for spitting, littering, loitering, and jay walking. His main concern is if there Is a lawyer, someone like Allen Dershowitz, who spearheads a constitutional class action law suit based on this ordinance and they are successful, then you have succeeded in getting rid of these beggars because they then will all be millionaires at the taxpayer's expense. He also asks that you consider, if you pass this ordinance how will it be enforced. Is he to tell a beggar, please you just aggressively panhandled me, stay here for a moment I'm going to call a police officer and then I'm going to fill out a complaint. Is that how its going to work, no, you're still going to need police officers roaming the streets to make sure that they're caught on sight. He offers a solution of creating a task force or sting undercover cops to aggressively patrol our City streets and see what happens. If you're unable to get them because we Page 1. don't have enough laws on the book then by all means make a taw but he thinks if you do wish to craft a law it should be more akin to a City our sze. Cities that have a smaller population, like Santa Monica, Califomia, Reno, Nevada, Bramson, Missouri, even Highland Park, he is sure they would have something on the books because they have Ravinia there. There has to be another Aay of doing it than to create one law that covers an citizens because of these twelve bad apples. Thank you. Carol Moschandreas said she had provided all the aldermen. Corporation Counsel, and the Director of Human Services with copies of her proposed amendments to the ordinance. She believes that they provide a very workable solution that will protect the constitutional rights of all of us, including the people who are panhandling, and will provide a better mechanism for getting at the problem that the people who want this ordinance see. Basically the thrust of the amendments are to shr:; from a blanket prohibition, which limits everyone's rights to speak in various times in various places, and instead limit people's rights to aggressively panhandle, which is speech plus some other action which creates intimidation or harassrr-ent for the person being solicited. That way you will target the behavior you want to target and you won't affect people's rights adversely, and hopefully you can be more successful in addressing the behavior that's undesirable. She also proposed, this is not inherently part of her original suggestion. She has talked to everyone on the Council and appreciated everyone's time in talking with her. She has also talked to the police and it was clear that a number of aldermen felt there was an issue about when you have really egregious behavior not being able to go after it with a criminal penaltf and has proposed what she thinks is a very wise civil penalty procedure for not particularly egregious panhandling sduabons. When it becomes egregious she has a criminal penalty comparably for that for criminal disorderly conduct, whim is a minor offense. The police and several of the aldermen seem to believe that would create a more effective enforcement mechanism and do not in any way want egregious aggressive panhandling. if that would be a tool that would mare us a more effective ordinance she would suggest it and see how it works. She will be happy to talk with anyone indrridualty or in this meeting about any questions you have about her suggestions. Alderman Feldman noted in the cover memo sent by staff it was indicated that our legal counsel, Herb Hill, would have some comment having to do with some of the questions raised. Herb Hill, City Attorney. commented, with respect to materials being made available to City staff for review, the draft language was not viewed by him until sometime this morning. It was faxed Monday when the building was closed. The attorney who has worked exclusively on this for a great number of months is unavailable due to medical reasons and he will do his best to address some of the concerns posed by the speaker and give his comments to the committee. First of all he takes very strong exception to any inference that our ordinance does not protect the constitutionality both of the person or organization soliciting the funds and the individual solicited. This ordinance is an exact mirror of language of an ordinance in Indianapolis which the Court of Appeals for our circuit found to be constitutonal. The basic premise of this ordinance is that even though charitable solicitation or panhandling is a first amendment right it can be regulated and the Indianapolis case stands for the fact that municipalities to protect the safety of the public can regulate speech based upon time, place, and manner regulations. This simply means that, it's a time, place, manner regulation of a form of speech, that speech tag solicitation for money, begging, charitable purposes, whatever phrase you want The ordinance does have a constitutional basis. A second point he would like to make, with respect to the language, dealing with criminal incarceration for people found violating this ordinance, Corporation Counsers office is opposed to that The Court of Appeals case drew a distinction with respect to the clarity of the language expressed in the Indianapolis ordinance. Its very important that aw Indianapolis ordinance, the ordinance which we mirror word for word, only impose monetary sanctions, did not impose a criminal sanction. A criminal sanction makes the language subject to a higher level of judicial review. It's the judicial review which arguable, technically the Court of Appeals has not addressed. A criminal sanction puts this ordinance outside the language of the Indianapolis ordinance and he would oppose it on that basis. On a practical basis a criminal sanction imposing incarceration has impact with respect to manpower, it requires the options of jury trials, its something which he believes is not in the best interest of the goals to be obtained here, but most importantly it puts the City of Evanston ordinance as drafted in a different posture from the Indianapolis ordinance. We are taking a conservative approach to protect the interest of the City, to protect the goals of the City to have a sense of safety and freedom on our streets and this is the ordinance which has passed, at least some muster, for review. At this point, at feast with respect to the goals, as he understands were expressed by the Human Services Committee throughout their meetings and as Kathleen Brenniman, our attorney who drafted this and who stands behind this ordinance, and he is also behind this ordinance Lind believes the way it is written is the way it should be passed. Those are the brief comments he can make on this. Alderman Newman wanted to briefly review that people came on several occasions, the owners of the Unicom Cafe gathered a petition of the downtown business people and he made the point about what it was like to try to operate an outdoor cafd. Officer Steinhoff, whose shift is in the downtown area, and Chief Kaminski asked for this ordinance because of dealings with those problems. The people who are in downtown almost every day know that we have a serious problem there and the typical request we repeatedly get are at night and directed to women are, "I just got out of the penitentiary, can I have a dollar to get into an employment program". That to a women or one of the seniors in the many senior residences that surround the downtown area, the Georgian, the forth Shore Hotel, Sherman Gardens, the Mather, is a Page 2. very intimidating statement and causes people not to want to be on the streets at night Alderman Newman said he wants to get an ordinance through and is very concerned about the issue of constitutionality. The amount of work we had our Corporation Counsel do to try to give us an ordinance that we thought would meet any attack and this ordinance was basically approved by the Seven Circuit It seems to him that we could possibly tinker with adding something to this basic framework that we have and would again remind us we started with a completely different ordinance. This was redone in order to address the constitutonal issue. His initial reaction to making it a criminal penalty was that it seemed okay until Mr. Hill mentioned the ability to ask for a jury trial and additional constitutional protections and the additional scrutiny the ordinance would have to go through. As he looks at the phrase, "it shall be unlawful to engage in panhandling in any time of day", he thinks there is a difference in his view in panhandling then asking a friend of yours for a quarter when its dark out The ordinance is in pretty good shape now and the question for the committee is was that demonstrated during these hearings we have had and he thinks we have. Even Ms. Moschandreas might disagree with the framework but she is putting forth an ordinance that limits aggressive panhandling and gets to the problem. He very much appreciates all the time Ms. Moschandreas has put into this but even her proposal acknowledges that there is a problem to solve which he would like to do the best way we can. Alderman Feldman agreed with rise need for an ordinance and that the arguments have been compelling. He also would like to understand a couple of issues which seem to him are in conflict between Ms. Moschandreas and Mr. Hill and asked Mr. Hill how he would respond to the constitutionality issue other than saying that its constitutional. The constitutionality of the difference between someone asking someone else for money that they know or they don't know because they did lose some money and have to make a phone call, then someone that does the exact same thing which we would call panhandling where we knove its somebody that does this on a regular basis. Mr. Hill responded he would direct the committee's attention to the definition of panhandling, Section 9-5-29, where the third line of that phrase deals with the word donation. Panhandling is not with the intent to return the funds. The examples posed and the phrase used is asked and the situation in essence is a borrowing, I will borrow money from my friend to make the phone call is a possibility of the intent of paying it back. A donation is not with the idea or the understanding of a return of the funds, it's permanently given away. That's just one possible semantic answer to the proposal. One of the other examples given dealt with someone sitting and being requested for the twenty-five cents for the meter, that's a service rendered by the meter that each individual is paying for the use of the parking space and the time on the meter. Again, its not a donation. The examples given are to the extreme but they are addressed by the concept of donation. Alderman Feldman remarked that listening to this discussion, if he was one of the regular panhandlers, and walked up to somebody and said he would like to borrow a dollar or five dollars from them. Mr. Hill said he believed we are talking about the peculiarities of the ci=mstances and in that situation the facts would render it not to be a borrowing but a donation, the ability to repay, that's one example. If the committee would look to address that example with corrective changes he would caution the committee because at that point the committee is rendering into a distinction which the Indianapolis legislature did not make and neither did the courts address. It is changing the language from what the Court of Appeals determined to be constitutional. Is that a valid distinction, between loan and borrow? That is up to this committee to decide. From the opinion the example as given was not discussed by the court in any manner and definitely is not part of the language of the Indianapolis ordinance. There is no carve out from soliciting from a friend defining what the friend is, defining what the acquaintance is, these are issues that may become somewhat difficult Whose level of knowiedge the ordinance as written the focus on donation and payback would render the City arguably correct in the constitutional analysis. It will go back with a reasonable man standard as to what was meant by the phrase donation, which he believes would protect the City. Alderman Feldman then noted it is Mr. Hill's judgement that this does not impinge on any constitutional rights either from the solicitor or anyone else that is just borrowing money from someone they know. Also what he is hearing from Mr. Hill and he would like to understand, is Mr. Hill is suggesting that if we change the ordinance in any meaningful way we might be opening it up to a reinterpretation or reexamination by the court. Mr. Hill said that is correct the court addressed an ordinance before it. the City Council will look at what this committee is now looking at, that ordinance. We have the Court of Appeals for our district rendering an opinion that the ordinance was within constitutional limits. Any changes from that ordinance arguably makes the argument that much more different before any Court of Appeals we would be going to should this matter be challenged. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Hal what if we added in the ordinance, under B (1) "any act of aggressive panhandling shall be unlawful to engage". because the concern was it basically outlaws after sunset and we got into some of those extreme examples. What if we say B (1)'act of aggressive panhandling on any day after sunset". Mr. Hill said by doing that the implication, as he understands it would be that panhandling itself is not outlawed, is therefore permitted after sunset and Is one of the objectives of this ordinance which the courts said can be done, reasonable time, place, manner, regulation and the court has said at night time panhandling can be regulated and that would be done here. Alderman Newman wanted to be clear if we add the word aggressive then you would be able to stand outside an ATM machine and just panhandle as long as you weren't being aggressive, to which Mr. Hill said, that is correct Page 3. Alderman Rainey reminded the committee this is on the City Council agenda for the next meeting. It has been returned to this committee for review and must return to the Council for action at our next meeting. Alderman Moran had some amendments he would like to propose and that would be along the following lines, under A for panhandling he would take out the Last paragraph where it says "However". Under B he would simply take (1) out and would essentially retain what language is shown under (2) except that he would take out the following language, "at a bus stop, in a vehicle which is parked or stopped in a public street or alley. In the last clause he would take out twenty (20) feet and make that ten (10) feet, and take out the words "or entrance to a bank". Then under C AGGRESSIVE PANHANDLING PROHIBiLTED: rather than paragraph (5) he would substitute the two sections that enumerated (7) and (8) and Ms. Moschandreas's suggested changes, which are on the second page of her Proposed Amendments to Draft Ordinance. Alderman Rainey interjected that Alderman Moran is just going through this right now with what he might propose and we need to move slowty and do it section by section because there are numerous issues to deal with. Alderman Newman had a point of order, he thought the thrust of what Alderman Moran is doing and the reason we might not be able to do that is what Ms. Moschandreas attempted to do was not have a night time ban on panhandling. What she did was add her paragraph about looking at the request and the totality of the circumstances. She then gave a way of the police dealing with the nighttime intimidating situation. They do go together in terms of Alderman Moran's first amendment eliminating the nighttime and then adding one of Ms. Moschandreas's paragraph which was the way to get at the nighttime act without a complete ban. He thinks those two should go together and we can discuss that test step and then move on to the others. Alderman Rainey said except the very first step was the last paragraph in Section 1A. Alderman Moran continued with his amendment and said he would change (5) under aggressive panhandling and supplant (5) with (7) and (8) in Ms. Moschandreas's memo to the committee. His last amendment would be add a sub section under penalty it could be D (1) and keep the paragraph already there, each act of panhandling prohibited, then make a D (2) saying each act described by sub sections C (1). (3), (5) or (6) may also be punishable by imprisonment of up to thirty (30) days. The basic reason he is suggesting that is he thinks (1), (3). and the new (5) and (6) all describe criminal acts and does not think the others necessarily do. Alderman Rainev stated there Is a motion on the floor and called for a second to amend Sections A. B. C. and D. Hearing no second the motion was not considered. Alderman Newman said he wanted to discuss this further, to which Alderman Rainey interjected the way it is always done Is to second the motion. Alderman Newman then seconded the motion for purpose of discussion only. He wanted to address taking out the B (1) language and adding in the (7) and (8). besides one of the most important aspects of the ordinance is to provide some protection when its dark especially in places where people are waiting on the Metra station, or the CTA. It is very intimidating waiting for a train at this time of the year. His concern regarding (7) and (8) is that (8) has no expressed statement prohibiting nighttime and you are basically to read into that if was at night it would be more apt to make a reasonable person feet harassed, intimated and compelled to contribute. It is not clear enough to him in (1) and (2) and he believes that Ms. Moschandreas's language is overly broad and could be subject to constitutional attack. It seems to him it would be a prudent thing for the City when we have an ordinance that has been approved by the Seven Circuit. To change it to come up with our own ideas makes it more susceptible to a lawsuit which is why he could not support the motion. He does appreciate what is trying to be accomplished and looking at the term panhandling he does not think of that as asking somebody for a quarter, but focuses on the donation and the nature of the relationship which doesn't seem to present a significant problem we have to be concerned of. Alderman Moran understands what the Seven Circuit did here, although Ms. Moschandreas pointed out to us what she thinks may be a significant flaw in our over reliance on this decision when the decision makes it Gear that the litigants in the Indianapolis Seven Circuit case had made some stipulations about time, place and circumstance that Ms. Moschandreas has suggested to us with some strength and sense if someone where to challenge this ordinance and not stipulate to time, place, and form there could have been another more effective avenue of attack on the Indianapolis ordinance. On the nighttime issue, not meaning any disrespect to the Court of Appeals, he cannot get comfortable with the idea of saying that somehow when darkness falls the first amendment goes away. That is not to say that a person might feel harassed, intimidated, or somehow compelled to contribute with darkness being a contributing element. He thinks the treatment in paragraph (8) of Ms. Moschandreas's memo acknowledges the fact that darkness may be an element leading to intimidation. It recognizes that, not explicitly but certainly implicitly recognizes that. By taking out the other language we as a committee and as a Council will not say people's first amendment rights go away with the light, which from his own perspective he is having a very difficult time reconciling. To him the language in (8) is like a stalking language as that basically is what it is stalking people for the purpose of getting money from them and accomplishing that by either harassing them, intimidating them, or developing a sense of compulsion which he does not think is protected by the first amendment and is not right and we should try to stop. That is his rationale for making those suggestions, and he appreciates the second to his motion for purposes of discussion. Page 4. Hearina no further discussion and with a motion on the floor. Alderman Ralnev called for a vote of Alderman Moran's amendment. Motion failed. 1-ave (Alderman Moran), 3-no, (Aldermen Feldman. Newman and Ralnev). Alderman Ralnev announced this matter will be returned to the Council for consideration and action at the next Cltv Council meeting. IV, CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 4R-01 ADOPTING THE PARKS, RECREATION AND FORESTRY MASTER PLAN Dave Hodgeman, member of the Recreation Board, began his presentation by recalling at the time of the Jefferson -Burr election there was a tie in the Electoral College and the President was selected by Congress. The most remarkable thing about that period was the speech Jefferson gave at his inauguration, when he was quoted as saying, "At this time of great division although we may have very different positions we must always remember that we all have the same principles." As he thought back about the people who spoke both from the audience and at the last City Council meeting, indeed over the last several years, he felt very comfortable that we all have the same principle. We all clearly understand that recreation and having the facilities to provide recreation is important, the principle we all agree on. The position upon we may disagree is how important and how much money should we spend on it The Council certainly understands the position of the Recreation Board on that, that it's terribly important. With that introduction Mr. Hodgeman proceeded to introduce the Strategic Plan, the first of the two items, to be considered this evening. There is some history that goes back almost ten years when there was an Attitude and Interest Survey commissioned, paid for by the City, inquiring about the citizen's desires with respect to recreation. One of the things that came out of that survey was a clear expression of need for additional recreational space. About three years ago, at a Human Services Committee meeting, when recreational needs were being discussed, the Human Services Committee set into motion and the City Council ultimately funded a Strategic Plan and Survey, that cost over $100,000, to focus on the needs of the Evanston Parks, the inventory of our parks and analysis of our condition, and the possibilities and needs for improvement and possibly additions to our facilities. The result of that plan which involved input not only from the Recreation Board but also from many community organizations, was the Master Strategic Plan for the Parks District, which is many inches thick, its a detailed engineering study. It is summarized on a park by park basis in a book that you have all received. Mr. Hodgeman wanted to remind people of what the Strategic Master Plan is and what it Isn't It is not a final plan and when we ask that the City Council adopt it we are not asking that anything be written in stone. What it represents Is a systematic professional analysis of what we need, what it will cost to do that, and if adopted by the Council will undoubtedly in some respects be deviated from. What we will do Is provide a framework and if there is going to be a deviation from this professional study. hopefully there will be a reason given, so It will provide a framework for ongoing improvement to our park system. He does not believe it is true here but he knows that some governmental units won't appropriate money for improvements to something like a park system unless there is such a master plan In plane. The summary, included in the materials sent to the committee, includes a long list of improvements or new facildes. He is not going to go through them all but certainty he or members of the staff, or other members of the Recreatiom Board can certainty try to answer questions about this. This lists many, many parks within the City, in addition to spe:ifn parks general needs that cover several different parks. For example, basketball court renovations, athletic field improvements, something for the new Craws Center building, entry for a new multipurpose recreation building, a new southeast Evanston recreation building, and a new theater for Fleetwood Jourdain. It is a very comprehensive plan for if we waned to have a wonderful, excellent park system. Mr. Hodgeman proceeded to through several more pages of charts which gave a little more detail about this after which he would attempt to answer questions. One of the charts was a more detailed breakdown and what they would hope to accomplish with the $35,000,000 proposal. What they would like to do in the first phase, which they think is cr;+ical to our City and som"bing that should not be delayed, is to build this new multipurpose recreation building, rebuild fire Crown Center building, and also on the new buildings create a new beach entry kiosk at Centennial Park Mr. Hodgeman pointed out the details of the basketball courts they would like renovated, and the details of the parks where soccer and football renovation would occur. He is sure you remember the eloquent remarks from people who came and talked about their organizations and how difficult it was, as those who have children know how difficult it is to run recreational programs with the park system and facilities the way we have it now, which is why these kinds of things are on their priority list Mr. Hodgeman also pointed out more inventory of the things that would be done with the first $35,000,t100, more baseball and softball field renovations, athletic field irrigation systems, including work at James Park. You may be aware there is already some significant work being done at James Park that has been previously funded. Tennis court renovations including lighting renovations and renovations in various neighborhood parks. This is by no means all of them but these are the parks that would permit all parts of the City to participate In this first phase and also which most desperately need to be renovated. Page 5. There was some concern expressed by the Council last tine that we're talking abort approving a tit of money for these parks and we want to adopt this master plan, but there been no neighborhood disarssions. He would like to emphasize this is an inventory of the tugs that need to be done to trove parks, its not a final plan, and exactly how these things are done and the way the renovations o, the parks would be tad out would absolutely be the subject of intensive community participation. Adoption of the master plan or even of this initial Phase 1 proposal does not mean that we're ramming anything down anyone's throat in terms of their park. It lust means that the funding is there and we've identified what needs to be fixed and what we think it will cost. There is just no question that these parks need renovation m part because of ADA issues. As he said at tree beginning everyone agrees that this will be wonderful for the City of Evanston and the area of disagreement is how urgent it is. With respect to the second proposal before you, which is the proposal to pit this to a referendum, he submits that we should let Lne people of Evanston tell us how urgent they think this is and they can vote whether or not they want to spend the money to do this. Certainly it is the view of the Recreation Board not becai.ise its our job but because we feel its in our hearts that this is terribly, terribly important for our City and our children. Thank you. Alderman Rainey Called upon those who asked to speak to these issues come forward and speak after which there wOl be committee discussion of both these matters. Richard Seaman, President of Robert Crown Community Advisory Board, introduced thew treasurer, Jerry Roseman and noted there were other members in attendance. They came to listen and to learn about the issues relating to the Crown Center so they may be better informed and better able to respond to the questions and concerns that are posed to them by groups and individuals that use Crown Center. That is all he had say other than they wilt at the Recreation Board meeting on Thursday and at the City Council meeting on Monday. Thank you. David Ucker, Commissioner of Evanston AYSO, said he came tonight again speaking on behalf of almost 1,800 ctuldren who are playing AYSO in our oDrnmunity. This year they constitute 150 soccer teams and over 500 adult volunteers make their games and practices happen. He simply wants to express their primary concern is for quality outdoor fields in our City. This is a very worthy goal and he wants to emphas¢e to the committee and the Council that is something that enhances the recreational needs and abilities of our children, generally enhances our community, and is worthy of our support He wants to further emphasize that recreational heads represent the single best investments for the recreational uses for our children because they serve the greatest number of individuals in our community. At this hour he is not going to elaborate at length, as he is able to do about all of the wonderful things they do for positive youth development in our program. We are an award wining and nationally recognized organization and want to acknowledge several of the Board members in attendance tonignt, Sill Botson and Kart Volvo. The ability of our program to meet the needs of the children of our community is dependent upon the volunteer efforts of the many volunteers who make the program happen and it is dependent upon the ability of us as a City to provide quality fields for our children. Thank you. John Nickel, a Neighbor of Crown Park, is also a parent of three teen-age children who have been soccer players and football players. He also works in Highland Park and has made the trip up to the 41 Sports Complex many times and knows what that building is Eke. He has a lot of concerns about what he is hearing and his number one concern is that he is a neighbor who owns property immediately across the street from Crown Park and has not yet seen a plan. One justification he read about, as everything he knows he read about in the papers is that we spent this $150,000 or $250.000 on ttte plan and we should justify that cost by approving going ahead with plans. A multipurpose recreational building is in his opinion, if he uses the 41 Sports Complex as a model, =s like a sports factory. It's a huge building, a giant bam, and if you're talking about taking away fields from AYSO teams, flag football, to put up a giant building he thinks you have a park district that's feeding on itself. He is not against the need for a multipurpose recreational building, in fact it might be great, but he has not seen a plan and wonders why we have not seen a plan. He just cannot see it there, as it could potentially be devastating to the neighborhood. You're talking about a huge facade parking taking away green space. He fives on Lee Street and is afraid if you use the current building as a model we're going to become an industrial sports area batik alley, and where is the power plant for this going to be. He has a lot of concems and does not know exactly what his neighbors say about this, maybe this is a good thing, but if he is hearing things said in the papers that you are going to triple the size of the building size plus add parking he Minks it's a loss. You say you can go ahead with funding and things can be rearranged but he is very nervous about that If this plan is not something that he as a neighbor can We with he's pretty much against it He would like everyone to know that the 41 Sports Complex is privately owned, it is not a municipally operated facility, and has gone through hands many times and he thinks you should look into that It sounds good and if that's what the children of Evanston deserve continue to look at it, but he would hate to see you ruin a park in the neighborhood. Thank you. Charles Smhh, thanked the committee for the opportunity to address this very important issue and does adjust for the sense of urgency. He would like to thank Mr. Gaynor and Mr. Hodgeman for bringing forth this plan and thinks it is important that we deal with the condition of many of these buildings but is somewhat troubled by the fact that there may not have been enough community wide input for everyone to understand the opportunities and also the downside of some parts of the plan. He has been involved with the Arboretum and the Evanston Environmental Association for a number Page 6. of years and personally does not feel that he has sufficient opportunity to understand ttie overall vision for the plan. He does understand that the plan corre s from Parks, Recreation and Forestry and seems Oo nave a very dominant recreation perspective and if we alkotate this money now+ what that will do for the near future for the etr er aspects of Parts and Forestry. Again, he thinks its a wonderful proposal but would like to have additional time to know more about it as many have talked to him about their Lack of kncAiedge of the vision. He often thinks of Evanston as an emerald city on ti-e take. its dominated by trees and green, space and does not want to do anything that will diminish that kind of visual valLie. it's a very ambitious and weicoe»e proposal but he would like to see more input and have more time to understand wrNere it will be in fire years, in ten years, what this does for green space and forestry. He was arso in:eres•.ed whether cr not a plan such as this should incfude some consideration of the other park districts. We have two other park districts. the Ridgeville Park District and Lighthouse Park (}strict, this is an overall comprehensive program for Evanston and ciy not including the other park districts wtsether or not that may under serve or leave out some areas of the community, which he did not quite understand_ Thank you. Mark McKewln, Crown Park Neighbors. said this will be his sixth time to speak witl'r this Counczl on issues :n the neighborhood. We have had a temfic relationship, not necessan�/ with this committee tecause he hasn't spoken with this committee, but he is working vrt,]m you on making the neighborhood and forming the compromises between wtitat's best for the City of Evanston and batancirg that with the needs of Me neighbors. You have made some terrific decisions that you have taken a lot heat for in the decision process, but when you look back at it two years later, Walgneen's in particular, most people would say you made the a good and right derision. He is not here to support or not support what has been presented tonight because most of us don't know and it is difficult to say we're for or against something when you've got about fire minutes to react to it in fact its impossible and as elected officials you shouldn't do that. Lets talk about some actions, about good neighbors, and about holding the Parks and Recreation* Board to the same standards that you've held developers when they've built things in our neighborhood. Lets do some comparison, when the Evanston Water Department comes into our neighborhood and is going to shut thie water off to do repairs we get notices on our front doors. Yet when the Paris District came in and put up new back stops and brought in back holes put together a four v peek construction project that they didn't finish until after the first snow, we were never communicated about that. Suddenly back holes showed up, some of the old back stop was tom down, suddenly a little white sign that looked like it had been put up by any developer said another project brought to you by the Recreation Board, but no one explained the benefit to us of putting up the new back stops, no one explained the scope of it no one treated us Like a neighbor. The problem is we pay for this neighborhood. Yet you hold the developer to a higher standard than you did the Park District. If Walgreen's had come in with a back hole and started to do renovations to Walgreen's you ,*veld have had people Irt .front of you the very next night and he can guarantee Alderman Drummer would have been trying to get off this Council as fast as he could because he would have had the phone burning up as fast as he could. What re is going to ask you to = is hold the Park Board to the same standards that we hold developers, and communicate ahead of tine, what does it me=, what is the impact on the community, and then hold them accountable for their actions. One of the things the gentleman said tonight is we're going to communicate with the neighbors, yet he did not give you any specifics. He tells you let the community make the decision in Apr;, but did he give any details about how he's going to hold these meetings, who it's going to hold the meetings with, how they're going to report that back to you, no. He also mentioned that ten years ago if came from a strategic plan and he was thinking where we were ten years ago, George Bush was President and *gad the highest approval rating of any President in the last ten years and now ten years later the person that replaced him has set aside more park land than in the history of the United States, not to be developed by either commercial developers or the United States. He would like you to think about why ten years Later this gentleman retiring with the highest approval ratings and who set aside more park land, yet ten years later you're using the assumptions from the person that: he defeated. The last thing he world want you think about is the standards and the goals, we're not here to say things are good or to say things are bad, all we're here to ask you to do is that d you're going to develop something at Robert Crc*wn you don't give anybody money until they give you all the details. That's a fair assumption of your process and we appiaud you for doing that, you don't give any money to any developer until you're satisfied with all the nitty gritty details and whes going to be the impact Yet tonight the gentleman here is saying put it to the voters and once we get the money omen ,s,eli start doing the details. You're trusting the Recreation Board to do what's in your best interest for people that vote far ,40u and you're not going to hold them to the same standard that you've held every other developer that has come before l ou for as long as he's been speaking to you, that makes him nervous because it asks him why are you doing this and very is there this double standard at least in his perception from what he read in the Evanston Review, where he gets all iris information. Why does he have to get his information from the newspaper when he's paying these people fvr the privilege for him to live across from the park. Thank you. Mort ©enlo►r, former Recreation Board member, wanted to compliment the Recreation Board for an excellent job d--ey did in preparing their report. He thinks the issue they are presenting to the Council is a very simple issue, whether time Council agrees with the Recreation Board that capital improvements for our parks have been under funded for a numtr-r of years, you have to answer that question If ycu answer the question yes, which is what the community is telling you d,,en the question is how much money are you prepared to devote, considering the entire City, towards additional camel improvements. is it $5,000,000 a year, is it 54,000,000 a year, $2,000,000 a year, what do you think we can afford. Est if the answer is no we can't afford anything then let! the Recreation Board that and don't require them to spend any more Page 7. time and effort doing what they have been doing. Based on his experience in Evanston he thinks we are under funded and have been for a long time in terms of our capital improvements and its up to the City Council to come up to the plate and answer, yes, we are under funded we appreciate the excellent job the Recreation Board has done to identify the $100,000,000 of potential improver;sents. The Council may say we can't afford all that atone point in time because of other needs but we can afford X amount of dollars and we're prepared to devote X amount of dollars, here's the money you have to work with go back out :n the community, you've got your priorities, see whether there is a consensus and go ahead and implement those priontes. If you're going to wait until you identify every other prionty in the entire City and have them do what the Recreation Board has done over the last six or eight years we're going to get nowhere. The Recreation Board has stepped up, they've done what every major commission should do that's looking for capital improvement and identify the need. He thinks the citizens have come forward and said we agree with the Recreation Board. Now the ball is your court ar►d either you agree with the citizens or you don't agree with the citizens, but step up and speak to that issue, either say we do agree and we can afford X millions o1 dollars a year or we can't so everybody knows where we're going on the issue of recreation. He certainly would urge the Council to take this plan, listen to the various groups that have come forward, tour the parks again if you need to tour the parks, but come to the conclusion that yes recreation has been under funded for a long period of time in the are of capital improvement and yes we are prepared to step up to the plate and commit our City over a period of three to five years a least initially to X millions of dollars, and Mr. Gaynor and the Recreation Board go ahead and get the job done for our community. Thank you. Mr. Hodgeman said he omitted to stx the proposal for the indoor center that was developed when they were focusing on the Recycling Center location and if a decision was made after consulting with the community that something like this should go in at Crown it would be configured somewhat differently. Just to show you what the vision is, we would have a gymnasium that would house three basketball courts and this would be for basketball and volleyball and other hard gymnasium sports which we have a crying need for in this City. He believes you have heard comments from organizations like the fellowship of African American Men talking about how much more they could do for our children if they had a facility like this. This is one thing we have in mind. The second thing is the indoor soccer arena which would also accommodate indoor baseball, lacrosse, and inline hockey and would be much nicer than the 41Club, much cheaper, and much more accessible to our children. He again wants to remind people that we are proposing facilities, we're not locked into a particular location, what we're locked into is to provide these facilities for our citizens and particularly for our children. He almost hesitated to stand up after Mr. Denlow spoke because he expressed a lot of what we feel Its very hard for us to develop details unless we have money and know what you're willing to fund, we know there is a crying need but we can't develop a detailed plan and we can't go out and discuss with the neighbors of a particular area what we're proposing to do unless we have some support and financial support from the Council. Alderman Newman had questions about the condition of Crown, as the report says Crown needs to be replaced and he would like to have that explained. He's been told there is a serious structural problem with a wan and would like to hear what the problems are there. Mr. Gaynor said the building is twenty-seven years old and part of the study was with an engineering fr,-m who helped analyze each of our buildings and structures. It was determined that there are two walls, the east and north wall, that are currently moving away from the building. We found this out two years ago and have had three structural engineering fans try to diagnose what the problem is to make a determination of votiM remedies what we might consider. We haven't been able to consider a move forward because each of the structural firms have given us a different opinion and not being stnuctural engineers ourselves we're not sure which opinion to believe in. We have been told it is not currently a safety issue and do not feel there is a problem with continuing to use the facility, the facility is old and we are having failures. last Monday night you approved the purchase of a $27,000 cooling tower which he understands will probably be installed in the next two weeks. The roof has been worked on several times. This weekend we had a sewage Lackup because the plumbing has severe problems. We are spending considerable amounts of money in just trying to keep the building open due its age. Also, a considerable amount of business has been lost due to other arenas which are newer, fancier, more secure in the locker rooms, provide a much better product in the market place than what we are able to provide in the faaLty we now have. Alderman Rainey asked the committee if they prefer to stay focused on the master plan before going on to the matter of the referendum and if there is an urgency for recommending approval to the Council tonight of the master plan. Alderman Newman was not sure what it means to approve the plan. He appreciates everything the Recreation Board did in teens of identifying the projects and thinks it is a worthy set of goals. If he was voting to approve the plan he would not consider that a commitment to do every project on the list To accept the plan is an excellent idea because in his view the plan has effectively identified all types of needs in this community and an argument can be made for every item on the list but he is not sure this has to be done now. We have to work through the priorities on that list and see what we can afford. The Recreation Board has done that to some extent by saying we should go forward with $35,000.000, he accepts the work, he accepts the plan, and accepts everything on there. He does have a couple of points of frustration about the plan one of which is a need for 54,000,000 for the various park buildings up and down the lakefront which symbolizes what we're doing wrong in recreation insomuch as the parks. The beaches bring in $400,000 a year and we are taking that $400.000 that users of the beaches from South Boulevard up to the lighthouse are paying and funding Page 8. other programs. We don't have the proper way of collecting money and he would hate to venture how much money were not collecting because we don't have a proper set up going into each one of the beaches. The washrooms, even if they're cleaned every other day, look filthy because the buildings are so old they're an embarrassment to the City. We do not reinvest the money. Shifting over to Crown, we're pulling in a million dollars a year on skating and using that to fund all types of other important programs but we're not reinvesting any of that million dollars in a significant way back into Crown which is why we have a building that is falling apart and can't compete with other facilities. We're making radical changes to Crown Park, but a minimum Crown Center is the linchpin of our recreation system and is filled with skaters and hockey players at a reasonable price. in terms of renters the rink is used about 18 hours a day. The amount of complaints he has received, and they are not only in his ward, are of the condition, its dark, its dingy, it's a tired building that needs improvements. One of the things the Recreation Board has brought forward in this plan is that we need to do something about Crown which he sees as a very high priority where something needs to be done as a minimum. He also sees, as a high priority, the condition of fields all around. We have heard some cities won't even come here because our fields are In such pathetic shape. He hears that parents are making the choice of putting their children in the Skokie leagues because they want them playing on better fields. Those are what he sees as some of the crying neglected needs in the plan and is sure some of the other members of the committee can identify others. Alderman Rainey said one of the ways she would like to look at the so called master plan is as an inventory of needs as proposed by and observed by the Recreation Department, the Recreation Board, and consultants. There are certain items in the plan that she does not agree with and she would like to see it looked at as a real working, very flexible document that can be massaged, reviewed, and discussed locally because many of the issues in there are local parks that many people, other than neighbors, don't even know about and thinks that can be said for many of them. Just briefly switching over to the current proposal for the 535,000,000, she agrees that the rest rooms along the lakefront are crying needs and she does not see them in the $35,DDO.000 proposal. One of the issues that she has with this is how these items are prioritized. She has so many questions because this brought up issues that were discussed in the past which she did not really focus so she went back and pulled out an extraordinary number of documents. In going through these documents she sees the notes she made so she knows she has read them in the past. One of the things we keep referring to is the Attitude and Interest Survey. She heard people refer to the survey as being ten years old, seven years old, and pulled out her copy. Questionnaires for the Attitude and Interest Survey that she is familiar with were mailed out October 1995. bt's an extraordinary survey and the quality of it and credibility of it is extremely high. The amount of surveys retumed and the equal distribution of those returns among wards and demographics is excellent. In deference to Mr. Denlow the Attitude and Interest Survey reveals very clearly that the people in this community did not support the building of any new structures in this community. One of the statements made in the Executive Summary had to do with the credibility and the veracity of the survey itself. The survey said the issue that received the most Citywide support was enhancing and developing canal lands for park projects. Other issues that got a lot support were various programs, granted programs have to be put someplace they can't be generally or always performed in open fields. She reread this survey and even South Evanston, which is described and very clearly and carefully defined as south of Oakton, east of Ridge, north of Howard and west of the tracks wasn't even supported, twenty some or maybe thirty percent strongly supported. Nowhere in the survey does she find Fleetwood Jourdain Theater as being a demand, she could have missed that page but did not see it anyplace. There was absolutely no support whatsoever in this survey for building any new building. People were basically satisfied with what they had. They talked about expanding some current facilities but there was no support for this. There was support for soccer and programs like that, as she certainly thinks our fields are a disaster. The consultant said that it was a survey so credible it could be utilized for short and long range planning over a period of up to five to seven years and we are now coming to the end of that period. This is almost too old to rely on and she was merely suggesting looking at it again. Alderman Newman remarked he has not read the Attitudes and Interest Survey for some time and asked what it said about the amount of gymnasium space, as he recalled it seemed to support that was a very serious need. Alderman Rainey read from the report; "A multipurpose gymnasium Citywide received a 47% strong and strongly support." Alderman Rainey went on to say a swimming pool which we are not talking about received more community support than a multipurpose gymnasium or soccer facilities. Soccer facilities received 33% strong and strong support indoor roller skating 47%, indoor tennis facility 33%, canal space 76%. Everything else was basically lower than 50%, a couple of items edged in around 50%. In South Evanston all the people supported was renting some current space for a community center. Alderman Newman asked the Recreation Board how the list of $100,000,000 evolved to $35,000,0OO and maybe address the pool question opposed to the multiplex building. Alderman Rainey raised some good points and he does not know how they got to the $35,000,000. Alderman Feldman perceived this report and its execution along with the Attitudes and Interests Survey Alderman Rainey referred to is we have already started to respond to the Attitudes and Interests Survey. He knows the emphasis at James Park and the program work at the facilities there was certainty given impetus by this survey. Looking at this priority list of $35.000,000 if one was to take away the multipurpose recreation building and the new Centennial Park beach entry kiosk other than a new Crown Center, which is a replacement of what we have, you don't have new buildings. You have programs and needs that fit into the kind of survey responses all having to do with programs and enhancement of the Page 9. various programs and facilities we already have. The last he heard is we are making progress, although he has not had a recent report about the canal lands being developed and wanted to know if those soccer parks are completed. Mr. Gaynor informed the committee of some information that just carve in that we have received the grant applied forwith the Department of Natural Resources and we now have all of the funding necessary to move forward with the plans and specifications for that project which they have called the Soccer Dog Park Project, located on the east side of the canal and south of Maine. We will be bringing forward to the Council approval of a consultant to begin the plans and specifications and the agreement is just about ready to come before Council as well as the Skokie Park District Board for the joint powers agreement. Everything seems to now be in place. Alderman Feldman remarked what the Recreation Board report represented to him was in a way the response to the Attitude and Interest Survey. The Council said, okay, there seems to be a will demonstrated on the part of the people of the City of Evanston for improved and enhanced recreational facilities. Some were specific, some received more support than others, 47% is a significant number as there will atways be dramatic differences between constituencies. To assume that we are going to get a consensus around any specific activity would be foolish. What we do know is that there are significant constituencies and parts of the population that are engaged in these sports. We know there are a lot of people engaged in baseball and soccer, many people play tennis, and we are all aware of the need for additional basketball courts. To him those needs are very compelling, at ieast at this point to eliminate the possibility of us dealing with a major undertaking like a multiplex center, we do not have anywhere near the resources to do that akxV with these other needs. To build a multiplex center and leave our soccer and baseball fields in the condition they are and not have additional basketball courts would be a crime. He would suggest th?s is a goal to aspire to but the basic needs of the community have to be met first. Our kids have to play on decent drained soccer fields and on decent baseball fields, and he thinks Crown Park should be the jewel of all of this. At one time it was the pride of the recreational community as there are an astonishing number of people that use it in many different ways. We have to seriously think about meeting the needs of a rebuilt, renewed, brand new, Crown Park and he would like to see a study on how we go about doing it. As soon as we start doing that we have to think about a new and fresh Crown Center because it was built a certain way at one time does not mean we have to duplicate what we have. His original hope was that the various constituencies could come together and present the City various scenarios, which is not a criticism, as he knows he did not articulate that. Its one thing to come up with a $100,000,000 plan where everybody is taken care of which is what it was supposed to do. The problem comes when we begin to hedge off of that figure and then the decisions are who gets what and when. What he would have loved to see was with or without the Council the citizens of this community come together and say we understand we're not going to get it all or get it all at once, perhaps with guidance of the Council we have to decide what's first. This has to be a Recreation Board and a community decision to decide along with all the constituencies how that money is going to be spent. If that set of priorities coming out from the community does not happen, the City Council will make it happen but it wits not be the same and there will be a lack of participation, involvement, ownership, and investment on the part of many people who have worked so hard. He is ready to set a figured we can with the help of other members of the Council and he will even recommend his priorities and communicate that to both the Recreation Board and the Finance Department and say lets figure out a plan of what we're going to do over a period of five years and at this point 1n time what would seem the kind of thing that would be reasonable for the City of Evanston to do and still make progress, knowing that we're not a5owing our parks to remain in the terrible state they are now. All of us want everything on thts plan and there is nothing wrong with using this as a working document and moving ahead, but nobody wants or expects It now or In the next five years, but we can work for it if we all know we're working and making progress that is all is anybody could ask. Alderman Rainey asked that all members of the Council get another copy of the Attitude and Interest Survey. It has such depth and is so beautifully analyzed it is very important, but one must keep in mind that it is five years old and people who were between the ages of the 18 and 29 category are now in a next stage. Alderman Moran wondered if Mr. Gaynor had an opportunity in working up these numbers in the plan to look at the history of the original of the Robert Crown Center and how that was financed and who financed it. Mr. Gaynor said he did not have that material with but knows that the Crown family contributed a significant amount of money to the project. Alderman Moran mentioned he heard anecdotally that the Crown Center was built completely out of private sector funds, there were no government funds contributed. He knows the Crown family gave a lot of money as besides this center they built other Robert Crown centers in Hinsdale and several other places. He also thinks there were substantial financial contributions made by people in Evanston other than the Crown family that built this center. One of the things he hoped to see as a companion piece to the inventory of needs in the strategic plan is a full exploration of how we might financially do this. He does not believe that we can afford to borrow all the money to fund everything. If there is a history of giving, such as at Crown Center, in some way we should try to return to that and figure out whether we can have a financing plan _ that includes private sector contributions. He Is aware of discussions off and on over the course of time about development of recreation facilities on a public/private partnership basis and in a conversation after last week's meeting he was told by someone, whom he does not know, on the Recreation Board that issue was raised but was kept back. — Essentially the idea was quashed from the perspective that to explore public/private partnerships may not be something Page 10. that was palatable. He does not know that happened or who the principles were but he has never heard an explicit exploration of what we might or might not accomplish by developing public/private initiatives for development of capital facilities which he thinks we should try to explore. He is aware of serious issues there, control issues, financial issues, operating issues, etc., but he would much rather go through those and make a disceming judgement as to whether we could develop some of these facilities through initiatives like that than just to ask our citizenry on April V to answer yes or no if they want all these new buildings that will cost $35,000,000. He'd rather have a plan that would involve an exhaustive investigation of how we might minimize the amount of public sector that would be used to develop these facilities. Alderman Moran brought up the fact that the City is now in their budget cycle. During the next two months they spend a lot of time trying to come up with a new budget Part of that examination is to develop a Capital improvement Plan. The City does that on a five year rolling basis by trying to target projects over the course of five years and then try to target a set amount of money for all of our capital improvement needs. For a substantial number of years the entire Capital Improvement Plan for year one, the year we were facing between January and February and starting March 1" and going to February 2e of the next year, our fiscal year, has been $3,500,000. This $35.000,000 proposal which is one third of the $100,000,000 proposal is ten times the amount that we spent on the entire capital needs of the City in any given year probably for the past five or six years. He is not saying that's bad, maybe we would want to do that, but he is only saying that from the perspective of putting the whole discussion into context Part of the Capital Improvement Plan in our budget materials we received from the City Manager that identified items such $70,000,000 to repair our streets, which everyone knows are in terrible condition. Other items.- $20,000,000 for a new Civic Center, $13,000,000 for police and fire installations, 530,000,000 to pave and improve alleys; 55,000,000 allotted estimated as being potential public investment in the Church -Dodge intersection. He mentions these things as opposed to when he was wearing his Recreation Board hat and all the good Recreation Board people here, all of whom he admires for all the time and effort they spend on these issues, he understands your passion. He is one of the greatest consumers of recreation in Evanston during the 25 years he has lived has here has spent a great deal of time at James Park and Robert Crown and sailing off the Dempster Street beach, which he loves and is passionate about. Now he is wearing his City hat and he has to look at all these items. He wants to improve the parks and we probably need to replace Crown Center, but he feels a lot more work has to be done to we can figure out how we can do that without putting the City financially at risk. He does not want to tell the Recreation Board, as Judge Denlow has invited us to do, to not do anything more as he knows as Alderman Feldman has said there are projects in this plan that we want to fund, but we have to put them back Into context with the other capital needs of the City. Maybe we have under spent and need to spend more on recreation and park development It sounds like a good idea but we do have to explore different financial plans and have to do more community development on this as several speakers tonight have said. He does not want to turn away from any of this and wants to keep it very much centered in his vision, but we cannot afford this $35,000,000 package by going out and borrowing that money and hoping to recoup enough of it to keep things afloat. Alderman Rainey asked that for the time being it is kept in mind that we just talking about the plan with only reference to the referendum. Alderman Newman does not know why somebody would give us money to rebuild the Crown Center when we as the landlord have made a million dollars in revenue there for the past ten or fifteen years and not put any money into the building. He tHnks its too much to ask the Recreation Board to figure out how to raise this money privately. Skokie spent $45,000,000 in their park districts to create a first rate park system. Skokie has two pools, a golfing range, the Webber Center, Central Park which is a or a on their list of parks, and we can't even get to one achievement anywhere. In terms of quality of life we need to take stock of ourselves and ask how important the parks are. He invites you to go to Gilbert Park and if we stay at the same pace and let that park look the way it looks today we should sell that park. We're the custodians of the public lands off the tax roles and we should not hold that for ten or fifteen years if we're going to let it be in the condition it is today. That is also the case at Butler Park, another west side park along the canal, another very valuable land. He would like to point out the investment in recreation, in parkland brings people Into those parks. In his neighborhood Talmadge Paris which was deserted was completely turned around when 5300,000 was put into it It is filled at all times with soccer kids, the new basketball courts are always used, the new play equipment which is handicapped accessible, has made that land into an asset as opposed to something that is just there and which we own. One of the mistakes we have made over the years in capital improvement is we have been alk)cating money on the basis of not trying to raise property taxes as opposed to being the custodian of these wonderful park resources. He has some questions that need to be answered about the $35.000.000 recommendation. He asked if we can all agree that the condition of our fields and facilities flunk anybody's test of what we want to provide for our children, and if we all agree on that point what amount of time should go by before we as a City and community change it. How much longer should be wait, he is suggesting an opinion that we can't wait three, four, or five more years nor can we ask the Recreation Board or the Parks Department to raise the money for those fields privately. Maybe there can be some matching funds somewhere, but he does not think we can waft. He would like if we as a committee talk could about when we should get to the fields. Page 11. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Newman, because this is such a passion of his, if he could please accept that we are going to make a formal motion on accepting the strategic plan, the inventory of needs and projection of costs as a working document so we can then move on. Alderman Feldman moved acceptance of the strategic Dian. the inventory of needs and oroiection of costs as a workina document with not only accentance but with areat resaect and aratitude on the Dart of all the work that was done by the Recreation Deaartment and Board. This Is a stellar achievement. a vital community resource and something we will work off of. Motion unanimously Passed (4-01. V. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION S-R-01 PLACING A PARKS AND RECREATION $35,000,000 TAX REFERENDUM ON THE APRIL 2001 BALLOT Alderman Feldman thought our approach to funding recreation in the past has been an integrated approach by looking at it in so called balance with all the other City expenditures, which was a mistake. In this integrated approach our streets have not been fixed nor have our parks been fixed, we stilt have to get a new Civic Center, and our alleys are still not paved. We have a very full plate and if we continue an integrated approach we're going have a lot on our plate for a long time and the parks will sink in the undrained fields in which they lie. It is time for us to say we're going to Fox them not by doing an integrated approach which is a recipe for paralysis. He agrees with Alderman Newman, as many others will agree, that programs for children and adults increase the quality of life that enhances and makes it worthwhile getting out on a summer evening, things that would make us accept a pothole or two or three or four if we had to make that choice. He'll spend money for schools not for alleys, he'll spend money for schools not for sidewalks or streets. He'd rather do both but if he had to make the choice looks upon recreation and parks in this community in that way as we have neglected them and it is time to start moving them up to priority expenditure and fix it As he said many times before, people come to Evanston, or will remain in Evanston, in part on the basis of what our parks and recreational programs and facilities offer. As Alderman Newman indicated our kids are going to other suburbs for baseball. How long after that does the entire family follows. This is very important to the community and he would like it known that as far he is concerned this Is a priority issue with him. Alderman Newman wanted to work up the list to know if there is a consensus of a commitment that the Council should be making to what is on this list in terms of identifying them as problems that need to be fixed and when we're going to do it Alderman Rainey asked if Alderman Newman was talking about problems that need to be Fixed that we are going to be put to the voters in terms of a bond issue, as she had a technical question about this. For the purpose of the academic discussion let us say we put the $35,000,000 on the ballot What is the five-year capital plan for expenditures going to look like? Is it going to be devoid of any recreation expenditures? Alderman Newman took one park as an example, Butler Park, it is close on the fist for CD funds and is also on the $35,000,000. If this referendum paid off and if we did this plan than we would not plan on doing that much with the CD money. Alderman Newman pointed out that as a community we can no longer tolerate the fields and as a Council have to find a solution for that When a building brings in $1,000,000 in revenue considering the condition of Crown Center that it has to be repaired or replaced when we are replacing it if you hear the arguments made by FAM, the soccer people for indoor soccer, the baseball people for indoor baseball, it would make no sense to him to rebuild Crown without being able at the same time to at least find a way to do some enhancements that would take in some of those things. Our parks system would still be light years behind our neighbors and we not talking about a Cadillac of a park system but just trying to get to average. in terms of the kind of tax bills people in his ward are paying and all around the City, he thinks people are entitled to think that City government is going to provide a certain level of recreation needs to fulfill them in a quality way. He would love to be able to do all the parks as it would be a wonderful thing for our children. We received numerous letters from people who think the tennis courts throughout the City are failing apart. He would like to find a way to solve some of these problems while some of the people in this room who have children are still children. That is why the Recreation Board has come up with a bold and difficult strategy and tonight we have to either commit we're gang to solve the problem of the fields in the Crown Center without a referendum and if were not comfortable with that we then have to say what amount of money we're willing to put on the ballot and let them make the case to the public, then let them ,whittle the list and try to fit into what we as a Council think are the most urgent priorities. Alderman Feldman agreed that is what we have to do and if this winds up on a referendum and is defeated, as far as he is concerned that doesn't let the Council off the hook in any was, shape, or form. There Is no question that we have to Fa the parks. With or without a referendum this community has a responsibility to deal with it and the Council has to take a lead in that He would like to set a priority list and to him the referendum is a way to deal with what he thought was an absolutely massive expenditure that he would feel very uncomfortable in doing without overwhelming support from the community. It would be difficult for him to justify using the referendum as an excuse if there is 51.2% and he is ready to make a decision even without that, which he thinks the Council can do especially if we pick a figure were willing to live Page 12. with and work for. From his point of view this agenda item, as it is stated, should rapidly be disposed, as he is not willing to support a $35,000,000 referendum going to the public. Alderman Moran noted after looking at the plan insofar as it addresses three categories, football/soccer field renovations. baseball,'softball field renovations, and athletc field irrigation system, which he assumes, are the three categories we're discussing If all the dollars from those three ca%Kpries was put together it comes to about $1,700.000 and he does not think we need a referendum to decide to spend $1.700,000 that's one observabw. if it turns out that is the emphasis of what the committee considers to be the highest need and greatest demand. Why don't we ask our Recreation Board and Park Staff to come back to us during the JanuarylFebruary time frame when we work on these issues and give us a two, three, four, year plan that we can deal with and is economically feasible to spend that $1.700,000 to redo the fields. Aldemu-n Rainey noted the amount is about S2.800.000 to which Alderman Moran said he did not include the tennis courts_ Alderman Moran said before we single out our personal favorite projects we should be fair to the Recreation Board and staff if we're going to whittle this down to a certain economic level for which we're going to make a certain investment we should let them tell us what trey think us what the greatest needs are. Alderman Rainey said that is absolutely right if we do what Alderman Feldman says and that is completely eliminate Agenda item #5 in its current form then we have to give them that direction. She wonders if anyone would like to hear a pnmereation from Mr. Stafford about the pessbirdy of adding $2,000,000 to our capital plan and the implications of that without a referendum. Of course she does not think we should do a referendum on $2,000,000. Alderman Newman said if the only probiem we had was is the fields, 52,500,000 on the opening sheet, and they whittled it down icy their 535,000,000 proposal, just taking facilities that people use for recreation throughout this plan they have $400,000 for basketball courts, $784,000 for soccer and football fields, another 5560,000 for baseball and softball field renovatJons, $360,000 for athletic field irrigaton, and then there is over $1.000,000 for tennis courts. When he refers to fields he is including basketball courts, soccer fields, irrigation, it's a little more than $3,000.000. Alderman Rainey noted irs $2,000,000 if you don't include tennis. Alderman Rainey could not understand why tt a Lakefront facilities were not included in the plan. Alderman Newman said that was because they made a value judgement if they had to spend 55,000,000 there is a list of parks that amount includes, Butler, Crown, Eagelston, Hayden. Gilbert, Hinman, Kelly, Levinson, and Lovelace, and they made a value judgement that recreation was higher and of greater benefit than fixing the bathrooms along the lakefront which at some point needs to be fixed. Mr. Gaynor wanted to clarify In the recommendations, on the first page, the $35,000,000 under recreation buildings, the third item under New Centennial Park beach entry kiosk, which is one of the free beach entrances. When this was discussed it was the Intent to develop one fac ity as a prototype and then duplicate that over a number of years when the funding became available. The plans, specifications, and designs would be done and that would be the theme at the lakefront We did include the development of one to give us the prototype and then over time as the funds became available we would construct the remaining four. Alderman Rainey was pleased to hear that. Alderman Feldman appreciated the willingness on the part of the committee to deal with this 52,000.000 plus for the fields and basketball court renovation but does not see haw we cannot include Robert Crown in that. According to Mr. Gaynor the walls are leaving us and he is happy to hear that the engineers indicate there currently is no safety issue but he was not certain from what he heard whether they are or are not repairable, is it permanent repairs, the kind of thing we have a few years left or no years left to repair. What did they say? Mr. Gaynor said the strategic master plan study the engineering firm that did the evaluation of the facility said it needed to L--- replaced. The structural folks were looking at what we could do to try and just repair the two walls. That didn't address the balance of the facility. Alderman Feldman asked how the criteria used for replacement was established. Mr. Gaynor said Mey did an overall evaluation of the roof, the warts, the total infrastructure and they looked at what the repairs are that we're doing. He mentioned a number of those earlier but did not mention in the entryway in front of the desk area there is a glass roof portion that is continually leaking and which we are continually repairing_ It needs to be totally reworked. By taking all of the components of the facility and adding it up if it was replaced because it would be cheaper or it may be the same cost, but at the same cost you're getting a brand new facility with many efficiencies. Alderman Feldman said there is one thing missing from the information he has received while he has heard the engineering imperatives for the replacement of Robert Crown and even we have heard the descriptions of it as being dark, dank, and kind of tawdry. he would have hoped that Mr. Seaman who represents the constituency that uses Robert Crown would give some indication of how those conditions translate into effect on peoples lives on the willingness. eagerness, satisfaction people have using Crown, what they aspire to, what they woWd like and what they would hope. He would appreciate it if the Advisory Board could indicate what they know about time effect of those conditions on the programs, on the possible need and dissatisfaction with the current condition, and need for a new one. Page 13. Mr. Seaman felt there has been some concems expressed by some and they may have gone elsewhere, also you look at the work the staff has done to maintain the facility wrth Gmi;ed funds, and looking at the money brought in as revenue the skating facility being basically self supporting, whereas tre money for the Center is funded by the City. There have been improvements over the years with grant money from me Crown which has greatly affected and improved the aesthetics of the lobby, there has been new tables and furniture put in as gifts from money of the Crown family. The gym floors have been redone over the years for the leakage and replacement of things that have gone on. He is sure if we had an Olympic sled skating rink as part of the complex 100 X 200, we would be drawing world class athletes and also those who are within the community who are either Olympians or aspiring Olympians. We have .lack Mortell, with the Fire Department, who was an Olympic speed skating coach. There are many people in the community who put a lot of tune and effort into this. For a number of years we have a severe shortage of ice time and there were discussions this year that ten years ago about possible expansion, this is all before pre -structural damage. Gong back to the initial question ttiere are some people who have looked at us and say no I don't want to go in there but there have been efforts to improve the conditions. There have been gifts of money, the staff has put time and effort into it, the cleaning and maintenance, the replacement of floors, the replacement of furniture, the esthetics of the skating show we just had a gentleman who donated flowers for decorating the lobby. We appreciated the esthetics that added to the facility at the time of the skating snow. There are little things here and there but we have to lcck at the long range, they are talking of five-year plans and the master plan, which not everyone totally understands. He and members of his Advisory Board have received calls, as there is confusion as to what the master plan entails. Part of that has to do with the reportage that has taken place in the media. He does not have a copy of the master plan, but as he understands there is a part 1 and a part 2 of the plan. There is confusion as to when those plans will take place and whether Crown will be up and running during that. There are also questions about the impact if we have to Dose the center, where will people take their kids for childcare or preschool. All those issues have to be addressed and we need to work together with the Recreation Board, Advisory Boards, the parent groups, and the interest groups all need to sit down and have a dialogue on these things so we can try to address them as a common group and try to find some solutions to this. Alderman Feldman agreed with Mr. Seaman that those things have to happen but there has to be a decision on the part of the Council to do something other than nothing at all. Alderman Feldman moved that we at least initialty relect the content of the $35.000.000 tax referendum on the April 2001 ballot with the condition that this Council commits to the Recreation Board and the neonle of this community that with the help of the Recreation Board and Recreation Department. will decide on a elan and commit to its fundinq for specified Items such as the fields. and the rebuilding of Crown Center. Alderman Newman had a substitute motion he would like to put on the list $17,000,000 that can be identified. That doesn't mean he is not interested in enhancements, but sees Crown $9,000,000. all the parks on the list $5,000,000, and the fields which totals $17,000.000. According to 'he information on the original memo somebody who has a $10.000 a year tax bill, for $17,000,000 their taxes would increase $150. We're letting the voters decide and by so doing we're recognizing some of the financial constraints of the City. We're thinking in terms of seriously attacking and taking a bold stroke to really enhance our parks systems, use the facilities we have and make them a significant portion of them something we can be proud of. He's not giving up on the issue of what enhancements to do at Crown to accommodate some of their needs and if we do get the money to do Crown he would want to take a look at doing something additional that would significantly improve our parks system. Alderman Feldman said he could sunnort and would acceW Alderman Newman's su;astttute motion to out on the list S17.000.000 that can be Identified.. Not hearing a second Alderman Rainey said that is now on the floor for discussion. At 9:45 p.m. Alderman Rainey called for a short break The meeting resumed of 9:55 p.m. Alderman Rainey announced the committee is at the point where there is a motion on the floor to propose a $17,000,000 bond referendum. Alderman Feldman noted one of the reasons the referendum is disturbing to him Is because it places us in a position of marching to the Dock and it is difficult to deal with this issue in that way. He would like to make certain that statement is not confused with not a dedication and a devotion to the concept to solving this problem quickly but d6berately. He knows Mr. Stafford has said it is within the power of the City Council to levy a few bonds and pay for this without a referendum, which he would personalty prefer, and work with the Recreation Department and the constituency groups in a very deliberative way to decide what we're going to do. He does not know whether or not at this point there is enough support on the Council floor for a $17,000,000 referendum and he would be uncomfortable because what we are doing is without consultation with any of the community. Were deciding on a figure included in the motion that incfudes very specific items. He is willing to support all of those items and does not know whether other members of the Council are. Therefore, he would like us to forget about the referendum tonight and make a decision to report to the Council that this committee will recommend a certain amount of money for expenditures. We will again hear from Page 14. Alderman Drummer on wanting to do this on a pay as you go basis. which indeed might be a choice. if he had two or three months before the decision to go the public referendum he would not be saying this at this time but he thinks this is a rush to judgement that doesn't do the issue justice. While he willing to commit to a certain amount of money that he thinks we need over a period of years, we have to go back to the Recreation Department and the Recreation Board to figure out how Chars translated into a time table. etc., as we will need that kind of help to determine how iCs going to be funded. That would be his suggestion. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Feldman if he is speaking against the motion, to which Alderman Feldman said yes, he is speaking against the motion. Alderman Rainey then asked Alderman Feldman if it is his intent to bring to the Council a bond issue of that magnitude to support without a referendum. Alderman Feldman thought that he would be willing to make that motion if there are people that have better ideas he would certainly like to hear them. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Feldman if he had in mind doing that when they go to the market this year, to which Alderman Feldman answered, yes. Alderman Rainey said she does not think she would be able to support that and we do not know if the Council Is interested in supporting a S17,000,000 referendum. They way we find out those things is by talking to one another, placing it on the Council agenda, debating it and finding that information out to which Alderman Feldman said that is fine with him. Alderman Rainey said she is not inclined to look favorably upon the case of adding to the tax burden in this community an additional S17,000,000 of capital debt without specifically asking our citizenry. Perhaps she does not know enough about it at this time except from what Alderman Feldman just said. Alderman Rainey went onto say as a member of the Council she is also a little confused in having attended every single, solitary meeting when the Council in one form or another has discussed this, she is surprised that in ten minutes the drive on the part of members of this committee has gone from absolutely mandating, demanding, and insisting that these projects get off the dime and begin in construction to we have to stop. Alderman Feldman said that is not what he said, his feeling is very dear he wants them done, and he wants them done quickly, but doesn't mean without deliberation. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Feldman ff this is the $35.000,000 project, exactly what is being talked about. Alderman Feldman said the motion was he supports that to deal with the Robert Crown Center, the fields and all the parks, the itemization was Alderman Newman's, he did not add it up. The only difference in the motion he has is that he would prefer to deal with outside of a referendum, the priorities and the timetable remains the same. The difference is he thinks the referendum and its date is very restricting. We have until next Monday night to make this kind of decision, if we don't have the referendum we have months to decide. Alderman Rainey said then if we don't do the referendum on the April ballot we can do it in two years which would give the community a real opportunity for input and they would then know we were serious. Alderman Feldman hoped that this Council would find a way to do something significant and meaningful between that time. Alderman Rainev asked If there was anv other discussion on the emotion to amend the S17.000.000 referendum. hearing none, called for a vote of those In favor of supDorting the motion for the $17.000.000 referendum. Motion tied, two votes for (Aldermen Newman and Rainev). two votes 0000sed (Aldermen Feldman and Moran). Motion failed. Alderman Feldman said he wants something to happen. Alderman Newman asked the other members of the committee if they came to an agreement that a 517,000,000 or $18,000,000 figure is something that should be done based on looking at this, are people more comfortable trying to find $18,000.000 in the next six months and telling our Finance Department to try to find It, or they are more comfortable putting it on the ballot and asking the community for $18.000,000. The bottom line with him is he wants to try to make something happen in recreation, if its going to be a referendum then it has to be done, if people think we can do it without a referendum because we're a home rule unit, at some point then that would be the way to go, Alderman Rainey called upon hill Stafford, Director of Finance, to say a few words, at least for her benefit regarding the likelihood of finding $17,000,000 to deal with this. Mr. Stafford remarked were still back to the same issue, finding $17,000.000. We're In the middle of an operating budget and looking at a property tax increase of 9.36%. If another $17,000,000 was added on to that, debt service is about S1,700,000, you would be looking at a tax increase of 16.6%. Where will we find it, we'll find it through paying property taxes because we do not have any reserves. We do not have reserves to cover our operating budget it would have to be a discussion and a policy derision on the part of the Council as to whether they wanted to support the $17,000,000. It would have to be through property taxes or we have to took at a combination of other ideas, such a private financing as was previously suggested. He would like to have better news and say he could find it, but if he could find it we'd have been back here with it In terms of capital improvements and programs, it's just not out there to be found, it has to be raised. Alderman Feldman noted there was no language In place included in any referendum offered to the citizens of Evanston that we're asking them if they would approve the Council finding $17.000.000. The question is why should we ask Mr. Stafford to find it Alderman Rainey remarked the point is if the community feels this is a crying need, the community will be willing to pay for it She has grave concerns about imposing on this community a 16.6% increase in their taxes unless ,Page 15. they indicate to her that given the accomplishments that will be made with the additional tax they are willing to pay that Without hearing from the people from this community she is not willing to support that additional debt but she is willing to do it if the citizenry agrees to support it Communities all over the state of Illinois are doing that and she realizes we do not have to do that for our citizenry. She thought we were taking an extraordinarily democratic populist step in asking people. We've spent thousands of dollars serving this community. If they really mean what they say then they will be willing to pay for it and when you start raising in excess of S10,000.000 in one fell swoop, you need to ask people. It's a very simple position she has, it's not very complicated. Alderman Feldman would like to know who was the prevailing side on this issue of the defeat Alderman Newman's motion. Alderman Rainey said the motion was a be. Alderman Feldman then asked if anybody can ask for a reconsideration, to which Alderman Rainey responded you can introduce a new motion. Alderman Feldman asked if the new motion can include the same motion that was just defeated, to which Alderman Rainey said, yes. Mr. Stafford wanted to make it clear that in the numbers we were talking about when he said it would be a 7% increase. that is on the City's portion of the tax. To put it in the context of the original proposal of $35,000.000 would be a 3.2% increase on the total tax bill, $17,000,000 would be a 1.5% increase on the total tax bill. Alderman Feldman said the only wav he could aet this movinn forward Is to move that we recommend to the Council the passage of the submission of a $17.000.000 referendum to take place on Aoril 3rd. 2001. Alderman Rainey seconded the motion and called for any discussion of the motion. Alderman Feldman said he would prefer It the other way but wants to aet somethina done and he will suaport this. Alderman Drummer asked Alderman Feldman if he is saying a $17.000,000 referendum and indicating a S17,000,000 bond issue. Alderman Feldman said that is what he is doing. Alderman Drummer said with the debt service on the $17,000,000 over twenty years we will be paying 517,000,000 In interest He just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of that. He would never borrow any money under those terms. The point he is trying to make is he thinks there was some misunderstanding the other night about a proposal he made we are now talking about the $35.000.000, but some of the same principles will apply on the $17,000,000. What we have around the City is a lot of debt, and when you tell the citizens you're talking about a $17,000,000 referendum you need to tell them you're realty talking about a $35.000,000 referendum, because when all the bills are paid that is exactly what they'll be paying back He proposes there is a way to do this if you're going to extract the numbers we talked about before, $4,375,000 per year, if you were to use that number and apply it to the $17,000,000, all you're doing is extracting a little more from the citizens in the beginning, but in the long run they'll be paying a lot less money because they will not pay any interest Thus, the actual bill will only cost $17,000,000 rather than $35,000,000. His point is if you use the $4,375,000 a year, using that number alone, you couldn't build out the project as theoretically the project will be paid for before its built out. You extract $4,500,000 million dollars a year, in two years you have $9,000,000. that is a sufficient amount of money to start all the projects you'd like to do. With that scenario the project would be paid off in four years without any interest. We have so much debt at this point in time we're looking at this huge increase for the citizens, which may not sound that large but they have to pay increased water bills and increased heating bills, creating a huge burden on all our citizens, If you can safety say we have a financial scheme that will actually save you $17.000,000 you will get what you pay for, you won't get less than you're paying for because you're not getting anything for the interest you pay except the pleasure of borrowing and using somebody else's money. There is nothing complicated about this financial scheme, this Is a simple thing used in business when you can't go to the bank to borrow any money. You save the money to get what you're buying and you're much better off for it as the bank has actually done you a favor by not loaning you any money. The same thing can apply to City government, as they do not have to bond for everything. If we're go to any kind of scheme at this point in time we need to look for avenues that will save the maximum amount of money and use the pay as you go system, if possible. If more money is needed, to close a gap he would borrow a short-term amount of money and pay it off. If he asks anyone would they rather pay $17.000,000 or pay $34,000,000 we already know what the answer is. He would ask all the Aldermen on this committee to think about the Fleet Service Fund, where we're using the exact scheme. We're not going to bond for anymore Fleet were building up the money thereto pay as we go. The same thing could apply here, we should look at this concept down the road as we go forward instead of being so excited because we can sell some bonds and keep our AAA rating that's nothing to be happy about because we don't like the debt service we pay on it As we go forward in this project and in other projects we need to look to this scheme and see what we can do. All we're talking about is a matter of delaying something and it you extract the $4,375.000 a year you would not have to delay anything. If you're going to build Crown Center you certainly won't build it this year and he would venture to say you'll have difficulty getting it built next year because there are so many other issues that have to be considered in building the center. You have to deal with the neighborhood, get the design work done, deal with relocating programs, talk about loss of revenue from the programs, etc. There are a number of things that need to be done that will not get done this year. If you extract the money you will have the money in hand to pay for the project and this way it is much more tolerable to think about Again, he will say, to all the citizens when they read the referendum and it says $17,000.000 hold on to your wallet because it's going to cost a great deal more. That was his problem with the $35,000,000 scheme we were saying it is $35.000.000 but we weren't telling the truth, we were actually talking about S63,000,000, $35,000,000 plus the $28,000,000 in operating Page 16. fees tacked on the amount bonding for. You have to tell the truth and the referendum should really tell the truth. In that plan people should know that in the end they will act may be paying back S88,5W,000 on what we're calling a S35,000,000 referendum. The way he would put it to the citizens is to say, this a plan you can buy into because it's creative enough and will save you a lot of money over the old conventional way of doing business. He asked that there be some consideration given to that thought and he'll let the experts work out the numbers. In this stage of our life we have no money and the worse thing we do when we have no more money is accumulate mere debt. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Stafford if we were to do a referendum, for example, $4,500,000 a year recreation capital improvement fund, for four years, what would be the burden to the tax payer and how would we levy that. Mr. Stafford said we are a home rule unit and it's important to understand that we can ask for an amount of the tax levy to be increased which can be dedicated to capital improvements. By saying it's dedicated to capital improvements and/or if you want to include related operating, but if its related to capital improvements that provides you the most flexibility you could have because based on that as Alderman Drummer said, you could take $4,000,000 a year accumulated and do whatever you want to do with it or you could take S2,000,000 a year in cash and the other $2.000,000 borrow over four years and see how you could leverage that, or you could do a combina5on as long as you were true to the intent in terms of policy to the voters. He does not think the voters would have any problems if you have found ways to maximize how you spent that, which is the nice part about home rule as we have that flexibility. if you ask for an amount we're flexible in terms of how we can squeeze those dollars, or leverage those dollars, to get the most capital improvements we want done. Alderman Rainey asked if this was one of the scenarios Mr. Stafford was going to present tonight and if we were going to raise this kind of money would he recommend that_ Mr. Stafford thought Alderman Drummer raised an Important policy as there are two ways to fund capital improvements, one is through debt and the other is pay as you go. It's clear that you would save Interest with pay as you go but the other problem with that is you have to wait to accumulate those dollars and it takes a long time to do it Of the five scenarios put together, one does a little bit of both if you issue some debt and also do some pay as you go a combination of Alderman Drummers suggestions, which is a nice way to leverage dollars and also get some projects done early on. The drawbacks on some of the things in terms of a policy point of view and in terms of what Alderman Drummer proposes is you would have to wait two to three years to get those projects started. If that's a policy decision that's fine. You can do a combination thereof, as most policies are good capital Improvement long-range programs and have a combination of some debt and pay as you go. We did the extreme here of having the debt on one of the scenarios, did another on what Alderman Drummer proposed, and staff did yet another in a combination of both another Interesting proposal. There are a lot of different ways we can go on this. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Stafford how long we have to wait if we responded to a referendum. Mr. Stafford said that would depend on what you want to do. For example. if on the $17,000,000 you want to do a $10,000,000 renovation of Crown you have to wait two years to accumulate S10,000,000. However, if you wanted to handle some of the park and land improvements that were the smaller amounts, $2,000,000 or S4,000,000, that could be done right away as you got the money In the door. Alderman Feldman said Alderman Drummer's point was that a project takes a period of time to do. If we were to start after April 3'd to plan on the reconstruction of Robert Crown that seems to him to be at least a two- year project, when would we receive the first monies? Mr. Stafford said we receive the money based on the levy, which we can't levy until December, in March of 2002. Alderman Feldman asked if plans could be developed at community meetings, etc., could we start construction then or before. Mr. Stafford said we would not have the $9,000,000 by then, to which Alderman Feldman said as indicated we wcuid have S4,500,000 the first year and $4,500,000 the second year totaling $9,000,000 by the second year. Mr. Stafford said you would have that amount by the end of 2003 to which Alderman Feldman added by the end of 2003 you'd have that paid off if it came in on budget and if we're talking about planning that would only be a six-month difference. Alderman Feldman thought that sounded like a reasonable option. Mr. Gaynor thought what Mr. Stafford is talking about in combination with what Alderman Drummer has suggested is what we would recommend. The issue we are a bit hung up on is that in three and half to four years from now we would finish Crown but that does not do anything for the fields or the other facilities, then we have to wait another year and another year. He thinks what he heard was a desire from the groups that they met with, as well as members of the Human Services Committee, that they wanted to get something done sooner rather than later. The combination Mr. Stafford has alluded to, whether we bond a smaller amount, even though we're going to be paying which is what we currently do with our City Capital Improvements Plan, also collect and start putting money in the bank as Alderman Drummer suggested would give the best of both worlds. We probably could work some numbers out to the $17,000,000 or $18,000,000 as it relates to the various projects and show how that would work. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Stafford why we can't reduce the time to ten years as opposed to twenty years, to which Mr. Stafford said we could. Alderman Rainey said that would certainly reduce the interest cost which would be something to definitely consider if we did decide to do bonds, which Mr. Stafford absolutely agreed with. Alderman Drummer said that is the beauty about the plan, you do not need twenty years to pay it off and he would take issue with those who say otherwise. There's no such thing as the best of both worlds when you're borrowing money, you've got the best of one world the bank has the best of the other world. He still says it you bond for the S4.375,000 as Page 17. you originally planned to do based on the need for $17,000,0X there is no way you can do any construction at all in the year 2001. that would be totally impossible. You will receive the first $4,375,000 in the year 2002. You can begin to plan and do whatever you want to do because the next year you -will have another $4,375,000, you cannot build a building as fast as you will tolled the money. This is not that complicated, he's not saying you won't need to borrow money but you don't have to run out and borrow money if you need to borrow you have the authority to go borrow it If you see you can't meet a gap you just get a bridge loan and borrow only what you need, no more. The project could conceivably be paid off in five years and then move on to another project The scenario he proposed the other night, if you extracted $4.375.000 from the citizens each year for twenty years witrs accumulated interest, we'd be accumulating $96,000,000. That's the total cost of the S100,000,000 project with no interest Alderman Rainey remarked if the scheme we have to devise is a payback plan where the principal exceeds the interest In a period shortened, she would like to see those numbers. Alderman Newman had some questions regarding the basic chart of the Analysis of Proposed Recreation Referendum, December 12.2000. On the chart the S10,000 property tax bill increase says $319.00 a year, Alderman Newman asked if that generates the $4,000,000 Alderman Drummer is talking about Mr. Stafford responded, yes thats an annual levy. Alderman Newman said if as Alderman Drummer is saying to generate that $4.000.000 to approximately $16,000,000 or $17,000,000, on a $10,000 tax bill you would add $319.00 tax for four years as opposed to adding $160.00 for twenty years. If we had did the original $35,000,000 proposal on a S10,000 tax bill it would be S319.00 for twenty years. If we did the $35,000,000 using these numbers it would have $160.00 a year for twenty years. Looking at the choices we're making would we rather raise property taxes $170.00 a year for twenty years of $319.00 a year for four years on a $10,000 per year tax bill which is in addition to whatever else the school, the City and County is adding to the regular budget cycle. Alderman Newman asked if we think we're ready to do any referendum and get it lined up on the ballot to pass by April 3" this would have to be ready by January 29 ". Alderman Feldman said we could recommend to the Council a $17,000,000 referendum and offer a couple of options for financing, one being a bond issue and the other would be either Alderman Drummer's or a combination of his recommendation. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Drummer if he is prepared to put his pay as you go method for $17,000,000 on the ballot Alderman Drummer said the $35.000.000 that would cost $90.000,000 was unthinkable, this is more durable. he has no issues that Crown Center needs to be repaired. He believes if we can find the right scheme, he could safely say, it is something we really need to try to get done. As Alderman Rainey has said the real issue is the referendum question, if the citizens say yes than that's fine with him and all he needs to vote is to put it on the ballot. If he's satisfied we have a good package to offer the citizens, it makes sense and people will understand and say what they want to do, which is fine with him. Akiemian Newman said the Idea of telling the citizens that even at Alderman Drummers higher figure $319.00 to generate for four years we're going to do this special recreation tax to get all the fields in the community, parks all across the City fixed up, and a new Crown Center, and this is not a permanent increase. This would be something where we would be making a bold stroke to give a people a choice to improve their parks. He invited anybody on the Recreation Board would like to comment on what is being discussed to come up and give us their ideas. The Recreation Board President said he sees with regret that there is a great deal of resistance to the indoor arena but it seems to him that everything else they proposed on that fast phase which will run a little over $20,000,000 continues to be a very high priority and if we are going to go to the effort, and 4 will be a big effort, of going through the process of a referendum that will be a major effort that we're going to have to undertake, he thinks we should be a bit bolder and go for everything on the first priority list with the exception of that one very controversial item. Alderman Newman asked what that totals and was told $21,000,000, which would be $319.00 for five years. Alderman Rainey said in response to that there could be some issues of your priorities versus others because she does not see that as being the case in the community that she represents, which is the problem she had with the goldenrod sheet from the beginning. She is willing to say there is a need for the all the fields and cannot think of any other way to do them. She again read the deficiencies with Crown Center and with community support that should be rebuilt Mr. Seaman said we should not compare what we have and what Skokie has but we should ask ourselves what we do have that Skokie doesn't have and we have the lakefront. He recalls when he moved to this community from Winnetka and started teaching, over 30 years ago, at that time they were talking about a master plan and developing the lakefront marina with hotels and condo buildings off Calvary beach and cemetery. We have a resource, the lakefront, if property developed it could be another source of income whether it be recreationally or otherwise. For example, going with a fifteen year or a thirty mortgage if its a matter of dollars, he s a retired teacher on a fixed income and his tax bill will go up, Mr. Gaynor showed him the chart, it's $120.00 a year, $10.00 a month, 4 affects everyone and if the people want to get behind it and support it We should look at what we have not what other people have. Page 18. Alderman Newman said the way we to conclude this is to ask the staff to prepare options on the figures of 518,000,000 and S21,000,000, or whatever figures we choose, in a referendum. We will have those options and discuss them at the Council. Anne Cana. Recreation Board, does not want us to lose sight of the necessity for gym space, if there is one thing that we hear as a Recreation Board over and over and over is the lack of gym space and she worries with this diminished figure of $17,000.00D to $20,000.000 that we are avertooking new gyms. Our programs are stretched to the limit, we have basketball and other teams with sixteen and seventeen kids on them, practices that go until ten o'clock at night and we are really cramped. She just hopes we don't lose sight of that which a multiplex did address. Alderman Newman said he is not giving up on additional gym space, we're not limited in what we spend on parks by this referendum. The issue of whether or not we enhance Crown with even additional money outside this referendum is not done yet. We have to try to reach as much consensus as we can as to what we can agree on. It makes no sense to him to rebuild and not get at the gym space problem but in terms of trying to find six or seven members of the Council on what we can agree on he's trying to take as much of that list as he can to get that. That is not saying that the Recreation Board and members of the Council who still want to address the shortage of gym space, can't continue to try to figure out on how we're going to address it. Alderman Rainey said the committee will expect for their Council packet this coming week, a couple of scenarios of pay as you go and pay and bond for $17,000,000 and $21,000,000 from Mr. Stafford, Alderman Newman asked to clarify one option, if the entire S35,000,000 plan minus the mutb*x which would bring us to the $21,000,000, the $17,000,000 would be doing all the park renovations for $5,000,000, the Crown Center S9,900,000 and $3,000,000 in the fields and everything else. Alderman Rainey said another way of looking at this is we will set the figures, look at the financing plan and in the meantime look at the projects. Looking at the projects will be one way to scale back in one place and add on in another place that might not be on this list at this time, or something might be on the list that should be taken off, or something may be added. The main thing is by January 290' to come up with what the money is going to be used for without listing the parks, during the referendum period we would have to list the parks. There are a couple of things on the list in her wand that Alderman Rainey said she did not necessarily want to have happen and some things in herward that she would like to see happen that are desperately needed that are not on the list. She asked if we're including operating expenses in the $17.000,000. Alderman Feldman said there is not operating expenses included there are unanticipated costs. Mr. Terry wanted to clarify the expectation of staff because after Monday night assuming something may get approved, there will be the need for the precise ballot language to be in a resolution to be considered. At this point he can see six different possible ballot languages which we will have available for the Council. There would be ballot language for a special tax levy for $17,000,000, bond issue for $17.000,000, a combination for $17,000,000, then a special tax levy for $21.000.000, bond issue for $21,000,000, and a combination for S21,000,000. We will have available for you the six possible ballot languages to consider for Monday night. Alderman Rainey called for a vote of those In favor of recommending this anoroach to the Council. Recommendation oassed 3 aves -1 no, (Aldermen Feldman. Newman and Rainey voted yes, Alderman Moran voted no), Alderman Moran Jett the meeting at 10:55. VI. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP DECEMBER 2000 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman moved aonroval of the Townshfa December 2000 monthly bills, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously Gassed 13-0). VII. LAKEFRONT OVERNIGHT WALK FOR AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY'S RELAY FOR LIFE - JUNE 157 AND 2sn, 2001 Alderman Newman moved approval of the Lakefront Ovemitlht Walk for American Cancer SocleWs Relay for Life -.tune 1" and 2n°. 2001. seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion unanimously Gassed (3-01. VIII. COMMUNICATIONS A) Townshlp Proposed 2001-2001 Budget - Alderman Rainey asked if this item requires having a special meeting. Mr. Terry said the next Human Services Committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, February e, as of now that will be the primary item on that meeting's agenda. Page 19. B) Walter Armstrong and B & D Real Estate Management - Alderman Rainey wanted to make certain this gets sent to the Council. This will be looked at and commented on at the next Human Services Committee meeting as this is getting outrageous and out of control. This Is not the only one so far this winter we have had several others. Cj City Relocation Costs Related to Mismanaged Properties Dj Well Child Clinic at Reba Place Church - Everyone appreciates Reba Place taking in this clinic. E) HUD Continuum of Care Grant Awards - There were some nice comments regarding Claire McCarthy Petersen and Paul Singh, former Human Services intern. We do appreciate all their work and congratulate them.. OL ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjoumed at 11:00 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trots Department of Health and Hu Services Page 20. - MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, April 16, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 8:30 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Newman, and Rainey Alderman Moran Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Frank Kaminski, Bill Stafford, Doug Gaynor, Maureen Berry, Harvey Saver, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Bernstein, Supervisor Betty Payne, Sylvestor Hilliard, Pat Vance, Township Assessor Sharon Eckersal, Susan Cantor (Mental Health Board), Chief Chapin (Northwestern Police Department) Alderman Rainey The meeting was called to order by Alderman Rainey at 8:55 p.m. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JANUARY 16, 2001 The minutes of the January 16. 2001. meeting were unanimously avoroved 13-0). III. CONSIDERATION OF THE DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS AND OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS REPORT Complaint 01-01 initiated January 25, 2001 - Committee unanimously voted approval of acceptance of Chief Kaminski s disposition. Complaint 00-17, initiated October 16. 2000 - Committee unanimously voted approval of acceptance of Chief Kaminski s disposition. Complaint 00-18, initiated December 27. 2000 - Committee unanimously voted approval of acceptance of Chief Kaminski's disposition. Complaint MI6, initiated October 16. 2000 - Committee discussion ensued. Alderman Newman had some concern regarding the officer's response. He asked if that was the necessary response when somebody just tries to get by you. When somebody is put up against a wail everybody's temper seems to rise. Considering the number of people there were at the time he is concerned that it could have been handled a bit differently. Chief Kaminski responded he was there at the time this occurred. The incident took place after a dance. Unfortunately all the kids were in the back and a lot of fights started to break out As the police were coming in this individual did not want to listen to the officers trying to control the area and he felt the techniques used by this officer were appropriate. Chief Kaminski said he did not see this particular incident, but he did see other incidents that occurred and agreed with the techniques of the officers. Alderman Rainey asked what was the entire scene, there was much more going on than is related in the report. Chief Kaminski said they were trying to get the kids out of the area after this high school dance. A lot of kids were coming out into a small confined area as they were only allowed to exit at the take Street side. Thus they had this massive flow of people at Church street and a number of the groups were getting into confrontations. They were trying to get the kids out and spread them out but unfortunately some kids were coming into the area and were causing trouble. This particular individual had been told to leave the area but he came back and was somewhat belligerent at the officer's request that he leave the area. He did push into the officer. Alderman Rainey asked if on an evening such as that, behind the school, at that moment, how many Evanston police officers were there. Chief Kaminski responded they held over all the shifts, the three to eleven shift was there and the midnight shift was opened early_ Alderman Rainey wondered if the people in Page 1. our community had any idea of the intense man power dram an event such as this has and all the police officers that were required for the letting out of a high school event. That is something that does not make sense at this day and age. Alderman Newman could not tell from the report what was done. He said if the youth was slammed against the wall, it seems that in itself is provoking, especially when there .s such an enormous situation as this was. How should somebody be handled in this instance, what technique should the officer use in such a large group, and could the officer's technique might have promoted some of the response Alderman Rainey recalled Complaint 00-16. initiated October 16. 2000 - Committee unanimously voted approval of acceptance of Chief Kaminski s disposition. IV. ACCEPTANCE OF EVANSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT OFFICE OF PROFFESIONAL STANDARDS ANNUAL REPORT 2000 Alderman Feldman moved for avoroval of the report and the committee unanimously agreed. 3-0. Alderman Rainey asked if this report was received in the past? Chief Kaminski responded, every year, this Is the annual report Neither Alderman Rainey nor Alderman Feldman recalled every receiving the report in this particular form. The committee was in agreement that the report was very nicely presented. V. NORTHWESTERN POLICE AGREEMENT ANNUAL UPDATE Alderman Feldman moved to accept the annual agreement. Alderman Rainey was very impressed with the DUI arrests. She wanted to know if people are obeying the no bicycle riding on the sidewalks or are we just not catching them, as there is only one bicycle violation. She would, of course, rather see the DUI's being caught Chief Chapin said he believed that as the weather is now changing they will do more downtown with the bicycle riding. Alderman Newman noted he spoke to the professor whose wife was involved with the DUI aid is not sure they were satisfied with the response. He thinks we really need to work on doing a good job in those cases. He is not saying you did not do a good job, but iVs hard to tell what happened here as it is not a good situation when a person is dissatisfied and they live on a block where everybody knows what is going on. Chief Chapin responded this gentlemen was a professor and thought we should have allowed his wife to park the car and the police drive her home as opposed to the person being arrested, which was the real complaint Alderman Newman asked what about her walking home by herself. to which Chief Chapin responded she was offered a ride and chose not to accept it. There is a deeper question behind the scenes here and he does not think somebodys business should be put out in the street. The woman was offered a ride home and her husband initially thought we should have allowed her to park her car and we drive her home because we're all Northwestern people. In fact what we were doing was enforcing the law across the board no matter who was involved. There are some personal things that the professor probably did not tell you. Alderman Newman said he was sure that is the case but thinks it is very important on these arrests of citizens who don't really understand the agreement to show as much courtesy as possible. He thinks the Northwestern Police were doing what they were supposed to do but the story in the neighborhood now can be that late at night somebody walked home by herself, which is what he is concerned about Alderman Newman asked if the booting glitch has been cleared up? The report says there is a glitch in the computer program and the Northwestern police have not been able to assist the City in identifying the boot eligible vehicles. He would like to know how long the glitch has been going on. Chief Chapin said the Evanston Traffic Division has not yet cleared up the glitch for them to identify those cars that are boot eligible. As we patrol, if we spot one we can notify them and they can boot d they have to. Alderman Newman asked when it was found out about this glitch, to which Chief Chapin said it has been at least five months. Nobody has ever gotten back to them Alderman Rainey said somebody will get back to them tomorrow. Besides she does not think there is a glitch in our program as we are booting people all the time. Chief Chapin said there was a problem in their computer program and they could not give them an up to date list To date no one has gotten back to him yet to say the program has been fixed. Alderman Newman said it is important as those who are boot eligible are hiding their cars on campus or elsewhere in the neighborhood, otherwise writing those tickets is meaningless. He asked Chief Chapin to follow up on this by notifying the committee if an answer is not received where his officers can identify boat eligible cars. Alderman Rainey said Ms. Berry will notify the Traffic Department regarding this. Alderman Ralnev recalled acceptance of the Northwestern Police Aareement report. Report unanimousiv accepted. 3-0. Page 2. Alderman Newman reminded the committee they have to vote .o extend the Northwestern Police authority to which Alderman Rainey noted the committee did not have the Northwestern Police Agreement before them and without that information they could rot vote on that. Chief Kaminski said the ordinance says they are to come back to the Council annually for conbnuaticn of the agreement, therefore something could be done for the next Council meeting regarding the extension of this agreement. The committee was in agreement this should be done at the next Council meeting. Vt. RESOLUTION 21-R-01 AUTHORIZING AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF EVANSTON AND THE SKOKIE PARK DISTRICT Alderman Feldman moved for apvroval. Alderman Rainey noted this Resolution has to do with the construction and maintenance of soccer fields and the canine park. It also involves the use of numerous grants from various legislators and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. There is a 5250.000 commitment from the City of Evanston and the Skokie Park District. Alderman Feldman asked if this will finish that area to which Mr. Gaynor responded the funding will exceed what is necessary to complete the area. In working with both the Skokie as well as the Evanston AYSO we decided we are not placing three fields or two fields but are building an entire field that will be developed as an open athletic field. It will be laid out depending on the number of youngsters in age groups that use one size field or another. It can be made as two official size fields one year, and can go to six junior fields the following year depending on the soccer organizations' requests. The fields will be irrigated and there will be a drainage plan. Alderman Rainey asked if, when we say Evanston's taking on the responsibility of water and irrigation we mean we're just taking on the responsibdq of providing the water, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, that is correct. Alderman Rainey then said we are not taking on the responsibility of laying imgation pipes and everything else, is that all part of the project cost. Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, all construction and irrigation are in the project costs. All we're suggesting is we will be paying for the water. Alderman Feldman inquired whether the canine area is now being used. Mr. Gaynor said the area is a temporary area and is available to both Skokie and Evanston residents to use. The permanent location will be significantly south. This was just put there temporarily because from the meetings wth the soccer folks and canine advocates we went well beyond our budget. The entire project was put on hold and witft Skokie taking the lead we were able to acquire these grants and now that we have secured the grants can go forward with the project. Alderman Feldman asked d an agreement was signed with the canine advocates to maintain and operate their area. Mr. Gaynor said, no, that agreement would be made part of the Intergovernmental Agreement and will be between the Skokie Park District and the not -for -profit organization for which it was created. The reason for that is the land we are developing is owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and leased to the Skokie Park District. Alderman Feldman said he would be interested in the details of that agreement and would like to know what they commit to, what a maintenance schedule is like, etc. Mr. Gaynor said from what they had discussed the responsibility of this organization is to provide for the facility. They leill have a membership and a fee for both residents of Skokie as well as Evanston in order to fund the maintenance effort It will basically be to operate that organization and maintain that facility so that it meets all the health standards and will be a basic agreement. Alderman Rainey said she would like to know what leeway they have in charging feeslmernberships as she assumes people are gang to be charged to used. Mr. Gaynor said that has not yet been established. Alderman Rainey would also like to know about the insurance issue for the Dog Park, are we going to assume the cost wsth Skokie. Mr. Gaynor said no, the not -for -profit will be part of the agreement to hold the Park District and the City harmless and indemnify. The not -for -profit carry their own insurance. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a limit to the number of animals that use the area at a given time. Mr. Gaynor said that will be worked out by time operators. Alderman Newman thought a great job has been done in terms of raising money and cooperating with Skokie, but he is concerned about whether or not the fee for the Dog Park will be nominal. We have an interest that it be at a low fee, as we want people to use this Dog Park instead of our own parks. If there is a significant fee that goes for a non -far -profit that defeats that purpose. Also, how much of this $1,000,000 is left over and what are we doing with the remainder of the money. Mr. Gaynor said the $316,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is a matching grant and we are using the grant money received from the other elected officials to match the S316.000. The remaining S250,000 from the Skokie Park District and the City of Evanston will be used to Finish the project. We are now estimating spending over $800.000. Alderman Newman asked if the extra 5200,000 can go for water fountains, benches, washrooms, something to make the soccer fields more usable for the people. Mr. Gaynor said what Alderman Newman just mentioned is part of the 5800,000. Of the $200.000, $100.000 of this amount belongs to Skokie. If there is a balance left in any of our park projects it gets put back into the C.I.P. fund. None of the grant money is lost it is used first. Page 3. Alderman Rainey thought the Skokie Park Ctstrict is an entity effeccng body and asked who gets notices of different issues. t`-e G.1 Manager. If we appro%a m,s =night wrien is this gc3ra to ce track to the City Council? Mr. Gaynor said the: Skoke Pa:* District Board will consoer, it later this month. Drawings. Mans. and specs are currently on the way. Alderrmar. Rainey thought this is fabulcus Aide~ -gar: New-rsan asked d our Parks, a-ecreation, and Forestry total-judget is approximately St 1,000,000 and was told that rs =r-e-, He said he just roticed -at Ce Skek)e Park Distract annual a.,dget is 520,000,000 a year and they area smailier Ocy. There has been some disc-- s cn about what we're sper4mg cn parks and recreation and he's just pointing out that we're far from the big leagues ;r. ter,; s of what we're doing CorFared to us Skokie spends a lot of money on palls arc recreation. Of course they rave a got of revenues we do rat na.e Aldamun Rainev recalled the motion for recommendina the Intergovernmental Aareement to Council. Motion unambnousty accented. 3-0. Alderman Rainey complimented Mr. Gai^nor on a job well done. Vll. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP JANUARY, FEBRUARY, AND MARCH 2O01 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman moved aooroval of the Township January. Februarv. and March 2001 monthly bills. Not hearnim anv discussion. the motion was unanimousty sassed. 3-0. VllL CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED FY 2001-02 BUDGET FOR irVANSTON TOWNSHIP Aldemnarz Rainey noted the committee received memos from both Bill Sw.affcrd and Herb Hill. Mr. Stafford's memo was regarding reductions to the budget and Mr Hirs memo was regarding an ad6tion. Alderman Rainey asked Supervisor Betty Payne d she would like to make a .Presentation to the Committee regarding the Township's budget. Ms. Payne said the budget they submitted was balanced and shows a s-nall reserve. In regards to Mr. Stafford's memo redur: ticrts she thinks they may have been based upon an earlier proje+ation p-ior to the budget she prepared in January 20G1<. At nis time the projections are ou,dated In regards to the mer-io frcrn, the Legal Department, she just saw that when she came into this meeting tonight it appears there should be an additional line item for reserve legal fees. She discLssed this with the Assessor and does no* have a problem with L-its, bul it will reduce their anticipated reserve of S90,CI00 d%7wn to 580,000. If that is what they want us to do, that is what we *Q1 do. Assessor Sharon Eckersal, noted the reason for an increase in her budget is due to the reassessment this year. It is between S10,000 or $12,000 more due :o the printing, postage, part t i-ne help, and other supplies needed during that period of tine_ Aldemrran Rainey wanted to briefly discuss the projection of the caseload of 76 clients. Ms. Payne said the caseload is where -they thought they operated at this Pas; )ear and was projecting what ".-'ey would be able to do this year. Based on the snail reserves they have, an increase of approximately 8 or 10 dients would put them up to 86 clients. They have averaged less than that or approximately that in the last 2 to 3 years and we would still have a sufficient amount to cover that reed. Alderman Rainey said that was the +owest she has ever seen projected but it is the average. Ms. Payne said last year she budgeted for 90 clients and they were way under that nunber. They have been in the 80 client range for the past 2 to 3 years. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Payne d they are row using less space in L-ieir current office and whether they are going to reduce the arnount of space used Ms. Payne responded, according to —,teir lease they do not have that option. However, they db have, and are looking into the opt:vn of oossibty sub leasing that space to someone to get some additional funds. Alderman Rainey asked when the lease expires Ms. Payne said they I-a-ve seven years remaining on their lease. They have been gn their present location eight years Aldernrmn Rainey remarked that she looked for another budget line item for rent and could not find one. It appears to her that this b;LZget only shows $60,000 for rent and if the Township's rent is 56,177 per month the rent for the year should be $77,130, leaving a shortfall of $14.000 unless there is another line iteirn for rent Mr. Hilliard said there is another line item an page 13 for rent. Alderman Rainey noted there is nothing in that lime item, the figure is at zero. Ms. Payne thougtnt ttrat occurred due their breaking h ckrvn and charging it to dirlierer-: programs. Alderman Rainey said she understood Mat but what has been done iin this budget in those cases *here an employee was eliminated and the rent to support them is at zero left the budget 514,000 short for rent Alderman Rainey added, on page 14, Clerical Trainer, you did have 53,000 for rent last year, but this year in every case you've ci opped your rent Ms. Payne said the intent was Page 4. to put all of the rent in the overhead and not distribute it out between programs The $14,000 amount is what we were paying before distributing rt out to which Alderman Rainey said that makes rt easier for her to understand However, when you did that you also did that for utilities and phone leaving another big shortage in utilities and phone. his Payne noted they do not have them based on what they spent to which Alderman Rainey said because utilities and phone was not spread across the various programs you also have a short fall for those items in the budget. Ms. Payne said they put all of that in one lump sum. If they did not use all of the money that was in utirties for the prior year in the different programs, that in turn would offset if we did increase it. which is what they probably did Alderman Rainey thought the budget is about $10,000 short in the utility budget projection and short by about S2,000 in the phone projection Mr. Hilliard said he did not think so, to which Alderman Rainey said she hopes not and hopes she is wrong. Ms Payne said she could not sit here and review and correct the numbers at this instant She said they certainly can look at this If you give them the items you are questioning they will get notes on them and when you meet again maybe then the figures can be adjusted accordingly. Alderman Rainey noted Commonwealth Edison, gas, phone, and rent are the items which we would like to you to check the numbers that you have. Alderman Newman asked why the medical payments are reduced S25.050 and esbmated to be S127,200 for 2002 going down from S152,250 for 2001, (shown on the page 8 and also on page 2 of Mr. Stafford's memo ) Ms Payne said that is based on what we actually spent in the prior year. We spent S92,000 in the year 2000101 and because we had budgeted $152.000 we felt we could adjust it down. Alderman Newman asked how the $152,000 figure was arrived at. Ms. Payne said that was because the year before we went over budget on the medical and when we came to Human Services we had to explain why we were over budget It was because we did not budget enough the prior year. The medical bills were more expensive and we had more people. Alderman Newman asked the actual amount for the year prior, to which Ms. Payne said she did not have that figure with her tonight and would have to find out what was budgeted for in 199912000. Alderman Rainey noted that the $92.000 was only for 9 months and not a 12-month figure. If the figure was projected out and things go along as projected, she figured it would be $123,546. Alderman Newman said he was trying to get a sense of whether there were more clients in the year before. You say you had an actual figure of $150,000 the year before, is this possibly going to be a built in as a deficit if it goes back to the prior year. Ms. Payne said for the last three years their projection had been for 90 clients and they would obviously budget more if they were budgeting for more clients. This year they're budgeting for 76 clients and if you take the 9 months and divide by $92.000 you come up with S10,000+ and multiply that by 12 you get S123,000, we averaged it up to $127.000. Alderman Newman said the information he would like is the amount actually spent for the past three years and the number of clients the money was spent on for each of those years. He could then get an idea whether this S127,000 is a realistic number. Mr. Stafford referred to his memo of February 1 ", and noted that there is still an issue pertaining to the City being owed $200.000 from the Township with no provision in this budget for paying that back. He would suggest that we have some understanding on how that is going to take place. Alderman Feldman asked whether or not there was any discussion between the Supervisor's office and Mr. Stafford's office regarding the possibility of including some payment in their budget Mr. Stafford said there have been informal discussions relative to that and he would like to make sure the committee knew our estimate, at that time, of what we think has to be done in terms of a budget reduction to pay us off in two years. That number may have changed according to the Township's Fund Balance. Either way we need a cash flow projection from the Township as to how they would pay this back. We would not necessarily say that we couldn't change the estimate in what we're asking for, what we suggested is another $150,000 cut, which may not be necessary depending on how long they would take to pay it off and what their cash flow is. That was our estimate based on their prior audit and the projection they have in this audit. In terms of the City's point of view, we need to see some kind of a cash How projection and some proposed repayment of the $200,000 loan. The Council has authorized him, and the City was authorized to forgive. $250,000, but he has no authorization to forgive the other S200,000. Due diligence requires him to have a payment program of how that's going to get paid back. He would suggest, with the budget we need cash flow statements to accompany this in terms of what their proposal is to pay that loan back. Mr. Hilliard commented the memo dated July le, 2000 states the other S200,000 will be picked up by the Township within the next two years. We have to pay the $200,000 back by FY 2003. We have not stated any provisions in this budget for that as according to our ban agreement we have until 2003 to pay back the $200,000. Alderman Feldman said then Mr. Hill is suggesting that the majority of the payments will take place in the next two years, 2002 and 2003. How much provision is there in this budget, if any, for repayment? Ms. Payne said, as she stated at the Town Meeting, they certainly do plan to pay the loan back and she also indicated that she would share that with the Supervisor coming in because she anticipated that they would have some reserve. Therefore, after they have received the final tax disbursement she would reevaluate their reserve and at that time make a payment toward this loan. Now she can only anticipate what they will get from the final tax disbursement Provided all things remain as they projected they will have a certain dollar amount in their reserve and at that time be able to make payment toward this ban. She is assuming that the incoming Supervisor will be able to put that in writing to the Finance Director and they certainly do not have a problem with giving him a cash flow projection. Page 5. Alderman Newman noted last year the Township was subsidized for $450 000. which meant they were S450,000 in the hole in time way they were operating, to which Ms. Payne inter3ected S450.C40 was approved but they only used $200,000 of the CnYs funds. Mr. Stafford said that is because S250.000 was waved Alderman Newman asked haw much money went to the Township over the last fiscal year, to which Mr. Stafford resper>ded S450,000 Alderman Newman then said if they were $450,000 short last year and only cut expenses S202,000, what Aas going on last year. Mr. Stafford said one has to understand this was cash flow because they only get their properr! :axes twice a year and don't have the cash to be able to fund it over that period of time. Alderman Newman asked if the net amount we loaned to them last year was S450.000, what were we paid back out of that S450.000. Mr. Stafford responded, so far we have not been paid back anything. Alderman Newman then asked if there was a S450,000 deficit last year, to which Mr. Stafford responded, no, the deficit ran somewhere in the S200.000 range. Their deficit in the pnc,* year, from their audit. was $455,000. Their actual deficit in this current year is over $200,000, Mr. Stafford said when you run out of cash, which they did, this is the reason the number is $450.000. Alderman Newman said then they are us,ng some of our money for cash flow and what is occurring is out of that S450,000. about S200,000 is being used for the cash operations, to which Mr. Stafford said that is correct Alderman Rainey noted this should be clarified and asked if the Township accepts that they received $450,000. Alderman Feldman said he would like to see this begin in the most amicable manner possible, especially with a new Supervisor as Ms. Payne is making these kinds of assurances. As soon as the installation occurs and Ms. Vance is able to get her bearings in the Township he would like us to have, not only the cash flow statement, but assurances from the new Supervisor that there is some kind of plan and arrangement to pay me City back. Alderman Newman asked how many employees are now working at the Township, and was told five and a half, not including the Supervisor. Last year there were seven and a half. Alderman Rainey asked when the Township lease was signed and whet:-.er there has only been one lease. Ms. Payne said there was one lease and there was an extension. The lease was signed when they moved in, in 1993, for a five-year period. Then they did an extension to that lease for a ten year period simpry because the landlord has not increased their rent since they have been there. They have only had to pay the increase in real estate taxes and the insurance. Alderman Newman asked if the Human Services Committee ever saw the extension lease, to which Ms. Payne said no, the Committee saw the actual lease and never gave it back to her. alderman Newman wanted everybody on the Committee to be clear that the ten-year extension was never before this Committee. Alderman Rainey asked when all this occurred, to which Ms. Payne responded in September 1993. Before she signed the lease she it sent it to the Legal Department and asked them to review it and get back to her. Two weeks afterwards she called the Legal Department several times and no one got back to her. To this day she has not seen the lease she submitted, so she checked with another attorney and got some issues resolved and moved on. Alderman Rainey thought there is some major issue with an elected body signing onto a ten-year lease and she would like to see that lease. What if the citizens in this community next month decide to mount a referendum to abolish the Township and say it passes, then what happens? Is there any protection in that lease against something like that happening? She reaazes that's far out. but let's say it happens. As another far out example, let's say there are no more poor people in the Crty of Evanston. All sorts of bizarre scenarios could result in our running a ten year lease, which is why elected officials should not get involved in leases that long. Ms. Payne said if the elected official is operating in private property, then yes, you get involved in a lease. It's not like she did not give the City the opportunity to give them space. The entire scenanc here is she did not just run out and do this on her own without notifying the City. She went through all the proper steps Alderman Rainey did not think there was ever any notice of a ten-year extension, and did not want to get into any personal issues. At this time Alderman Rainey wanted to talk about this lease commitment and the annual housing costs involved, something she has tread on very carefully, but thinks we have to look at it very carefully and very frugally. The annual housing cost for the Township is S100,000 to the community at this location. That includes gas, electric, telephone, sanitation, etc., which she thinks is a lot of money, and excludes the Assessor's rent. Alderman Rainey questioned the $6,000 charge, under Administration - Account 9060, for general insurance Ms. Payne said that is insurance for the Trustees for any law suits against the Trustees and for the Township itself Alderman Rainey asked how many square feet of space the Township has at this location, and was told 5,000, at a cost of $14.01 per square foot This is the exact same amount Eric Anderson. former City Manager, quoted for the Lekotek space in the Civic Center, which was only 3,000 feet. When that space was not available they looked elsewhere. Alderman Rainey asked if the only raises in rent the Township had for real estate taxes and insurance were included in the $6,000 a month rent? Ms. Payne said it is. Alderman Rainey then asked how the rent increased over time just for taxes and insurance. Ms. Payne said their initial rent was a little less than S5,000 a month and has increased in the last seven years to what they now pay. Alderman Rainey asked if it is known whether their landlord has appealed his taxes, to which Ms. Payne said she had no idea. She said she did know that at one point he tried to get some kind of intervention because they are a governmental agency. Page 6. Alderman Newman asked what is left in the Town Fund, to which Ms Payne said she believed they ended their year with approximately $100,000 under ne suggested amount but she would have to get the cash flow projections on this. Alderman Newman was concerned if the Township runs low and this budget is not accurate will the Township have to use the cash the City has already k7aned. He asked if there is any other place for them to go other than the cash, to which Mr. Stafford answered, no, all Lney have is the cash already loaned them. Alderman Newman wondered if the caseload rises to 90 cases instead of 76 and they are $70,000 short what will happen Mr Stafford said they will have to use whatever cash they have. In the past the Township has had some tyke of safety net and now they do not Ms. Payne said in her opinion they are not rn a position to afford to do what they did in the past as in the past they had money. When they were put in a position where the money was no longer there they had to do with what they had. Even though they have to go into the money the Cry has given the Township, they also have to tell you how they're going to pay you back. Obviously their budget is not gong to balance which is why they cannot say they are going to pay S200,000 back this year because they cannot do that They have agreed to, and will be more than happy to, provide the Committee with what they anticipate they will have in their reserves and they will make a payment at that time Alderman Newman asked what are the reserves. Isn't that the money the City already loaned the Township, to which Ms. Payne Bald, yes it is. Alderman Newman then said the reserve isn't realty a reserve. It's the cash you need to operate and the reason we loaned you nat money last year. To him that is different than a reserve fund. Ms. Payne said they have not had a reserve in five years, since they depleted their reserve, and the fact they do not have one is not a problem that she created. Alderman Newman said he is not saying it is, nobody is btaming anybody, he is merely asking a question. Other than the cash, is there any reserve money at all in the Township? Mr. Stafford said the only thing that needs to be noted in their budget is theyre projecting at the end of this year theyU have a S90,000 surplus. To the extent that their expenditures go over their revenues they have $90,000 to work with, after that Alderman Newman is exactly right we're just talking about cash that's available and that's money they've been given as a loan. They would start cutting into that There is some cushion in this. Ms. Payne said it is not $90,000 but S80,000 as we're going to put another S10,000 in the Assessor's budget. Mr. Stafford added we also need to budget for some of the issues Alderman Rainey brought up relative to that. His only concern speaking on behalf of the Council is we need more than just an understanding that we'll get paid back some money because if there's not a specific agreement relative to what we'll get back and when, then we could go all the way to the end of 2001 and get nothing. If money does not have to be paid back to the City that's all the more that can be deficit spent without facing hard budget issues that may have to be faced. He's not saying those aren't being faced, but is saying without an agreement, until that $200,000 gets paid off it gets deferred and he is not sure that is what the Council wants to do Ms. Payne said she did not know about the incoming Supervisor but she would not want to defer paying the City back its money. If she were still Supervisor it would certainly be her goal and hopes the incoming Supervisor does not have a problem putting in writing a reasonable amount we felt we could pay back after you have reviewed the numbers and have adjusted them based on what Alderman Rainey has questioned and what the reserves would be. Alderman Rainey did not know if is the promise to pay by the Supervisor that gets this job done. She thinks we have to come up with a policy regarding the repayment of that money that the Supervisor and the Trustees are going to have to live up to. Ms. Payne thought they were just talking about writing an agreement regarding the payback. Alderman Rainey said that is something one does not have to live up to, as she did not think an agreement was as meaningful as a policy created by the Trustees and the Supervisor. Ms. Payne said the only way they can project anything is after the issues and questions you have in the budget are ironed out to determine a true reserve, and after an anticipation we can put in what we're going to get in the next tax disbursement, would we have a projection of the amount of money we would have at that time. We can then come up with a number of what we would pay back in this year. Alderman Newman referred to Mr. Stafford's February 1, 2001 memo and asked if the S56,000 is a result of only budgeting 76 cases? He was told it was. He also asked how the $22.000 reduction in payroll came about and was told that was a result of the elimination of employees that fell into the 2001 budget which started in April fm when those employees were gone. Alderman Newman asked about the $34,864 in G.A Overhead, to which Ms. Payne said she would have to go back to each lire item to see what they did. Alderman Rainey thought the $34,000 would be made up in the unaccounted money for rent and utilities. Alderman Newman asked about the $44,000 reduction in the Work Opportunity Program. Ms. Payne said that was a program they were funding that helped their drug abuse clients and was a Community Action Program agency where th:y sent their clients. They had given a certain amount of rent to the Work Opportunity Program that was taken out of the budget. Also, S12,000 taken out from the ARC program comes from taking the rent out of that program and eliminating the ARC program and utilities and equipment. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Stafford to explain the property replacement tax. Mr. Stafford said originally real estate taxes were both on real estate and specific personal property items related to that When the state changed the constitution and reformed that they said the amount on personal pmperty is so small that the state will pay for that based on a formula and it now comes out of the income tax. The City gets some of this tax and gives some to the general fund, some to the library, and some to both police and fire pension funds. It's all formula driven. The formula is based on population. He can't speak for the Township but knows the City personal property tax is based on the City and is a per capita amount Page 7. we get from the state. Alderman Rainey wandered why we know its going to be 45 not more. Mr. Stafford said he would check the formula on that Alderman Rainey announced the Township needs to come back with a budget with some of the corrections or comeback with at least an explanation. if what we've asked about doesn't need correction but just needs to be better explained to this Committee. She added they also need the cash flow projection, latest year to date figures, and a copy of the Township lease. Alderman Rainey thanked the Township for their attendance. 1X. REVIEW OF THE 2001 LOCATION OF THE FARMER'S MARKET Farmers Market Location: The committee unanimously annroved the Farmer's Market location of Parcel 7 at Oak Avenue and University Place In the Research Park in the Hill Development be recommended to CltV Council, 3-0. Ms. Aiello commented that they have been talking with the staff at the University and their staff would like a letter from the Council regarding approval of this parcel. Ms. Aiello also distributed an example of the stamps that will be used at the Farmer's Market for an additional hour of free parking. Alderman Rainey asked if Ms. Aiello thought there Is a need to do this, to which Ms. Aiello responded, yes, sometimes somebody spends more than an hour at the market and we don't want to rush them out Alderman Newman asked how this is going to work with the trucks. Ms. Aiello said last year there was 44.000 square feet of space for the farmers and this year we have a little more room approximately 50,000 square feet of space leaving enough room for the trucks right behind the stalls and no trucks in the parking area. In terms of parking how do we insure all the people go into the garage? If construction starts early in the summer that lot could be open and people will probably park there. If it appears they are not going to begin construction early we may have an agreement with them so that there is surface parking, as some people may not want to use the garage. We're going to have the market helpers again with the carts, hopefully from Jewel, that will help people take their produce back to their cars. Alderman Rainey said she truly believes people will figure it out, as people love the market Alderman Rainey complimented Ms. Aiello on doing an excellent job. Sale of Bread at Farmer's Market: Alderman Newman moved for approval of Ordinance 46-0-01 Amendina Chaoter 25 of Title 3 of the Evanston City Code Reaulatina the Farmers' Market to provide Evanston Bakeries with the nouortunity to sell bread at the Farmer's Market Motion seconded by Alderman Feldman and unanimously passed. 3-0. Ms. Aiello reported there were only four bakeries that can sell bread at the Farmer's Market, Sennison's Bakery (represented at this meeting), Judy's Bakery, Great Harvest, and Tag's. Alderman Feldman asked the representative from Bennison's Bakery if they have already started the process of baking bread and if they are now selling it. He was told they are doing it now but the response is slow as they do not have enough customer traffic for that kind of sales. Ms. Aiello said once they start at the Farmer's Market it will be different The process is called organic bread baking. X. CONSIDERATION OF FY 2000 EMERGENCY SHELTER GRANT FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS Alderman Rainey asked if anybody from staff wanted to talk about this, to which Mr. Saver said he was expecting both agencies Mr. Terry recommended for funding to be in attendance tonight, however, neither were there. in response to Alderman Rainey, Mr. Saver said both agencies are currently fulfilling their contracts. Alderman Newman moved for approval for both recommendations. motion unanimously Passed, 3-0. XI. MAY HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETING The committee was in agreement that the next meeting of the Human Service Committee be held on Monday, May 14'" and at Alderman Newman's request begin at 6:30 rather than 7:30. Page 8. Xll. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:35 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 9. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, May 16, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 6:30 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, .lean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey Kathleen Brennrrnan, Frank Kaminski, Sergeant Curt Kuempel, Bill Stafford, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Harvey Saver. Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Mayor Morton, Betty Payne, Supervisor Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard, Val Wideman, Township Assessor Sharon Eckersall, Susan Cantor and Lonnie Wiebe (Mental Health Board) - See Attached List of Additional Attendees Alderman Newman Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:20 p.m. and welcomed the committee's new member Alderman Lionel Jean -Baptiste of the 2n4 Ward. The committee looks forward to the next four years with Alderman Jean -Baptiste. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF APRIL 16, 2001 The minutes of the April 16. 2001. meetina were called and motioned for aoDroval by Alderman Feldman, Alderman Newman had some discussion in relation to the April 16. 2001 minutes. He referred to the portion of the minutes relating to the Farmer's Market involving the four bakeries that can sell bread. This ordinance will be voted on at the Wednesday City Council meeting. At the May 7, 2001, Council meeting this committee was accused of improperly changing the ordinance in an attempt to benefit one business in the community. There was a major production made regarding this at that Council meeting. Alderman Newman thought we were opening this up to as many Evanston bakeries as possible who can bake bread and thinks we reed to get that point back to the Council on Wednesday. He felt the remarks that were made were an unnecessary attack on this committee and needs to be publicly responded to. Alderman Rainey asked whether there were some accusations that the other bakers did not know about this. Alderman Feldman said the accusation was that the ordinance recommended by the Human Services Committee was designed to promote the interest in the business of one specific bakery. Alderman Rainey said all the bakery names were noted and that is obviously is not the rase, but was there any inference that the other bakeries didn't know or hadn't been invited. Alderman Newman said to his knowledge all the bakeries had been contacted by the staff and invited not only to participate in the Farmer's Market and they know that this ordinance is pending. The implication that was made at the last Council meeting is somebody on the Council wanted to benefit one particular business and in his view he wanted to make everybody aware of this as that that needs to be rebutted. The April 16, 2001 and October 2, 2000, Human Services Committee minutes. when the original idea regarding the baking of bread arose, will be included in the Wednesday packets. Alderman Newman recalled the April 16. 2001 minutes (or anarovai. Alderman Jean-BaWlste abstained from voting on approval of the minutes as he was not Dresent at the Andl 16. 2001 meeting. Not hearincr anv additions or corrections to the minutes the minutes were anaroved. t3-0. one abstention.`i Ill. DISCUSSION WITH CITIZEN REGARDING DISPOSITON OF COMPLAINT AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Newman called on Corporate Counsel to clarify whether this item should be heard in open discussion or Executive session. Ms. Brenniman said if the individual is going to name the officer and deal with that officer(s) actions you may then go into Executive session under the Open Meetings Act where there is appointment, employment. compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees and she recommends that be done if names are going to be used. Page 1. alderman Newman asked Mr. JohnsC.n, complainant, if he plans on raising the names of any of the officers to which Mr. Johnson responded he did not know +e name of any of the officer. Mr Johnson said there were almost six officers who came. When they told him he was urcer arrest he laid on the floor on his stomach, and he was constantly kicked. They pt..1 the cuffs on him and he was picket up by his wrists. on which he had bruises and started bleeding profusely. When l-e got to the station he asked the Servant d he could go to the doctor, Mr Johnson sad Intemal Affairs was investigating and wtien they came back with their ,�:-_cisicn it was unfounded, which he does not understand and just wants to know wciat can be done about the officers' a--tions Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Johnscr to again relate what occurred. Mr Johnson said when the police told him he was under arrest, he was in the hall and lad on the floor so there would be no problem He put his arms behind his back and a couple of the officers started kickirg nirn in his side and pulled him up by the handcuffs which is how he got the bruises, scars, and blood on his arms. The alfrcers said he was resisting arrest with the handcuffs on, he can't resist arrest. When he got to the police station he asked for a doctor because he was bleeding so bad. Alderman Rainey remarked the commrttee has the report and it is very clear that there are two sides to the story She asked Mr. Johnson if he has seen the report the committee has, to which Mr. Johnson said, yes, he got it from Internal Affairs. Mr. Johnson said he was arrested and brought back to court at 26" and Cal,fomia, where he did show the Judge how he was cut The Judge did not think anything was wrong with him to which Mr. Johnson said how could he be misting arrest when he got bruises err the other arm instead of him pulling away as the bruises would come down his armzm not up his arm but the charges against the officers were thrown out Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Johnson if he told the officers to take off their badges arrd he would kick their asses. Mr. Johnson said, no, he said if you want to kick me take off the cuffs and take off your germs and we can go from there, but he had cuffs on then. Why would they want to do that when he had cuffs on? Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Johnson if he was drunk, to which Mr. Johnson sand, no he was sitting at home looking at the basketball game drinking beer. Alderman Rainey asked if he questions that part of the report that says he was extremely intoxicated. Mr. Johnson said when the first officer arrived he answered the door, let "officer in and closed the door. Next officer came and stood by the door, he asked the officer to come in but he said no and just stood there so he tried to dose the door. The officer pushed the door in and told him to stand over against fire wall, which he did, but he was not under arrest then. Alderman Rainey said everybody from the paramedics, the police, the alleged victim, and the personnel at the hospital have a different story. Mr. Johnson said the story they got is because he was upset since he was sitting in the hospital bleeding with no one attending to him and two officers talking stupid to him. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked for clarification of the vale and history of this committee in addressing comptaints of police misconduct_ Ms. Brenniman, Corporate Counsel, responded the original resolution produced the Police Services Committee, which was the original committee that heard these complaints and charged the committee that their review of the complaint, once the police department had finished their investigation, states Specifically in the resolution that the rote of the committee is not to deal w-th discipline or anything of that nature. The committee can make suggestions or ask the Police Chief to review something he has already looked at but the ultimate decision is with the Police Department and the Police Chief. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the Internal Review is the process that goes on within the Police Department_ Ms. Brenniman said that is correct and she is sure if you want to know more about these Intemal Affairs investigations the Police Department can address that. Chief Kaminski said when the police file these complaints the complaint is taken into review by the Officers of Professional Standards who work directly for him. They take the complaint and then conduct a thorough investigation of any allegations of misconduct that is made against the members of the Police Department Once that investigation is put together it then goes to the supervisors for review and for recommendation based on the information that they have. After that it goes to various levels of the Police Department for additional reviews and then comes to his office for the final review and determination of the disposition of the complaint whether it is sustained or not sustained, founded, or a policy failure, all those dispositions are made. After that the complainant is notified personally who disposition is made and the complainant is advised if there is something that we fabled to see during our investigatrve process they can come to this committee and bear that grievance to you. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the complainant has a chance to appear before the Internal Review Committee, to which Chief Kaminski responded, no, he can come and be interviewed by Internal Affairs, his statements are taken and any witnesses are interviewed. Any information the complainant can provide to the Police Department is evaluated. Both sides of the st>ry are beard, from the officer's perspective as well as from other members, from the complainant and witnesses, then the investigation is put together. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there are any civilians on the Citizen Complaint Review Committee. Chief Kaminski responded, no, it is an internal process of the Police Department. Mr. Johnson said he tried to get the transcript of his case but the Public Defender told him d was senseless as it was being thrown back to the first court where he told the Judge what had happened and showed him the bruises, and he could not get the transcripts. Alderman Rainey asked what information would be in this transcript that would help us see something we are not seeing. Mr. Johnson said more than likely when you review an arrest for a domestic scene irs a bond of Page 2. $1,000.00 or more his bond was $500.00 and those are things for each of your consideration. His bond was not reduced it was $500.00 because that was his hearing. Alderman Feldman said at least two paramedics, not part of the Police Department, testified. He asked if there were any nurses quoted in this complaint. Sergeant Curt Kuempel said two teams of paramedics attended Mr. Johnson. The first team came to the scene where the arrest took place and the second team came to the Police Department and attended Mr. Johnson. Three of the paramedics were interviewed. Alderman Feldman said Witness Three indicated that even while his injuries were being attended at the hospital the client continued to be belligerent. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Johnson if there is anybody he knows that saw thss and could validate any of things he is saying. Mr. Johnson said, no, they told him he was being arrested and didn't take anybody along. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Johnson how many times he was kicked. Mr. Johnson said he did not knav, several times, but he does know more than one person kicked him because he could see feet coming at him on the floor. Alderman Rainey asked about the victim and the daughter who were in the house at the time this was happening. Mr. Johnson said his stepdaughter and the woman were present in the room he was in the hallway. Alderman Newman asked Chief Kaminski if during his process anybody found if Mr. Johnson got kicked. Chief Kaminski responded neither the officers nor the paramedics. Mr. Johnson said it should be in the hospital report because he told them about that and wanted them to look and see if he bruised, maybe they did not put that in the report. Alderman Feldman asked if during the medical examination any evidence of kicking was found, the report admits there were lacerations. Alderman Newman said he very much appreciated Mr. Johnson taking the time to come to the Human Services Committee meeting. The Chief of Police is given the authority to investigate and make determinations on complaints within the department and the basic role of this committee is to look at the complaints. We get every single complaint and look to see whether or not there are any patterns or whether or not we believe that the Chief is being responsive to the complainant. He is very glad Mr. Johnson took the time to present this evening because there is nobody on Council who wants anybody that is arrested to be mistreated by our department In this particular case you brought your side of the story to our attention which helps us in terns of knowing what to look for. Being able to look at all of the complaints in totality we try to get an idea of what is going on in the department but it is very difficult for us to be able to make any determination beyond what the Chief has done, especially when there are not any independent witnesses. Mr. Johnson asked how could you not make a determination if the handcuffs are hurting him. Their handcuffs cut you, d you have cuffs going up your arm that's not resisting that's just nonsense. Alderman Newman said we as a committee are not in a position to be able to do our own review we review the complaints of the totality to try to get an idea of what is going on In terms of the complaints being made in the community. The Chief knows that we do not want anybody in any way mistreated by the police during an arrest. He appreciates your taking the time to come and share this information with us. This is not an appellate process for us to make a determination whether or not the Chief acted correctly, how he viewed the complaint, and ultimately ruled. Mr. Johnson said the way it was ruled was unfounded, to which Alderman Newman said it says it was not sustained and you have all your other rights that the legal system would give you if you wanted to file lawsuits or seek out your own legal representation. Mr. Johnson wanted to know where to go from here to which Alderman Newman said he thought what he has done tonight is share his views on what happened giving us a different view than was given to us by the report that was submitted to us and thinks it is helpful in terms of our future review of the complaints. He thinks what Mr. Johnson would have to do is seek out his own legal counsel to see what his rights are in terms of addressing his allegations. Mr. Johnson asked if there is anything to show that he has come before this committee. Alderman Newman asked the staff to forward a copy of these minutes to Mr. Johnson. Alderman Newman moved to accept the complaint, to which Alderman Feldman said this is a very helpless position to be in, as we do not have an independent investigator or anything like that He would like to have some real justification for this provision in the ordinance, why we review the complaint and what that review means. With the reports we receive we know the numbers of citizens that file complaints with the police, what their disposition is, a sense of the reasoning that the Chief uses in terms of coming to his conclusion, and the number of independent witnesses that may or may not be there. It sounded to him like this provides a relief valve for a further extension of someone's rights The only way it would make much difference is if there would have been a preponderance of evidence that indicated there was some merit and there were other people that testified on his behalf indicating that the police were being excessive in their behavior towards Mr. Johnson, Alderman Newman said this complaint came with no other witnesses we have had other complaints with five or six people in the community viewing what happened. This complaint had its own facts and circumstances but not every complaint is like that. Alderman Rainey said discussions about the Police Review Board have been going on for about fifty years and she thinks that is an issue for the Rules Committee to discuss with the Police Department She has that very same concem about some cases, which means if we all feel that way the concept should be explored. If we did have that kind of option that would have presented any problems for her to support the Chiefs decision but this case was just open and shut. if we're going to discuss a Citizen Review Board we to need to go to another venue to do that, but not at this time. Page 3. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he could not come to any determination whether or not this gentleman had any real credibility or that the process had any credibility. He thinks our obligation is to make sure that whatever process we are asking people to follow should be one that people can respect. He has worked with the Chief before and respects him very much as the Chief works very dosely with the community and neighborhood organizations, which Alderman Jean - Baptiste is a part of. However, he thinks the process itself of being accused of doing some wrong and having the responsibility to investigate it yourself is hard to feel that that process is credible and we need to take a hard kook because today's scenario has just said to us that this was about hearing something and not having the authority to do anything about it not even having a process where we can say to Mr. Johnson that he has any real credence because he does not think Mr. Johnson respected the process. Most citizens that accuse the police of doing something wrong who have to go to the police to have a determination whether or not their complaint is legitimate will come away feeling that nothing happened and there was no sense to it. We have to create something that makes sense and has some credibility to the community. Alderman Newman said if we did not review the complaints here they would end at the Police Department and Alderman Jean-Baptiste's point that they would have no credibility whatsoever because then only the Police Department would be reviewing them is essentially what they do. The fact that they do come here alk7ws us to see what the patterns are. We did have a complaint a few months ago that wasn't totally investigated and we sent bade to the Chief to gather additional information and bring it back to take another look at what had happened. We could have done with this complaint if a member of the committee felt that this needed to be looked into further. The difficulty with the complaint before us tonight was the witnesses in opposition to the complainant were overwhelming and there weren't any independent witnesses which is not what happens in a lot of the complaints. Many of the complaints are out on the street and there may be neighbors watching who come forward with statements putting the complainant in a much better position to be able to look at whether or not the department has taken a look at the particular complaint He thinks irs a good thing the committee gets to review these complaints. Its not a perfect process as we're more revealing to look things in the totality as to what is going on. Let us take an example of having five complaints in the months of May and June, all of which were filed by citizens in the community who were being physically abused by the Police Department We would be seeing that pattern and the Department's response to them which would give us an opportunity to at least see about whether or not the issue is being property addressed by the Chief which means there is a value to this committee to see the complaints. However, this is not an appellate process nor are we the appellate review for the Chief even though some people feel that is what this committee does. Perhaps that is where the problem lies. Alderman Feldman remarked the difference here is that we saw and heard the complainant. We usually get it in typewritten form where the complainant states their case, the investigation is almost exactly like this. What might be an advantage is if Mr. Johnson came here tonight with new evidence or saying he could present additional witnesses, which did not occur. Alderman Newman added in every case brought before us the complainant, if helshe so chooses, can come before this committee and occasionally they do come before this committee. This is not a perfect process and we do not know what can be done about it at this time. Alderman Rainey informed Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he wished to refer this issue to a Standing Committee he could do that on the Council floor during the Call of the Wards. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed this should be forwarded to the Rules Committee to make a determination or any other entity that can address the process. We say that we observed, we heard, we listened, but he is not sure people feel satisfied with the process as it now stands. The bottom line is we need to again review this perhaps in the Rules Committee or in an at large debate on the Council Floor. He would suggest this be placed on the Rules Committee Agenda and from there determine where it should go to develop a more satisfactory process. Alderman Rainey said she was certain most Councils or Village Boards do not review the results of Internal Affairs of their Police Department in a public setting with an audience listening, such as is here at this time. We are probably far ahead of many of our peers. Alderman Newman said before this goes to the Rules Committee this committee should take a look at what our authority is and pefiaps at the next meeting we can cover that. Ms. Brenniman will provide this committee all the written information written and opinions on this process and Chief Kaminski will recap how many complainants have come before this committee in the past four years to give us an idea how often this is occurring and what we have been doing about this. This will give us the opportunity to look at this process together at the beginning of this new term to be considered on the agenda for the Human Services Committee next meeting. Alderman Feldman requested a list how this is handled in communities similar to Evanston, i.e. Chicago, Skokie. Oak Park, and Wilmette. Alderman Newman again thanked Mr. Johnson, Chief Kaminski and Sergeant Curt Kuempel. IV. CONSIDERATION OF SPECIAL EVENTS A) Evanston Baptist Church Concert - June 9, 2001 Alderman Rainey asked where this Church is located in the community as the address in the packet is a Post Office Box. Mark Coppenger, Pastor, responded they meet at the YWCA on Ridge every Sunday morning and have an office in Chicago at 722 Clark. Page 4. Alderman Newman noted the amount of events being added to the summertime schedule is becoming an issue in his Ward Mr. Gaynor said the City Manager has established a new committee of staff, a Special Events Committee that meets every two weeks. They met with lakefront residents who shared various concerns of the increase in the number of activities that have taken place in the past fe•ry years This substantial increase of activities not only impacts the residents but also impacts traffic and parking presenting concerns for a number of departments including both Police and Fire Departments because of the additional need for those services to be available during these events They are trying to sort out annual events and limit new events or move these events to other venues. The particular event under discussion witf take place at James Park during me day.rne where our concert series also take place in the evening. Their recommendation based on all of the acirvrbes coming in is we are tying to hold the line and provide a balance in the number of concerts and other activities going on. More informabon will be forthcoming on all the special events and how this committee is operating as it develops a line of costs in terms of the cost to the City and whether the City Council wants to absorb those costs or charge those sponsoring the events. Mr. Gaynor had another issue that will coming before this committee, that requests for the lakefront and other special events go before A & P W. There is an inconsistency as some events do come to the Council and some do not. They are tying to establish providing a consistency of knowledge of special events. Alderman Newman appreciated Mr. Gaynor's handling of this event especially since special events are being rotated. We have a lot of wonderful parks in the community and from what Mr. Gaynor is saying most of these events will go through his office for him to make suggestions on where the events should take place. Mr. Gaynor noted there is quite a variety of special events taking place in the community, i.e block parties, the Custer Street, the Downtown Chamber of Commerce Art Fair, etc., ail being requested along the lakefront. All requests are now funneled through the Public Works Department which is where the general files are maintained. We now have a committee representing the Police, Fire, Health, Parks and Recreation, Traffic, Legal Departments, etc. There are twelve or fourteen members of City staff meeting every two weeks to review and make sure all conditions are being met and the activities are appropriate. A number of applications are received requesting alcohol or a tent, all requiring specific permits for safety purposes. These are now being coordinated by this Special Events Committee that is trying to get more consistent and provide the City Council with a better picture of what our group has been demonstrating. Alderman Rainey said people are not used to this type of event at James Park, especially during the daytime, and wondered if a banner or something under that order can be put up to let people know that this will take place there. Mr. Gaynor said that would be up to the people having the event. Alderman Rainey asked if they will be allowed to do that and she would encourage notification be given in that way prior to the concert going to be held there as it is important to let people know something is happening in the area. Mr. Coppenger said last year they had a seventy -fire -voice choir, speakers, etc., and turned the program away from the residents toward the lake and he thinks this was a fine event He does not know if there were any complaints. They came back this year asking to do this again with a twenty -voice group. He applauds the function of the Special Events Committee and consistency and guideline and suggests his group sing acappella without amplifiers. They need clarity why this works one summer and not another summer. They also talked about an evening event in Mason Park. This group is coming from Nashville and they need to tell them if Centennial Park is okay or should they ask them to come some other year. Alderman Rainey said James Paris is not an isolated location, it is one of the City's largest parks and most beautiful parks with a bird sanctuary and where we're building our Levy Center. Those of us who live in the south of lawn take pride in that park. Alderman Newman agreed that millions of dollars is being invested in James Park and that park has already been significantly improved. What's happening is there is a cumulative effect on the lakefront and everybody wants to be there. There are numerous events scheduled to take place there and he appreciates that the staff is trying to redirect some of these events to other very nice parks of the City. Alderman Newman moved aooroval for the staff recommendation for the Evanston Baptist Churr,.h Concert to be held on June 9, 2001 at James Park, motion seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion unanimously anoroved VU Alderman Newman referred to the issue raised by Alderman Rainey and Mr. Gaynor regarding what notice surrounding residents *11 get of the events that will take place. Alderman Rainey said she did not think residents need to be notified in a personal manner but a banner indicating an event wilt take place should suffice. Alderman Newman said his issue regarding lakefront events is the neighborhood never knows when they will take place or what time the event will start and sometimes the staging near residents' homes becomes a bit problematic. B) Rotary International Picnic - August 24, 2001 Page 5. Alderman Newman asked if this picnic has loud speakers to which Mr. Gaynor responded their program takes place an a Friday and is over by 4:30 p.m. Mr. Domeocer added this event has taken place for a number of years, they have some Went and music, and utilize the beach area. Alderman Newman said he had some concern regarding the noise level and said they should forward that concern to them. Alderman Feldman moved for aooroval of the Rotary tntemational Picnic on Auoust 24. 2001 at Centennial Park. Motion unanimously aooroved f4-01. Alderman Newman asked if more special events considerabon will be coming before this committee. Mr Gaynor said a number of events that had previously come before this committee were directed to the A & P W Committee and the Council. The reason that occurred was during the last several months this committee did not meet and Council approval was needed. Alderman Newman asked if the memo with the schedule listing events and activities could be sent to the Southeast Evanston Association and would like to distribute this information to the parts of the 1" and 3"' Wards that will be affected this summer. Mr. Gaynor said Mat certainty can be done but there could be other requests coming in not included that will be added to the schedule. Aklerrrtan Newman thanked Mr. Gaynor and Mr. Domecker for their work on this schedule of events V. CONSIDERATION OF APRIL 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BiLLS Ms. Payne wished to say a few words before the consideration of the bills. Tonight this committee will be continuing a discussion on the Township budget. At the April 16 i meeting when the budget was looked at there were a number of issues that came up that she wanted to put closure to. The first thing she wanted to acknowledge to Alderman Rainey is her concern in regards to the utilities line item in the budget which certainty was a valid concern, and which she hopes the current Supervisor has answered those questions to the satisfaction of the committee. The second item was Alderman Newman had questioned the number of staff persons and she had quoted five full time people and one part- time person, and wanted to correct that number to six full time people and one part time person. The third issue discussed was in regards to the repayment of the loan to the City and while she had made the statement that she had intentions of repaying a portion of that loan back and had anticipated that the current Supervisor would follow her lead, she did not have this as a line item in the budget. From the dialogue at the last meeting it seemed that there was some concern because there was no written document that the City may never get their funds. She just wanted to say if she had not personally known that the Township had the ability to pay a portion of that loan back she would have never brought this subject up. She hopes that after you have reviewed the Township cash flow projection you can move into a comfort level knowing that the Township does have the ability to make some type of payment towards the loan. The fourth and final issue was Alderman Newman and Alderman Rainey had expressed concern about a lease and an extension agreement that she had signed and the length of time that it was signed for. Prior to signing the lease and extension agreement she obtained legal advice. After listening to your concerns at the last meeting she obtained legal advice again. The advise she got was that as Township Supervisor and the Chief Operating Officer for the General Assistance Program she had the authority to sign the extension agreement and any other type of agreement she felt was appropriate to operate that program. At the last meeting Alderman Newman expressed that he wanted it noted in the minutes that the extension agreement was not brought to the Trustees and tonight she also wants it noted in the minutes that she does not trust agreements to the Trustees and she broke no rules nor violated any statutes Her actions fell under her authorization as the Township Supervisor and she wanted the committee to know that She is no longer the Township Supervisor by choice, and does hope this committee can and will support the budget of the current Supervisor. Thank you. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Payne and called for any comments on the April 2001 Township Bifis, Alderman Rainey asked to be reminded of what TOIRMA is, and if that was an annual or monthly expenditure. She was informed that was an annual insurance expenditure. Alderman Rainey inquired regarding this month's large expenditures, for example Office Depot in the amount of $2,439. She was informed that was a total of four different checks for supplies. Alderman Rainey also questioned the expenditure of S3,400. for Advanced Business Network, and was informed it was an annual payment for the Township's computer consultant Also questioned was the $199. for Frykman Technologies, Inc. and was toll that was 4 a company that installs office equipment company for people with disabilities which was needed for an employee. Alderman Rainey noted the reason she is scrutinizing these bills more is because she is trying to use a month to project out the budget and is concerned about some of these charges that are annual charges. She had some concern about the ComEd charge of S1,124. and was told that occurred before the Township went on a budget payment That bill was rather high as they paid the actual charge and after that they went on a budget plan for both offices. Alderman Rainey did not question the NICOR expense for $728. as that that seemed about right for that month, but wanted to know if the $1,124. was an actual bill and was told it was a bill for the entire space. Alderman Feldman asked what the S50. for the Great Escape was and was told it was a restaurant One of their caseworker's is treasurer for the Township OfficLals of Cook County that meets months and collects the money from the Page 6. social workers around the area turns the money over to the Township office who in turn writes a cneck for that amount. That is not considered an expense and there is a special account for this. Alderman Rainey brought up the payment to Edwin Eckersall, the Township Assessor's son, in the amount of $450,00. Alderman Rainey said she has a serious problem with that kind of employment and spoke to Ms. Eckersail regarding this. as there are all sorts of temp agencies that we could have hired from One of the issues she has maintained all along, especially with the Township, is spending public money is not al+Hays convenient. It's not always easy, sometimes it's complicated and if we have to spend a few more dollars to hire a temp that is what we have to do as it is inappropriate to hire an immediate relative within the office. Alderman Rainey hoped this was a one-time occurrence and will not happen again. Ms. Eckersall said they were in a crunch with the permits they had, to which Alderman Rainey said she knows this is very complicated but thinks she made herself clear that 4 is not easy to spend the public's money, it is not easy to do the publics work and a call to a temp agency would have gotten an employee. Ms. Eckersall there is one other check for this is on page F12. Alderman Rainey said she hopes that is the last time, otherwise she will make a big issue of this and does not want to do that There beina no further questions Alderman Newman called for a motion on the Township bills list Alderman Feldman moved approval of the Townshin April 2001 Bills. motion seconded by Alderman Jean-Baatiste. Motion unanimously accepted f4-01. Vi. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED FY 2001-01 BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Newman welcomed Pat Vance, newly elected Township Supervisor, to the committee and looks forward to her attendance many more times over the next four years, He asked when this budget has to be approved and was told by June 30, 2001. For purposes of discussion Alderman Newman called for a motion to forward this budget to Council. Alderman Rainey moved to forward the or000sed FY 2001-01 Townshin Budget to the City Council. Motion seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Rainey appreciated the corrections made to the rents, utilities, etc. Having now read the lease and she sure she heard the attorney said it was fine to sign a lease until 2008 when your term ends in 2001, One of the issues presented in the lease is the rent, common area maintenance (CAM), and real estate expenses. The Township offices represent 31 % of the property, you pay 31 % of the real estate tax and 31 % of the common area maintenance charge. Site wonders if anybody in the Township has ever seen an accounting of the common area maintenance expenses actually spent by your landlord. She absolutely believes this number is a made up number for which he could never account. She does not believe that $12.000 or S13,000 is being spent to do landscaping, etc., on that property because you pay everything else, electric, gas, garbage, etc. She would like to see those figures and interestingly this lease does not require that the landlord produce that She asked if the Township has ever seen the actual tax bill for which you also pay 31 %. Alderman Rainey asked if the Township has ever been presented with legal bills for appealing your taxes. Prior to tonightfs meeting Alderman Rainey requested a copy of those taxes from the Assessors office and now has that tax statement before her. According to this statement you have been overcharged for each of the three years for which we have the tax bill, not by much, for example, S481 in 1991, $534 in 1997, and ST71 in 1998. She would definitely confront this landlord and insist on a refund she would also ask for a reconciliation of the common area maintenance expenses at least since this lease was renewed. The lease is very clear that you are paying $52,605 in annual rent and it is very specific that your common area maintenance expense is $5,175 and your real estate taxis $14,220. There needs to be some evidence to clarify you are paying 31 % of the actual cast. She also thinks you're paying much more than that in common area maintenance and this should be challenged. Ms. Vance said she is looking into the lease in terms of subletting of the space and will address those issues with the landlord, Alderman Rainey thought the actual bills need to be asked for also the utilities in the budget should be looked at, as she does not think they are enough Alderman Rainey asked about the water bill and was told they do not pay that She asked if the other tenants are paying for electricity and if everybody has individual heating units, if the heat is gas or electric, and whether each space has a unit and where the units are located. She was told they do not actually see where the heating unit device is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would assume from what the Township is saying is there is only one furnace and we should probably investigate to see whether or not this one furnace is taking care of everybody in the building and if the Township is being overcharged. Alderman Rainey did not know that they are paying for everybody as the gas bill is not that high but she thinks they might have electric heat. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that the next time the Township meets with this committee there be an overall report as to whether or not these bills are fair, on what basis, and whether or not they're using 31% of the common area. Alderman Newman wanted to give a little historical perspective, from his point of view, on the lease at Main Street. The idea of moving the Township from the Civic Center to Main Street was not unanimously supported by the Council. He supported it because at the time he felt that the Supervisor should have the right to operate the office and there were Page 7. problems with the space in the Civic Center. His concern is about the 1998 lease extension, and he is not questioning anybody's authority to enter into an extension. The role the Township Trustees play is an oversight role, definitely in reviewing the budget as we are elected by the communirty to play that role. When there is a lease extension for ten years that is going to obligate the taxpayers of the Township and the City of Evanston for ten more years at $50,000 a year or whoever has the authority to execute that The issue he is raising is whether or not that lease extension came before the committee to give this committee an idea of what was gang on and how long we were going to be obligated to be on Main Street. It is abundantly clear that the committee was never notified. This is a partnership, last year when the Township did not have enough money to operate and the Cfij was asked for money for the Township to operate, the City eventually put forward that money. We had a right to know trial me Main Street lease was being extended for ten years and this document should have been before us at a minimum as an elormational item a point Alderman Newman wanted to make clear. He was not questioning anybody's authoncj to execute that lease because he never really looked at it himself. As an oversight person he would have liked to know that there was going to be a ten year extension and he would have liked the committee to be able to look at the terms of the lease, at ►east to offer their views and share with the Supervisor their opinion on whether or not the extension for that length of time should have been entered into. Alderman Newman wanted this noted in the minutes as he feels very strongly that information, at that time, should have been shared with the committee, which it was not. Now, years later, we know and see what it's all about and there is nothing we can do about it Ms. Payne said as a citizen and not Township Supervisor she would also share with you and the current Township Supervisor issues that you spoke to. When you spoke to the fact of this partnership we had and when the Township needed money the City came to our defense, you absolutely did that. However, you failed to mention that the Town Trustees put us in that deficit we were in for their tack of action. If we're going to tell the story, we need to tell the whole story. Alderman Newman interjected that whatever story, you are now the former Supervisor and you have access to the new Supervisor, tell her the entire story, tell her your entire point of view. He is just sharing with her as the new Supervisor that if there are any major financial decisions obligating the City or Township of Evanston for ten years at the rate of $50,000 a year his suggestion would be that those items be shared at that time with the committee. This is just a suggestion and she can do anything she wants to do with it Ms. Payne said she also wanted to state that when she signed the original lease she shared it with the Town Trustees, she shared it with the City's Legal Department and nobody got back to her and said no, don't sign that tease. She was totally ignored so she went right back and signed the lease. When she got ready to sign the extension agreement she signed it because she did not have your support at that time and was sure she wasn't going to have it this time, so she signed it. Alderman Rainey said it's too bad that nobody read the lease because the lease that was signed in 1993 which is continuing in effect with the rider allows for this landlord, at his discretion, if you stay one day beyond the term of the lease to double the rent for one year. There are clauses in this lease she is sure are illegal as you cannot give up your rights just because you sign a lease. if we were to terminate the lease in the year 2008 but we accidentally stayed a couple of extra days he could double the rent. Those are the kinds of things you do not want to get into. The cost of the lease is minimally $72,000 a year plus all the utilities, as she figured the actual cost of this lease if $96,000 a year. That is a tremendous amount of money for the number of people there. We got ourselves into this and it's our fault. Alderman Newman said the committee was not aware of the extension and does not recall seeing the onginal lease, that was never before the committee either. If it were he would like to see something that shows that. Alderman Newman called upon Mr, Stafford to comment on whether a payment plan has been worked out with the Township. Mr. Stafford said in working with the Township Supervisor as requested we were provided with a cash flow statement The cash flow statement they put together suggests paying the City $25,000 a quarter which means the loan will be repaid to the City by September 2002. In principle if the committee is comfortable with that we're comfortable with that If that is the case we will put together a repayment document along with the budget to submit to the Council. The Township cash flow is solid and we think we will and can get paid back in that period of time. Supervisor Vance stated for the record the debt it is not $200.000 but $150.000 Alderman Newman remarked if the budget is based on an average of 80 people a month being on GA. what happens to the budget if we go up to 90 people. Supervisor Vance said if it goes up to 90 people there is flexibility even within their cash flow that they could carry the 90. Also, within the budget they are finding they are paying attention to the monthly amount for each person because everybody is not necessarily getting the cash payment or the rent payment allowing some flexibility and some buffer within the budget to account for that Alderman Rainey asked if that means some clients do not require the rent payment or do not require the personal payment and wanted to know how that works. Supervisor Vance said, for example if there is a client who may have a Section 8 certificate then Section 8 would be paying the rent part and there would not be a need for the Township to pay the rent part. Alderman Rainey asked if that person would be anybody other that somebody who is disabled, to which Page 8. Supervisor Vance answered, yes, there are some single people that carry those vouchers but when they started off with the Section 8 vouchers they may have children but now their children are grown and they still carry the Section 8 voucher. Alderman Feldman asked if that is the same kind of voucher for the same amount of money as if they had children. Supervisor Vance said the Housing Authority goes by income and amount of bedrooms approved for, which are taken into account. Alderman Rainey added. 30% of your income is grven for rent. Supervisor Vance said some people pay zero. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to comment in defense of the former Township Supervisor in terms of her overall record which has been one of reducing the role of dependents on the Township, a contribution to the Township that has been significant over the time of her tenure. The debate on the lease he is sure is not an overall kind of indictment in terms of what the overall record has been and he hopes in the next few years as real estate taxes and property values go up we will end up achieving some kind of saving. One of the positive aspects of this lease is for ten years at the same amount that it is now. He just wanted to say that he was looking at this situation from a different perspective. As we go forward he is certain the new Township Supervisor will take into consideration the needs of the Township from the standpoint of State money as much as possible and if we can sublet to somebody that would be very significant but may be difficult Alderman Newman wanted to make three points clear, number one, he totally agrees that the former Supervisor did a fabulous job in reducing the roles from the time she took office until the time she left Nobody here ever wanted to admit to the improper practices going on with the previous Supervisor and members of the Council thought the client roe could be significantty reduced and Betty Payne did that Number two, he totally agrees that the situation with the cut of the levy and also the tax cap situation the legislature passed had nothing to do with the management of the Township office by the Supervisor or anybody working for her. The Trustees share as much responsibility as anybody else for any shortages occurring. He was simply commenting on the long term obligation that was extending in 1998 without knowledge of any of the Trustees whose role is to oversee the affairs of the Township, we had no idea that it was happening. That was a judgement call that was made and people can differ on how it was handled at the time. He totally agrees that Betty Payne did a great job in reducing the roles and saved the Cit/ a tremendous amount of money and wanted that refieded in the minutes. As a public record, Supervisor Vance wanted to thank Ms. Payne because after her installation she spent the next two days at the Township office and Ms. Payne was right there with her to help her go though things. The staff has also been making this a smooth transition. After she gets her feet a Irttle wet looking into some issues one of the things she plans to do is ask the Trustees to come over and meet the staff and sit down so we talk together. Supervisor Vance wanted it noted that the Township will agree to this repayment agreement Alderman Newman noted it is the consensus that the City Staff should work on the agreement with the Township staff on the repayment as they indicated tonight Alderman Feldman inquired regarding Supervisor Vance's reference to her discussing with the owner of the property subletting some space on Main Street Supervisor Vance said this would be in regard to what their options are in terms of the space, if we can sublet or if its possible for us to release some of the space back and thereby reduce the amount of rental. There are various options they are trying to look into to try to compensate for some of the rentals. Alderman Feldman asked, merely speculatively, if they have considered subletting the entire space, and was told no. He asked what portion of the space is being discussed for sublet. Supervisor Vance said right now she's looking at the space that was formerly occupied by the Clerical Program, 400+ square feet of the east part of the office with its own entranceway. Assessor Eckersall wanted to comment on the Assessor's budget and that she sent cover memos for the committee informing them of the significant increase in the budget for this year was because of the reassessment Alderman Newman asked what the committee wanted to do regarding the Township budget and it was the committee's decision that the budget be held until the June 4"' Human Services Committee meeting. By that time Mr. Stafford will have worked on the repayment agreement for S150,000 with Supervisor Vance. Alderman Rainey suggested there not be any more Township budgets sent to the City and that the budgets in this month's packet be saved for future use. Alderman Newman thanked former Supervisor Payne, new Supervisor Vance, Mr. Hilliard, and Ms. Wideman for their attendance. VU. CONSIDERATION OF THE 2001 CONTINUUM OF CARE FOR THE HOMELESS Mr. Terry gave a history of the Continuum of Care for the Homeless, a document which the past six or seven years, which is a document that has been required by HUD. HUD annually makes a large amount of money available to communities in the country for homeless services through a process called the Super NQFA Each year any of the agencies who apply for the Super NQFA funds are required to attach to their funding application the Continuum of Care for the community that they wish to serve. HUD requests that each jurisdiction in the country eligible for their funding convene a community process of identifying the needs, the existing services, and the priority needs of a community. Also, the agencies within Page 9. that community that wish to apply for funding go before this community process to see that the goals and objectives they identified are in keeping with the prionties of the Task Force identified in the community. Each year we have been very successful obtaining funding Three agencies in the community applied for and received funding, Housing Options, Conneeaons for the Homeless, and last year for the first time Interfaith Housing got funding and this year are again applying for funding. What is very different about this year is the funding that Congress creates for this annual funding process has a congressional requirement of 30% going for permanent housing. Last year HUD could not make that objective and by their own admission did not fund some high quality supportive service programs throughout the country because they had to make this permanent housing quota and did not quite make it. This year in an effort to avoid that situation they made a $500,000 bonus available to every community if you, a) have a permanent housing project, and b) the community priority setting process identifies that as being your top priority. Given that funding availability Evanston's prorated share without the permanent housing is about S650.000 and with the S500.000 the amount of funding available to Evanston is S1.100,000. The usual agencies in the community considered what they could do with that amount of funding and came back with proposals which are attached to the Continuum of Care document included in the May 2001 Human Services Committee packet. These are proposals which the agencies can submit directly to HUD as the City does not have an approval process except the Housing Commission has to certify them as being consistent with the Consolidated Plan. However, the City Council does have the responsibility of considering the Continuum of Care document to see that this is an appropriate plan for the homeless that is the official homeless services policy for the City. Alderman Feldman asked if these are recommendations from staff or just agency proposals. Mr. Terry said there are members of City staff that serve on the Homeless Task Force from loth the Community Development Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. It is a process whereby once the dollar amount becomes known obviously time amount of the proposal is very similar to the amount of dollars that have been made available by HUD. Alderman Feldman wanted to know if staff had anything to do with the dollar amount to which Mr. Terry said that is a collaborative process that the agencies worked out among themselves. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the information the committee received is just for the committee's information. if there is not any real action needed does the committee just ratify something that is already in motion without the City Council making a determination. Mr. Terry said the Continuum of Care document does require the City Council's approval. The individual funding applications specifically do not, the agencies have every right to send their application directly to HUD. There is a relationship between the two documents because the Continuum of Care involves a priority setting process and the funding applications which have been submitted reflect that kind of priority setting process. There is no question that the availability of the $500,000 is not the only for applications but also the priorities as identified in the Continuum of Care. Alderman Newman referred to page 9 of the Continuum of Care document statement, "Maintenance of effective housing and service component of the Continuum of Care system to meet existing needs; expansion of the number of safe, decent affordable units; creation of emergency shelter, transitional supportive housing and permanent supportive housing for homeless families, an increase in the amount of funds available for emergency financial assistance to prevent First time hometessness.' He asked if these are being stated as the goals of the City by not being this Continuum, which Mr. Terry said was correct Alderman Newman thought there needs to be some discussion because he is not sure that the Council has any plans to increase the amount of funds available at this time, for example for emergency financial assistance. This document also says the expansion of safe, decent affordable units and we have had repeated discussions on what is an affordable unit Alderman Rainey remarked that on Friday, May 4e' she worked at least six hours on a case, and again today she worked non stop on the phone from 11:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., she wanted to know what all this money is going to do to help this person, with seven children and the Sheriff coming on Wednesday morning to evict her because Reverend Armstrong owns her unit at 1530 something on McDaniel. Foreclosure took place and now a family has purchased the unit and this person has been looking for an apartment for herself and her seven children for at least a month. Alderman Rainey gave her definition of affordable housing, S1,600 a month for the three -bedroom apartment on Hinman she found which she and has a certificate that will cover. This woman makes $35,000 a year working for a bank, a hard working woman, two children in high school, both on the honor roil, and five others, one of which will graduate from Haven next week. This apartment was in a great neighborhood, but today she was rejected for that apartment because she did not meet the numbers of Berry Realty. Ali day today was spent on getting thsm to change their mind. The City is going to give $750., maybe because she is one of Reverend Armstrong's victims and that is what we have been doing for all his victims. Alderman Rainey called the high school and pleaded with them because the two kids in high school are such great kids. The high school agreed today to give $325. towards the interim housing fund. This woman has put all her furniture in storage and paid for their inning in the current place that she is being evicted from. What could all these hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds do for this lady, what can anybody in this audience do for this lady? She lived In her last apartment before this one ten years, this is a stable, hard working woman. Page 10. Claire McCarthy Peterson said there is not much they can do for her for a couple of reasons, part of which relates to why we can't support her. HUD money won't touch this lady because she is not homeless yet, maybe after Wednesday when she will be homeless something could be done. The HUD money that is available through the Super NOFA can be used for a very limited number of things which is why we keep ge=ng the same agencies coming back. A lot of agencies doing very good work, preventive work, can't qualify for that money. Ylhen we went through our process of trying to develop priorities we had focus groups trying to talk with different segments of the Evanston community. One of the things we kept coming back to were the problems of at risk families, exacta the kind of situation you are talking about. There are a lot of people in Evanston who are living on the edge and it tequentty lust takes one crisis to throw someone over. That is why we put in an expansion of the availability of emergency finanaal assistance, which by the way we did not mean that the City had to come up with that money. We have been ta'k,ng wsth members of the State's community who are tying to devise methods of resources so that those funds can be increased from different sources. We don't have all the solutions, but we do know that there are a lot of people out there, mostry families who are nght on the edge, and we know that emergency financial assistance can make a difference and can bde people over. We know that a lot of those families, not the family Alderman Rainey is referring to, also have a family member who is either mentally ill or has a substance abuse problem and if we can gel services to those people before they become homeless that will help things. Alderman Rainey said she has maintained for years that this town helps everybody else but the hard working poor. The healthy, hard working poor are just out of luck in Evanston except when people like her and Mr. Terry and Mr. Wolinski come along and try to make things okay for them. We are having this issue arise over and over and over as this town starts to crackdown on these slum landlords, which we have plenty of. We are going to continue to dose these landlords down. Then the City needs to try and resolve its problem witn, for example licensing landlords, which would really nip this problem in the bud because of the way it would be administered. She does not see any of your agencies coming to help out those who aren't mentally ill when we have those fights. We're always giving to your agencies and the money keeps flowing from the Federal government and others. There is a whole population in this community who pays on time and yet are trapped in a system where they have to take less than quality housing, they pay market rent or above. Some of them are working two jobs, many of them have a lot of kids, and they live a borderline existence. if they're luck maybe they'll get mentally ill and then they can get some help. If she were living in that situation she is sure she would develop some severe emotional problems. She would greatty appreciate knowing if anyone here has any idea how we can help this lady before Wednesday. Will Sunblad, Connections for the Homeless, agreed with what Alderman Rainey and said the problem is they deal on a daily basis with problem cases that they can't help. We have funds to help with prevention but when they don't have a place to go they can't make that materialize, there isn't enough affordable housing. Alderman Rainey said this lady does not have that problem she has a Section 8 certificate that will pay S1,600. a month for an apartment and was refused because she has seven kids. Mr. Sunblad said they do have some funding available to try to help people but they don't have apartments available or landlords willing to help them. their hands are also tied. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if the Continuum of Care is passed, these agencies applying for S499,750, $250,680, $351. 000, and $53,251 funding, does HUD decide whether each of those projects will get those monies. Are we just approving this goal statement and do they independently decide whether or not they get the money. Mr. Terry said that was correct. Alderman Feldman wanted to know whether or not the three flat budding is owned by the Interfaith Housing Development Corporation. Richard Koenig, Interfaith Housing Development. said they do not, if they get funded by HUD they will start the process of looking for a property. HUD usually notifies them of the money around Christmas time, they don't own it now or have any intentions of buying or putting any options on any sort of property. Once HUD identifies them at Christmas time, they go through the process of funding with them maybe this time next year they'll start to identify that piece of property. Alderman Feldman said they must have examined the market to determine they could purchase, remodel, and famish a three flat for that money. Mr Koenig said they did take into account what three flats could cost and have an estimate of what a rehab would be. They can balance out those numbers to maybe spend less than the rehab for the acquisition. They can also obtain other sources of funds and know that they will have to go to, for example the Illinois Housing Development Authority to ask for funding to make the project come together. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Koenig when they did the building at Brummel and Elmwood they had as tenants people from the community some who already lived there, were there clients from Housing Options in that building? Mr. Koenig said no they did not have those clients in his building as nobody has moved out since they took over the property. Alderman Rainey asked about the building on Callan. Mr. Koenig said they bought a four flat there with some private funding and they did at one time rent out one of the units in that building to Housing Options but they no longer have a lease with them and all four units in that building are rented. Alderman Newman called for a motion to send the Continuum of Care to Council for aooroval where any, additional questions can still be raised. Motion unanimousfv aooroved {4-01. Page 11. VIII. REPORT ON POSSIBLE CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH PREVENTION GRANT Mr. Terry said this is a City of Evanston agreement and the information Ls in a memorandum included in the packet. The only update is the Mental Health Board did consider the idea at their May Board meeting and voted to approve the idea and endorse the concept Tomorrow he is expecting to receive the first detailed overview of what Metropolitan Family Services is planning to do with funding. We know they are talking about a program for training teachers and parents in terms of behavior issues to deal with that both in the preschool and the early grades Mr. Terry is also part of a group meeting on Wednesday morning. with Superintendent Murphy. Alderman Newman said the consensus of the committee is to help Metropolitan Family Services get the grant. iX. ITEMS FOR THE JUNE 4' HUMAN SERVICES COMMTTEE AGENDA Mr. Terry noted the June agenda will include, a) a review of the complaint review process of the Police Department b) the Township budget C) the Library Board to talk about what they're doing with the branch discussion and whatever budget concerns they have Mr. Terry brought up another item for consideration on the June Human Services Committee agenda. He asked the committee if they recall last fall when the funding of the Childcare Network of Evanston was approved last fall there was a stipulation that those dollars should be used for care and if there was any change they were to come back to the committee. There has been a tremendous amount of change going on at Childcare Network, they will no longer be in the business of processing Trtiee XX contracts. The entire way the State funds childcare has shifted to a voucher or certificate program thus the need for community, match which the City has always provided, has been diminished if not eliminated. Childcare Network has been engaged in a process of reexamining their mission determining what it is they should be doing. He believes they will be coming forward with a request for other uses of the dollars and therefore thinks they will request to be on the agenda. The City matched the Childcare Centers funds and that State contract As of June 307' he has no authorization to give them any money past June 3041. Childcare Network is now in a phase out, the contracts and we are monitoring them as close as we can to make sure we're just paying for the care that is extended. His representation to them as they come forward is that is still the City's priority and if they have new uses for those dollars there should be a relationship to children as opposed to administrative costs. He would guess they're going to be coming to the City for dollars for the income level for State subsidized care maximum level income which is now so low that there is this entire group of working poor who do not qualify for the State subsidy and yet can't afford full fee child care. They're going to be looking at establishing a better scholarship program for that next group that is above State subsidy to use the City dollars for. Alderman Newman said we have the option of looking at what we want to use the S150,000 for. Alderman Rainey added we also have the option of looking at administering that money as opposed to paying somebody else to administer that money. IX. ADJOURNMENT Alderman Newman adjourned the meeting at 9:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, d A Audrey Tro , Department alth and Human Services Page 12. SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Name: Civic Center -Room 2402 Monday - May 14, 2001 6:30 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: u4me A l�1'/�J tiia�� ff / TtL,v df �pn.f'f�'LJ JJ j✓ / � ✓,)«I� NV Austi 4v v S r r-2 tjl n- rr, ,`r fc r <q �1r�rvt r sdr ,�c.11Crrq HoUv � r. Op'T/ONS DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, June 4, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman, and Rainey STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Maureen Berry, Harvey Saver, Nancy Flowers, Neal Ney, Paul Gottschak, Aleksandr Granchalek. Jay Tent', Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Wynne, Alderman Bernstein, Supervisor Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard, Pat Vance, Township Assessor Sharon Eckersall, Susan Cantor and Lonnie Wlebe (Mental Health Board), Emma Harmon (Commission on Aging) - See Attached Attendance Sheet PRESIDING: Alderman Newman CALL TO ORDER Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m. and announced the first item on tonight's agenda, after approval of the minutes, would be the discussion with the Library Board. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF May 14, 2001 The minutes of the January 16. 2001, meeting were unanimously aooraved. f4-01. Ill. DISCUSSION WITH THE LIBRARY BOARD RE: BRANCH LIBRARIES Alderman Newman announced there would be a brief question and answer period with members of the Library Board after which comments can be made regarding the issues being discussed. His initial question to Mr. Sagan, President of the Library Board, concerned where are we on library services in Evanston as he was under the impression that after the main building was built the next hurdle for the community was the issue of the quality of the materials in the main building. Taking the viewpoint on how our scarce resources should be invested he asked if the best thing the City Council could be doing now is expanding spending on physical facilities or the actual materials. Mr. Sagan responded, over the last five years a lot of time has been spent trying to not only have the beautiful downtown library but also trying to improve the materials and improve the collection. Our Fund for Excellence, which is an entire volunteer effort, through a book fair, raises approximately $60,000 a year to help fund their collection. They know that having the buildings themselves without having the books and the materials to go in them is not enough. They have also appeared before the 3" Ward at the gracious invitation of Alderman Wynne. What they need to try to do is to be able to reach everybody in this community and tonight are here for a dialogue to discuss how best to do that. They are not here to ask you to approve this as they do not know if there is enough money to do this, but are here to start the dialogue about where is the best place to put library resources in a scarce time, which way should they explore this proposal that has been presented to them about moving to the Dempster and Dodge Shopping Center. When they appeared before this committee over a year ago, they said as opportunities arose they would come back and talk and are happy to be here tonight. Alderman Newman asked where does the Library Board see us in terms of quality of collection. At one point we had a major art collection. Where are we at in terms of the collection and what is the amount of resources needed to be spent in order to get to a absolutely first tier library, if that is where we want to go. Mr. Sagan said he did not think we are exactly where we would like to be in terms of improving the collection. He did not have the numbers about what they'd spend on a per capita basis for the collection, but knows, at least from past years, it has been roughly half of what some neighboring communities spend. That is not a problem they could do much about as they simply do not have the money and know the City does not have the money to help them improve the collection which is why they spend a lot of time and effort, and all these good people from the 3r4 Ward and others in attendance come and use the library, contribute to the Page 1. book sale, buy gooks, contribute to the Fund for Excellence on an annual basis, is sure would help them improve their collection as certainty improving the collection is a priority for the library, Alderman Feldman asked whether the Library Board in any way sees budding a new branch interfering with that, do you see two tracks hIr Sagan said they like to believe that two tracks are possible. they know it would cost money, also in their strategic plan the library is committed to a decade of outreach They know they have to reach everybody in Evanston and one way they think that could be done is by moving tie South Branch to a better location. There have been discussions about this in the past and have very carefully and very seriously explored Judy's Bakery, but it turned out the building was not appropriate. There are not a lot of buildings that make sense from the things they need to afford a branch and know it is going to be difficult as there is not a lot of money The numbers show it is going to require some money and is wiry they would like to have a dialogue to see whether its worth exploring and whether the community thinks its worth exploring Alderman Feldman gathered by Mr. Sagan's response that the Board hasn't come to the conclusion that it would take the resources devoted to branch libraries and put it into the collection. The Board committed to a branch library not only on Central Street but some other location in Evanston. Mr. Sagan said when they did their recently completed strategic plan they committed to branch libraries in Evanston. Branch libraries are one of the things that make Evanston special. In a perfect world they would like to have three or four branch libranes but they know there isn't money for that and they are not here to suggest that What can they do to reach everybody in Evanston to make the library experience something for everybody, they know that takes money. time and effort. Alderman Feldman recalled the last time the Library Board came before this committee this same issue came up. At that time Judy's Bakery was being considered, and he thought it remarkable that wrthout much fanfare, community meetings, or outreach you chose a place to at least inibalty explore three or four blocks away from the initial location, He felt if in fact we were going to have a second branch and you were going to get out of the present location on Chicago Avenue, then the question should be where is the best location for the new branch as that question has not been asked for a long time. Now when the move comes about it would seem logical to him that the library does ask that question. He remembers asking you to determine the place of the new library on the basis of where you think it best serves the community, not just where it has traditionally been, although he knows it has a very strong constituency and placing it in a new place you are not certain as to the constituency. Alderman Feldman remarked that after reading Mr. Sagan's memo he understands the reasoning for this but is wondering whether or not the Library Board has gone into this neighborhood on the Southwest and West sections of Evanston and made any kind of study to determine the possible usage and what the need might be. Mr. Sagan said this is in a very preliminary stage and they have not done studies because they committed to this committee and to the people of Evanston and to the V Ward, before they did anything they would come and talk to people and continue this dialogue. They were trying to get a sense from the community as they do not have a lot money to do fancy studies but know that Evanston Plaza is being revitalized largely because of the Dominick's. They know the developer would like to have the library there but they have not had any serious negotiations with the developer. Their estimates of costs are what they were told by the developer without the benefit of sitting down and playing hard ball with him. They do know it is over a mile from the main library and there is a significant concentration of residents that go by there every day, it's relatively r close to the high school which some people might think is a minus as opposed to a plus. Also, it would serve a portion of our population that we're trying to reach through our outreach. Specifically, in answer to the question we have not done studies to know whether this is the right place. If the Human Services Committee was interested and thought this is something we should pursue we would intend to do things like that and have community meetings to see whether there was support for moving to the Dempster Dodge area. Alderman Rainey said one of the answers she gets when she asks people, and she has asked many people, where they think a new South Branch Library should be, the very first thing they say is it should stay where it is or they have another idea. Alderman Rainey wanted to know if the branch library has to move from its present location Mr. Sagan thought it is slowly strangling itself and he is a person whose closest branch library is the South Branch. He likes the South Branch because it reminds him of his youth and small branch libraries where you could go to sit and read. It's a great place, but its not ADA accessible, there is absolutely no parking, Chicago Avenue has changed in the last thirty years to a very, very busy street so the children have to go one way or the other. It has some problems and they are not in favor of closing the South Branch for, as you know closing the branches came up a year or two ago. The question is where is the best place for the South Branch. As Main and Chicago Avenue gets developed with thousands of condo apartments they explored whether they could get in some of that condo space, but again that did not work out. The question is looking forward are we simply going to say because we want to keep it there, as he is sure there are many people in attendance who will speak to the absolute necessity in their minds of keeping it there. He's sympathetic to that but are we simply dooming the South Branch to a slow death by strangulation. Page 2. Alderman Rainey was interested to know the percentage of use, as she understands the use is diminishing. She wanted to know if there is a way to simply quantify that. Mr. Sagan said Mr Ney has some statistics which are somewhat anecdotal and be happy to give the committee. Alderman Rainey asked if it is known where the users are from Mr. Sagan said they know that most library cardholders in Evanston are from Chicago. Mr Ney added they do not track by Ward. Alderman Rainey wanted to know if it is known what census tract they come from, is it east or west of Ridge. are there any patrons of the South branch who are west of Ridge or west of Asbury. Looking at a map, Dempster Dodge is a marvelously accessible k>catoon. Mr. Ney had some figures on use taken for a one -week period in April that shows use as far north as Isabella and the concentration is mostly south of the branch both east and west of Ridge. A Alderman Rainey remarked wrren the City was looking for the interim Levy Center location, which is now on Chicago Avenue, they went to the developer of Dempster Dodge, who had these great spaces which they could see moving right into and immediately setting up shop but instead they ended up in an extremely expensive downtown location. At that time it was argued that the developer of the Dempster Dodge Shopping Center made an incentive deal where excess sales checks revenue beyond a certain point go back to the developer and the developer was hell bent on securing users that only generated sales tax, it was totally to his benefit. She wanted to know if this issue came up with the library. Mr. Sagan said it has. For a long time the Dempster Dodge area didn't seem very appealing to them because that shopping center was somewhat run down. Seeing the success Dominick's is having with the new deveVXr the Library Board went back and spoke to him and asked the staff to speak to the developer as they had the same impression you had that this was something that was a non starter but he is actually very interested in something like the library. It has some very good advantages for us, the parking there is phenomenal and would be very helpful, but the greatest advantage is the cost, which is a big impediment. He would like to stress we are simply here to discuss this as an idea and this is something that will have to be addressed and given some very serious thought As a community where do we put very scarce dollars, very scarce library dollars. He happens to think a dollar spent on developing reading is a dollar that pays you back many, many times over and everybody in Evanston should have the opportunity to enjoy that Alderman Rainey asked what the square footage of this location is versus the current South branch. Mr. Sagan said they have flexibility in this location and the numbers quoted are for 6500 square feet, we are now in a 3400 square foot location. If we are going to reach out and do this, if we are going to have a disruption. if we are going to ask the people in the 3rd Ward to give up their library, as they see it as their library. we need to do something that is going to work and is going to last for a while which is why we are talking about a 6500 square foot library. You could certainty do one for roughly the same size for a lot less and would get you closer to some equivalency, but if we're going to a do 4 we should it right. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said everybody should know he will be partial because this is in his Ward. In the discussion of the advantages of moving the library to the Dempster Dodge Plaza parking was mentioned, but it seems to him the strongest advantage is that you would further the mission of the Board in terms of making library services technology available to as wide a span of Evanston residents as possible. When you talk about the impact you would see by that branch being placed there on accessing the population in that area that might not have ordinarily taken that trip downtown to the Central Library. Mr. Sagan said they know from the report that they commissioned when they got the grant from the Stale a few years ago, a report shared with this committee and was before Alderman Jean -Baptiste was on this committee, we have an issue getting people to come all the way downtown to the library. We have a number of people particularly from the west side that simply don't come downtown to the library. This goad location in this part of town furthers their commitment and they are one of the few agencies in the community that have a ten-year strategic plan, and it furthers their commitment of outreach. As Evanstonians if there is anything we're committed to as a City ifs outreach and making opportunities available for all. Sometimes even when that hurts what's right in our back yard that seems to be an opportunity. Again. we never may find the money to follow up on, but certainly we owe it to ourselves and to our community to explore. We haven't done the studies as we don't have the money to spend on fancy studies, but we can tell just by seeing foot traffic and buses going by there, by knowing the parking that's there, by knowing we'd be putting ourselves in a central location trying to reach a group of people we haven't reached very well in the past is where we think would be a helpful spot to have a branch. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said one of the issues he ran into a number of times running a campaign is people talking about equitable distribution of the resources that the City of Evanston has available. To the credit of the Aldermen for the downtown and Chicago Avenue areas there is a lot of development and activities going on in those areas, it seems to him that beginning to shift some of the services around, moving the library to west side, would also serve a general thrust of making opportunities available equitably across the board. Alderman Newman talked about the stale of the collection in the downtown Central Library and asked whether or not the collection is at a state where it should be and also commented that we should not have a second tier status. is our Central Library in a second tier status relative to surrounding suburbs in terms of collection. Mr. Ney responded they spent less on collections than several of the large libraries in the north suburban library system, i.e., Skokie, Schaumburg. Arlington Heights and some of the others. We spend less per capita than several more. We've made substantial improvements over the years both with some money that was left from the building project with inflation increases in the materials budget and with the money that has been Page 3. raised by the Fund for Excellence Right now we're at the point where without adding more staff to process into collections we can't do a lot more. Books don't get on the shelves by themselves. We're approaching our capacity, we aren't there, but are certainly approaching our capaarrty to handle the material without additional staff Alderman Newman asked d we are a first Der library in terms of collection or in terms of collection have we reached a state where everybody considers 4 an excerent main library. Mr. Ney responded, no. there is not any agreement about what a first tier main library would be Certa city, if you look at the quality of collections that are placed at Arlington Heights or Skokie libraries they have more depth of collection in many cases it is not that they're buying more titles but they are buying more copies so there are more things available to their public on a more consistent basis. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we find our users suffer from the unavailability of works as he would think those complaints exist anywhere. or are our 1lbraries now under utilized. Mr. Ney responded, no. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said the reality is the state of the collection may be something that the experts may look at but the people that use the Central Library are generally satisfied with it. Mr. Ney, responded yes, he thinks so. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the investment in a branch would serve the central mission and would not necessarily create a detriment to us and to libraries. Mr. Sagan said they are strong supporters of the branch library system as is known from past discussions we've had. The question isn't should we have branches or not, everybody in this room thinks branches are good and we're proud of the branches we have. Alderman Newman remarked when first got on the Council, in 1991, that was not the position of the Library Board and in his mind there hasn't been any resciubon of that issue since then. As a matter of fact the first month he was on the Council Maryann Cappo, then President of the Library Board, with Don Wright, a very fine man who has passed away. came to him with their plan to close the branches. Their reason for closing the branches was they were concerned whether the City was going to have the resources to have a first rate library and they wanted to bring the people who were staffing the branches downtown and centralize the collection. Their theory. at that time, was that the branches should close. About three or four years ago the Library Board held meetings where testimony was taken on whether they were going to close the branches. This is something we've been going back and forth on and from his point of view we spent the $22,000,000 plus the interest on the bonds to build the Main Library and the issue now is have we reached a level of excellence where we're comfortable and if we want to do outreach, what is the best way to do that. Do we build another building, rent another City space, bring back the bookmobile. He asked if Skokie still has the bookmobile and was told they do, they do not have branches just the bookmobile. Alderman Newman understood one of the reasons when the Library Board came to the Council a few years ago and asked that the bookmobile be eliminated, was because they wanted to save money to put into the Main Library. Now were back at the starting point as to how we get out into the community. The bookmobile that could go anywhere was eliminated and you're asking for an increase of $37.000 to $76,000 for operating in terms of a lease and $312,500 for build out. One of the considerations we should be looking at is should a community our size not have branches and is a bringing back the bookmobile a better alternative to consider. Mr. Sagan said they have considered that and discussed the bookmobile with staff. The general feeling about bookmobiles is it doesn't encourage reading in the same way that a branch does, it's not a clean, well lighted room, its a bookmobile that comes once a week or every ten or fourteen days. They agreed with Alderman Newman that money is the issue and there isn't enough money to do this right now. Alderman Newman said then the bookmobile concept is not one you think is the best way in terms of getting the resources out there. He thought he read somewhere at some point we were going to consider some space in the new Levy Center, Alderman Rainey believed there was some communication by the Director of Parks and Recreation about adding to the new Levy Center to construct a customized space. The opinion of the Library Board was it was too far south and not centrally located, which she was not sure but they were probably right. Mr. Sagan said they considered that had there been a movement to go forward in the Crown Center. The problems he just addressed was the Levy Center is so close to the Chicago border which apparently the study stows, if they are close to a border you get a lot of people from Chicago coming over to use the library which is their right to do. They wanted a library that is centrally located and primarily serves Evanstonians_ Alderman Newman suggested the Board have some hearings with the V Ward residents and people affected near Dempster and Dodge and where ever else. He asked members of the committee to make suggestions on what process we should try to get to a decision with the Library Board, Alderman Feldman wanted to pursue the idea of placing the new branch in a commercial area. An initial motivation for placing the South Branch library on Main Street was it would be in a place of commerce where people could come for other reasons. With a sense of cross fertilization the library would help bring business and people into an area that it might need and in reverse the library would take advantage of affecting people like that_ He noted Mr. Sagan's memo said this would apply to the same kind of situation in the new shopping center. In terms of Crown or the Levy Center while there may be busses going by it's not a place of commerce. When the new library was being built there was a serious debate about where it should be because it was on a certain place for a long and there were those that believed that is where A belonged but others felt as long we were building it we could put it any place. The argument still being used and = Page 4. the philosophy the Library Board seems to persist on, is it belongs where people are There is this sense of cross- fertilization with commerce that the Library Board sees in the same vein as a has always been. Alderman Newman sees part of the oration issue considering our resouroes every time we build another building there's more electrical, another roof, more dean up of the rest rooms to consider wmcn is why his initial thought process was to look at space we already might have. Since we are building a buiidrg in south Evanston which is going to have a janitorial staff. with City people cleaning and taking care of the roof, etc ..n terms of the budget is the type of discussion we should be looking into_ Alderman Feldman was not certain d the debate was about whether resources should be placed in the new building or the new library. This whole issue of its placement is very serious issue If the Library Board, this committee, and this community decides that indeed we must have a second or South Branch library then the issue of where it is should be very seriously considered. Alderman Rainey stated there was a very strong outcry from people who embrace James Park on the issue of the South Branch being a part of the new Levy Center. Their feeling was don't you dare take one more inch of that green space for any use other than recreation. don't add one more brick or board in this park However, there is no new building going on and if we're going to turn to vacant space, asked for some idea of where that is going to be. Mr. Sagan said it depends on exactly what size building they end up doing, but the one people are talking about now that would fit the optimum is to the east along Dodge to the south but faring Dodge there are some storefronts there. Mr. Ney referred to the rents per square foot in the memo, the lowest one is based on the storefront facing on Dodge at the south end of the shopping center, the higher rents are the storefronts on the parking lot itself. There are yet higher rents which we did consider in the new out lot building that is going to be in addition to their rent which we find will attract people because of the fast food restaurants that are going to be right there as well. Alderman Rainey finds this proposal and all the reservations and concerns about the cost very exciting, but to diminish the importance of a public use not being accessible. as the current one is not accessible, and as an opportunity to expand space. One of the visions she has for branch facilities of any kind, especially a library, is reading room space where people can sit and read the newspaper, magazines are very expensive, some people do not have computers, its access to all sorts of things that people don't currently have access to. For people not familiar with the Dempster Dodge neighborhood, the activity around there is tremendous. When Dominick's first opened she was very much impressed to see, which is not common placed and was the first time she ever saw, women in the middle of the day, pushing baby buggies, walking, carrying bags of groceries. That area is a very pedestrian as well as a highly auto traffic area. As you look around the people you see there do not have a lot of access to other City facilities. The library would be a tremendous boom to the population not to the shopping center. One of the complaints she has heard about the Main Library is congestion, too many people, too many cars. It's time to open up the library so others can feel its their library too. She knows it is very difficult to give something up but the time has come if we have to move the location she could not think of a better location to put the branch. She has not figured out the dollars but would be very supportive of the move. Alderman Wynne had some questions and comments, her most important comment was is that this may be in the V Ward but this is not a V Ward library. Certainly the 3r' Ward heavily uses the library but most people do not know where the Ward boundaries are and she would like to know what the usage is by people in the at", r Ward, and 9°i Wards. A critical aspect of this library, that everybody is talking about, is an outreach program. Lincoln School is two blocks away and last Friday Lincoln School's first grade class walked from their school to the South Branch library and sat with the librarian. The new Lincoln School librarian has an entire year planned for outreach programs connecting these kids where they go and get their first library card walking over to the South Branch library. This is walking distance from Nichols School as well. The Dempster Dodge location is not a walking distance from any elementary school. She ventures to argue that high schoolers have ready access to the Main Library and if you're looking at an outreach program you have a building right there on Lincoln, 45% of Lincoln School's population is low income and 45% of them live in the CDBG target area. Aren't these the children you're trying to outreach to? She thinks characterizing the South Branch library as being a V Ward branch that doesn't already function as an outreach center is mischaracterizing if Her understanding is there were close to 51.000 visits last year to South Branch. She fully recognizes that it has problems but wants to stress that she does not think the library is being characterized correctly. If you draw a five or ten minute walk circle around the location of the South Branch or anyplace around Main and Chicago you will hit a population density like no other in this City. The 3r° Ward is the densest Ward in the City, she does not know where the 4 Ward ranks, but the size of the 4"' and 9' Wards are equally dense. When we say that Dempster Dodge and Central is central on the map, she would like to know if it is central in terms of population. Those are very important issues She appreciates the library developing outreach programs and would agree in terms of many rooms as she has a tot of thoughts about the children's collection which she does not think compares at all with Skokie's or Wilmette's collections She recognizes there are problems with the South Branch but that branch serves a community that you are trying to outreach to and she would like to see more studies about who is visiting South Branch and what is the population's area that comes to that branch and uses it. It isn't Page 5. just that we like this cozy library. tn,s cozy library in an outreach way and the reason that Main and Chicago is it's busy ' and there are people there due to cross fertilization that exists there right now We are about to open up the Main Newsstand again so there is anci:rier cross-fertilization that people can use. There are still possibilities to explore with other developers in that area and sne would be happy to work with the Library Board in terms of trying to find another location The critical things we reed to look at are what are the studies of the current usage. what is the potential study of any new usage in Dempster and Dodge and whether or not that really is the best location, and is that truly the best location for what your prccrarn s Alderman Newman noted he ra,:e cry vne table tonight an initial suggestion to look at a new location for the South Branch library. He does not think He ,mil solve that issue tonight because we have some budgetary issues and some public issues to address. Alderman New -man noted there were approximately ten people in the au{fence who wished to address this issue tonight and asked Mr Sagan if the Library Board could begin a process of opening up to the community on the location issues because he is nct sure the interested residents, both around Dempster and Dodge and where the current branch is, have had an opportur. y for comments and questions. His suggestion would be that the Library Board have a public hearing and send Cdywxae flyers informing the community of this hearing Mr. Sagan agreed with Alderman Wynne's comment that this is not only a 3" Ward library, they love the South Branch, it does a great job and has an excellent librarian. If we all, in this City, take the parochial view that nothing can ever change, that buildings have to stay used exactly as they have always be used. then we can't explore putting a branch anywhere else because there isn't money or it can't leave its current location, we're never going to do anything in this City. Alderman Newman said this past etecoon there was a very major issue on where the Levy Center was and he supported putting the Levy Center in Me south end of town. He received a lot of criticism for this but this Council did not act in a parochial way because it went out of his ward and into the C Ward, was debated in a campaign, and yet it was done. We can make decisions like that on this particular issue and he is sure we are able to take a Citywide view if we work at it. Mr. Sagan said they would love to have a Citywide meeting or meetings. He would like to stress that inaction means we won't ever do this if we simply wait ds all going to be (eased up at that location. Alderman Newman said we helped get that development off the ground and he thinks we can talk to the developers on the Library's behalf. Alderman Wynne appreciated what is being said and said she does have a chauvinistic view about this library but if you can demonstrate to her that mere is some other location that does as good or a better job then she can appreciate that. She recognizes the current library is not ADA accessible, but she also does not want it to be driven by this Act as suddenly we have a space there and have to act and take that space. She does not think that's the way the process should work, there has to be a thorough anatysiis because she does not want to make a bad choice. Alderman Newman asked if a reasonable amount of time to make a decision can be by September or October to be able to try to have some public meetings and come back with some decision? Alderman Wynne thought the summer is a difficult time to have public meetings. Mr. Sagan said he would be happy to speak to every Alderman's Ward group, there can be meetings at the library, they need to access what the people of Evanston want. We believe that branch libraries are good and knows everybody does not believe that, we also believe that we can put them in a place where they have the best opportunity to thrive. He does not think we are in disagreement, but we may be in disagreement on the best location for a branch. Alderman Newman noted we are in agreement to have the Library Board of Trustees initiate some Citywide meetings giving everybody notice as to the issue of where the location of the South Branch will be. Alderman Feldman agreed with Alderman Wynne that this isn't a ward issue and he does not think we can approach it that way. It should be done in terms of where people live and people from Southwest Evanston and Central Evanston should be invited no matter what ward they're in. It has to include all M wards but does not have to be on the basis of each individual ward claiming its own specific interest. Alderman Rainey said when the Library Board was discussing eliminating the branch libraries the largest contingent at that meetrng to support the maintenance of the South Branch library on Chicago Avenue was from the 80' Ward. There is no doubt that people love that library and people in her ward love it too. She is sure if you talked to them they would say it's their library. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the Library Board's central mission of the hearings should be to drive the discussions. He L would hate to see us get caught up wilt► that parochial attitude that we want keep what we have and don't want it to go anyplace else. We have to look at haw we can spread that kind of service to as wide and diverse a population as possible and let people respond to these funds of issues so that we can educate people in the process and try to get support. If we find it is not budgetarily feas}bie that is another issue, but we should try to open the discussion so that people are not caught with their individual, narrow geographical interests. _= Alderman Wynne raised one other point, if this process is going to go on we have to figure out where the money is going to come from. As someone who sits on the newly formed Budget Policy Committee she urges someone on the Library Page 6. Board to act as liaison to that committee. Mr. Sagan said he'd love to be that liaison. money is clearly going to drive this decision. Alderman Wynne said even if we found another location that we all agreed on, we have to analyze the issue of what are the costs. are you going to get to a perfectly packaged idea that we can afford. Alderman Newman thought that the budgetary issue related to library services continues to be primarily a Human Services issue. How it fits into the total budget the Budget Committee can discuss, but the budget aspect of this is here in this eommitlee. Alderman Wynne said there is no question it belongs here, she was merely inviting a Library Board member to come and listen in on the budget discussions. Alderman Feldman said if we bring up money the first thing he would have to examine is, is now the right time and way to do it The fact that it is being spent as it has traditionally been spent begs the question that the only reason we would reject anything else is that it costs more. Alderman Newman thought the issue being addressed was budget wise and raised the issue of collection, as it seems the people want to continue to spend on the branch concept which is where we seem to be going at this point_ Whether or not its going to be a $300,000 build out at Dempster and Dodge we haven't quite figured ouL Alderman Feldman said one of the things in the Branch Library Report that impressed him was that it criticized or cntiqued our branches on the basis of not having the kind of equipment and services a modem library has. That was one of the reasons it said that towns such as ours might not have branch libraries and if we're going to create a branch we want the right kind of branch that is going to serve the people in the way they need to be served Alderman Rainey said the reason why others don't have branches is because they can't afford to do it right and if we can't afford to do it right, then do we do it? Alderman Feldman added then we can't afford to do it wrong. Mr. Sagan said as he understands it they will be doing three things; 1) access the community's feelings towards the idea of branches and continue that assessment that began eighteen months ago when they Last appeared before this committee; 2) continue discussions on a very general basis with the developer and see what flexibility the developer has in those numbers; 3) most importantly, figure out where this money would come from. Alderman Newman said Mr. Ney will contact Mr. Terry when the Library Board wili come back to this committee on how the meetings are going. Alderman Newman thanked the library staff and Board members for their attendance and expects they will be participating in the public meetings on the location. A gentlemen from the audience said he hoped these hearings would be general and not by individual wards as they do not want to set up one ward against another. Another comment from the audience was they hoped people would be able to find out about these meetings. Alderman !Newman called for a short break at 8:45 p.m. The meeting resumed at 8:53 p.m. N. CONSIDERATION OF MAY 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Rainey questioned if the $8,850 paid to Miller, Cooper & Co., Inc., was for the audit and asked when can we expect to receive the audit_ Mr. Hilliard said that amount was partial payment of the audit, the total cost is $11.200 and the audit will be received in July. Alderman Rainey asked who Jacuzzi Associates, Inc., as they appear on both the Township and Township Assessor's Accounts Payable reports. She was told they are a printing company used by both the Township and the Assessor. Alderman Rainey noted the medical bills are down and asked if we are losing some of our medical cases. Ms. Vance said some of the medical bills are still in Springfield and haven't been paid making for the low figure in May. Not any hearing any further discussion Alderman Newman called for a motion to recommend aonroval of the May 2001 Township monthly bills. Alderman Feldman moved aporoval, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously approved f4-01. V. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 44-R-01 AUTHORIZING THE CITY OF EVANSTON TO ENTER AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT WITH EVANSTON TOWNSHIP TO REPAY CITY FUNDS LOANED TO THE TOWNSHIP Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved approval of Resolution 44-R-01 Authorizing the City of Evanston to Enter an Intemovemmental Agreement with Evanston Township to Repay City Funds to the Township, motion seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion unanimously approved f4-01. VI. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 55-0-01 PROPOSED EVANSTON TOWNSHIP BUDGET Alderman Rainey remarked she read all the information provided from Mr. Major, the owner of the property, Mr. Major, being rented by the Township and thought the owner might be in attendance at this meeting because Ms. Vance obviously bombarded him with questions. She asked the Assessor's office for the tax bills and only got one of four bills requested making her think things maybe a little worse than she thought Alderman Rainey said she was having serious problems with the costs of the Township space. The cost of being in that space this month was S8,489 which translates roughly Page 7. to $100,000 a year and for the amount of activity going on there and the amount of space needed versus %fiat you have, thinks this is a problem. We didn't cet information as to the discussions Ms. Vance had with Mr. Major about downsizing. Alderman Rainey also had very serous questions about the common area maintenance costs that we're being charged. She knows the owner gave us the reformation he wanted us to have but we don't have the actual information and from reading the lease we're not really entrbed to it. As she read the lease we do not have an opportunity to audit the books. Alderman Rainey had concern anc ouesboned that we signed a lease that allowed for double the rent for holdovers, Mr. Major's answer to that was in his tn.: ,y years of experience they always have that in their lease. Alderman Rainey said in her Nventy-five years of experience tenants always try to beat that down and if you're represented by good counsel you 11 get it beaten down, will not have that issue, and will also have a clause in your lease that says you can audit the books, or if the tenant requests the actual pals you're entitled to see them. You're paying 31 % of the bills and one of the most serious issues on this is the water c,ll of $5,668 a year of which we pay 31%. if you think about the users in that space there is a Laundromat there and did not know if the Laundromat had a separate meter. She called the City today and asked about water bills. As far as tine City could tell there is one water bill for the entire property. Also, today she called the Legal Department and asked for an opinion as to whether or not the Supervisor had the authority to sign this lease with the ten-year extension without any Trustee approval and is waiting to hear the answer to that. We are also being charged for scavenger service, which we pay for scavenger service in the lease. Ms Vance said she is questioning the owner on that but when she looked at the breakdown he had given in terms of his actual costs versus what were paying in rent he's telling us he's not charging us the full freight. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Vance what is the status of her negotiating for the right to sublet with regards to those issues. Ms. Vance said she has the right to sublet and also has the right to negotiate if the owner can find a tenant for the storefront space which was spec-fiicalty utilized by the clerical training program. That would reduce our space by that amount and not get into a sublet that owolved just that space, then that tenant would be responsible for all their own costs, repairs, taxes, etc. However, that takes time. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Rainey d she has any desire to leave this issue open going into the next budget year. Alderman Rainey did not think anything can be done about it as we have a ten-year lease, we need more Information but it looks like we're paying more than cur fair share. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought if we get the information than we can challenge some of those issues Alderman Newman asked when the budget has to be approved. Mr. Terry said the budget should be introduced at the next Council meeting and considered at the meeting after that, we need a budget in place by June 3CP. Alderman Newman remarked the committee has gone through the budget, the debt issue has been settled, and noted with 70 clients this month the Township continues to do very well in that area from a budgetary standpoint. Aldemtan Rainey moved recommending approval for this vexes budaet to be Introduced before the June 11. 2001 City Council meeting, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motlen unanlmousty aDDroved f3-01. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Vance and Mr. Hilliard for their attendance. VII. CHILDCARE FUNDING REQUESTS FROM: CHILDCARE NETWORK AND CHILDCARE CENTER Mr. Terry noted that for close to thirty years the City Council has funded the Childcare Network and Its predecessor organization for the purpose of helping to provide the community match for subsidized childcare in Evanston, a relationship with the State that required 25% local match where the State would match that funding on a three to one basis. The system that has been in place in Evanston and the State up until recently is one with contracts with the centers in which the dollars are administered and slots are identified at centers in which a local broker would get the State funding and broker those slots out. There would be contracts with the individual centers. A couple of years ago, the State began changing the way it funds subsidized child care to a voucher or a certificate system in which there are relationships with the individual families and they have tie right to vouchers and certificates in which they can make choices for care and can get those vouchers assigned to t:.e centers. That program is not administered locally but administered by the Day Care Action Council which has a much wider area. For some time we've known that this change in the system in the way childcare has been funded has been coming. In fact the rest of the State has adopted this system and Evanston is one of the last communities to make that change over. Aware of the changes coming, last fall the Human Services Committee, in approving their funding for this year for the Childcare Network said we approve the continuation of the match at whatever point the match requirement is no longer required and want them to come back before we agree to any other use of the funds that have been allocated to the Childcare Network for the current fiscal year. The Childcare Network made a decision and informed the City last January that they were ending the match contracts and the community of Evanston would begin a process in which the voucher system would be in place for the families here in Evanston. The last two or three months have been a very involved time with all the members of the child care community in terms of taking a look at what the new system in Evanston will look like, how it will be implemented, how will District 65 be affected by this change. Ail the centers that have subsidized care are affected by this change. The City has funded Page 8. the match as the system is being slowly phased out toward the end of the school year. June 30" would be the absolute cut off time for any City funding for the match requirement. The question becomes what are the appropriate purposes for what is left in that budget line item for this fiscal year. There is approximately S100,000 available. We have had a number of discussions with the staff and Board members of the Childcare Network in terms of potential ideas for the uses of those funds. At the same time we recently became aware that one of the specific programs that was funded through this match program was the Home Day Care Network which is administered by the Childcare Center of Evanston. They became concerned that the ending of the State contracts would affect the future of the Home Day Care Network which they administer. They directly contacted the State Department of Human Services and became aware that they had an opportunity to continue to receive State funding to keep the Home Day Care Network going. However, the State has verified that they still have a local match requirement that goes along with keeping that network. As a result of further discussions, Mr. Terry is recommending is that $21,800 of the $100.000 available be used to keep the Home Day Care Network going. At the same time the Childcare Network has looked at its mission and what they can do to keep things going in terms of promoting access to child care one of the very acute needs, which we have been aware of for some time, is the need for a scholarship program. As previously discussed the State lowered the income threshold for subsidized child care and there are a significant number of working poor families who no longer qualify for the State program but cannot afford the full fees which child care centers need to charge to cover their costs. The thought of a scholarship program which helps working poor families who are in one way succeeding by getting jobs at the same time are hurt by having their child care costs increase so dramatically that a scholarship program helps as a buffer to try to ease that burden. The Childcare Network already operates a scholarship program and is seeking City funding for that purpose for the remainder of this fiscal year. Alderman Newman asked how many scholarships would that include and was told by Carol Mullins fifty-three scholarships at $1500.00 a year. Alderman Feldman asked if it is automatic that the scholarship is $1500.00 and was told it is not, it varies between $1500.00 and $2000,00. Alderman Newman called for a motion for S21.800 of the remainino $100.000 child care funds be given to Childcare Center of Evanston to be used for the Home Dav Care Network match program. Motion seconded by Alderman Feldman, motion unanimousiv passed f4-01. Alderman Rainey wanted to clarify that we are talking about money left over this year and asked if this is going to be an ongoing annual request. Alderman Newman recalled that $150,000 is the usual allocation and assuming that Childcare Center now gets $21,800 for the entire year, asked if the expected request from the Childcare Network next year would be about S130,000. Mr. Terry said he purposely wanted to focus the discussion on this fiscal year because there may be arguments for expanding the Home Day Care Network, there may be arguments for expanding scholarships and both would be considered during next fiscal year's funding process. Alderman Rainey asked what is the current function of the Childcare Network in relation to its previous function. What will their paid employees be doing? Mr. Terry said the primary function of the agency was the administration of these contracts, but in recent years there have been a number of other support type services that have grown with the agency, the scholarship program, special screening services and services of that nature that they coordinate at certain centers in the community, the Mental Health Board funds them for early intervention services at certain centers, and they are currently in the process of sorting out what their future missions will be. Carol Mullins, Childcare Network, said clearly for the near future with the transfer of certificates they are going to be assisting their families with the certificates. Currently they are taking care of all the applications that come in for assistance, and taking them to the Day Care Action Council, transferring families into new centers for the coming year. They are initiating a broader waiting list called a ClearingHouse which will be a wait list for all families in the community and they willcontinue with their social work services and their Project Health services. There area lot of direct services that they currently provide to families and centers, they do some teacher training, they coordinate the Early Head Start Program which has just been expanded, all these are services we will continue to provide. Alderman Rainey asked when will the $80,000 you are requesting for scholarships be awarded. Ms. Mullins said itwill be awarded starting June 30'' of this year. Alderman Rainey asked if they will keep everything going this fiscal year. Ms. Mullins responded their scholarship funds are received from a variety of sources and they will be continuing to do that. In the last two years 124 kids have gone over guidelines and the gap between True XX payments that we paid the for the full cost of care is absolutely amazing. One of the centers has as its full fee for infants $245.00 a week and in order to go from Title XX to paying $245.00 a week that is something people simply cannot afford. Ms. Mullins wanted everyone to understand that the scholarship payment is not as much as the Title XX payment, we're giving people help but we're not giving them help to the extent of their former stipend. Alderman Rainey asked when a scholarship is given is it given to the family or to the school. She was informed that the scholarship payments are made to the centers who bill them on a monthly basis, one of Childcare Network's requirements is that the centers give them the attendance for each child. Alderman Rainey asked if there is a requirement that the family be working in order for their children to attend day care Page 9. and was told the family has to demonstrate a need to which Alderman Rainey said if you're not working and you want your kid in day care, you can't afford to pay and can certainly demonstrate a need. Ms. Mullins said these are people who are coming off the State program because they're earning too much. Some people chose not to take an additional raise or promotion because if they do they can't afford their childcare. One of the cad things about the State planning is that day care is one of the best working incentive programs that the State ever had and what they do by lowering these thresholds is provide a terrific disincentive to work. Alderman Rainey asked if our legislators are leading a fight for chill care to which Ms. Mullins said Julie Hamos certainty has childcare as ore of her rrain issues and in the current State budget they got a Federal block grant and tools 57.8 million dollars out of their own money which reduced childcare funding for the next year to stay about that level. Study after study shows the cost effectiveness and cost benefits of putting money into early childhood which is the approach they are taking. With the legislators its an alternative use of money and what they can do with it. Alderman Rainey recaps some time ago discussing what is being done about raising the threshold income as it does not make sense. Ms. Mullins said there is now House Bill 1929 , a bill to break the threshold income, it is in the Senate Committee and as of this hour she does not know where it is. Mr. Terry said essentially the point of doing it was to eliminate waiting lists for the very poor by lowering the maximum threshold. They said everyone below this threshold gets childcare no matter what, which was how they paid for it. Ms. Mullins said d was an initiative for Welfare to Work because it provided day care for those going into the labor market. Another practical fallout to this is that many of these kids who are in families where people are not stable in working are always in and out of care. This goal of care would be to build some sense of continuity and some sense of attachment that isn't happening. Alderman Feldman asked if the point where they leave Title XX is $19,000 or S20,000 and was told that is the gross amount The scholarship guidelines is for families beyond two. Alderman Feldman thought this is the best type of program we want that money to go for and he could not think of a greater need than families that need to have day care. This is certainly a part of Evanston's attempt to mi igate the astonishing costs for childcare and if we want people to work and not totally fall through the cracks. A working family needs that kind of help it enables these children to get the kind of education they need to start out and does not seem they are getting an absorbinant amount of support Alderman Feldman moved approval of Childcare Network's request for $80.000. motion seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Newman asked if this committee could get a profile, for the October funding process, without names, a census tract of the people who get the scholarships . Ms. Mullins said they do have a profile that will be included in their fall funding request. Alterman Rainey asked what they will be requesting money for next year to which Alderman Newman said there is $150.000 in Purchased Services funds and he would assume they will be coming back for some portion of that amount either for a continuation of this program or for some other program, to which Ms. Mullins said they will be requesting funding for next year. Ms. Mullins wanted to thank the City of Evanston and the United Way for the many years they have been in the forefront of committing themselves to early childhood and for that the citizens who Irve here can only be grateful. She is quite serious as the Barry Pre -School Project says that for every dollar spent on early childhood you save seven down the road and she thinks this group has had a lot of insight into what this means. Nicki Pearson asked what is specifcally being asked for in the census tract information the committee is requesting. Alderman Newman said they want to know where the 53 children are going in the network, are they going to home day cure, IGng Lab at District 65, or other centers, etc. They are interested in what the Childcare Network considers important information for making scholarship decisions and it might be useful to know who we're helping. Ms. Mullins said the only information that is not on the data they now have are the census tracts, but they can address that for you. Alderman Newman recalled the motion for approval of Childcare Network's request for $80,000. motion unanimously approved f4-01, Alderman Newman thanked everyone from Childcare Network and Child Care Center for their attendance. Vill. STATUS REPORT ON SUBSIDIZED TAXI PROGRAM Alderman Newman remarked that he is getting complaints about this program in his ward. The people at Noyes Court want him to come to a meeting to discuss the lack of responsiveness of the local taxicab drivers to the coupon program, Last year 25,195 coupons were redeemed at a cost to the City of $37,792 , the total paid to the taxicab companies was 488.182 as the numbers get inflated because of what the seniors pay for the coupons. Alderman Newman said one of = Page 10. the reasons the seniors will like our van is because they are getting very frustrated with the taxicab program. The issue is who is going to address these issues. Alderman Rainey said she has sent a request to the Finance Department on some regulatory issues including fares. How we can address this is a very .ommon placed compliant issue with most everyone who lives in the senior buildings. Alderman Feldman thought tt,:s should be addressed with management. Alderman Newman asked if it will be from a regulatory standpoint with A & P W or from our committee to which Alderman Rainey responded A & P W is going to go over the entire taxicab scheme licensing, rates. etc One of the arguments the cab drivers make is they haven't had a fare increase for years. There 5 another side of that story where they're using all sorts of creative means to increase what they get from a ride by asking `or two coupons, or asking S2 00 a bag for luggage, and things of that sort. To be fair we have to allow them to make a living wage so they don't have to rip people off and on the other hand if we're licensing cabs and doing all sorts of regulatory things with their meters we have to make sure we're doing a good job of that. Our staff has some proposals for that work to be done. Alderman Newman asked how do we get the seniors using the program to be able to be involved and participate. Alderman Rainey thought Alderman Newman could play an important role in that when attending their meetngs. When we have this issue at our meeting the seniors need to attend as this is not only a taxicab issue but also a bu*get issue. Mr. Terry said the precedent is this issue has dual jurisdiction. Most of taxicab regulation falls under A&PW, the Subsidized Coupon Program tustorically has been a Human Services issue. He is aware that the Finance staff has some proposals on fundamentally changing the coupon program and discussed that at the last Commission on Aging meeting. While there is no consensus he thinks the Commission on Aging is leaning toward not fundamentally changing the program, if there is any change it should be just increasing some of the dollar amounts. They need to know what forum is going to be available for these to come and discuss that Alderman Rainey said it might be better for us to do our kind of work over there and let the seniors come here to talk about the coupons after we deal with some of these issues at A &PW. Alderman Newman asked that a schedule be coordinated that will begin with A & P W looking at the entire regulatory scheme and have a follow up meeting in September when we will invite all the senior building residents to inform them of what is happening. Alderman Feldman said he would like a record of testimony from seniors to be brought to the A&PW discussion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the A & P W would be looking at the regulatory issues as to what is needed, i.e., licensing, fares, etc., those kinds of discussions, and then deal with how these services are being provided, because these are two separate issues. Alderman Newman said when the owners of the cab companies are at these A & P W regulatory meetings they need to understand what our expectations are. Alderman Rainey remarked when this committee deals with the taxicab coupons the seniors will be here. Alderman Newman thought A&PW needs to come up with a fair structure that in; orporates the companies honoring our program to which Alderman Rainey added its not just fares it must also include the licensing scheme. Also, there are many other issues with these cabs, there are drivers who do not have licenses or insurance, people are loaning their cabs out, etc. Alderman Rainey thought to begin with we should have copies of the complaints. Ms. Flowers said there are mostly verbal complaints but we do have a number of written complaints that came from a survey taken a year ago. The facilities that want to talk about this are Noyes Court, Perlman. Primm, besides a number of complaints have come from the Presbyterian Home. Not so much from the subsidized program but the general condition of how seniors are treated. Ms. Flowers said most every single senior building or resident home she goes into have complaints. Alderman Rainey added the same complaints heard eight years ago are heard all the time. The committee was in agreement the seniors should come to the July 2n° meeting and that meeting should begin at 6:30 p.m. rather than 7:30 p.m., with the taxicab issue being first on the agenda. In response to a question from the audience Alderman Newman stated the Police Department Complaint Review process would also be on the agenda at the July meeting. IX. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 4:45 p.m. Respectfully submitt , Audrey Trotsky, Department rtment Aealth and Human Services Page 11. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET Name: HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 p.m. Monday - June 4, 2001 'l )tell" k4 PLEASE PRINT (!- C;S-.. dam- �--�- —tea Cz�s� Address/ Organization: 'L o 4 �o�fj ,vim I t i( .) A 0an &12&,�i" //IE/rss� Al )3Z2 T-4t MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: I. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, July 2, 2001 Civic Center - Council Chambers 6:30 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman, and Rainey Kathleen Brenniman, Maureen Berry, Nancy Flowers, Doug Gayor, Bob Domecker, Police Chief Frank Kaminski. Sergeant Curt Kuempel, Amanda Jones, Bill Stafford, Kevin Lookis, Steve O'Sullivan, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Supervisor Pat Vance. Sylvester Hilliard, Susan Cantor, Lonnie Wiebe Carol Sittler, (Mental Health Board), Irene Ziaya (Commission on Aging) Alexander Brown (Evanston/Skokie Valley Senior Services), See Attached Attendance Sheet Alderman Newman Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 6:40 p.m. and announced this evening there will be a hearing and comments will be taken on the Senior Subsidized Taxicab Coupon Program. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JUNE 4, 2001 The minutes of the June 46. 2001. meetina were unanimously aooroved. (4-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF SPECIAL EVENTS: A) Evanston Environmental Association Duck Pluck - September 8, 2001 Alderman Newman asked if this event is being put together by the City. Mr. Gaynor responded that this is the fundraising event for the expansion of the Ecology Center and the Environmental Association will be working along with staff on this event. Alderman Newman remarked that recently one of the events this committee approved along the lakefront had a serious amplification problem in terms of music being blasted into nearby homes for very extended hours. His concern was regarding amplification and he was counting on Mr. Gaynor to see the appropriate organizers keep this reasonable. Alderman Feldman moved for approval of the Evanston Environmental Association Duck Pluck to take place September 8, 2002. Motion seconded by Alderman Rainev and unanimousiv approved. (4-01. B) City of Hope Walk for Hope - October 21, 2001 This event is scheduled to take place October 21, 2001 at 8.00 a.m. to noon to raise funds to support breast cancer research programs. Alderman Newman noted the memo states the walkers will begin at the Northwestem University Sports and Aquatic Center and walk south to Elliot Park. He wanted the committee to be aware that this year there are nine or ten walks scheduled along the lakefront and one of the issues he recently made a reference to was where these walks would originate. Where they originate porta potties, amplification systems, and cheering sections are set up early in the morning. If the walks are going to be along the lakefront his suggestion is to rotate the organizations' starting points along the lakefront as most of them have been starting at Dawes and Centennial Parks. Alderman Feldman moved for approval of the City of Hope Walk for Hope to take place October 21. 2001. Motion seconded by Alderman Rainey and unanimously approved. f4-01. W. CONSIDERATION OF JUNE 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Newman called for a motion to recommend approval of the June 2001 Townshlo monthly bills. Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Rainey. Page 1. Alderman Rainey's comment did not concem h--- bills but the Summary Sheet_ The committee has always been shown two or three month comparative figures and tries summary sheet eras only for the current month Ms. Vance said she would see that the summary sheets again refer those comparative figures. Alderman Newman recalled the motion for approval. motion unanimously anornved. f4-01. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Vance for her a-tendance this evening V. REVIEW OF THE SENIORIDISABLED TAXICAB COUPON PROGRAM Alderman Newman noted that early on in this new term of the Council he received a call from representatives of the Residents' Council at 2300 Noyes Court, a County Senior building, that they wanted to meet with him to discuss problems in the Senior Taxicab Program. He discussed with staff the potential of going over to the Noyes Court building for a meeting and discovered there were several other buildings also registering complaints about the program. He came to the conclusion this issue should looked at by the entire committee There has been some work going on related to this at A & P W. Alderman Newman was happy to see Mr. Stafford in attendance to share some of those issues. The memo received in tonight's package mentions problems seniors are having with the program, such as certain addresses not being picked up by cabs, riders being harassed by cab drivers when presenting subsidized coupons, cab drivers demanding additional funds when presented with the subsidized coupon, all which seem to be the most common complaints. Alderman Newman wanted to give some of the people present an opportunity to voice their concerns about how that program is working. Before any changes are made to the program hearing these comments will enable this committee to make the improvements you would like to see in the program. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would also like the other side presented, the taxicab companies issues needing to be addressed by any new proposal of the coupon program regarding rates. Alderman Newman added those issues are the costs of gasoline, the costs the drivers have to pay the companies to use the cabs every day and how they relate to rates, the price of the coupons, and other issues. He did not mean to leave the impression that whatever we do we would not take into consideration the concerns of the taxicab companies, as he knows, from time to time, they are also being expressed. He wanted the committee to hear from actual people about some of our problems and the importance of the program to the people who live in Evanston. Many of us who have our own cars take for granted being able to get groceries, going to the doctor or the post office and other basic necessities one has to do. Alderman Feldman remarked in addition to that he would like to find some direct correlation between the issues the taxicab companies have regarding their additional costs and the difficulties they rind with the program and the implementation of the program. If at any point we were able to answer or respect the taxicab program's concerns he wanted to make sure that ends the issues with the senior coupon program. In other words, if the taxicab companies are saying the reason these things are happening is because of certain concerns, and we adjust or try to respond to those concerns or issues, he wants to make sure after we do that we don't get these people back again saying nothing has changed, they still don't get picked up, are still disrespected and being harassed. He wants to make it very clear if there is any accommodation he expects there to be a direct result in the success of whatever new coupon program we have, if we decide to change it_ Alderman Newman thought there would be a lot of agreement on that point by the committee. Alderman Rainey noted the memo received in the packet indicated members of the Council and staff had been contacted by cab companies. She was not contacted by a cab company, in fact on an occasion when she was arranging for a cab communicated with the Cab Company her concern that they had not received a fare increase in many years. The issue we have here is the same issue we've always had with the cab companies, which she does not think is any reason or cause for disrespect for anybody under any condition. There is no reason why this City should expect the taxicab companies to provide a service at a discount which is what they claim they do given the value of the coupon, when we don't expect Whole Foods, Jewel, Dominick's. Walgreen's, Osco, or any other business in this City to provide service at a discount. We don't legislate that and once we make the payment fair there is absolutely no reason for anybody to be mistreated anymore than service establishments mistreat customers on a regular basis under normal conditions. From time to time we're all mistreated by retail establishments because people aren't trained on how to treat customers anymore. However, the whole issue is this one industry is being asked, and has been asked every E'-ce she can remember the taxi coupon program, to provide service at a discount. She just wants them to be paid their tair share for the service they provide. Alderman Newman was in agreement with Alderman Rainey and said he also has not been contacted by the cab companies but in his ten years on the Council cannot remember a time during any budget process where we have had management of the taxicab companies came to us when we were about to fund the program for the next year, and said the price of the coupons is not high enough. This is a request that we have not had, therefore, we cant fix something until we know about it. He's glad that as part of this process we are new getting information that the drivers are being under compensated and we have the opportunity to address that. Page 2. Alderman Rainey remarked that at least two and half years ago s!:e asked ou- City staff to bring information to ABPW from the Taxicab Advisory Committee She believes that peco�ee rave teen restrained from coming to the Council and month after month after month keeps being told that the Taxi= A-:risory Committee is working on this or that We have no idea what this committee is doing and they are supposed to report to A&PW. As far as she can recall they have not had a report since she returned to the Council in April of 1997 wn ch she thinks is deplorable and all she can do is point to staff for not bringing us those reports. She can't believe r:s ras not been discussed, but thinks we just don't know about it. Alderman Newman thought as part of dealing w-,th p-.)I;e-n, we should have a committee recommendation to the Council directing staff if they get a complaint from the tax:cab companies in regard to what we're charging for these coupons we need to have that information shared immediatehi wpm r,&PAN to at least look at whether or not the problem is a real one. We can't be mind readers if we don't have time r^formation Alderman Rainey added, therefore we need to have the minutes of the regularly scheduled meetings, wh ri sre is sure is taking place, because that committee is legislated by the City Council. Alderman Newman noted he l,as rot seen minutes from that committee for some time. Alderman Newman stated some of the issues will be addressed tonight at this hearing and will include comments from the taxicab companies. At this time comments were taken from Muse who wished to address this issue. Dorothv Lamson. Presbvterian Homes, remarked she has heard so much negative about the program she's here to say how very pleased she is with the program and has participated in it for almost nine years. When she first moved to the home she asked her neighbor what was a good taxicab ccrnpany to caa. Her neighbor recommended Best, she called them and has used them for eight and a half years, they have just been wonderful. The dispatchers are very friendly, the service is wonderful, the drivers have been very courteous, very prompt, and thinks an increase in the coupons is long overdue. Every time you go to the store to buy groceries everything has gone up a few pennies, the same with buying clothes and everything else, which is why this is tong overdue She has heard comments about tipping and has always been generous with tips because the service has been so good Ms. Lamson said she shops quite a bit for seniors at the Presbyterian Homes who can't get out any more and therefore uses the cabs quite a bit. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Lamson for her comments and said when he mentioned some items in the memo did not mean to omit emphasizing this program has been supported unanimously and is considered extremely important by the City Council over the last ten years which is why we are having this hearing. Tonight we are attempting to focus on ways to make the program better and improve some of the ways the program might not have been working for some citizens and do it in a way that wrill also take into consideraton the interest of the taxicab companies. Pepav Lewis. Presbwarlan Homes, said she had a completely different experience. Since May she has been left waiting three times by two different cab companies who have said drivers were on the way. She made repeated calls and nobody ever came. These were evening calls and caused a lot of difficulty as she felt there was absolutely no excuse. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Lewis which companies she referred to and was told 303 and Norshore, both on the same night. What escalated her anger was they lied to her on the phone by saying the cab was on its way. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Lewis if when she called she had the perception people knew she lived at the Presbyterian Home. Ms. Lewis responded, yes, because of the address, however it happened that she did not know anything about the coupons because she moved in fairly recently, unless they just assumed that b---ause she Iived at the Presbyterian Home she would have a coupon and would pay less. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. Lewis' concem was not whether or not the coupon would be honored but whether or not she could get service at Presbyterian Homes. He also asked Ms. Lewis if she was ever able to get in touch with anybody in the management at either of those companies, to which Ms. Lewis responded, absolutely not and several efforts were made. Evelyn Baker. 708 Washinqton Street, said she has good news and bad news. She usually does not have a problem with Best and Better cabs, but she lives near Chicago Avenue and frequently walks over to catch a Norshore cab where she has had very, very bad experiences with that company When she first started going there they told her to always take the cab closest to the elevator station, which is what she started doing. The last time she did that the driver asked why did she take him, why didn't she take one of the others, she told the driver because they always told her to take the closest to the station. When she gets in cab she always tefEs the driver she has a coupon. The driver said he did not know why because he had been waiting forever and went on and on and she consequently decided not to give that driver a tip because she felt he did not deserve one. As she previously said she has not had a problem with Best and Better. Better Cab Company knows her when she calls, that also helps. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Baker for her comments. Emery Prather, 1900 Sherman, said he personally does not have any problems with the cabs as he seldom rides them. He thinks the cab drivers, the policemen and firemen have dangerous jobs and are entitled to what they should have, but by the same token thinks the senior citizens should be taken into consideration when because some of therm make very little money and can't afford cabs. He drove cabs for quite some time a few years back and knows the cab driving business. The driver pays five dollars two and half gallons today, he does not know what he pays for a shift but knows Page 3. it's expensive. He thinks whoever sits down with these cab owners and agrees on whatever they decide on they are in a position to make these coupons whatever we car, af`ord and should remember a senior citizen is a poor person. Grace Prather. 1900 .Sherman, wanted to add she usjally calls Norshore cab and they come right away. If they say five to ten minutes when she goes down they're right mere They always tip the drivers and the drivers always help her carry her groceries inside the building She has no ccr, plain:: about the taxi cab program. Alderman Newman thanked Mr. and Mrs. Prather for their comments. Alderman Newman noted for clarification, when talkirg about the taxi drivers getting more money for the coupons, more Rey than not we're talking about the City putting more rnoney into the program, which does not necessarily mean there will be an increase in the cost of the coupon. Beatrice McBride. 2300 Noyes Court, said her man complaint was the drivers are so rude she literally got cursed out by one of the Best cab dnvers. He told her if he had known she was handicapped and she had coupons he would not have picked her up. She was very glad to get out of his cab. She has had other rude drivers, but this was the rudest she had ever encountered. When the drivers find out you have coupons they are very rude, they slam the doors, they win not help you in or out of the cab, sometimes she has troupe getting in and out of the cab. Alderman Newman asked Ms. McBride if she was going for medical treatment when usng the cabs, to which Ms. McBride responded this particular day she was not, she was being picked up from the beauty shop to go home. Alderman Newman asked Ms. McBride if she looked at the cab number, to which Ms. McBride replied she did and she reported this to the manager of Best Cab Company who was not very nice, either. He said he took the report but she never heard anything after that. Years ago she did not need assistance, but now she does and she does not think she should be subjected to the rudeness of the taxi cab drivers. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. McBride for her very important testimony. Alderman Rainey inquired, since we license the cabs what is the process for anybody who has a complaint about a cab. Haw do we know about the complaints? Alderman Newman added his follow up question to that is have we been encouraging people to call both the City and the Cab Company. Mr. Stafford said there are one of two ways to do this One way is many people call the company and the cab company wit follow up to either ameliorate the situation, or if they don't then it comes to us. If that's not the case they will call us. Many people, because they had a bad experience with the company or the cab, won't call the company but will tali us. We then have our licensing measures inspector make out a complaint form, which we follow up on to try to remedy the situation_ In many cases it will go back to the cab companies, they will refund fares or issue an apology or we'll have to press it further in terms of the driver and ask for suspenson of the driver, if that's possible, which in many cases it is not part of which is due to the way our ordinance is written. It again gets back to fact that we have been working on the revision of the ordinance, which is one of the issues we have We don't have remedies that can go as quickly as we would Gke to in these situations. Alderman Rainey asked hax we know when a person, such as this woman, reports a complaint she had which is about as low as you can possibly get. Did the Cab Company that took that complaint do anything other than hang up the phone = and get a cup of coffee and forget about it. How do we kr.c�v that didn't happen? Mr. Stafford said rt they don't come to us then we don't know that which is what would happen right now under the current situation. Again, part of the problem is the issue in terms of notification in the cab. If we can get better notification in the cab that passengers have a right to go the cab company and the City and have that notification placed in the cab, is something he agrees we have to change, we would know about some of those situations ir_� Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we know whether the drivers are getting reimbursed when they turn in their coupons to the taxicab owners or is there some other injustice going on at the level of taxicab drivers and owners that may be aggravating the situation, because he is not sure the cab diver who made the comment was an exception. It may have been the level of frustration these cab drivers are experiencing. To what extent are these cab drivers even getting the reimbursement they are supposed to get? Mr. Stafford said all we can monitor is when the associations bring in the coupons in mass and we pay for them when they're brought in. He does not know whether something is going on between the association and the drivers. The associations will generally group those coupons because the cab drivers aren't going to wait until they come in, they give them to the association and they come and in and get the reimbursement. He's not sure anything is going on relative to that and could not speculate as to that. _ Alderman Feldman asked if there is a way to print on the coupon itself, or on the cover of the booklet the City's number as well as the cab company number because he is very much interested in having the senior citizens protected from the kind of verbal abuse and astonishing indignity that these people are being subjected to. All they want to do is have a ride _ and doing something that this community has validated. If they need more money, he does not know how much is enough, to prevent people from treating a woman as this woman was treated. We could come to a marvelous settlement = and give a fare raise to the Cab Company and there is still going to be somebody in these cabs stilt mistreating people. Page 4 Anybody that can do that needs only the slightest excuse not a deep seeded grievance. This woman is not the object of the difficuttf; the object of the dif%culty is they are being underpaid with the coupons and lies between the relationship with the City and the cab companies These are women, handcarped people, seniors, who are not to be abused. In his view any relationship between the City licensing and the Cab Company the City has to have some kind of lever to end this kind of treatment, or certainly to influence it. He remembers times that he complained that he thought a lot of this had do with the inability of management to deal with their own cab dnvers, he does not know whether or not that is true. He knows that's a problem, but we have citizens we have to protect and it has to be done one way or another. These people cannot keep going on worrying about getting into a cab and anticipating verbal abuse and indignity He'd like to have some place within the City for them to tali and let us know they reported their complaint because this was a terrible experience. Alderman Newman said he would like the cab companies to address this later but wanted to note that the City of Chicago Bureau of Consumer Affairs, does not tolerate that kind of conduct from their drivers Once it gets around that a company will suspend or terminate a driver for being abusive to anybody the amount of abuse will significantly go down. We're going to have to figure out a way to make sure these complaints get a serious response. Loretta Holscher. Prfmm Towers. said she does not take the cabs very much but she writes the monthly newsletter for their center and hears a lot of comments about the cabs that are also very bad. She would like to make two points, the cab drivers are usually not taking people very far, its usually a few blocks, a five minute drive, and they're not really using a lot of time in these transports. Also, if the tenants could go to the building office and have them fax a little complaint to the City to have a written record of what happened rather than calling the Cab Company because that doesn't seem to work. The senior buildings should have the City fax number to fax these complaints directly to the City. Mr. Stafford thought that was a great idea and said Steve O'Sullivan, who handles that, will be glad to provide that information. Alderman Newman said for the next several months. from time to time, he would like this committee to get copies of these complaints and if we can't maybe we can work with Mr. Terry and Ms. Flowers about distributing Mr. O'Sullivan's telephone and fax number to all the senior citizen residences and all staff members at those buildings to let them know who to call at the City to register a complaint. Mane Hoffman. Mather Gardens, said she has been amazed at what's being done toward this to solve these problems. Ms. Hoffman said she is legally blind and was asked, as a volunteer disabled person, to go every other month and talk to the drivers who want to get a certrficate and explain what help is needed. We must be helped getting in and out of the cabs and the cabs must be dean. She has had very good results from this according to the reports from the women at the Mather who use the cabs. If we all work together and have a common place to lodge complaints this will be better for all of us. She knows we're trying. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Hoffman for her comments. Lee, uses her first name only with the cab companies and would rather not say where she lives, wanted to thank the committee for being here tonight and allowing members of the community to speak. She not only appreciates that opportunity but also the fact that Evanston has a cab program and knows that Chicago has one as well. She represents the disabled community and in particular the chronically ill element of that community. Obviously she is not a senior citizen, nor does she look like one. She would like to talk about a couple of issues this evening. She appreciates Alderman Feldman's remarks about the experiences some people have gone through because she has had several quite abusive experiences. She uses Norshore Cab Company on a regular basis and by and large the service she has received has been competent and sometimes even exemplary, however a number of incidents, four in particular, stand out in her mind as completely unacceptable and would like to describe what happened on those occasions. Three issues are important here, certainty the financial issue is important and she acknowledges and recognizes the taxicab companies perspective on that one. The second issue is courtesy, and the third is accommodations of people who are chronically ill, disabled, and senior citizens who require certain accommodabons that the average cab cash fare paying rider does not require. She would like to see and be part of the solution that would enable people like her be able to afford to go places. This coupon program has been wonderful and has given her autonomy she did not have before when she was dependent so" on friends and generous family members for rides everywhere she wanted to go. However, in so doing she was surprised at first and now has almost become inured to the fact that taxicab drivers tend to take out their frustrations on the passengers, especially the disabled ones. The first response she always gets is, "You don't look disabled", she thought we were beyond judging by appearance in this country, but apparently we are not. She is judged not because she kooks different but because she does not Most recently she had an experience that almost put her over the edge in terms of her tolerance level of such vituperative remarks and reprehensible behavior. On two occasions with 303 taxis she was chased down into an establishment and had the drivers demand money, one of whom shouted obscenities to her in a public establishment that wanted his money because he did not understand the taxicab coupon program. She does not think this is just about money, but thinks they do not understand what it's like to go through that situation. She does not think we're dealing with people who in this case its not just about money, but one who deals with the public should be courteous. She does not think just raising the level of payment will be sufficient, but it would be a Page S. help. Also, she would want to make sure they do not raise it too high so that people on fixed incomes, such as herself, cannot afford the program. Many times she has had abusive drivers with Norshore Cab. but two particular incidents stick out in her mind. She does not want sound as though she is picking on Norshore Cab because she is not. They know her and try to provide very good service to her. She does not blame the company for this but what happened with the driver's needs to be heard The first driver wanted to drop her off across the street from tree address she had specified, in the middle of Ridge Road, a four lane street, and wanted her to walk across four lanes of traffic to get to her then place of work. When she respectfully asked him if he would pull across the street, he refused and called the dispatcher who told him to turn into the parking lot, which he did. She asked him d he would pull up to the door as she needed him to, at which point the driver got frustrated with her and fumed around and sa,d to her. "Do you want to die?" Needless to say, no, she does not want to die nor did she want to engage further with him. She did immediately get of the taxicab and call Norshore Cab. They suspended the driver for three days. She thinks he should have been arrested, but she settled for a suspension. Most recently she dealt with another Norshore taxicab driver who has in the past questioned a request for accommodations about where she would like to be dropped off. He wanted to drop her off where it was convenient for him and she told him, no, she would appreciate rt rf he would pull up to the address she had suggested at which point the driver said to her, "Just for a few steps you want me to pull around the comer." She does not think her taking a cab is about the driver and what works for him. If she is disabled the ride is about her, she is paying for ride, yes, maybe at a subsidized rate, but she is still paying for the ride and she is still a human being who deserves to be treated with respect no matter what she is paying. There are other establishments who provide services at a discount to people who have compromised incomes due to circumstances beyond their control. She refused to pay the driver for the ride because he continued to be abusive. When she got out of the cab she went into a public establishment the driver followed her in and demanded payment, he said he would call the police if she did not pay him. Because she did not want to cause a scene in a public establishment, which she visits on a frequent basis she paid him but she felt quite violated and just plain enraged as she should not have been put into a situation in which her choice was either be associated with a scene at a coffee shop, which is supposed to be a relaxed environment, or pay a driver who because of his reprehensible behavior, who did not deserve to be paid for the service. She is very upset about this, and should not have to go through that, nobody should have to go through that in order to get from point A to point B. Now, before she gets into a cab she prays to please give her a nice driver, a fear she should not have every time she goes from point A to point B. Its hard enough to wake up every day be sick, have to face the world and not look like she's sick, which people also question her about, then to be treated even worse has a lot of negativity that isn't necessary. There have been some very nice drivers and she does not want to say that all drivers are mean and nasty but these couple of incidents stand out in her mind as particularly ignominious and she thinks should be brought to the attention of the committee. She will conclude with she would like to be part of the solution that takes into account and meets the needs of all people involved. Alderman Newman thanked Lee for attending this evening and for her comments. Alderman Newman remarked that although we have had some positive comments, we do have some problems that definitely have to be addressed and we will begin to address at this meeting. F1sia Madell. 1920 Foster, said where she lives there is no bus service on Saturdays or Sundays. Ms. Madell said this washer first year dealing with cab coupons. She attends the Second Baptist Church, on 1717 Benson, and has noway of getting there other than a taxicab. She also has been insulted. She called the place where she gets the coupons and also called Best Cab Company and reported taxicab No.124 should be taken off the street, it is filthy. She felt like she needed a shower when she stepped out of that taxicab. When she called in the complaint they said they knew which taxi d was, but when she got in the cab the second time it was the same way. She doesn't know whether to commit Harry kerry because she became more than sixty, or if she should thank Evanston for the coupon program, it is helpful because she has no weekend bus service. City Council has been asleep, as she does not know who is responsible for allowing that to happen. However, were here about taxis. She finds the drivers are impolite, good morning is not in their vocabulary they say nothing. They put you out anywhere and she is unhappy with that Everybody is not rude, but they're running a dose second. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Madell for taking time to come here tonight and asked how she heard about tonight's meeting to which Ms. Madell responded she attended another meeting where she picked up the agenda and came here to speak on behalf of seniors like herself. Alexander Brown. Director of Evanston/Skokie Vallev Senior Services, said the social workers at their agency report in the last year they have seen some changes in the right direction and fewer people are telling the kind of horror stories we are hearing tonight. Nevertheless, it seems very inconsistent as there obviously are a few drivers out there who out of the kindness of their hearts actually do help people open the door, bring in their groceries, and help them out, but it is very inconsistent. He spoke to a woman this morning about transportation who told him some stories and he encouraged her to call the City but she said, "Why should 17" He thinks there is a real feeling out there that its not going to make much difference any way. The drivers do need more money and he thinks clearer guidelines need to be in place and Page B. some dear consequences. The idea of having something written and a specific contact here at the City, who has some authority to follow up, is a very good suggestion. Alderman Newman thanked Mr. Alexander Alderman Rainey asked who are the people directly responsible for overseeing taxicab licensing for the City. Mr. Stafford said it the City Collector's office. Presently there is a temporary supervisor, Kevin Lookis, as Susan Sat: it has left the City's employ. Steve O'Sullivan is the City's direct contact perscn on the street, then the Collection Supervisor and then himself. Alderman Rainey said she knows they are not respons:ble for the demeanor of the driver but has seen cabs she could not believe were on the street, and has talked to people who were not seniors who said they feared for their life in the cabs. How did it happen that Ms. Madell has been in this filthy cab twice, how frequently are the cabs inspected? Why when this filthy cab was reported didn't we go out and lock for it? Mr. Stafford said we can address that and he would be glad to have Mr. O'Sullivan talk about our inspection program. For that reason we inspect the cabs quarterly. Another issue has to do with working on our ordinance, the part that taxicabs in this town are allowed to be over ten years old which is the problem. We have to change that ordinance. Alderman Rainey said she has been in cars that are twenty years old that look brand new. This woman was not talking about being in an old cab but was talking about being in a filthy cab and there are a tot of those cabs. She has been in a cab, in this town, where the driver's seat was broken so bad it was almost laying flat and she was the person who had to sit behind is She cannot understand how those Evanston cabs are allowed to be on our streets. Before hearing from the cab companies she would like to hear from the City's inspector and find out why this happens and haw we follow up on these complaints. The people in attendance tonight. who take the cabs, would also like to find how we inspect those cabs. A woman from the audience wanted to know about the money situation, we pay 52.00 and the coupon says $3.50. Who pays the missing $1.50. Alderman Newman said the City of Evanston pays it to the company of the driver. The woman noted the most important question is how much does the driver get for the coupon and was told the driver is supposed to be fully compensated, $3.50. The woman asked if the fare is 54.80 who pays the difference and was told the driver does not get anything for that it goes on the driver's expense not the company's expense. That is a loss to the driver, to which the woman said is why the driver is upset because he cannot know ahead of time how much over the $3.50 limit the fare will be. Alderman Newman said the driver also does shorter rides and still gets the 53.50. The woman asked why should the driver take the risk of coming out positive or negative, it is not fair putting this on the driver. Alderman Newman said this has been mentioned earlier by several aldermen as something we have to address. Oorothv Francls. Prlmm Tower, said she usually calls the cab and the main thing with the cabs is the Haitian people. As another lady said you get in the cab and say good morning, they have their face up in the air. One morning when she was going to church, she got into the cab and the driver turned the meter on, she told him she had a coupon and he told her he does not take the coupon because it's $4.00 to the church to which Ms. Francis told the driver when they got to the church to turn around and take her back home because she was not going to pay $4.00 when she had a coupon in her hand. Those drivers are very rude and have no manners, which she does not think is right because we are not begging them for a favor we are paying for our rides. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Francis how long she has been taking cabs in Evanston to which Ms. Francis responded she has been in Evanston for 30 years. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Francis in her opinion whether she sees the situation getting better in the last year to which Ms. Francis responded, no sir. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Francis for her comments and presence at this evening's meeting. Alderman Feldman wanted to again hear how often the City inspects the cabs and was told it is done quarterly, every three months. He remarked there is no way that a quarterly inspection can prevent a cab from being filthy, it may prevent it from a broken seat, but a cab can get filthy in three or four days depending on what the driver's and company's standards are. Alderman Newman raised the question whether the drivers have possession of the cabs for more than one night in Evanston because in Chicago they have to get a new cab every night. A cab company owner in the audience responded if they are independent they have their own cab and keep it 24 hours. Alderman Newman asked what percentage of the cabs driven in Evanston would be independent as opposed to 303, Norshore, or Best and was informed about 30%. Alderman Newman then said we have a high percentage that the companies cannot get to that are independent and would only be seen quarterly for City inspections. Alderman Feldman asked what is the cab company's policy regarding cleanliness and how often are they inspected as it seems to him if somebody has an independent cab he would assume they can be called in for inspection. A cab company owner in the audience said when they get a complaint about a driver they do call there in, they have no control over them, they just give them radio service. Alderman Newman said if you do get a complaint about a filthy cab you can communicate that to the City and then the City can do something about it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to say to those in attendance with complaints, the City itself has to be self critical and look at ourselves to see what we have been doing over the period of time that cabs have been providing services to seniors in the City of Evanston. It seems to him that we need more sensitivity training and the seniors and disabled should participate in training our drivers. They need to be exposed to these concerns that you have and he would think the City would need to establish some kind of quarterly Gasses where each driver would have an obligation to participate or else would not be able to drive. He would definitely propose that we do that, as these types of things should be corrected, as they will not just go away by punitive measures. Training is needed for people to understand how you truly feel. Also. Page 7. the comment made by the lady about who takes the hit for the addctcnal expense is cnbcal and when the cab companies speak they should talk about how they participate in helping the drivers defray that kind of cost That would be important to help the drivers understand they are not being victimized by whatever measures we take into account. Another issue is there has to be more controls; people should pay a price whether it be a fine or a suspension of the license to drive a cab. With this hearing tonight there will be more initiatives taken irto account for more measures to make sure that anyone who violates a senior or a disabled person, who violates anyone. any driver who does that will have to directly respond to the City and will not be allowed to function and do business as usual. You have undertaken the initiative of making your complaints and we will try to keep facilitating those complaints so that we hear you more, but things from here on out will have to change if we want to make this a better process, we have to think of you, we have to think of the drivers, and the City has to be more vigilant to your concems. Alderman Newman was in total agreement that things are going to begin to change and we're going to get answers to this problem. He called upon Mr. O'Sullivan and asked him to inform everyone of his duties as an employee of the City of Evanston in regard to the taxicab companies, regulations, etc. Mr. O'Sullivan said primarily he inspects the cabs four times a year. He also issues all the licenses both for the drivers as well as the individual vehicle licenses. The cab meters are inspected twice a year and in many cases if the meters are recording incorrectly it is because it has been changed from one car to another. The meter itself operates off the transmission. If a meter that is set for a Chevy is dropped into a Ford it is not going to record correctly. He has never found a meter that came to him for testing that was fast, more often its a dime slow. When we test the meters it is done on a mile route, we check the time with the time off, then let it sit in the parking tot and time it to make sure the time it clicks off is also correct. The other inspections done quarterly are appearance inspections, on the exterior of the cab to make sure all the lettering and numbers are correct, we do check cleanliness, and check to make sure they have been licensed property. Alderman Newman asked where the inspections take place and was told at the Fleet Center. Alderman Newman asked if we ever thought about going out to the companies to look at the cabs and was told by a cab owner the method we use is the most efficient way of doing the inspectons. Alderman Newman asked if there is any way we can do inspections were somebody can't just clean up the cab for the day because they know it's going to be inspected. Mr. O'Sullivan responded, of course, they are sitting on the cabstands and we could certainly do a spot check. We wouldn't get them all because they're never all in one place at one bme. Alderman Rainey remarked they're always in the 300 block of Howard Street, she counted fifteen cabs there the other morning and not one of them had a driver in it. Mr. Stafford had a suggestion on this point as some of this comes down to manpower and enforcement. As an example, most of the municipalities in the area, and many throughout d `e nation, in terms of inspections are privatizing that. In the draft ordinance, being put together to be brought to the Council, we would advocate that for the reason what you are doing Is basically getting four or five businesses in town who we would make sure did inspections that cabs would have to pay for. The businesses would do it, it would provide more business to the business community in the City and would get Mr. O'Sullivan out on the street doing random inspections, and checking on cabs. We need to make some reforms relative to this and he would suggest that is one of them. Alderman Rainey voiced how tired she is of hearing about all the work we're going to do on reforming the cab ordinance and this, that and the other. We've been talking about this for years when are we going to see some product. Alderman Rainey had one more comment to add about cabs all being in one place. She is just letting people interested in taxicabs know, in the next 30 days, if she taunts more than three calls at the Howard Street cab stand she will introduce an ordinance at Administration and Public Works to eliminate the 300 block of Howard Street as a cab stand because it is so absolutely abusive the way the cabdrivers treat that area. Our City employees clean Howard Street every single morning, within one hour the cab drivers clean out their cabs onto to the City streets. It is the most disgusting thing you will ever see. In the next 30 days if she sees more than three cabs rAice, and she makes the trip daily, there will no longer be a cabstand in the 300 block of Howard Street. This is too bad because that will effect people who need a cab, _ but, the cab drivers are so abusive to passers by, to cleanliness of the street, and leaving their cabs which is a total violation of the law. She has sat in the Dominick's tot and called the police. The last time she did this was about three weeks ago. Within five minutes of her calling the Chiefs office, who then dispatched a police officer over the radio, cab drivers came out of nowhere and got in those cabs and drove away. Why, because they have police scanners and know when a police officer is being dispatched. The only problem is Alderman Rainey whose ward that is, is smarter than those - cab drivers and she has now figured out why there are never more than three cabs there when the police arrive, because they have scanners. She's not calling the police anymore, however she's keeping track and probably in about 30 days from today she will be introducing that ordinance. Those of you who have cabs parked there you might want to mention to your drivers it's a bad idea to park more than three cabs at any time. Alderman Newman said that would be one thing for the cab companies to respond to. M---- Alderman Rainey asked Mr. O'Sullivan if he got the call from the lady who complained about cab #124, the dirty cab. Mr. O'Sullivan said he did not. The lady said they were supposed to get back to her and never did. Mr. Stafford said if that s= didn't get through it was his offices fault and they'll make sure that doesn't happen again. Alderman Newman asked Mr. O'Sullivan if he attends the Taxicab Advisory Committee meetings, to which Mr. O'Sullivan responded, yes he has. Page 8. Alderman Newman then asked Mr. O'Sullivan if he attends t ►ese meetings regularly, to which Mr. O'Sullivan responded. yes. Alderman Newman asked if anyone from the Taxicab Advisory Committee was in attendance and found there was no one. He then said to him this Advisory Committee is a ;ost body in regards to the City of Evanston because we have not heard from them in tie longest time. nor have we rec-a*eed airy of their minutes. Alderman Newman asked when this committee last met. to wnich Mr. Stafford responded over a year ago. Alderman Newman requested a copy of these minutes be sent to the Taxicab Advisory Committee and -cmarked this committee is not passing the buck, but as part of the City government My are all responsible for part c` wha.ever has gone on. The City Council has established a special committee of ctizens, drivers, and the cab compares to be our eyes and ears on taxicab matters and when we're not hearing reports from them it seems like all's well in loge Ci:y, we don't have to be calling Wyatt Earp to clean it up. But when we hear this committee has not met for a yea- that's outrageous You can't be a functioning City Board or Commission and not meet for a year, what you're basir_aiy sa/ ng is you're not interested in your charge. You're only appointed for three years, which means you're doing not"rng for one-third of your term. Alderman Newman wanted to know who the Chairman of this committee is, to which FA, Stafford said they lost their Chairman which is one of the problems. Alderman Newman asked who are the citizen commMee members appointed by the Mayor and was told this would have to be checked into. Alderman Newman requested Ms. Barry of the City Manager's office contact the citizen members of the Taxicab Advisory Committee for an explanat:on of why they're not meeting, whether there are any vacancies on the committee. He requested a copy of torights minutes be sent to the Mayor and work with her to get a functioning Taxicab Advisory Committee. It seems to him members of the Council should have known about this without having this meeting to surprise them. Alderman Newman asked whether or not a written record of citizen complaints is kept by Mr. O'Sullivan's office. Mr. O'Sullivan said, yes, ar-y complaint they get, they keep. Alderman Newman requested a copy of that written record be sent to this committee for tneir next meeting and monthly summaries of these complaints and how they are responded to by the City are to be sen; to ABPW and the Human Services Committee. Alderman Feldman stated what is the most disturbing atout this issue is the fact that this committee is supposed to be the eyes and the ears of the Council, the Taxicab Advisory Committee to the Council that has not met. He is concemed that no one has informed the Council and specifically the committee, that this has occurred and asked what was the normal schedule of the Taxicab Advisory Committee meetings and if they were very well functioning. He was told they met quarterly. Alderman Feldman remarked there either seems to be something wrong with the original appointments or wrong with our system that allows an important commi=ee of this City to abdicate its responsibility for whatever reason. We can't operate that way and he's glad that Alderman Newman referred it to the Mayor because as far as he's concerned he thinks Lwery one of those people should retire, we should start all over again with a new committee constituted by the Mayor. Alderman Rainey noted this ordinance is a good ordinance and she had a lot to do with writing it. The ordinance calls for a well represented committee, a user, a driver, a coupon holder, and a cab company owner. We don't know why they haven't been meeting Alderman Newman asked if the l3 of complaints was ever delivered to the committee when they were meeting. Mr. O'Sullivan said, yes, the complaints were discussed. Alderman Feldman asked if anybody from staff informed the Mayor that there is no Chairman and that this committee has not met in one year and was told they did not. Alderman Newman emphasized that this committee will inform the Mayor at the next Council meeting Alderman Rainey wanted :o expand Alderman Newman's request to the City Manager's office, to include meeting with all the members of the ccmmittee that still exist, which Alderman Newman agreed was a better request. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. O'Sullivan what he would have done if he received a call from the lady regarding cab #124, Mr. O'Sullivan said he would have contacted the company and had the driver come in. He would not elaborate as to what the complaint was about but just that he wanted to see him and his cab. Alderman Newman thought when people take the time to call in a complaint it is very serious and they have truly been harmed. He asked if we have the authority to revoke any driving privileges umt,ar our ordinance. Mr O'Sullivan believed the authority is with the City Manager or his designee. Alderman Newman asked if we have revoked anybody's driving privileges in the last five years, to which Mr. O'Sullivan replied, not that he could recall. Alderman Newman remarked to him that says we have not been doing much because he believes in the last five years there has been at least one driver who could have been found to be seriously abusive. He does not believe that Lee is the only one who has been confronted with that type of very serious abuse. Alderman Newman asked if anybody's license has been suspended in the last five years to which Mr. O'Sullivan replied licenses haven't been suspended but the cab compan4es have removed the drivers from service. Alderman Newman wanted to know what period of time this suspension was for, to which Mr. O'Sullivan said from three to five days. Alderman Newman requested the committee also have statistics on this. Walter Wolff. President of Norshore Cab Comnanv said he has been with this company for about twenty-five years. He was going to retire soon but was asked to stay another year. Alderman Rainey was very instrumental in getting the Transportation Committee started, they started out wrong but Alderman Rainey corrected it all. He was the chairman for six years, has been living in Evanston all his life, and is now a senior citizen and respects everybody here. These Page 9. problems have been going on for a long time and he is not here to pick on anybody but would like to say we did have a good committee that started the school with the professor from Northwestem. The school is still going on, not as good as he would like it to be, but at least its there. They haven't had a Transportabon Committee meeting in more than a year The Board tried to take care of the senior citizens and had a senior citizen represented at meetings, a nice lady from Primm Towers who he used to pick up and bring to the Saturday meetings. Twenty-five years ago, when he first came, they started the coupon program, which at that time was $1.25 He was the first one to take the program and Sam 'McKinleys father helped him. they tried to subsidize the City. He has been to meetings with Alderman Rainey and the Township when they asked for a raise, Alderman Ramey got them a raise, at that time the raise was 52.00. They have had meetings on this but the program is still in bad shape. Adde-rnan Newman asked Mr. Wolff if he would agree that there is no senior in town that has been responsible for the coupon not linty compensating the driver as they have nothing to do with it, which Mr. Wolff agreed with. Alderman Newman awed Mr. Wolff ,f he also agreed that there should not be one senior who lives in Evanston or one person with special needs, who is treated with any lack of dignity and respect try any company licensed by the City of Evanston, to which Mr. Wolff absolutely agreed. Alderman Newman then wanted to know why when people call the companies they feel that nothing happens to their complaint and are wasting their time because they are being treated with disrespect not only by the dr.,ver but also the company. Mr. Wolff said like anything else there may be some cracks but he can say the young lady that called, when he got the call he suspended the man for three days. Alderman Newman asked who else in the company receives the calls. Mr. Wolff said it is usually himself, but now that he is getting older has appointed several people to hem and keep this going. They have come up with a form where they have the drivers take care of everything. Right now they have three or four men involved in this, to which Alderman NvATnan asked what is done with the forms when a cornplaint is received, does the City get a copy of that form. Mr. Wolff said the City does not get a copy, they keep a file an them. Alderman Newman suggested the City should receive a copy of the form coming back from the cab companies and asked if the Citys ordinance has to be changed to accomplish that this will be done. We will need to know that people who call up and complain and choose to call the company first as opposed the City, are having their complaints foi:owed up on and if there are serious complaints that are verified is there the appropriate discipline. He asked if we are in agreement with that and was told yes. Mr. Wolff wanted to add they have a tape system and Paula Haynes has called him two or three times about some human relations issues They brought the tapes in so they could hear the drivers and everything else but the tape machine has not been working properly. They are more than happy to do the paperwork. Alderman Newman asked if the tape machine can begin working again and was told, no, it is too expensive. Alderman Newman asked how many drivers have been suspended in 2001 at Mr. Wolffs company for mistreating an Evanston citizen, to which Mr. Wolff responded, quite a few. They have eighty-one cabs in Evanston and have suspended quite a few drivers over they years, but this year probably only a dozen. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Wolff what the school he referred to does. Mr. Wolff said the school is the City of Evanston School, before drivers get their chauffeurs license they have to go to the school. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if they team to drive City streets at the school and if there is any sensitivity training done at the school, to which Mr. Wolff responded that is part of it, they now also have drivers go to the Presbyterian and Mather Homes to show the drivers how to help the senior citizens. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Mr. Wolff if he is familiar with the school and what type of sensitivity training is done at the school to which Mr. Wolff said he is just telling what the school does, he himself went to the school. Alderman Rainey asked who runs the school and was told the City of Evanston. Mr. O'Sullivan said he has been coordinating the school since Susan Sabir left the City's employ. When Mr. Wolff started the school it was for one day an instructor came from Oakton Community College to go over the ordinance rules and regulations, the coupon program, what is expected of them as a cab driver and customer service, it was very rudimentary. Approximately a year ago it was expanded to encompass two and a half days. The Presbyterian Homes come in one morning, two ladies that are nurses at the home speak about how to deal with a variety of seniors and what they are going through as they age. Mary Hoffman is the senior who comes in and speaks to the drivers and answers any questions they might have. The second part of the second day a cab driver talks about how to follow a map, the quickest route available. They also have another driver go over the basics of cab operations. On the morning of the third day the Evanston Police Department has a program on crime prevention for the drivers to avoid any kind of criminal activity, as well as traffic safety. Amanda Jones also speaks to the drivers about seniors and what to do if they feel the senior is being abused, how they can intervene and how they can help out. The school has expanded from when Mr. Wolff started. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how often a driver is expected to go through the training, Mr. O'Sullivan said the driver goes through it once as long as he keeps his license renewed on a year to year basis, that's is the only time he has to go through it If he lets his license lapse for more than one year he will be required to go through the entire program again as if he was new. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted Mr. Wolff indicated he had to suspend a number of drivers over the years and asked if it pertained to just one certain group of people or reasons. Mr. Wolff said it was for a lot of reasons. for example, if the drivers don't have air conditioning in the cab, if the drivers refuse the senior citizen coupon, if the drivers don't put carpeting in the cabs and in the trunks to make them look better when people go to O'Hare or whatever. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired how much the cab company has been involved in trying to give internal training to their win drivers to make sure that they do not violate these rules. Mr. Wolff said they require the driver to go out during the Page 10. day with another driver if he isn't capable of doing a good job. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how often people are orientated about sensitivt�y to seniors and people with disabilities, to which Mr. Wolff responded, truthfully not enough wftch is why he has young fellows trying to teach these people the right things Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Wotff if we could see some statement from him, perhaps after he evaluates this situation, to let us know what he has set in place so we can take that ^to account as we evaluate the program in the future. Mr. Wolff said they already have, they are prepared to give the C :y all kinds of paperwork, to which Alderman Newman added the City is definitely going to do some follow up. Aldermani Newman thanked Mr. Wolff for the information given this evening. Allan Miller, Norshore Cab, said he lives in Evanston and is relatively sensitive to what is going on here. In ten minutes he would not be able to adaress a third of what he has to say. Alderman Newman suggested tonight Mr. Miller just give some of the highlights and the committee can give him additional time at a subsequent meeting. as we will not finish discussing this large topic tonight. Mr. Miller said he was asked to speak on behalf of all the cab companies and would take Alderman Newman's statement, the best statement of the evening for the cab companies, "if you don't know there is a pot hole, you can't fix r." There are a number of complaints they are not made aware of. He just heard about Lee's complaint and she called Gee company Friday. He heard a complaint from one of the aldermen here during this past week and that alderman heard from him within twenty-four hours. There is a solution to that problem, we can solve a majority of the problems internally. all the cab companies have the mechanisms to do that but they can't solve the problems they don't know exists. Alderman Newman said he is skeptical if complaints are taken by the average dispatcher whether or not those complaints will adequately get back to the owners of the companies. Rather than have three or four people responsible for complaints there should be one person in each company, even if it's the head of the company, who the caller can be told will commit to returning tails. Everyone should know the one contact person at each of the cab companies. There should be an agreement implemented within the next six months, which Mr. Miller agreed with. Mr. Miner said in the packet given by staff there are some of the beginnings of the remedies. The cab companies have met and dealt with several substantive issues and a lot had to do with who is bearing what responsibility and at what level. They are talking about three key Issues; 1) it's not just the money, the money is an integral part of it, 2) you also have to talk about education and training of the drivers by the City and the companies, and 3) we have to be comprehensive in our approach, we can't do it alone, you can't do it alone, they can't do it alone, we all need to work together as a team. Alderman Newman followed up on Alderman Feldman's comment and said despite the complaints we're hearing tonight there is a consensus on the committee to fix the coupon value for the drivers, but as Alderman Feldman said once we fbc that, which we are going to do, it has to be discussed how to do this without affecting the seniors, there is going to be an expectation that old cornplaint by the drivers will not be heard for a couple of years. If there is a problem in the future with the daily cost it will be brought back so we can know about it Mr. Miller thought Alderman Newman is right and whatever change is made there is going to be a period of adjustment on all of our parts. We need to retrain our drivers, they know they have to take the coupons, its in the ordinance, they get it from training and when they go through Gasses. Mr. Miller said he drives, he owns, he has cabs in all the villages, and is probably the operations person you want to talk to. He would encourage everyone to call him, he's the first Miller in the phone book and he is available. What is very important to him is how does the City contact us. In the last couple of days we have talked to Mr. O'Sullivan and resolved a complaint that had some snags in it. The driver in question was reluctant to see Mr. O'Sullivan and was suspended until he saw Mr. O'Sullivan. The problem did get solved by us working together. We all have mechanisms along the fines of problem solving and the key is to make them work, which we can and will do. He can give reasons and explanations of a tot of things and hopes he can have the chance to have your ear. Alderman Newman said without any doubt Mr. Miller wilt have our ears, he has given us some of the highlights and we will give him some extended time. Mr. Miller recalled that Alderman Rainey was correct, a number of years ago there was a proposal written about an increase that did go to the Taxicab Advisory Board. Alderman Newman said it did not go to the City Council who has the budget authority on it. He asked Mr. Miller when it went to time Taxicab Advisory Committee, to which Mr. Miller said in 1998 a proposal was forwarded to the Taxicab Advisory Committee and the City Collector's office to raise the rate. Alderman Newman extended an open invitation that anything sent to this Taxicab Advisory Committee, that stopped meeting a year ago. should be copied to the City Council Human Services Committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste appreciated Mr. Miller's determination to try to find a solution to this and make it work. Earlier there was a comment made targeting a particular group of drivers, the Haitian drivers, as being particularly rude. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said because he is a Haitian American and has some communication with the Haitian community and with some of the drivers, he would like to make sure they get the necessary orientation and training so they understand the sensitivity of the seniors and those who are disabled. At the same time he wants to make sure we are not unfairly targeting that group and calling them out in public because a lot of the seniors and the community at large will have to deal with them. He asked Mr. Miller if he finds the complaints coming to him are mainly about the Haitian drivers or are they complaints across the board and if he finds complaints coming against Haitian drivers is it a question of understanding and how would he characterize it so that we can fix that particular problem. Mr. Miller thought complaints that come in are universal, there is no color, religion, or race. Our drivers are rude whether they're white, black, purple, green, or orange, it doesn't matter. The complaints come in whether the drivers are old or young, Pakistani or Indian, Page 11. African, etc., he could go through the whotp demographic of drivers What we now see in terms of complaints is more rudeness; the general consensus is the drvvers are much ruder to all customers, whrch is a big concem of a customer service business. Alderman Newman noted the other customers who are not involved in the program have suggested that underpayment for coupons is a source of anger, and asked Mr. Miller what he would attribute to rudeness towards customers who are outside the senior coupon program. Mr. Miller said someone identified something about a driver's attitude and when a driver gets pulled off the head of a cabstand to take a coupon that starts the dnvees day in a negative way. When he does that three or four times and hears the next driver on the radio or on the computer going to Midway or to O'Hare while he is losing money taking the coupon ride the other driver is making $40 or S50. That builds up with feelings of resentment where they take it out on the dispatchers, the customers, they scream at owners, leave the cabs in parking lots, hang out at the cab stands and abuse people, and a lot of other things. Part of this has to do with some re-education of our drivers in terms of what a customer service business is, some of it is language, some of it is understanding. He would say 60% of all cab complaints are language misunderstandings, which sometimes are easy to clear up and somebmes are not. Alderman Feldman found t1:3t very interesting but when somebody comes up to the drivers at the head of a cab stand and says they want to go ten b:ncks, no coupon, he's still angry because he didn't go to O'Hare. Therefore, this has little to do with the coupon program be^.ause if the driver is going to get angry for not having a big fare, then this driver is going to be angry half of his life. Mr. Miller agreed with Alderman Feldman, as there are some fundamental problems. They're trying to summarize a number of issutm, as they have a lot of issues in the cab business. Alderman Feldman wanted to clarify that in any kind of program we set up, any kind of plans, ordinance, arrangement agreement, he wants water set dates at which time that we can check on it, we have certain things to accomplish. He knows it will not happen ovemight, but he wants us to be on top of this and does not want to have to come back a year or so from now and hear about complaints that we never fixed. He hopes we're able to address this issue as this is not an easy issue to address, but we have to do everything possible to protect the citizens of this community and try to be fair to drivers. The most we can do is be fair, we can't make the drivers millionaires, nor can we guarantee every other fare will go to O'Hare. As Alderman Rainey remarked to him, if this is what they expect they should get another job. Mr. Miller thought Alderman Feldman was right about the drivers' unrealistic expectations, that's something we have to deal with as cab companies, he is in total agreement to work with the City and give you total cooperation. A lady in the audience asked if there is a form available for the senior citizen with the rates for tipping within a certain radius, if you are in a cab for less than a mile, or a mite, a mile and a half, etc. A1derran Newman said tipping is completely at the discretion of the customer. Mr. Miller said he oversees the programs for the seniors in Lincolnwood and Skokie, both successful programs, have an education program for the people in the senior homes. They come out and talk to them, identify issues and listen to their complaints. We have a little road show that we do and one of the things we talk about is why do you tip a driver, and why do you tip a driver that is rude to you. One of the ways you can stop the rudeness is not to tip him, you can call Mr. Miller and tell him why you didn't tip him and the driver has to deal with him. He suggests if you get good service give the driver 10, 20, 30% depending on what you can afford, they can give you some guidelines if that would be helpful. The lady in the audience said some of the seniors need to know that, Alderman Newman asked members of the committee if they will all be in attendance at the next regular meeting on August 607. when we might have more time to address some of these concerns here. There is overlapping jurisdiction on this issue between A & P W and Human Services, three members of A & P W are on the Human Services committee. He asked if the committee is in agreement to try to address as much as we can on the topic at this committee and send the report to A & P W. Alderman Rainey said A & P Ws jurisdiction has to do with the fare increase they're allowed to charge. Alderman Newman said the coupon issue is under this committee as well as some inspection issues raised and records of complaints. Alderman Feldman thought we should hear everything that has to be heard and make a reasonable report but the final issue on the rates and other issues that have to do with A & P W will be made by A & P FrT W. Alderman Rainey asked when will the drivers' rate issue get to A & P W. Mr. Stafford said that was held off until this _ WKF- meefing it can now be brought to A & P W any time, he would not suggest waiting. Alderman Newman suggested somewhere in the next couple of meetings staff should get ready to bring the meter proposal to A & P W. Alderman Newman thanked everyone who came to tonight's meeting, the seniors and those with special needs, because without their willingness to take the time to be here we would not know the problems we have to address and rtx. He can c tell from the questions asked by each member of the committee there is a very deep commitment and we will get this problem under control. At the August r meeting, we will spend some time talking with the cab companies in more detail about the complaints and some of the problems from their end that they want to see us address. We will also talk about getting the value of the coupon to the level necessary for the driver to feel fully compensated which will require the City committing some additional funds to this program. He would like to make it clear that we will not take as much comment at the August 6"' meeting. Anybody present tonight who wants to attend that meeting is more than welcome but that meeting wilt not be a hearing as this meeting is. The various senior buildings, Noyes Court, Primm Tower, Presbyterian Homes, The Mather, etc., may want to send representatives to get information. Whatever meetings Human Services has Page 12. an this subject, copies of those minutes and all our actions should be distributed to the various buildings to enable them to read about what is being done so they can contact aldermen when its appropriate. Alderman Rainey hoped staff would bring the rate increase. having nothing to Co with the coupon, to A 8 P W as soon as possible. There is no reason why we can't approve that and hold it so the minute this issue is resolved it can go into effect She does not think one should go after the other, we should do that right away and she would like the cab companies to know we feel they're entitled to an increase. There is not an inaustry in the world that has not increased their cost since 1994, especially since the increase in the cost of gasoline Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to extend Alderman Newman's expression cf thanks to the seniors and the individuals with special disabilities for attending this meeting, and also extend that to the owners of the taxi companies. He has known Sam McKinley of Best Taxi for a long time, he went to high school wsth him. He knows a lot of these people have an interest in making sure that we continue to have excellent services or we Lrnprove the services we provide and trouble shoot on the problems we are currently having. He also wanted to thank Mr. Seagowl, one of the owners of 303 for attending because he has a special connection to a number of Haitian drivers and can take back the message to make sure we provide the best care for our senior citizens and those citizens with disabilities. Ms. McBride commented the City should have complaint forms in the office of each building and those forms should be sent to the right person in the City. Alderman Newman said Ms. Flowers and Mr. Terry will work on that and in about 30 days there should be some informational forms distributed to the various buildings. Alderman Rainey said when people buy their coupons they could be given a stack of these forms. Alderman Newman again thanked all who attended and announced the Levy Bus would be arriving and accommodate everyone needing transportation. A short recess was called at 8:45 p.m. at which time Alderman Feldman left the meeting. The meeting resumed at 8:59 p.m. Alderman Newman wished to thank Ms. Flowers and Mr. Terry for all the work they did to help transport seniors from all over the City to this meeting. If there is any question as to what information should come back to us an the review of the senior and disabled subsidized taxi coupon program for the August 6m meeting he would urge Mr, Terry and Mr. Stafford to talk to him, also each member of this committee should be called prior to the next meeting for requests they have in regard to information to make sure we have everything needed. Alderman Newman said he would like to look at the figures with no increase to the seniors for the coupons. He noticed we had S1 increase for 12,000 and asked if that means if we kept it at $2 what would we have to increase it to get $2 for the seniors to purchase to get to the S5 mark for drivers what would The Citys budget contribution have to be. Alderman Ramey did not want to see any increase for the seniors, if we can give $57.000 for a study for a theater on Central Street because it's good for economic development, she thinks getting the seniors from one place to another is great for economic development. She wants them to get from here to there to spend their money and thinks our goal should be no increase to the seniors. Alderman Newman thought the consensus of the committee is to look at this with a $5 coupon keeping the price to the seniors to S2 and what the potential increase to the City budget would be. There wrll be an opportun,'y to recommend that to the entire City Council and for us to try to figure out if we do this increase on September 1 a what the cost to this year's budget cycle would be and see if we could somehow find that money. Alderman Rainey asked if we could also get information about the set rides done for testing, how far is it from any senior citizen building. She knows many seniors who take cabs do not live in those buildings, but it would be interesting to know where $5 will get you from any one of those buildings. VI. REVIEW OF THE DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Newman called for committee questions on Completed CR's # 01-02 and # 02-03. He noted the Chief has the Office of Professional Standards talk to virtually everybody available who was a witness to the complaint and any citizen, if we have a name, who was present that we know of we talk to. Not hearing anv questions reaardina CR #01-02. Alderman Rainev motioned to acceot. motion seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimousty accented. (3.0). Alderman Newman called for questions on CR # 02-03. Alderman Rainey said the complainant stories were interesting and asked what they were trying to do, it appeared as though the alleged parent didn't know that the box was in the trunk. Sergeant Kuempel said apparently the parent had no knowledge that the box was in the trunk. Alderman Rainey asked if the parent was trying to cover for the chili. Sergeant Kuempel said he thought that was also part of it but the child was doing some things the parent didn't even know about. Alderman Rainey was astonished at how the case was resolved in court, the only charge was possession, when the 16-year-old admitted to selling cocaine and there was a firearm found. She asked if the firearm was returned to the family and was told no weapon is every returned they are destroyed Page 13. Alderman Rainey asked who the firearm was registered to, and was told that information was not available. She asked if there is any information about whether the gun was ever used and was told a check is mandatory on every gun. At this time Chief Kaminski did not recall that information but would check on rt Alderman Rainey would like to know if we knew about this gun before. She found it appalling that a juvenile can literally almost get away with murder, driving without a license, without insurance, without the car being registered, with drugs and a gun in the car, but is only found guilty of possession of a controlled substance and put back out on the street w',h 30 hours community service. Alderman Rainey asked what would that community service be and if this was an Evanston case or a Chicago case. Chief Kaminski said it's our case and the court will determine the community service Alderman Rainey asked if we take the burden of administering community service for this kid do we get paid for that and was told we do not. Alderman Newman said sentencing is always an issue and on one of our big liability cases me person was arrested 44 times and was out on the street One would think someone like that would be going away for a while. Alderman Newman asked Chief Kaminski if he had met with Judge Sayles about sentencing and bail issues Chief Kaminski said he has met with the Judge to talk about issues and express our general concerns and the Judge was very responsive. Alderman Newman asked if the concern about property crimes was expressed to the Judge to which Chief Kaminski did not know if he specifically talked with her about that but did talk about his concerns of letting people who have been arrested out on the street time and time again. We make several arrests and everyone is out faster than we can do the paperwork. The Judges have a great deal of discretion with a lot of this. Alderman Newman again encouraged Chief Kaminski and members of the Council see the Judge at least once a year to talk about various problems we might have because he believes the more we push the more they respond to encouragement from elected officials Alderman Rainey asked if this complaint involved a former Evanston family and was told the family came from Elgin and moved to Chicago within the year. Alderman Ralnev motioned to accent the disposition of Comolaint is 01-03. seconded by Alderman Newman, motion unanimouslv accented 13-0). VII. DISCUSSION OF POLICE DEPARTMENT COMPLAINT REVIEW PROCESS Alderman Newman noted the packet contained a very significant memo on anything anybody would want to know about investigating our complaints with an extensive description of what it entails. Chief Kaminski said Sergeant Kuempel was involved and did a lot of the research on the memo. Part of the annual report covers all the complaints but there is also a separate report that covers all the complaints we've had for a year. This year we're up to rive complaints, to which Alderman Newman said considering we've ending the month of June that is not many complaints. Chief Kaminski said last year we had eighteen complaints, the year before that were about fourteen, we have usually been under twenty complaints a year. Alderman Rainey asked how many of these complaints are calls for service. Chief Kaminski said we get about 60,000 calls for service, we do about 4.000 arrests, issue 7,000 or 8,000 traffic tickets, write hundreds of thousands of parking tickets, and have all kinds of interactions with the public. We do fairly well and have a pretty good track record. Alderman Rainey asked the Chief if he has any way of comparing it with other communities. Chief Kaminski said according to some of the research books and conversations with some of his colleagues, cne in particular in Aurora who said their complaints are up into the 170's, he felt pretty good about our numbers. Alderman Newman remarked since he has been on this committee, which was when the Council went back to the Committee system, one of the reasons he wanted Human Services to be a separate committee was so he could participate in police issues. All members that have served on this committee feet very strongly that every member of the Police Department, who is in the street, should be treating our citizens with dignity and respect. We have an expectation if that is not happening the Chief is going to fairly evaluate complaints and they will all be fully investigated. Many times extensive questions have been asked by this committee on certain complaints where we questioned whether or not the right call was being made. There were times when we asked the Chief to take another look at the complaint, which we did several months ago. One of the balances we have to achieve is the complaint process can be used by some members of the community to discourage certain aggressive police conduct by the department and we have to be careful about giving the department every chance to account for misbehavior, something experience has taught him since he has been an the Council. His impression is sometimes these complaints are very founded and other times they are not, sometimes there is not enough evidence to follow through. Chief Kaminski agreed with Alderman Newman and said the bottom tine is we want all the officers to provide the best service to the citizens in this community. There has to be a system of checks and balances in order to deal with that and this is one of the processes the citizens have to do those checks and balances. We thoroughly investigate the complaints, the officers assigned to it are supervisors who work directly for the Chief and are not accountable to any other bosses in the department Once all the fact finding is done we go through a process of letting all the bosses comment on the facts of the investigation going through a process and making recommendations that comes to him for die final recommendation. After that if discipline is involved it goes to another layer of review with the City, if not a synopsis is done. We talk to complainants, many times a lot of the complainants do not understand what the officers are doing, some Page 14. of the issues and problems they face on the street and we try to make sure the complainant feels comfortable with what we have done and do try to explain it. Then a personal letter is sent by the Chief. This committee sees the complaint and if theyre not happy with what has been done they can certainly voice their concerns again We do try to have a series of checks and balances to make sure everybody is heard Alderman Rainey asked if there are sanctions administered against police officers having nothing to do with citizen complaints. Chief Kaminski said for that we do a CR, a complaint register, which is a citizen fling a formal complaint against an officer, then deal with administrative reviews which is any supervisor or any other officer making allegations of misconduct against an office. For example. late for court or late for work, car accidents, inappropriate behavior that we detect We monitor off',eer behavior and monitor what they do on the radio and in the field, if we detect something we take action. We do far more of that on our own than citizens. On the other hand we get a lot of nice letters about the officers from people and try to balance all that together. Certainly we are not perfect, we do make mistakes and sometimes the officer is not having a good day or did something, and we take action to correct that behavior. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if the fact that only five complaints have been received thus far this year and eighteen complaints for the entire last year, is a compliment to the professionalism of the department His trust has been to take a look at how we make the process as credible as possible. It is one thing to say you have internal reviews, but another thing to have the citizens respect that and he has not determined or come to a conclusion that citizens do not respect the process that you have in place, but it seems to him there is some kind of rote that civilians play. There is a level of objectivity they may bring that the department internal review may lack. He understands you have a Citizen Advisory Council and would like an explanation of the role of that Advisory Council and why you feel it is not prudent to integrate it into any kind of review of your findings or your process of reviewing complaints. Chief Kaminski's answer to Alderman Jean-Baptiste's question was we already have citizen review, in fact this committee represents the citizens in that review of him. If you do not like what he is doing you will go through the process to get rid of him, it's as simple as that He feels we do have citizen review and when looking across the country at other citizen reviews there is no one type of review that is the best, they are all different Your review is oversight of the decisions that the department is making in reference to citizen complaints. That is already built into the City structure. On the other hand his advisory group is another group of citizens that represent all kinds of neighborhoods and organizations throughout the City that he meets with quarterly. He meets with them in his office and one of the questions he starts off the meeting with is what they have heard positive or negative about the Police Department. He asks what the department can do, whether they're doing good or doing bad, if they hear anything he wants to know to get feedback which is the purpose of that advisory committee. He has never put them in the role of reviewing complaints, they are just for feedback for me to them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if he is getting maximum citizen's input from the quarterly Advisory Council meetings to give general comment in terms of what occurred. Chief Kaminski said he would go a bit broader as that is just one aspect and everyone pretty much knows his style, he believes in the partnership style of policing and very strongly feels the community is very important. He has tried to establish an administration that is open and accessible to the public. The Advisory Board is just one part of that. He would like to think that a lot of the programs and outreach the department has going on makes the citizens feel comfortable with the Police Department and coming there. They tend to get that from all the graduates of the Citizens Police Academy and encourage everyone, including the complainants who file complaints, to come and join the Academy. He wants to make sure that openness and accessibility is always there in the event they do have a complaint they will feel comfortable. If they do not want to go to the Office of Professional Standards they can call him on the phone, or if they do not want to do it personally they can call him and ask him to at least look into the matter. He does get a lot of calls from people and tries to be visible in the community as much as he canto make sure people who hare issues or problems can personally tell them to him. He thinks it is not just one aspect, but everything done in an approach to help make people feel comfortable with the Police Department and what we're doing. If they're not happy there are a number of places for them to complain to try to fix the problem. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked that Alderman Newman pointed out there is a danger to citizens participating in the review process because some people may want to take advantage of that to discredit the department and asked what the Chiefs opposition is to citizen civilians participating in the process. Chief Kaminski said he does not have opposition to anyone looking at anything they do, they do a good credible job. If you give a citizen a complaint to handle, to go out and investigate they would not know what to do. Usually the people we have that do the investigations have been trained in doing criminal investigations and know how to put together an investigation, how to interview and interrogate people, do a procedural investigation which the average citizen would not know how to do and would be to their disadvantage. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if that is the situation in other municipalities where they have citizen reviews. Chief Kaminski said they hire full-time civilians as investigators to do that Whether it is a civilian or a sworn officer they do have to go through a training program in order to do a good investigation because there is a lot to do in an investigation, not just giving it to a lay person to put together. Page 15. Alderman Newman agreed with the Chief and as he had sand previously feels very strongly that police officers in the City of Evanston who are abusive to citizens or misuse their authority need to be disciplined. He also has a concern about the complaints but this is citizen review, we are elected by the community and one of our functions is to took at the final outcomes, not necessarily as an Appellate Court to overturn the Chief, but to make sure and monitor that the complaints are being thoroughly investigated. If the Polices Department wasn't making progress there would be more complaints, the number of complaints is incredibly low and has been that way for a couple of years. It has not always been that way. Since he has been on the Council, there has been a significant turn around through the efforts of this Chief of Police and the Council in improving one of the big problems we had, morale. A number of years ago we weren't paying the officers what it takes to risk their lives in the City of Evanston Working in the City of Evanston as a police officer is not like working in Wilmette, Buffalo Grove, or a number of other =--s, they are on the front lines in many situations. One of the reasons we have some of the budget difficulties is we have gone out of our way to try to get these salaries competitive with other communities. Five years ago he consistently got complaints about police officers who had bad attitudes on the job, mainly because many of them felt they weren't being paid enough, which to a large extent we have turned around. There are officers who go through this process who are disciplined, and he does not believe our review is one that is a stacked deck, we have to have that concern because it is police investigating the police. A much higher priority for him to spend two sets of another $50,000 is he would much rather hire additional police officers than people to investigate complaints who were not police officers. He would dearly love to have more coverage in the downtown area at night from 4:00 to 11:00. As a budget issue he would not want to spend money on civilians unless we were getting to the point where it was clear, in all of our minds, that these complaints were not being honestly investigated and discipline wasn't being applied in the appropriate circumstances, which he has not felt. He understands the credibility issues as he personally did criminal defense. One officer had a lot of trouble and efforts have been made by the administration to make sure those types of officers are not in our department. If we went to a different kind of civilian review it would have to be on the basis of evidence within our complaint process that we did not feel two things were happening, one is appropriate discipline was not being rendered when there was culpability on the part of the officer, and the second part would be if we followed up and felt the discipline was not there. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said were it not for the last the committee meeting, when a man stood up and had a complaint that the committee itself seemed to have totally tacked a process for reviewing and looking at his issues, this topic may not have been on the agenda today. He would think the committee itself needs to look at how it addresses the review of the review process because when that gentleman stood up and raised his questions seeking answers we had no answers to give him, we had no process, which at least appeared to be credible to anyone and we ourselves said the process seemed to have been very impudent- Even if we are not talking about a revision of the process that is in place we need to look at how we review what is presented before us when citizens come and want to raise further questions, what do we do with that, how do we address their concerns beyond the process that the police have gone through because we did not review anything when it was presented to us. If it was civilian review we did nothing. Alderman Newman tried to refresh his memory regarding the complaint in question and was told it took place two months ago and was a domestic battery complaint. Chief Kaminski said the complainant felt the officers were excessive when they arrested him, there was a scuffle. The victim, the complainant's girlfriend, had called the police because she was beaten by this man and it was a continual ongoing problem. When the officers got there he was trying to leave and the officers grabbed him, they went inside and put him under arrest for hitting the woman. There then was a scuffle and in the process of trying to arrest him as he was resisting arrest a few objects were destroyed, they fell down on a table, and _ a fish tank broke. The man came in and filed a complaint against the officers and the man came to this committee. The Chiefs finding was Not Sustained, the man said he wanted to come for further review and talk to this committee. Alderman Rainey had no interest in helping someone coming here to appeal a police complaint if she does not feel they are credible or does not feel she wants to support that person s appeal. All of us on this committee would have been very clear if this had been a case where r appeared to us as though there were discrepancies or problems with the way the case was handled or the Chiefs decision. We could have an Executive Session with the police officers involved present -- and could have heard the whole case outright as it actually was, but in that case she did not have any sense of inappropriate behavior on the part of the police. If she had felt otherwise she would have attempted to pursue the next step. The next step tieing we have the opportunity to have an Executive Session with the Chief to find out who the police officers were and maybe have them present as we have the authority to hear more about the case. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said 0 was unclear to him what the next step was or whether we had any procedures. He is not interested in standing up for someone who may have abused somebody, nor is he struggling to defend someone who has violated the law, he is talking about having a process in which whether or not this parson was credible, we could not test his credibility because we saw the complaint at that moment_ Most of us were surprised that he showed up and we had nothing to say to him in terms of how we conduct our business. At that time it was not a finding of lack of credibility that led to us telling — him to go see a lawyer, it was simply that there was no clear direction. He is concerned that complainants showing up at these meetings is rare. Alderman Newman said it happens in one out of five cases and gave as an example the case _- prior to that case when a citizen showed up. This was a case where somebody had been handcuffed and there was a dispute of whether they got injured while handcuffed. Several members of this committee felt the person was credible in Page 16. terms of how they got the injury and asked the Chief to investigate the matter. There are a couple of things we can do in a review. For example, if in the next six months if we had eight complaints for police brutality and saw a very clear patte. n emerging when reviewing the complaints and something happening regularly one of our options would be to ask the Chief what he's doing in terms of training or whether or not there is any occurrence against certain officers We could start getting into and locking at the results of those complaints to see whether or not there was any findings of guilty and then ask what the discipline was for that person so we can show that time message is getting out in the department that type of conduct, when found to be present, would not be tolerated and there would be the appropriate discipline. It is much harder on these indwdual cases when you're sitting up here where you sometimes do not get a clear feeling that the department made any rr)stake. At the time, based on the facts we can ask for further investigation, and can ask the Chief to reconsider his decusicn We can ask him to revisit the decision he made. or if there were any *mtnesses who were not interviewed. There are things we can do. What might have happened last time was that complaint did not jump out at any of us. It is not a perfect process and he would agree that we have to be vigilant in looking at these complaints to make sure citizens are getting a fair shake, we have to be skeptical because it is in all due respect the department investigating the department He had a complaint from somebody he knows and encouraged them to go to the Chief and make the complaint known, which eventually may be seen at this committee. As members of the Council we will hear from our constituents whether or not they have gone through this process and feel they did not get a fair shake from the department. A woman in the audience from the 5"1 Ward said she signed a complaint against two police officers and also wrote a letter that she gave to Alderman Joe Kent. Alderman Newman asked how long ago this took place and was told it was a couple of years ago. The woman said her issue is she hears a lot of complaints on the street, but they don't come to the department. Some people are afraid they will be harassed, other people don't have the time to do it She asked Chief Kaminski when someone files a complaint what the process is there. When they come and talk to him is that considered a complaint, or does it have to be documented to be a complaint. Chief Kaminski responded if one wants to file a formal complaint there is a form that is filed with the facts and the complainant has to sign making the allegations against the officers for whatever incadent However, that is a formal complaint, there are a lot of other ways for people that have issues and do not want to get involved, they call him about it and he still investigates them. He investigates them himself or finds other ways to ford what is going on, if he has to he will take action. Any information he gets from citizens he takes seriously, he does not cast it aside. Every phone call, every anonymous phone call, anonymous letters, he investigates and wonders if there is a theme going on with any particular officer. He constantly looks at those things and constantly looks at every officer. The woman In the audience said that is when people call the Chief. Chief Kaminski said when a ciften comes in and files a formal complaint, they make an allegation of misconduct, they come to the Department Office of Professional Standards, they give an interview, we do an interview with one of the investigators, and they sign a form. We go through a regular formal process all the way. The woman said the reason she is saying this is because if you are going to make a complaint you have to take the time and effort to do it but there are a lot of complaints made for different reasons and she hears a lot of complaints. She talks to a lot of people. a lot of young people. and many of them have complaints but do not know where to go and don't want to go to the station because they might be harassed. That is not to say that all of them are standing on the corner selling drugs or carrying guns. Sometimes people have complaints about certain things and they want to be heard but are afraid to do it. Alderman Rainey said there are options other than going to the Police Department, they can go to the Aldermen. Alderman Rainey gave the lady a copy of the memo the committee received from the Police Department. The woman said she was told if you file a complaint against a police officer the complaint is in their file for one year. Chief Kaminski said it all depends what the disposition is on it, if its suspension time it will be a permanent record in their file. The disposition can range from our finding out the officer wasn't trained properly and there may be deficiency there, there may be some other problems where we might refer him to employee assistance, there may be an oral reprimand anywhere from suspension time up to discharge. He has used every one of those options along the way and a lot of it depends on the individual officer, the circumstances and the situation. There is no set rule given to a disposition, its a variety things that we look at_ He does not know how to do any more outreach than he thinks he can do to try to get feedback about the department, not necessarily because he wants to hear negative things as the officers like to hear positive things once in a while, we all like to hear about some of the good things we do. That is why outreach and feedback is so important. Alderman Newman said the outreach is there, in some cases we have members of organizations encouraging compliance so there is definitely help in the community for people to file complaints against the police department when they feel they have been wronged. If the complaints don't get here, they should call the police or talk to their aldermen. In his ward he would encourage somebody to bring a complaint because the rest of the Council is not going to be able to act upon It nor hold the department accountable unless the process is used. Alderman Rainey remarked you do not have the responsibility to do this if you do not have an interest in it and she is certain the Chief would meet with you privately and confidentially for you to share any information you think would be helpful to him regarding behavior of his officers. Alderman Rainey said years ago she personally as an Alderman, filed a police complaint regarding the behavior of officers that she personally observed in a domestic battery case, what she considered a brutal beating of a woman. At that time she did not know the name Kaminski She was appalled by the Page 17. treatment she received and was appalled by the decision reason, she felt there was enormous cover up taking place on behalf of the officers involved. Singe then she has been extremely sensitive to this process and can a tell you she feels extremely satisfied, comforted, and impressed with the effort being made today, its far different than then. She can imagine what an unknown citizen was going through at the time, here she was an elected official who was treated as though she was some kind of trouble maker and literally a nut. There was an attempt to keep her out of an Executive Session that involved the complaint which established a whole new rule. and there was a legal opinion on that, no alderman can be denied access to an Executive Session. She fought that tooth and nail and these officers were patted on the back and sent on their way. Therefore, she is very sensitive to the entire situation and thinks there is far more concern on the part of our department to maintain ethical behavior and really investigate these cases. Alderman Newman commented as we go through this term when we have a couple of complaints coming before us at each meeting we should talk among ourselves and raise options for the department. Perhaps tonight was not the best example, but there will be complaints that will come along where we will have questions about the fact finding and sometimes the conclusions. We should take those opportunities to discuss what we can be doing to improve the review process. if we have to send them back to the Chief for reconsideration, if we have to see if patterns are developing. we'll do it as a committee. Peggy Tarr said she had a couple of questions. One, judging from what Chief Kaminski and others said, asked if it is the understanding that the Human Services Committee is being considered as the civilian review committee, Alderman Newman said the committee members are citizens reviewing the complaints, there is no question about that. Ms. Tarr said the committee members are special citizens. Her second question was whether the woman in the audience was talking about people not complaining formally as she has known Chief Kaminski for quite a few years and maybe once filed a format complaint against an officer that went no where. She had called Chief Kaminski and also talked with Commander Nilsson. When you're doing a count there are also those kind of complaints. She does appreciate the fact that she knew Chief Kaminski. One of the things she was also told is complaints against officers are not kept in their files after a year. She was told that when she complained about an officer, that she thinks has since refired, who it would have been much better if years ago he had been kicked out because he did a lot of awful things. At that time she was told the complaint was Not Sustained and would not be kept in his record for over a year. Alderman Newman said if it is Not Sustained why should it be kept. Ms. Tarr said because the pattern of the behavior. This officer had done to her what she later found out he had also done to other people, the same kind of pattern, and in an internal police investigation he was Not Sustained. She does not know where it went after the internal investigation nor does she know who was looking at this, which leads into her next question. After the police give their findings on a case is a citizen then given the guidelines and told that on such and such a date this will occur, or do they send a notice to come before this committee. Sergeant Kuempel responded the citizen is called by someone in OPS who has done the investigation and told the finding of the investigation and at the same time are also told they are going to get a letter from the Chief that spells out, again, the disposition and lets them know that there is recourse and spells out how to do the recourse. Ms.Tar- thanked Sergeant Kuempel for his explanation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what that recourse says. Chief Kaminski responded it says the disposition of what the finding was and if the citizen is not satisfied with that disposition has the opportunity to appear before this committee, to call them and schedule an appointment. That is what is in the letter. Chief Kaminski wanted to clarify the confusion about CFI's. There is a process that they do and have done for years, they took at the officers behavior in a number of venues and keep those records confidential for years. They look at the officers and their performance for tong term, by looking at their disciplinary record, the number of CR's, the number of arrests, the number of uses of force, sick time pattems, all that data is reviewed for each individual officer. If they see flags come up for any one of those items they intervene. Chief Kaminski does not want anyone to think they do not consider the total data on each officer. they do, and they have been doing that a long time. Alderman Jean- Baptiste suggested if the committee is going to play the role of recourse, they should have something written that citizens can understand as the process about which we provide that recourse. Alderman Newman said there is a memo included in tonight's packet from Ms. Brenniman describing what we can and cannot do. The committee may review the disposition of citizen complaints. raise questions/concems, and may also request the Police Chief to further review the disposition of a particular citizen complaint, but the resolution so far does not give the committee the authority to overtum the Police Chiefs opinion, nor to be involved in the discipline. The discipline is entirely administrative and from time to time the committee has been asking about discipline, they have not reviewed it but have been asking about dispositions. Perhaps there should be an attachment to any letter that goes out about the authority of the committee so people will understand this committee is not an appellate court, but we hear what has happened and see if it needs further review. Alderman Jean-Baptste said he would like to see just what it is that we do, if the recourse we provide is just that we can send it back for police review he does not think that is adequate. No one who came before this committee would see that as a recourse. Again, he does not think that process says anything to anyone coming to get any kind of remedy from this committee. Page 18, __ Alderman Rainey suggested if we get a case that we find questionable, that should be the determining factor for the next step. If three out of four commree members find tt questionable, we then have an Executive Session and hear both sides. She suspects we would ge: a sanitized version as we do not know the people who are involved nor do we know the real details, but we can hear at that in Executive Session and also hear the complainant's details. She does not think any complainant who comes to ass ri open session realty feels as free to talk as they would in Executive Session. Maybe at that point we would have some additional information or the Chiefs decision would be sustained in our minds. We do not know everything we need to know when we see these complaints reported Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggesw-d maybe he would take the responsibility to make a specific proposal along the pattern suggested by Alderman Rainey so that guidelines of what we do will let others know what the recourse is that we are providing. Then we can consider that proposal specifically. Alderman Newman noted when me Police Department has to come before this committee there is no perception in the department that the members of its committee are not tough and aggressive, many times over this committee has been chastised for its aggressiveness. We're criticized for being too tough and too aggressive and at times for interjecting ourselves too much into mistakes that the staff might make, micro management An example of that would be, when he was on A R P W a staff member came before that committee and completely fabricated an explanation to the committee. He spent 45 minutes of the committee's time going into that case, after that the employee was no longer in the employ of the City. He had nod-ing to do with it but because it was established that the employee lied to the committee and very serious discipline was taken by the City Manager. The Chief knows that our committees are covered by the press, and at any time if a member of this committee feels a citizen has been wronged will become very outspoken, it will be in the newspapers and there will be accountability one way or another. To him the bully pulpit, which every member of this committee has, means if we want to keep a complaint on our docket indefinitely and review it over and over, we can. We have not given ourselves ultimate authority by ordinance to actually reverse the Chiefs findings which he agreed would make it a much clearer process. Alderman Newman asked, if we wanted to, could we legally give ourselves by ordinance the authority of reverse the Chiefs findings. Ms. Brenniman said that would have to be looked into. Alderman Newman said if anybody on the City Council had the idea five years ago on the City Council that they wanted to have the ability to reverse the Chief on a police matter there was no way could you get a majority vote on this. Now you can, but in his view we have not had anytning close to a pattern of complaints where in the last four or five years a member of the committee has felt the Chief was not doing a pretty efficient job. We have a disagreement tonight as one person feels different. We have not had a lot of letters on this subject and it would be a much clearer process if we could legally get to actually review it He has nct felt there has been any basis to have that political fight on the Council. Ms. Brenniman said what would be part of a legal analysis of the question asked by Alderman Newman would be the type of municipal government we have. We have a City Manager form of government where the review of the department heads, division heads, and their expertise that what they do and do not do comes from the City Manager. Certainly as the Council you can make suggestions, but that is the role of the City Manager. If it goes to a strong Mayor form of government like the City of Chicago then it emanates from the Mayor. Alderman Newman thought it would be interesting whether the Chicago Police Services Committee actually has the authority to reverse a disciplinary decision, even under that form of government, of the Chief of Police. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not want to belabor the point tonight but thought that comment should be investigated because this is a City Manager form of government, there is a limitation on City Councirs authority to be able to intervene and make sure that justice is properly being administered. We need to work on making our process clearer, so that everybody understands it and it is clear there is a recourse and suggests we come back with a clearer process. Alderman Newman added this is a review not an appellate process and if we found a consistent pattern members of this committee would respond to the complaints and there would be some very tough questioning which in itself would be something that the department, if they weren't responding, would find some discomfort in. That is how we will get some change. It is an interesting point whether in this form of government we ever could be an appellate as opposed to a review board. Bettv Ester, said what if she was a complainant and filed a complaint with Chief Kaminski who gave a decision on her complaint that she was not happy with, does she then get a letter from the Chief that outlines of procedure and where she is supposed to come. What you are saying to her tonight is she does not have a recourse, all you do is listen, you do not recommend to the committee. you send it back but the Chief still says this is his decision. If this is what recourse is and they came back to you, would you then recommend to the City Manager that he overturn it? There is no polish here at this committee so what's the point for me as the complainant to come here. What is the reason to bring me hereto talk to a committee that is not going to, or not able to, reverse a decision. My recourse would be that is a court case. Alderman Newman said in some cases if there was, for example, an injury, the injured party would have the ability to seek cMI remedies beyond the complaint There is some merit to what Ms. Ester is saying, we do not have a system in place where we are the appellate court for what the Police Chief does. At this point in time based on the number of complaints that are coming directly to the committee and based on the number of complaints individual aldermen have, in the past Page 19. six years we have had less and less complaints. As a member of Council it does not seem to him that there is a serous problem in the Price Department with the way they re reviewing me complaints. If he felt the reviews were not leg .rnate or being followed up on and our serving as an institution was merely a review board not having any impact on the Chief he would be moving to change it. 'there would have to be some evidence of complaints that were mishandled where discipline wasn't rendered when it should have been, which the cornmmee has not felt. There has not been a c=m:oee member in the past four or five years complaining about the dispositions of the Police Chief. To take it to the next step where we empower ourselves by ordinance to do something more than review has not seemed necessary. Ms. Ester understands what Alderman Newman is saying is probably true but as an individual complainant when you get a fetter for any process that you have to go to a step for review and you don't like the decision then you take it to another step for seeking a different decision. Why not just tell the truth that if you go there and you issue this complaint to the Human Services Committee and they will look at it and see whether or not when looking at maybe they might send it back to the Chief to look at again and reverse the decision. Alderman Newman said maybe this committee will spend a half- hour publicly chastising the department for not investigating property and everybody in the town of 74,000 who chooses to read the newspapers will know about it The Police Department will have the situation where if they are not investigating these complaints correctly they will make their own conduct such at the public debate and discussion, which they would not like to do. As a department they very much want to have a superior reputation, at least among Police Departments and with elected officials. Ms. Ester said she is sure your committee would not tell the Chief because you will not override the Chiefs decision. Alderman Newman said they do not have that type of authority. Ms. Ester said whatever the letter says you might at least make it clear that you can't override his decision that might be one reason why you have not had a lot of complaints coming to you. Alderman Newman said he would rather have it not be as dear because he would rather have people come as opposed to not come to let us know about the complaints. if we said in the letter the Human Services Committee will never do anything for you we'll never see them here at all. Alderman Rainey remarked we're not saying we're not getting complaints from complainants, we're saying the Chief himself is not getting the number of complaints to give us cause. Alderman Newman said having five complaints for 60.000 calls for service through the first six months of the year to him is incredibly tow. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed that is a fine record but what Ms. Ester is saying is that may not reflect the amount o` complaints out there, but d will never reflect that number, People will never take the initiative to come forth and make all the complaints they may have about the Police Department and the complaints may not always be credible. The Chiefs statement throughout the process that he abhors any kind of abuse against any citizens and would stand up against it is a good thing and he appreciates his making that statement. He understands you're saying if it's not broke, why try to fix it The only thing is we create an illusion to people if we say to them that they have a recourse when they truly do not have a recourse which is why he's suggesting we cannot expect to fix this tonight and what he would like is to get some clarification as to what we can do. You said we can send it back to the Chief for review which he guesses could go on at infinitum until we reach some kind of compromise with the Chief, but if we are going to present an option to citizens that option has to have some credibility if we are to manage the process and the perception that we are really providing a recourse to people. He would suggest we take a closer look at what it is that we are saying we can do and if we cannot do anything then we have to take a look at that and face that reality Alderman Newman did not disagree with what Alderman Jean -Baptiste that Ks a process that seems not to have any teeth in terms of us as a committee having a serious direct impact on the individual complaint From his perspective one of the reasons he has not pursued this is he has not recently found the need, but also there are some elected officials now on the Council who vehemently oppose it, there are other members of the community who would think we're going to be micro managing the Police Department and we're abandoning the City Manager form of government He has not wanted _ to spend any political capital he might have correcting something that could be controversial at a time when he hadn't felt there was a good review going on or could not find complaints were being reviewed property. If we felt the investigations were not up to a professional level wanting to take a look at what our authority is would be at the top of our agenda. There are members of the Council who have thought the way Alderman Jean -Baptiste has and who could never get appointed to the Police Services Committee, going back eight or nine years, because there was concern they would push the kind thing he is pushing. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thinks it is very important pushing a credible process, even for the Chief, there is not a perception to try to destabilize the status quo. If we have good police relationships with the community, that is excellent He is just saying we need to tell people the truth, the recourse we have is to really hear you out and send it back to the Police Chief for review. If people understand that when they come to us and are clear all they're asking for is a review of whatever the Chief had done. Alderman Newman thought more often than not we make that clear, maybe it was not clear at that last meeting but he would even poll members of the Council and the Mayor to see the different answers to =-- that. For now we should make it as dear as we can we are not an Appellate Court, we are simply reviewing the complaint and the investigation. _ Page 20. Alderman Rainey remarked in tt'e past she has given the Chief at least two complaints, not huge issues but they were complaints. She does not find people have any problem giving her their concerns which she immediately gives to the Chief and does not understand people being afraid to give their alderman complaints they can then oonfidentialty share with the Chief. Ms. Tarr said to Alderman Rainey try growing up black and maybe you'll understand. Alderman Rainey responded black people talk to her, to which Ms. Tarr said she was glad they do, but we have nine aldermen, not just Alderman Rainey, Alderman Rainey said we have se•.eral aldermen of color to which Ms. Tarr said she does not care, what she is saying is what she said earlier, try growirg up black. Ms. Tarr went on to say two incidents she talked to Chief Kaminski about were based on her being black, that was it She had a problem with the officers just for that reason and all she is saying to Alderman Rainey is she is glad I-er constituents talk to her, there are nine aldermen in the City and what Ms. Ester said about people and being afraid, just, try being black for a while and see what that means. Ms. Tarr said she did not mean to put Alderman Rainey down with teat comment. Alderman Rainey said she finds Ms. Tarts comments extremely racist and very offensive to which Ms. Tarr said she did not care that she does, she is a black person. Alderman Rainey called upon Alderman Newman as Chairman of the committee and said she is finding this discussion very disruptive and would like to comment on that. Alderman Rainey said that is one of the problems we have in our community people who don't give a care and have absolutely no respect for one another. Ms. Tarr said she made a comment and said it as a black person, Alderman Rainey could twee accepted it for just that. Alderman Rainey remarked that comment was a total put down, to which Ms. Tarr said if that`s the way you want to take it Alderman Rainey said to Ms. Tarr you can't blame everything on being black, to which Ms. Tarr said she does not, Alderman Rainey went on to say she is so tired of hearing that in this community, to which Ms. Tarr said for anyone thats white, that's too bad. Alderman Rainey said her record stands for itself as she thinks does Ms. Tares. Alderman Rainey thought it is very unfortunate that we cannot have a deep, full-blown discussion on something without Ms. Tarr yelling racist at anybody who tries to speak up and defend the police. Alderman Newman ended the discussion by calling for an adjournment of the meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 10:3O p.m. Respectfully submitted, e&z d5w-1 Audrey Trotsky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 21, e GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Council Chambers Monday - July 2, 2001 Name: .1 PLEASE PRINT Address / Organization: GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Council Chambers P. m. Monday - July 2, 2001 Name: s ,WAWA PLEASE PRINT Address/ organization: K•fiiLL , GUEST SIGN -IN ET', HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Council Chambers 6:30 .m. Monday - July 2, 2001 Name: PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: k:�.) _I5(,- 5.r0 .(1, Sr,..-S-e-J•4-el u A2 DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, August 6, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2401 6:30 I.M. Members Present: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman and Rainey Committee Chair. Alderman Newman Following is the portion of the Human Services Committee, August 6, 2001 meeting minutes covering the Subsidized Taxicab Program. CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBLE CHANGES TO THE SENIOR/DISABLED SUBSIDIZED TAXICAB COUPON PROGRAM Alderman Newman thanked the staff for a wonderful response to some of the issues and getting everybody to cooperate with their Education Program. He suggested doing this on an annual or a semi-annual basis to maintain the momentum created with the new Education Program, which he thinks will go a long to help solve some of the problems in the area. The main item to be dealt with this evening is the coupon cost suggestions made by the Finance staff after which the issue of complaints will be taken up. Mr. Stafford's memo suggested alternatives for a coupon value and how it can be paid for. Alderman Newman remarked that in the past three months he has taken two rides in taxis, one was from the transportation center to Main and Chicago. that cost S7.00. The other ride was from the downtown transportation center to Duxler Tire, which cost $5.50. His thoughts about the coupon being raised to $5.00 are we are making a significant raise and he does not want to hear its not good enough because how long does it take, in terms of the meter, to get from one side of Evanston to the other. As he understands the program, if someone gives the coupon they have to be taken wherever they want to go in Evanston. Alderman Newman said when he takes a taxi in downtown Chicago he gets a lot farther for less money than he does in Evanston, although he only taken two rides, S7.00 to get to Main and Chicago is outrageous. He asked what it really costs to go from South Boulevard to Isabella assuming there is no great traffic delay. Alan Miller, Norshore Cab Company, said they approximate they can go anywhere in traffic for up to S9.00, early in the morning it would be significantly less. He has done that run for $3 90 and did it again trying to stop at every traffic light and it was nowhere near S7.00, but S5.00 may be realistic depending on traffic. One of the important things is there are different rates being charged by the different cabs. He is not saying the companies are legitimately charging this but some of the other cab companies have a variable rate meter when they go from one suburb to another. His guess would be that Alderman Newman's cab had a variable rate meter. Alderman Newman asked if these meters are checked every three months, to which Mr. Miller responded the Evanston meters are checked some of these meters may have been from a cab from a different village. Walter Wolff, Norshore Cab Company, said Magic cabs have multiple meters. Alderman Newman said he was not in a Magic cab. Alderman Newman asked if everyone was together in accepting $5.00 as a reasonable contribution for a cab ride. The current value of a coupon is $3.50, which the City is raising to $5.00, a significant increase. Mr. Miller said the controversy comes in whether you're talking about a $5.00 flat rate ride or you're talking about a coupon off the meter rate, to which Alderman Newman said we're talking about a flat rate, not off the coupon. Mr. Miller said a further problem with that is underlying issues that come up when you talk about a local flat rate. When the drivers were polled they were resentful as they felt they're losing money because the coupons eat into their expenses. They pay for the gas and other fees. Even with the increase you're talking about a program that is limiting the drivers income. Alderman Rainey agreed that the drivers are losing money. Mr. Stafford and Mr. Varner introduced a computerized map program to the meeting to show the cost of a cab ride from certain addresses in Evanston, specifically to show where a S5.00 cab ride would take you from any designated address. Page 1. Alderman Feldman said the entire discussicn of an increase in rates started with a Kay to address this very issue a?d he was constantly reassured that this issue would be over the minute we increased the rates for taxicabs Suddenly, here we are increasing the rates for the taxicabs and he is hearing the same identical issue What he had sand at the beginning' of the discussion was he would support tr•e increase of rates but t•e did not want to hear anything mere about the drivers' concerns One of the reasons he suppered that was beca::se re thought that would help mitigate the kind of loss the drivers were taking. They only suffer a icss rf tney. at that morrment. could have taken another fare scmeplace else at full value and do not suffer a loss if they are s :'ang there for 45- min: ,es and waiting for somebody to call They finally get a senior citizen call and get their S5 00 fare You can't have:. bctrr :►rays, and he's very concerned abcui this as he is now hearing articulation about the drivers still being dissatisfied t)�-.:se they're losing money. This is absolutely endless, if we offered the drivers another 150% increase in rates they woula still say that This is not the deal that he took part in, the deal was that rates would be increase : and the drivers would be happy Now he hears the rates are increased and the drivers are still not happy. if the dnve--s aren't getting enough maybe the companies should come in and make up some of the difference. The Uy is already taking on an adcrbonal amount and from the memo the committee received we might even ask the citizens to come ua wsth another fifty cents Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed with Alderman Feldman in terms of his feelings about this except the drivers are not represented here. The entities that are hzeing a win wen srttzbon are the companies. The companies win when we raise rates, the companies win no matter what we do with the mupcns because they do not care. Alderman Newman interjected how do the companies get paid on the rates. they get a rate from the cab driver. Mr. Miller also interjected they do not see a nickel of that Alderman Jean -Baptiste said do vn the line that payment is going to be shared. During the hearings last month we identified the loses are being taken by the drivers and not the company, now we're talking About a proposal we made to increase the fare and to raise the coupon which was supposed to be the end of all dissatisfaction. However, the drivers were never represented in that dialogue, only the companies were represented. The companies are now saying to us that the drivers are still concerned about some of the losses they are taking. He agrees, the companies have to step up and engage to the dialogue as to what the City is kicking in. Alderman Feldman noted this whole discussion came about as a result of two things going on, one. senior citizens complained they were being abused and being treated badly, without respect Two, there was an issue of whether or not the cabs, over a long period of time, should have gotten a raise which this committee agreed to and pars of this had to do with the fact that we thought it was absolutely, totally, completely unacceptable and without question there was no excuse whatsoever for any abuse. The way it was presented to us was these drivers are upset because the rates are so low on top of which they're getting a coupon and are losing all this money. Alderman Feldman said he posed the question to the cab companies, if we raise the rates is it going to end the resentment, is it going to end the anger and abuse, and he was told over and over and over again, yes it will. We just passed that increase and now suddenly out of nowhere what we just did had nothing to do with it, he's still hearing the resentment and the beginnings of an excuse for abuse and disrespect what it came to before. He does not see any difference now. Mr. Wolff said this all started in 1994 when we asked the City for a rate increase. We went through Mr. Stafford and got all this set up and then all of a sudden Human Services came in because of the senior citizens situation. We never asked anything about anything except for a rate increase. Alderman Newman noted Mr. Wolff was present at this committee's last meeting when Alderman Rainey said when we started to address the coupon program the reason for some of the resentment on the part of the drivers was the low rates and riftat site wanted to do was exactly what we did Everyone on this committee voted for that rate increase and said we were going to come up with a fair coupon value, which he thought we did, and suddenly it's no good. Mr. Wolff said at the meeting they had it was quoted 59.00 or $7.00 for the coupon. Alderman Rainey asked who quoted those rates. Mr. Stafford responded the issues came up as to what are the options and they said they could be $9.00. $7.00. or S5.00. and we talked about those rates. In terms of staff we came back with $5.00 or $6.00 as a reasonable number. If you're going to ask the drivers and cab companies what's their favorite number they will say S9.00 or S7.00 but staff isn't quite there and thinks $5.00 is a reasonable number. Mr. Wolff said this is absolutely correct and thinks the rate increase is fair This is the very first time we found out that you decided on $5.00, so if you decided on $5.00 there is no quarrel because that s your decision. The fact is were just trying to tell you $7.00. Alderman Newman said information has to start coming to this committee. The first information we have to get annually is what the driver's are being charged per day by the companies to rent the cabs and we have to find out where our increase is ending up. He recalled at the last meeting we were basically talking about a $5.00 coupon. Mr. Wolff said they're trying to point out some things about the S5.00. Alderman Newman asked if there are certain drivers who the companies will say will do more of the coupons than others, can they volunteer for it, because some drivers might think if they do more coupons they won't be sitting in some of the cab lines Mr. Wolff said that is a possibility what they do is try to circulate around the senior homes so they have cabs available for them, good cabs. Alderman Newman said he feels defeated before he starts because as soon as we get out of the gate with the rate increase and make the change we're already hearing the coupon's not good enough. Mr. Wolff responded, you won't hear that. Page 2. Mr. Miller said in the original proposal they submitted C ey said not to change even the amount of the coupon. They said S3.50 was fine if it was deducted from the metered rate Alderman Newman interjected ti-at's not happening and Aldemzan Rainey added that is the only thing she totally rejects She is willing to look at a S6 00 =upon but totally rejects deducting the amount of the coupon. Alderman Newr^an said our concept is the coupon pays for the nde Mr. Miller said originally they were asked to think outside the t>ox t.rt thinks they could have done some resea wh and been more prepared for this in giving you better numbers This is the second time they came before t7:s committee and got blindsided. Alderman Newman said you can't be bl:ndsided. this is all public information. A;der-ran Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Miller if there has been dialogue with staff, did they know what you were about to propose Mr Wolff said this is the first they hear of the S5.00 and that's all right if thats what you decided. Alderman Feldman said tie S5.00 coupon is almost a 50% raise that's more of a percentage than the raise in the fare Mr Miller thought they were going to get a percentage in drivers who are going to grouse about if even if a were S12 00 and thinks there are going to be drivers who don't want to take it, but that's their problem. As an industry we have been talking about it with drivers from all four companies, and he's just expressing their feelings, they resented it over the years and are feelvng that now if the Increase doesn't go through. Alderman Newman said the increase is through Mr. Miller said they're telling the drivers they're getting an increase and they will make money in other places that will subsidize what they may lose here. We're trying to help them understand that is this part of the service Av do for a community. We're dealing with a lot of different cultures and a lot of things are not getting through very quickly. staff can tell you we've had problem Recentty we've improved relations about complaints and we're still having probtems. Alderman Newman wanted it understood from his point of view, if we raise the rates this time and fix the coupon problem and we do not get a better attitude towards the seniors from the drivers, he will sit a long tine without ever voting for another increase. The problem needs to be solved. Alderman Newman deferred to Mr. Stafford's map of the City to See how many of the rides from various destinations are S5 00 rides. Mr. Stafford said basically S5 00 covers about half the City. Alderman Rainey asked if this is with the new meter rate, to which Mr. Stafford responded, yes Evanston Hospital was used as an example to show how far $5.00 will take from you the hospital or the distance one can get to hospital for S5.00. St. Francis Hospital was also taken as an example to show a S5.00 ride to or from the hospital. The Evanston area that a S5.00 ride takes in is quite extensive. Mr. Stafford said we've increased the rate and the whole idea of the rate charged by the cab is the cab rate is designed to cover back the cost of operating, the gas, the depreciation, etc. Even though the meter rate may be S6.00 and the driver gets S5.00 he could still be making money because the opportunity cost is sitting there not doing anything. To go one step further, if we did S9.00 and it covered the entire City the cabs would be making money on most of the rides at the expense of us and if you do it for the ST.QO it gets closer, $6.00 is reasonable. He thinks somewhere between S5.00 and $6.00 is a reasonable number because eter that point we're losing and we have our money invested in this. Alderman Rainey asked if it can be shown where the S5.00 area is to get to the Levy Center. Mr. Barnes pointed out a distance of 1.75 miles. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted that does not take into consideration traffic. Alderman Newman said when the Levy Center is twill our program won't work for most of the seniors. Alderman Feldman asked that we think about what we're doing here, we just increased the rate and then were being punished by those rates by saying that the S5.00 we're giving doesn't represent enough. Conceivably if we'd have given them triple the amount of money they would have screamed even more. If we had the $5.00 and did not give them an increase in rate that 55.00 would have gone a lot further, so we're being punished by the logic as weT Now the ride that used to cost S4.00 now costs $6.00 and we're getting nothing. Mr. Stafford said that is one of the reasons we're also advocating that we do have to increase the coupon because we think between S5.00 and $6.00 is reasonable and think the City is losing money in terms of where our subsidy dollars are going. Alderman Feldman said whatever we come out with, and he's sure it will be something we can all live with, he is not going to sit here and again listen to the citizens of this community coming back and saying they're abused and disrespected for whatever reason by the cab drivers in this community. If that means that we have to change the law then that's what we do, if it means their license has to be taken away, or that we have much more stringent laws that's what we'll do. This just cannot go on, there is not a single human being in this community that has to suffer that for no other reason than they're taking advantage of a City program designed to help them. There is no acceptable reason for that and we're not going to take that. Whatever it is cos have to do prevent that he will see that it's done, its not going to happen any mare Alderman Rainey said in her ward and Alderman Feldman's ward they have a tremendous aging population. These people do not live in senior housing. Since we've begun this discussion she found the seniors she has talked to in her ward don't know about the taxi coupon program, something she feels very bad about. They don't use coupons because they don't know about the program, but they're going to learn about the program. She has heard of some seniors not using the coupons because of the hassle. She asked what it would cost to get to Evanston Hospital from south of Main Street. Mr. Bamer asked for a spectific address and Alderman Rainey gave an address from the middle of the ward. The program keyed this in as 3.19 miles. The program cannot calculate the fare but Mr. Stafford thought the fare would be approximately S8.00. Page 3. Alderman Jean -Baptiste directed his comment to the media present that he thought we have yet to dialogue with the drivers, the two gentlemen in attendance represent owners He can see the headline now, the Human Services Committee is not going to tolerate whining drivers or semetning to that effect. Drivers are not here to respond to what it is that we are talking about. We have not heard their perspective, the owner's interests are not the driver's interests. When we talk about this program and taking a firm stand, °.%,e have to be able to communicate that to the drivers and he would suggest we do that. He wanted it noted we are here talking about how this committee will not tolerate drivers dissatisfaction when they promise to accept the terms we lad dawn, but the drivers are hot here, the owners are here and the owners have a different interest It is very important `sat we find a way to dialogue with the drivers to at least try to get their opinion as to what it is that we are doing and then thepl know what our terms are because right now he does not know what has been communicated to them and untsl unney're here and dialogue with us we will not know that We have to come back and have some dialogue with the drivers before adopting any decisions on the coupons. Alderman Newman asked how many drivers there are in Evanston. Mr. Wolff said probably 350 to 400 because they double shift. He said Mr. Lookis, Interim City Collection Manager, can tell what the drivers said because he conducted the Gass with the drivers. Mr. Lookis, who with the help of Mr. O'Sullivan set up the meetings, said half of the drivers said the way they view the coupon program is they lose money on some of them and make a tremendous amount of money on others. If they have a very short ride with a $3.50 coupon, at the old rate, overall it balances out. A lot of the drivers were very upset about some of the issues brought up and showed very little remorse in a lot of ways towards senior citizens, they felt what they did and what they said was justified They felt they were being taken advantage of by the amount of the coupon and have a lot of remorse in terms of the complaints we had from seniors. Some of them would never even apologize. Alderman Feldman said to him the issue is not whether or not this committee decides to accept discontented drivers, the issue is whether that discontent is accepted as an excuse for abuse and disrespect He cannot guarantee that everybody is going to love everything we do, but what he is suggesting is automatically there is no excuse no matter what we do for abusing elderly citizens. There may be other issues that they have to address but you do not take those issues they have with the City out on elderly people. Alderman Newman asked how many coupons would a driver typically take in a day. Mr. Wolff said the company takes in 1500 coupons a month. Alderman Newman said it sounds to him if there are 300 drivers a driver comes in with four a month. His reaction to that is he would be glad to go to the old rates and raise the coupon to $7.00. When we raise a rate we take care of 98% of your rides. His point is if we have 300 drivers and each are doing four rides a month to him that is not much for a City to ask. He does not feel he's taking a lot out of their pocket going with $5.00. In giving them the rate increase we've improved their situation for 95% of the rides and he's satisfied with the 55.00 coupon, by giving them a rate increase he's improved their situation for 95% of their rides. Alderman Rainey added for 95% of the distances. Mr. Miller said when they originally started this they were not under the assumption that there would be a rate increase, with that in the picture the flat rate is a lot more acceptable. In answer to Alderman Feldman's position they're in total agreement with him as they do not condone anything that is going on with the seniors as the staff can tell you. They have worked timelessly and spent hours in meetings over the last two months to solve some of those problems. Alderman Newman asked the committee to consider the fad that these drivers are probably only picking up four coupons a month and considering we fix the rate, does not think 55.00 is unreasonable because some of these rides will be $2.00 rides. Some seniors only want to go across downtown because they may be in a walker. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said before Alderman Newman calls for a consensus he would ask how much does the company charge the driver a day. Mr. Wolff said the rate for a cab today can run from $35.00 to 545.00, Alderman Newman interjected its much more than that in Chicago, its 585.00 a day. Mr. Miller said there are five or six different programs that people rent their cabs at. For some the driver buys the car and does the maintenance, some the owners do the maintenance as you can see in the difference in the cars out here. The rates have stayed the same for the last six years, in fact some of them have actually gone down because he could not find drivers. Part of the other problem here is, yes, there are owners and there are drivers. The drivers are complaining, a lot of them have legitimate complaints but a lot of them don't, a lot of misunderstanding in communication gets resolved once we talk about these issues. We're on the same page with you, we're developing harder sanctions for some of these guys who are violating people's rights and we don't condone nor do we accept it either. We tell our drivers, " You take that senior as if you were taking your oven mother and if you don't take them that way then don't drive for us, get out" We've affirmed that with the City and worked with them on it. What we're saying is we're fine with the flat rate. Some of the drivers will never be fine even if you give them $50.00 for a $3.00 ride. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked approximately how much the average driver makes. Mr. Miller said for a day shift $45.00, for a night shift roughly $35.00. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much does a day shift make, to which Mr. Miller responded between $25.00 if he's inexperienced to $100.00 if he's experienced. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said a driver may net between $25.00 and $100.00 a day fora 12 to 14 hour day. Mr. Miller said usually it should be under 12 hours for the shift cab, a 24 hours cab may go from between S60.00 to 570.00 if the driver keeps the 24 hours he increases his eamings. Alderman Newman remarked of the 350 drivers you have if there are 50 drivers that have a chip on their shoulder's against seniors don't steer them any seniors, steer the seniors to the drivers who don't mind picking up the Page 4 seniors. He's asking if that would be difficult from an operational standpoint, to which Mr. Miller said, yes it would be at Norshore with the current owners we have because a lot of the staff is aware of a lot of problems and some of our guys are screaming there is unfairness in the company. All drivers should have an even chance no matter how well trained. Alderman Newman asked if out of your 300 drivers can any sign up who want to be called by the dispatcher to pick up seniors. Mr. Miller said is it possible, yes, is it likely, no. Alderman Feldman asked if riders have to identify they have a coupon when they call to which Alderman Newman responded no. but the drivers know from a lot of the addresses they're getting seniors passengers. Alderman Newman asked if anybody wants to go beyond S5 00 at this point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said looking at the numbers if a successful driver walks away with 5100.00 after a 12 hour day he makes about 58.33 a hour. Mr. Miller said in the summertime guys make 525.00 a day and go home happy. Again, its over the long haul that the driver looks at it, there are drivers that sometimes make a lot more than $100.00 above their costs. It was previously said four coupons a driver, but he has a driver who gives him ten coupons a week, he's an experienced driver who helps the people and accepts whatever comes to him on the radio. Then there are drivers who dodge radio calls. Alderman Rainey asked how are requests for service dispatched. Mr. Miller said it's an address. Alderman Rainey wanted to know how a cab driver gets selected to take a pickup. Mr. Miller said they are cabstand based, which is the way their dispatching system was set up. Its getting tougher now particularly on the south end with limited availability they have guys that orders just pop off of because of transients and shopping in the area. They also use those cabstands for orders in Rogers Park. Alderman Rainey did not know why it should be so difficult because every night there are eight cabs lined up in the parking lot in front of the New China Buffet in the Howard and Western Shopping Center. She thinks you have a pretty good dispatch plan and does not care why you do it, that's fine with her, but you have more cabs there than she sees anywhere, don't say you don't have the location in South Evanston. If there are five, or eight, cabs at the cabstand haw is the driver selected. Mr. Miller said the first one there is the first one in the line and gets the first call that comes. Alderman Rainey asked what happens when you're in a cab and you hear orders being dispatched, does the cab driver say he can take that order as he's dropping somebody a door away from there. Mr. Wolff said if the stand is empty. Mr. Miller added what we're trying to do is allocate cabs in areas that are the busiest. Alderman Newman asked for input on the value on the coupon. Alderman Feldman said Alderman Jean-Saptiste is interested in an additional amount of information, which he is ready to hear but thinks that is a part of the equation we have not heard and would postpone this until we hear from the them. Alderman Rainey wants to hear more about the business that the cab drivers don't believe that we're raising the rates. Mr. Miller said he thinks they will believe it but right now they are holding their breath. Alderman Rainey said when it does happen and they are told about it they will believe that, won't they. Alderman Newman said he would like to hook up the 55.00 coupon with the rate changes at Monday night's Council meeting because we're not Gear we're going to have a consensus here. You can bring all the drivers you want on Monday night to talk about the rates because he's not voting for a rate increase if seniors aren't treated well. Alderman Newman asked what happened regarding the Mr. 99, Norshore complaint. This driver chased the woman into the building and embarrassed her because she wanted to go into the building and get her coupon. There was a power failure and the elevators were not working. Mr. Miller said 99 was taken off the air and was scheduled to meet with the City. What we have is a process where first we deal with the drivers and then if the City asks to see them they're sent to the City and taken off the radio service until they meet with Mr O'Sullivan and Mr. Lookis Alderman Newman asked what the status is with this complaint Mr. Lookis said this was one of the drivers who defended himself and felt he was within his rights as he was not going to get paid. He was not paid because she could not get her coupon. Our comments back to him were that the Cab Company was going to deal with part of these issues but we felt that out of respect for anyone he could have come back. Alderman Feldman said if we had a system where if that ever happens again, for whatever reason, they're not getting a coupon there has to be a facility someway that can call the City and say this is what happened and they're owed a coupon. We can take their number and send them a coupon. Mr. Lookis said that's what they're trying to do. A lot of drivers claim people are abusing the program and they want to do something about it They say grandparents are giving grandchildren the coupons, to which Alderman Newman said in such cases they should not accept the coupon. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what happens if they tell the driver at the end of the ride they have a coupon. Mr. Lookis said they're supposed to identify they're a coupon user at the beginning of the ride. Alderman Newman asked what happened regarding the complaint with Mr. 35 and the Oakton and McCormick cab incident Why did this complaint go as far back as August 14, 20007 Mr. Lookis said they tried to give a cross section of the kind of complaints that come in. Mr. Wolff said at the time of this complaint Susan Sabir was with the City and wrote him a letter stating the facts. They called Mr. 35 in, everyone met in Ms. Sables office and decided this driver would not work for a week. Alderman Newman said there is week before voting on this issue and would suggest and hope Mr. Miller and Mr. Wolff will get back to their drivers so we find can out whether the 55.00 rate will be acceptable. If its not going to solve the problem that has to be a factor in considering the rate increase. Mr. Miller said in the issue regarding the grandchild, if Page 5. the child was handicapped or disabled they would accept the coupon Another issue concerns increasing the rent, it should be on record that we said, at least for Norshore, we as owners would not raise our rates for at least three months. There is an inference that the owners are going to make out from this and that is not necessarily true, he said that off the top of his head, but they are not going to be increasing their rates. We have to get a consensus from the Association that takes a vote of the membership. Alderman Rainey asked how many members there are in the Association and what does it mean to be a member. Mr. Miller said there are 25 members, not only cab owners or company owners but people who can buy radio service, it's a complicated thing Alderman Newman supported the S5.00 coupon unless we hear Monday night that 50% increase with the rate increase still isn't good enough. Mr. Wolff wanted to go on record that me knows their guys will go for it, unless Alderman Jean - Baptiste wants to see drivers, they'll come in. They just found out tonight about the S5.00. Alderman Rainey asked if there was anyone present from Best or Better Cab Company and was informed the owner of the companies was ill and not in attendance. She asked what about 303 Cabs, Mr. Wolff sa+d those are Magic Cabs in Evanston. Alderman Rainey asked if they also have to accept the coupons and if their meter rates are the same as the City's meter rates. Mr. Stafford said they inspect the Magic 303 Cabs, there are 303 and Magic 303 cabs. Mr. Miller said they drive in other municipalities and their rates are very much higher than Evanston's rates they charge different rates for different suburbs. Alderman Newman noted we're at S5.00 on the coupon and the issue is what are we going to charge the seniors. The options we have are $2,50, $3.00, and $3.50. Alderman Rainey suggested leaving their charge as it is then consider it as a budget issue. Alderman Newman did not want to raise the cost to the seniors as he does not think seniors can afford an increase, nor does he think we got into this issue to raise the cost of the coupon to seniors, we got into it for a different reason. We want to promote transportation to the new Levy Center and this will be one way that will happen. Alderman Rainey said she has recently discovered the lack of knowledge of people outside the central senior housing district have of this coupon program. She would like to have a massive advertising campaign conducted so that all seniors have equal access to the coupons. For people in her ward, especially all the seniors who live along Dodge, to go and buy these coupons it would cost them S9.00 by cab. Perhaps this purchase could be done with a water bill as somehow we have to have a way to get this informabon out. Not all seniors read the Review or the Roundtable, we need to have some sort of blitz campaign on this. Alderman Feldman asked if the coupons are sold somewhere beside the City and was told they are sold at the Levy Center and the United Way office. Alderman Rainey suggested they also be sold a couple days at the new Howard Street Outpost and asked why they can't be sold at the Jewel and Dominick's, which would be a wonderful place to sell them. Alderman Newman said advertising alternative distributions of the coupons will come back to the committee. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Stafford what number without an increase for the coupons, will be forwarded to the Budget Committee. Mr. Stafford said the cost increase from $1.50 to S3.00 a coupon, about $40.000 for the year. The September 1" date will be S20,000 and $40,000 for next year more. Alderman Rainey asked how the coupon sates have gone from one year to another. Mr. Stafford said he would get that information for the committee. Mr. Terry added the overall trend seems to be the sales are dropping. Alderman Rainey asked what that can be attributed to, to which Mr. Terry said first and foremost demographics. Evanston's number of older adults dropped again from 1990 to 2000 and dropped from 1980 to 1990, Secondary, it is our feeling that people have stopped using the program based on some dissatisfaction. Mr. Stafford said if we move it from S3.50 to $5.00 there is going to be increased sales in a significant amount over $40,000 and he just wanted to raise that point. Alderman Newman asked if because we're increasing it to _ 55.00 do we think there is no longer going to be any abuse to the seniors and more people will use the program. Mr. Stafford said no, if the subsidy is more it's a greater good for a lesser dollar. The aldermen did not think that argument works. If we engage in a campaign to let more seniors know then they will buy more. Alderman Newman said if the City is overwhelmed with the demand because we did such a great job advertising then well deal with the problem. To him, right now, seniors are probably the ones who are apprehensive about using the program and just by increasing the value of the coupon to $5.00 are we necessarily going to have a run to use the program. Hopefully, over time, when word gets around the service is going to dramatically improve because we're all happy with the rates and the cost of the coupon and we can put all this to rest. Alderman Feldman moved to Increase the taxicab coupon to $5.00 and keep the senioes cost at $2.00. Alderman Newman seconded the motion, motion unanimousiv passed, f4.0d. Alderman Rainey thought when the advertising about the program is put out there should also be information to seniors on ways the coupon should not be used. Regarding the complaint form, she thinks it is important to give good points to the good driver just as it is to give the baseball bat to the bad drivers. The more positive things that are said about the program the more it will be used and we want seniors to use the program. Why have a program you do not want people to use. Page 6. Alderman Newman asked if it is necessary to have an ordinance to mandate the taxicab educational program every other year. Mr. Stafford said it is already in place and was instituted for a year and he would like to make clear that we think we have one of the better programs in the state. It is mandatory and ongoing. Alderman Newman questioned that d was done all of sudden before this meeting. Mr. Stafford said that because of the issues raised by the committee the reporters got more and more interested in the issue and came up with toaL Alderman Newman asked about the new complaint form and was told it has been distributed. Ms. Flowers said rt has been distributed to all the senior buildings, the Levy Center, and will be sent to all new applicants to the program Alderman Newman asked who gets the complaints and was told Mr. O'Sullrvan. Alderman Newman requested that every single complaint be submitted to this committee on a quarterly basis and then the companies can be brought back to talk about the complaints. Mr. Miller said in the past two weeks there have been several very nice meetings that got other issues on the table and our drivers needed to hear the City is not going to take the driver's abuse any more, which was very helpful. Mr. Lookis said it was good for us at the City to hear the drivers' perspective as well. Mr. Millers one concern is that cab companies be made aware there is a complaint. It is now happening through Mr. O'Sullivan and Mr. Lookis. but there are other complaints that they were told about months ago they have not yet seen. Once they know they can do something about these complaints, and they have. Mr. Wolff said they had 1300 coupons last month and only two complaints. Alderman Newman said this committee is going to be looking at the complaints for a while and the cab owners are invited when the complaints are looked at, if they have any comments they will also listen to them. We would like information on your rate increases and feedback on the drivers from the entire coupon situation more than once a year. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked it there could be some kind of tool for the drivers to be able to communicate to the City about their own concerns. Mr. Stafford agreed the lines of communication should be open. Alderman Rainey hoped everybody noticed that the last Taxicab Advisory Board meeting was May of 1999. Alderman Newman brought up the composition of the Taxicab Advisory Bo.:rd. The Board should consist of seven members, one owner of a taxicab company, one independent owner, one taxicab driver, one user of senior taxicab coupons, and three representatives of the public at large. He noted asked there are currently five vacancies on the Board. Alderman Newman remarked the way this Board has been operating there will not be anybody on this Board the end of September. Alderman Rainey said some interest should be generated for this Board. She is sure the cab drivers will take care of their own representatives. Mr. Stafford said they are soliciting from seniors for members. Alderman Newman asked if anything has been heard from the Mayor regarding this issue to which Mr. Stafford responded he spoke with the Mayor and she is again soliciting members. Alderman Feldman asked who will be the Chair of this Board and was told there are no Chairs on this Board. Alderman Newman thought all the members who have ever been on this Board should be invited to the Monday night Council meeting and as this is being discussed they can be asked why this Board has been so invisible. Alderman Newman called for any further discussion or comments on this issue. Mr. Stafford said he wished to thank staff especially Nancy Flowers who has done a great job coordinating and working with his office. Also he would like Mark Vamer, GIS and the information people to know how much they're appreciated. He knows there are still issues to deal with but wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for their assistance. The committee was in agreement and very much appreciates the great job done by staff people. Page 7. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, August 6, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2401 6:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Maureen Bent', Bill Stafford, Steve O'Sullivan, Mark Vamer, Kew Lookis, Nancy Flowers, Donna Stucker, Doug Gaynor, Amanda Jones, Jay Terry. Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Engelman, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office), Susan Cantor (Mental Health Board), Gladys Bryer, Mardi Mevs, Diane Willett, Judy Freeman, David Jones, Gwyn Burton Poole, Len Sciarra, Iry Levinson. (Environment Board), Allan Miller, Walter Wolff. (Norshore Cab Company) PRESIDING: Alderman Newman 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 6:42 p.m. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JULY 2, 2001 The minutes of the July 2.2001. meeting were unanimousty approved. (4-01. III. APPROVAL OF SPECIAL EVENT: INDIAN GUIDE AND PRINCESS LAKEFRONT CAMPOUT Alderman Ralnev motioned awroval of the Indian Guide and Princess Lakefront Camoout event; motion seconded and unanimously approved, f4-01. IV. LIGHTHOUSE COMPLEX FOGHOUSES Alderman Engelman distributed maps of the complex to the committee and noted the Lighthouse Complex consists not only of the lighthouse itself but to the east toward the dunes are two foghouses that used to contain the actual foghorns. In front of the lighthouse complex are the keepees quarters. To the north of the complex is the Arts Center, which is under the jurisdiction of the City of Evanston. We lease the building and take care of the surrounding grounds including Jensen's Gardens and Campfire Pit where public events are held and the dunes area is east of that To the north there is another park maintained by the Lighthouse Park District, north of that is the Derry Shelter, and north of that there is a park and a play lot also maintained by the City. The committee received a communication from Alderman Engelman indicating the Lighthouse Park District obtained a grant to do renovation work to the north Foghouse. The south Foghouse was renovated in the 1970's. The north Foghouse plan, which was also passed in the 1970's, calls for that to be a Visitor's Center which they would technically use to hold people in anticipation of moving them into both the keepers quarters, where there are currently some exhibits, and then up into the lighthouse for tours. Because of the lighthouse limitations they can't put more than four or fire people into the lighthouse at a time and if they bring in a busload of tourists they have to stage them somewhere. The idea is to set up a Maritime Museum and Visitor's Center in the north Foghouse. Alderman Engelman said he reported this to the committee a little over a year ago when this committee was addressing the issue of the Coach House in front of the Arts Center and its use. At that time this committee suggested the Arts Center look at plans to use that and come back to them with how much that might cost and whether they could raise the funds. He pointed this out because he knew the application would be coming and if they got the application they would need to remove what is currently a City recreation program, the Wildflower's Day Camp out of the north Foghouse. Wildflower's Day Camp is one of the more popular day camps because it is the only camp located at a beach. Mr. Gaynor can speak to the impact this will have upon the program itself. The City does have some options, they can go along with this and next year move the camp out of the Foghouse, the Lighthouse was very cooperative in letting us use it this year. The camp could be moved to the Coach Page 1. House, but the Coach House has been under discussion with this committee and the Arts Center. We could simply not move because the City owns the lease on the Foghouse and has been leasing it to the Lighthouse Park District for almost seventy-five years for 51.00 a year. The lease is terminable September 30 of each odd number year, which is why he has come before this committee tonight_ A decision needs to be made tonight or at this committee's next meeting There is a committee that meets quarterly on ail the jursdi=ns that deal with this complex. One of issues mentioned at the last meeting by the Arts Center is the Arts Center ;ends to be the focal point where people walk in and ask how they can take a tour of the Lighthouse, or how they can reserve t!ie Derry Shelter, because when you drive into the parking lot that is the first building you enter. They don't know wrra; to do or say because they don't administer to the Lighthouse, the Derry Shelter, or the play fields, those are administered by the Park District. In addition to not having a location for the camp there is some concern about having a set location at a Visitor's Center and a Visitor's Center in the north Foghouse at the far eastern end of this complex which is as far away from public parking as you can get, and is a good holding place for tourists, but certainly is not the most appropriate place for a Visitor's Center. He recognizes the Chamber of Commerce has been actively trying to encourage more Lighthouse Park District tourists but questions the issue of the infrastructure availability. There is not parking in that area, especially in the summer months, there is only a limited amount of space in the parking lot itself. In the summer months Lighthouse Beach gets a lot of people that park on the streets. Where can the buses park? Those are the issues. Alderman Feldman was puzzled by the statistic that the Lighthouse is only able to handle four or five people at a time and can imagine a busload of 50 people, coming in and waiting their turn to be one of the four or five, that would be an hour wait. Alderman Engelman said that is why they want to set up the Maritime Museum in the north Foghouse. The grant is also helping fund a Maritime Lighthouse video, which currently shows the inside of the Lighthouse keeper's quarters building. Alderman Newman remarked the immediate issue is they want to kick the camp out and wanted to know if there is someplace that the camp can go. Alderman Engelman said they do not have another location. Mr, Gaynor added the camp has been there for about 25 years, through the Ecc;ogy Center, and the importance of that location is it is utilized for the natural area. There are 40 to 50 kids attending each session. Alderman Rainey wanted to know how could it be that we don't have a place for that camp. Mr. Gaynor said the problem we're running into and need to fully acknowledge is each summer the school district does the repairs and maintenance to their buildings, the only time they can do this, and we have to find other altematives other than schools to run a lot of our activities. This year was no different and we were again reduced to the number of buildings we were able to use. Alderman Rainey asked if the trailer is good enough for the children on Clyde. Callan and Brummel, why isn't it good enough for the children who go to Wildflower Camp, to which Mr. Gaynor said that is something that might be considered_ Mr. Gaynor noted that the trailer at Clyde/Brummel has more of a base for equipment and does not house an actual program inside unless there is inclement weather. Other than the number of computers we have installed, which is a very tow number, we would not be able to conduct a camp program with 40 kids in the trailer, to which Alderman Rainey responded then you should get a larger trailer. Alderman Newman asked what is the fee for the Wildflower Camp and was told that would have to be looked up. Alderman Newman was not opposed to the trailer concept. what he is opposed to is being kicked out when we own the land and is not sure why we're being kicked out. Alderman Engelman said this is a long-term lease, terminable every three years on September 31f and was prepaid to 2014. Alderman Newman remarked but we have the right to terminate every September and does not know how much time we have to respond to this or if we can look for another building. It does not seem to him that we should have our camp, wt,scm is a revenue generating camp, kicked out of a property we own. He does not know what accommodation can be worked out. the Coach House is being discussed although we have not heard from the Arts Center for some time. He wondered if there is a way to work this out to everybody's satisfaction to which Alderman Engelman said that is his reason for coming before this committee to find a compromise. He approached the Lighthouse Park District with the idea of trying to find a compromise. The Coach House had been mentioned as a possibility but warned them it had been prom to the Arts Center and we would have to have a dialogue with them. He tried to have a dialogue with the Lighthouse Paris District before this meeting, which was not done because they did not seem to be interested. Alderman Newman sa%d perhaps they would be more interested if they received a letter from this committee. Alderman Feldman said the last time this committee had contact with the Arts Center we told them to go ahead and invest money and make plans to fix up that building for their purpose, to date we have not heard anything from them. Aiderman Engelman said they have quarterly meetings to discuss the complex and that's one of the issues they discussed. They are still waiting for an architect to come up with plans and costs. Alderman Newman said it sounds as though we are in suspended animation. Alderman Feldman asked why the Lighthouse District itself does not worry about additional space such as a trailer, why do we have to do that. There is no way to have any meaningful type of experience with kids in a trailer. All of this is generated by a desire to celebrate a wonderful facility but not at that kind of expense, Why do we have to figure out how we can do something with our kids? He does not thinks the Arts Center is an appropriate place I _ to have kids running around especially in that area with all the cars always there. What we are saying is the north Foghouse, as a staging area, is more important than the uses the Arts Center has for that building, a conclusion he cannot come to. _ Page 2. Alderman Jean -Baptiste was seeking some clarification as we are talking about the Lighthouse and Arts Council as independent entities. Alderman Engelman said the Lighthouse Park District is a separate taxing body, it's not the Arts Council its the Evanston Arts Center which is a not -for -profit corporation where we own the building and we lease it to them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Engelman if he wanted to talk to them about this proposal and had not been able to do so because they refused. Alderman Engelman said the Arts people have not said they won't talk because this has been an issue between the Lighthouse Park District and the City Unfortunately one of the possible solutions at the Arts Center was they wanted to use the former Coach House garage for studio space. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then asked Alderman Engelman for what purpose he is seeking to talc to them. Alderman Engelman said to try to bring everybody to the table to find a solution and one of the reasons he came to this committee is to see what is appropriate to do. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Engelman if he were able to negotiate with them what would he propose. Alderman Engelman said there are wide options, they will currently allow us to continue to use south Foghouse. While that is not Large enough for the size of the day camp, and he nct sure there is another place to put a trailer on this land, remember this is not our land this is Lighthouse Park District land to the north of this is our land, there is more park district land then there is our land again. When talking about putting the building or a trailer in the area you re creating a structure and because of the Lighthouse, the Jensen Gardens, and the Fire Pit you're creating problems whenever you build a structure as the sight itself has some value. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there are any other alternatives other than kicking the camp out and putting a trailer on the premises. Alderman Engelman said trying to utilize the Coach House as both some type of office space for the Arts Center used for the camp in the summer and a Visitors Center for the entire complex might bean altemaWe that could appeal to all three parties Mr. Gaynor said the fact is that the Lighthouse Park District has the grant If the grant could be amended that $45,000 grant could be used as part of the funding necessary to rehabilitate the Coach House that could be a Visitors Center as well as an office for the Arts School and would eliminate the problem for the City using the Foghouse. Alderman Rainey's recollection of when the committee talked about taking the Coach House and making it a place for kids classes was there were extraordinary numbers involved in that in terns of the cost of making that a safe place for children to be because of the renovation requirements. Mr. Gaynor thought in part that was accurate as well as the upstairs not being ADA accessible which was going to increase costs and there would have to be jockeying around to deal with that Alderman Rainey asked why this camp has to be at this sight, why can't it be housed someplace else maybe even at Noyes Cultural Arts Center and brought to wildflower locations. Mr. Gaynor said they do all of their activities at this place and in addition to moving around there would be additional costs. Alderman Rainey asked how many weeks a year this camp is in session and for how many hours a day. She was told it is an eight or nine week program that starts in the morning and goes to mid afternoon. Alderman Rainey asked if the Foghouses are identified along with the Lighthouse and were they included in the landmark status of the Lighthouse, is the complex identified or just the structure. Mr. Gaynor said he did not know that but knew the main floor of the Ughthouse is already a Maritime Museum. Alderman Feldman brought up the $45,000 grant the district received and asked if the amount of money the Arts Center was going to spend on that property was considerably more than that They seem to be the missing link in that nobody has talked to them, knows how far they have gotten, or whether or not they're still interested. Alderman Engelman said they are still interested but have not gotten very far, as they do not know what the numbers are. Alderman Feldman asked who would pay for the remodeling of the Coach House to accomplish this office space and a Visitor's Center. Mr. Gaynor said it is this committee's lead for the Arts Center to pursue the next step and it was understood that it would bo paid for by fundraising efforts of the Arts Center. Alderman Feldman said that would be for that purpose, what he is talking about is what you described as a possible combination office space for the Arts Center and visitor's space for the complex. Alderman Newman moved to get everybody involved with this committee and have Alderman Engelman begin to talk to people about the alternatives, and find out whether there is another site for the camp, as this will not take place until next summer. He would like to know how many kids attend this camp and how much revenue per year comes from the camp. Mr. Gaynor said the issue raised by Alderman Engelman is a decision that has to be made and the deadline is September 30"% to which Alderman Newman said we'll decide at our next meeting and come back with the information on what the Arts Center is doing, whether we have another place for the camp, and whether or not they're interested in this common building concept. He did want to make it clear that he would be willing to tell the Lighthouse people that we would consider terminating their lease if we had no other alternative that would get them to the table in the terns of collaborating. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested that we took at what we can do for the rest of the year if the camp is there for eight weeks why can't we utilize the facilities for the other forty-four in the year. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Engelman to once again explain the ownership and lease situation of the Lighthouse. Alderman Engelman said the Federal government owns the Lighthouse, the City owns all the land. The Lighthouse Complex is owned by the City although there are certain restrictions as to what we can do with it or 4 reverts back to them. The City has leased to the Lighthouse Park District for the past 75 years, which was when the distract was created. He knows the land was acquired in three different transactions from the Federal government but does not know if one lease or a series of leases was created for the district Mr. Gaynor said he could provide that information as the City has been doing research on that for the past six months. Alderman Rainey then asked who owns the structures on the land. Page 3. Alderman Engelman said he believed the structures were built in the late 1700's or early 1800's and we obtained the land in the 1920's from the Federal government. The Lighthouse is one of the first Lighthouses on the Great Lakes and has a tremendous history, which makes the complex a wonderful resource. Alderman Newman said then we own the land and the buildings including the Lighthouse that we rent for a S1.00 a year to the people who are now kicking us out. Alderman Rainey thought this is a very special place and you don't go around creating taxing districts and then piece by piece say we're going to take this piece back and this piece track She does not think we're not approaching this right and has some bad feelings about the way we're looking at this. Alderman Newman said we just got a letter from them saying they want our camp out, that's how it's being approached. The status quo was fine with us until we received this letter. Alderman Rainey's reaction to that was are we now saying we're going to cancel our lease? Alderman Engelman said what we're saying is let's see if we can find a compromise as there are a number of constituencies who use this and perhaps there is a way to maintain the integrity of the Lighthouse structures and find alternative uses for some of the other buildings. Alderman Newman wanted to point out we own the land, we own the structures, and pay for the Arts Center upkeep, but have only one source of income from this land other than the beaches, this camp. Considering we are leasing this for $1.00 a year and we are making money on the camp makes us an interested party and he would like to see everybody's interests worked out. Maybe we can work it out with the Arts Center as Alderman Engelman is suggesting but at least we will have a dialogue about this and hopefully work out all the Lighthouse improvements. V. CONSIDERATION OF JULY 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Rainey motioned to approve the Julv 2001 Townshlp monthty bills. Motion seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Rainey asked about the new column in the middle of the Vendor sheet. shown on all the pages, that she found very bizarre and was never there before. Mr. Hilliard said those are used for the codes, but he was not aware of the double zes which he said could be a computer glitch and would find out about iL Alderman Rainey inquired about the Hosry Company to which Mr. Hilliard responded one of their employees is the treasurer for this social work organization. Hosry is a program where they have their meetings and the money from this organization is semi into the Township office. This is not Township money but money that each of the Townships pay into a fund that their employee is a treasurer for. Alderman Rainey asked that the auditor be asked about running the money through this account as she thinks this is questionable and does not like the way this is being done. Alderman Rainey asked what Aitheimer & Grey was paid $2,042.50 for this month and was told by Mr. Hilliard that is the legal fee charged by Mr. Siegel for the Gloria Harris lawsuit. Alderman Rainey questioned if that amount comes out of the Assessors budget, to which Mr. Hilliard yes, that is part of the S10,000 legal fee amount. Alderman Rainey wanted to know if this is for a new lawsuit or an old lawsuit, to which Mr. Hilliard said if for the same lawsuit. Alderman Rainey asked d this is for the appeal to which Ms. Brenniman responded that's probably not the cost of the appeal yet, but is the cost of arguing the motion for dismissal. Alderman Rainey questioned the Township Officials of Illinois payment of $874.66 and asked if that is paid for by both the Supervisor's and Assessor's office and do both have to join. Mr. Hilliard responded, yes, but if you notice there is another S874.65 on the next page that was voided. The check has to be rewritten and the $1.748.92 was voided and the legal amount is on the following page. Alderman Rainey asked which check represents the payment made to the security guard hired by the Assessor. Mr. Hilliard said there is a check for S940.00 in payment of that Alderman Rainey then asked if that check has already been written and was told it was. She wanted to know, looking at the check register, how one can tell which checks have been mailed out and which have not been mailed out. Mr. Hilliard said once this check register is approved the checks are mailed out Alderman Rainey said then these checks are not waiting for anybody's approval and have all been written and mailed. Mr. Hilliard said these checks have been written as we cut off our accounts in order to get this report prepared for the City Council. Alderman Rainey asked if the check register she is looking at is a list of payments of checks that have been written and mailed to the vendors or is she looking at checks waiting to be approved. Mr. Hilliard said all of these payments were signed and approved by the Assessor, and at her request the checks were given to her, as she did not want them mailed out. Alderman Rainey questioned the Medical Payment Check Register and noticed two payments, one to Walgreen's for $3,805.32, one to Osca for $2,691.20, totaling $6,496.52. The medical expenses for that period of time shows only $579.00 for drugs, what else could those two checks have been for other than medications. Mr. Hilliard said the drug companies, Cisco and Walgreen's, have 180 days to bill from the time that the client goes to one of their facilities to get drugs and it might be 180 days before they bill us. The bills could have been for Moor three months ago and were just submitted for payment_ Alderman Rainey said then the $579.00 for drugs are for invoices that have not been paid. Page 4. Alderman Rainey noted there was a client in the month of May who had severe bums, which are just now appearing on the list and asked for a report on that client. Alderman Rainey asked when the Township Supervisor's office is audited, do the auditors also audit the Assessor's office? Mr. Hilliard responded, yes, they audit the entire Township not lust the General Assistance office and the To.vn Fund. Last week they met with the auditors and their report will soon be submitted to you. Alderman Rainey inquired whether anyone from the Assessor's office was present at this meeting and was informed they will not be attending this meeting. Alderman Rainey wanted to know what the situation is with the part-time aide, as $7,000 was allocated in the annual budget and thus far 57,254 has been spent She asked when the audit will be completed to which Mr. Hilliard said it should be sometime in September. Alderman Rainey did not know why the Assessor was not present, but feels given the nature of the controversy swirling on the number of very negative letters in the Evanston Review and other newspapers that elected official has an obligation to appear at public meetings that specifically deal with her position. The most important thing she has to do is protect the taxpayees money. We have just dealt with the taxpayer's money on the bills list just received regarding questions Alderman Rainey had but the Assessor was not present to answer them. Alderman Newman said those questions can be forwarded to the Assessor to which Alderman Rainey said it will be too late for those answers, she is not talking about doing something about her not being here, she is asking, if we do nothing else, please send the Assessor a message, with her comments in the minutes, that as an elected official she has an obligation to attend these meetings. Alderman Newman asked if any member of the committee objected to that, not hearing any objections, said that note will be sent to the Assessor from this committee. Not hearin4 anv further discussion reciardina the Township bills. Alderman Newman recalled the motion to approve the JuIv 2001 Townshlp bills. Motion unanimousty approved, (4-01. VI. DISCUSSION OF ENVIRONMENT BOARD STRATEGIC PLAN AND PRIORITIES Gladys Bryer, Chairman of the Environment since last January, said she was pleased to be here today and did not know the last time this Board appeared before this committee. This is a first of a series of reports, communications, and collaborations with this committee. After she became Chairman the Board proceeded to do some strategic planning and had somebody work with them on a four-year plan on what they saw as the environmental issues in Evanston. That was in Febwry, since then they have been working on several of these items and are still in the process of a continual evaluation of priorities. There are enormous issues on everything from open land, air, water, recycling, waste management public transportation, etc., etc., etc. Ms. Bryer said Board members will introduce themselves and their areas of interest Margaret Khws, her day job Is working with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and running the Chicago team there. When she originally came on the Environmental Board she saw the new developments that were going on in Evanston and knew on a technical level there was a lot of new technologies not being implemented here and felt she had knowledge she could share. She also has an interest in pollution in general, and in particular is a little bit concerned about what is going on in terms of lead poisoning because in the City of Evanston the statistics are very hard to get a hold of. She is not saying there is a problem, but thinks they need to get a grasp of how many kids are actually getting screened for blood lead level. Diane Willett. has lived in the 90'Ward for twenty-five years. Her interest on the Board has been quality of life issues and wanting to make Evanston an even more attractive place to live. Right now the major issues specifically concern our energy, recycling task force, low maintenance landscaping and green space, and sustainable buildings. Judy Freeman, has been involved in environment management in various ways for twenty-five years. Among those is solid waste management. The Board has met with Keep Evanston Beautiful and identified two areas of recycling they would like to look at and are focusing on the task force including recycling in multi units of housing which she understands and appreciates that Alderman Rainey recently has spoken about They would like to help with participation in our neighborhood recycling programs and will be pursuing that at the very early stages. David Jones, his background is an organic chemist His main interests are CTA right of way, and he is also very interested in the recycling program. He is tying to get all of our neighbors, in all of our areas, to use the program instead of just housing everything in the garbage cans. He's also trying to help educate the people around us, whether they're out walking their dogs or anything else, if they see trash to pick it up just as a general way of keeping the City clean. If we all do that, in all of our wards, we would have a much cleaner City than we have now. Page 5. Gwyn Burton Poole, Federal retiree has worked on views of different Federal agencies to include the Environmental Protection Agency and has also had experience with USDA Currently she is working on trees, basically integrated pest management, and hopefully they wild soon put out press releases about the Asian Long -Homed Beetle and the Gypsy Moth. They also plan on being co -sponsored with the Library and Districts 65 and 202 educators to enlighten our children more about pest management. Len Sciarra, an architect whose firm specializes in high performance buildings, is why he is interested all the environmental issues associated which be into the quality of life and the liability of the economy of Evanston. He is also very involved in the energy part and with Mr, Levinson is working with the Energy Commission to develop a long-term energy policy for Evanston, which right now is crucial. Iry Levinson, all his life has been a chemist in industrial waste and now specr5mlly in things that pollute our environment. Finally, after his lifetime, has decided he wants to do something about cleaning up the environment that he has managed to pollute. They're cracking down on the hospitals concerning their waste, and are talking to the Energy Commission which has promised, in Chicago, to try to find ten percent new sources of green type energy and trying to build that same sort of thing with the Power Commission here in Evanston. A couple of things they're talking and arguing about are public transportation, to try to see if we in Evanston can go to more public transportation and reduce pollution of private cars. These are their energies and their efforts and they hope to make a change in your lifetime. Alderman Rainey remarked the Board's comments were very impressive. for which Ms. Bryer thanked her and said is why she feels this is a wonderful Board. She hopes the committee looked at the material provided in their packets and called attention to their proposed survey which would let Evanston know what they are doing and what their thoughts are about the problems and the opportunities of environmental issues in Evanston. One of their issues is how to get the survey out there, and is the best way to do it Public transportation is the area she is most interested in. They have been going to programs other groups have done and recently attended one. —The Chicagoland Transportation and Air Quality Commission - Planning for Public Transportation, to take place in 2030. for the entire Northwest and North Cook County", where they met with people from that entire region and made long range prans. Several of the Board attended a meeting run by the Center for Neighborhood Technology on Transportation Orientated Development, They have been leaming and participating in programs on public transportation and are interested in knowing what this committee thinks abort their priorities and what they're doing. Alderman Rainey asked if this Board is also going to catalog all the open space parkland. Ms. Bryer thought they are looking at all open space, publicly owned by all the various bodies as wet! as Northwestern, privately as well as people owned, and are getting a plot of all the open land of Evanston. Mr. Levinson said the current system requires what is called link areas, and when looking at the map of all of Northern Cook County, Evanston is a break in this link. There are no continuous link lands except where the CTA runs up into Skokie. Perhaps in the future, one of the plans we may approach you to try and develop in the linking system as land is farmed out, is to insist on a passageway so that we have something like a golf course run along the lake. Ms. Klevs added the Skokie Swift right of way is one of the missing links and is a lot closer to the Forest Preserves Alderman Feldman was interested in the question of using technology in architecture and asked when will we start hearing something that wr. enable us to integrate that into building and zoning codes. Mr. Sciarra said right away, we are doing it in other cities, it's a matter of sitting down with the Planning Committee and saying if you want to reduce the overall energy consumption of buildings in Evanston, whether municipaity owned or privately owned, you can start either to increase the insulation value of the walls or increase the efficiency of the light Fixtures in City Hall. He noticed today coming into the lobby, all the lights were on and they all did not need to be on, there are photosensors to turn the lights on and off. There is now a lot of off the shelf technologies that can be implemented to reduce overall energy consumption. Alderman Feldman said he understands that, but is wondering when will the Board make a recommendation with a list of those things and what they might cost. Mr. Sciarra said right now a lot of their energy is focused on this energy negotiation with ComEd, their deadline is two years. The franchise gets renewed within a year and is then renewed for another year, to which Alderman Rainey commented, not to be too sure of that as we haven't decided that yet. Alderman Feldman asked if most architects today fully understand the kind of issues being raised, and was told they do not. Alderman Feldman then said it is very possible that some of the buildings currently being built in Evanston are being built not only because people might reject those technological advances, but do not know of them. Mr. Sciarra said that is highly likely, Alderman Rainey said that customers/clients might also reject them because of the cost. Mr.Sciarra said the payback of the first cost, the standard column of most executive office buildings, is that the person with the biggest capital has no vested interest in seeing any paybacks. Ms. Kevs added the City of Chicago is right now developing these types of guidelines where their planning department will be taking notes to developers and asking they implement them. Obviously the ones that are going to get implemented first are the ones that haven't put a payback in. Whenever those guidelines will be coming out and there will be an opportunity for technology transfer where any municipality can pick up those guidelines and introduce them and modify them as they see fit and bring them to their own suburbs so there will be this opportunity for Evanston to do that. What is really important is to give a message to the Planning Department Page 6. that you're interested in pursuing tt-at, they're overworked and =less 4somebody says we think this is important they're going to look at other things Mr. Levinson said looking at the structure of the new Levy Cente-, those of us who have had an opportunity to find out what its about are appalled aoout the amount of potential heat 'oss art light gain throughout that building. It was done for beauty or decorative purposes and all other reasons, but in ter-ts of -e-ooIogical reasons its a living disaster. Alderman Rainey asked how much is known about that, has anyone met wrn tt'e architect or is your informabon just from seeing the pictures. She was going to ask if you all have met with the amn2ea because there was serious consideration given to those kinds of issues and mere are going to be lowers, fighting, etc: . and other items built into that building to make it efficient that she wishes )ou would look at Alderman Raine;+ said More the Environment Board goes around town saying the new Levy Center is a very inefficient building and yes: are apaalied at what you see she's asking you to talk to the architect and discuss what it is that is really happening. Alder.-w Fedman said there were issues such as that raised and the question of the amount of glass being used. etc., was a trade off. It wasn't just out of the blue that that was decided, they knew with a dtFerent facade there could be a lot of energy savings but it might be a different building. The question is at any given time are you willing to pay for that Mr. t_�vmscn said thars what they wanted to do become your partner. If another building. and others of the future, comes afcng we'o like to be your partners to sit in your comer and help you, if we can, from cur technological basis to make additional recisions. Mr. Sciarra said the key about doing sustainable architecture, using the Levy Center as an example. is yo4 need to do it early. If you design a building and then come in later and say we have to change this, can it afford to be pane. Whereas, if you start at the beginning with the entire design team in the planning process even citing the tuilding will be a considerable saving. Alderman Rainey said you should talk to these people before )ou go aground town making that statement One of the things she noticed lately is when in the grocery store there no longer were lights in the freezers and on the window was a large sign saying, "Pardon our dimness, we're lowering our lignts for ne purpose of saving energy". which she thought was very interesting. Also, the Osco at Asbury and Oakton has a huge sign saying they're dimming their lights in certain places because of the summer energy problems, which she thinks is extremely responsible. It helps them save money but is also energy saving. Mr. Levinson said just replacing bulbs saves energy, now the typical fluorescent bulb is very small and comes in all powers. We should reach out to the stores selling light crafts and they can come back to the City and get a rebated they buy those types of bulbs instead of the ircandesrent type of bulbs that waste energy. They would Pike to thinks those are polices that could be addressed in the fug ire and maybe can help cutback the use of energy. Ms. Bryer added in terms of energy conservation, especially in the summer, ComEd pays people to reduce their energy usage if they can count on your reducing energy usage they pay you :o save that energy. Not that you pay them less but they will actually pay you because they won't have outages someplace else and it may be that some of these big companies are taking advantage of that. Alderman .lean -Baptiste wanted to congratulate the Environmental Ecard for the good work they do and hopes they will stay vigilant and spread the word. As Alderman Rainey comr-ented :tf would be important for you to write a letter and interact with the new developments going on and let them know you're opinions. Whether or not you have authority over them is another issue but it would be good to share that. Also, when we talked about trying to keep Evanston clean as a concept to just spread the word and let everybody know where ever you run into garbage in the street or where ever pick it up. He specifically wanted to know the Board's thinking about the Canal. He knows you may not have authority over the Canal, nor do we have any authority as the Water Refcr-naticr Board governs that We know that waterway runs a lot of waste to get it out of the City, but what thinking has been dore on the system that exists in the City and how do you see the future of that Alderman Newman said before ansa enng —nat one of the comments made in your report was you wanted to be informed about decisions before they were made and one of the decisions recently made gets into the canal and the use of open spaces. He asked if the Environmental 'Control Board was heard from on the District 65 building and was told they did, which meant you did get in on time for twat Ms. Bryer said it wasn't realty on time as they were too late in the process. Alderman Newman said d was earty on in "ne process that he had questions about the impact of putting that building next to the waterway and was waiting to irvear fm-n District 65 about the alternatives. An open land policy might have been helpful before considering that even trough C-e land was owned by District 65. The canal is an issue that seems to be just be out there and we're not doing rmi h about it. Ms. Poole said one of the issues regarding the canal discharge was discussed with the lakefront issue. Ms. Bryer added, the canal is under MWRD restriction but in order to actually put that District 65 building and the parking lot next to the building they are not only going to have to collect the parking run off but will also have to treat it which is a hidden cost All of that is required because that lot is so large the run off is going to have to be treated before being cscharged back into the canal and will have to be done somewhere on site. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said even though the canal is under another body's jurisdiction you can be persuasive in terms of your ideas and views as to how we can minimize pollution as something will eventually have to be done. He knows the deep tunnel is part of the strategy of trying to eventually dean up --nA canal. Mr. Sciarra said right now its behind the green wall but you may get a public entity like the skull and boat locks they put up near Home Depot. Ms. Freeman said MWRP can provide documentation on the quality of the water which s what you're concerned about and as a matter of Page 7. fact the quality of the water in the canal has improved. Alderman Rainey said the Chief Engineer told her you can swim in this water. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste asked the Environment Board to give some thought to the canal and maybe at some future date help us out on this Ms. Klevs said this brings up an interesting point as the person in charge of Research and Development for the district lives in Chicago and is a former 81' Ward Alderman. There are also many other people with expertise who would love to be able to donate time to the City but it's hard to figure out how to make those connections to be able to use their expertise, we just want to be useful. One of the main messages this Board wanted to communicate today is how do we partner wrth you, what are your interests, what do you want us to research so we can give you these reports, what do you need to help us make the City a better place. Alderman Feldman said this Board's regular appearance before this committee would be very helpful. He has always been very much in favor of that kind of involvement, tieing able to sit down and talk about various things. He is very impressed with the caliber of your presence and your experience and looks forward to some very interesting and perhaps controversial and daunting suggestions you might have. Ms. Bryer brought up the Energy's Commission's re -negotiation of the ComEd contract or agreement This fall they are co -sponsoring a forum with the Interfaith Sustainability Circle. Also, in October they are co -sponsoring a forum with the Roundtable newspaper at the Library. They hope there will be publicity to get people to talk about the issues of what is going to happen after deregulation. This is an entirety new universe of experience. Mr. Levinson said they are sitting in at the meetings of the Anti Power Commission and are right there with them as they move forward to find the answer at the beginning of their stages what problems may be effected. Alderman Rainey was happy to hear this Board's presentation, as the previous Environment Board was not very active. She thinks this Board should keep in touch with this committee. Her only recollection of the previous Board is their opposition to a tree preservation ordinance which to this day does not make sense. Alderman Rainey commented that the survey seems over technical and too scientific, as everybody does not understands how to comment about natural management of open space. Why can't that be said simply, why not have blanks to fill in on the survey. Ms. Bryer thought something is needed at the bottom of the survey for comments. Alderman Rainey's most important concern is the ineffectiveness and lack of improvement in participation in recycling in our community. Recycling has been in effect for years. bins have never been used except for laundry or garbage, but not for recycling. The ordinance has been in effect for years and requires mandatory recycling in single family homes under four units, yet there are families that never put one can in their red bin. This has to stop! This is a huge budget issue that also reaches out to the landlord community. The idea of bringing rental buildings over four units into the City's recycling program will save landlord's money in their disposal costs, not to mention what it will do for landfills. This is very, very important and people need to be encouraged to do this, and she is ready for a punitive move for those who do not recycle. Alderman Newman shared Alderman Rainey's concern about recycling and those who are not doing it, also the expansion to the rental buildings. Another concern he has concerns what's going on in our alleys with the wildlife. It's not only dealing with skunks and raccoons but also the inability of us to have a garbage can that can't be accessed by the wildlife. There are negative effects going on because of the way we're collecting, any help we can get would be appreciated. He is also concerned about the downtown alleys, they're atrociously unclean in this area, because we can't seem to keep all those garbage cans empty on a regular schedule in this most highly visible portion of our City. Alderman Newman thanked the Environment Board for their presence and presentation as they are looking into great areas and he looks forward to their sharing the results of their survey with us. if this Board has any thoughts for this committee on any of these issues we look forward to sitting down and working on solutions to these areas. Mr. Terry wished to respond to some things said by the Board. There should not be any reason that you cannot get all the childhood lead testing that goes on, just call the Health Department or call his office. He will say lead has been a major responsibility on the City, particularly in the last year, with new Federal and State requirements on existing staff. No new staff was hired with all the new lead requirements. Ms. Klevs said she called the State Health Department, it is not the Evanston Health Departments fault, the doctor's who report the data to the State Health Department traditionally have not been very friendly with certain data because of confidentiality issues_ Mr. Terry commented the City Health Department can get that to you whenever you would like. The other comment he could not resist making, and he understands the context of this Board's comment, but for those of us who have been advocating for persons with visual impairment and disabilities having a brightly lit lobby was a major victory this year. The Council is forever balancing the interests of one group versus another. We have had criticism for having an overly dim lobby for years from persons with disabilities and now that it is brightly lit it is considered a success. Alderman Rainey added that seniors at the Levy Center have said over and over again, they can't see it the lights are dim. Mr. Sciarra remarked green design does not mean sacrificing quality of light, 90% of the energy is heat. 10% is light. The Environment Board was again thanked. Page 8. VII. CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBLE CHANGES TO THE SENIORiDISABLED SUBSIDIZED TAXICAB COUPON PROGRAM Alderman Newman thanked the staff for a wonderful response to some of the issues and getting everybody to cooperate with their Education Program. He suggested doing this cn an annual or a semi-annual basis to maintain the momentum created with the new Education Program, which he thinks will go a long to help solve some of the problem!, in the area. The main item to be dealt with this evening is the coupon cost suggestions made by the Finance staff after which the issue of complaints will be taken up. Mr. Stafford's memo suggested alternatives for a coupon value and how it can be paid for. Alderman Newman remarked that in the past three months he has taken two rides in taxis, one was from the transportation center to Main and Chicago, that cost $7.00. The other ride was from the downtown transportation center to Duxler Tire, which cost $5.50. His thoughts about the coupon being raised to S5.00 are we are making a significant raise and he does not want to hear its not good enough because how bng does it take, in terms of the meter, to get from one side of Evanston to the other. As he understands the program, d someone gives the coupon they have to be taken wherever they want to go in Evanston. Alderman Newman said when he takes a taxi in downtown Chicago he gets a lot farther for less money than he does in Evanston, although he only taken two rides, $7.00 to get to Main and Chicago is outrageous. He asked what it realty costs to go from South Boulevard to Isabella assuming there is no great traffic delay. Alan Miller, Norshore Cab Company, said they approximate they can go anywhere in traffic for up to $9.00, early in the morning it would be significantly less. He has done that run for S3.90 and did it again trying to stop at every traffic light and it was nowhere near $7.00, but $5.00 may be realistic depending on traffic. One of the important things is there are different rates being charged by the different cabs. He is not saying the companies are legitimately charging this but some of the other cab companies have a variable rate meter when they go from one suburb to another. His guess would be that Alderman Newman's cab had a variable rate meter. Alderman Newnan asked if these meters are checked every three months, to which Mr. Miller responded the Evanston meters are checked some of these meters may have been from a cab from a different village. Walter Wolff, Norshom Cab Company, said Magic cabs have multiple meters. Alderman Newman said he was not in a Magic cab. Alderman Newman asked if everyone was together in accepting S5.00 as a reasonable contribution for a cab ride. The current value of a coupon is S3.50, which the City is raising to S5.00, a signficant increase. Mr. Miller said the controversy comes in whether you're talking about a S5.00 flat rate ride or you're talking about a coupon off the meter rate, to which Alderman Newman said we're talking about a flat rate, not off the coupon. Mr. Miller said a further problem with that is underlying Issues that come up when you talk about a local flat rate. When the drivers were polled they were resentful as they felt they're losing money because the coupons eat into their expenses. They pay for the gas and other fees. Even with the increase you're talking about a program that is limiting the drivers income. Alderman Rainey agreed that the drivers are losing money. Mr. Stafford and Mr. Vamer introduced a computerized map program to the meeting to show the cost of a cab ride from certain addresses in Evanston, specifically to show where a S5.00 cab ride would take you from any designated address. Alderman Feldman said the entire discussion of an increase in rates started with a way to address this very Issue and he was constantly reassured that this issue would be over the minute we increased the rates for taxicabs. Suddenly, here we are increasing the rates for the taxicabs and he is hearing the same identical issue. What he had said at the beginning of the discussion was he would support the increase of rates but he did not want to hear anything more about the drivers' concerns. One of the reasons he supported that was because he thought that would help mitigate the kind of loss the drivers were taking. They only suffer a loss if they, at that moment. could have taken another fare someplace else at full value and do not suffer a loss 0 they are sitting there for 45 minutes and waiting for somebody to call. They finally get a senior citizen call and get their S5.00 fare. You can't have it both ways, and he's very concerned about this as he is now hearing articulation about the drivers still being dissatisfied because they're losing money. This is absolutely endless, if we offered the drivers another 150% increase in rates they would still say that. This is not the deal that he took part in, the deal was that rates would be increased and the drivers would be happy. Now he hears the rates are increased and the drivers are still not happy. If the drivers aren't getting enough maybe the companies should come in and make up some of the difference. The City is already taking on an additional amount and from the memo the committee received we might even ask the citizens to come up with another fifty cents Alderman .lean -Baptiste agreed with Alderman Feldman in terms of his feelings about this except the drivers are not represented here. The entities that are having a win win situation are the companies. The companies win when we raise rates, the companies win no matter what we do with the coupons because they do not care. Alderman Newman Interjected how do the companies get paid on the rates, they get a rate from the cab driver. Mr. Miller also interjected they do not see a nickel of that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said down the line that payment is going to be shared. During the hearings last month we identified the losses are being taken by the drivers and not the company, now we're talking about Page 9. a proposal we made to increase the fare and to raise the coupon which was supposed to be the end of all dissatisfaction. However, the drivers were never represented in that dialogue, only the companies were represented. The companies are now saying to us that the drivers are still concerned about some of the losses they are taking. He agrees, the companies have to step up and engage in the dialogue as to what the City is kicking in. Alderman Feldman noted this whole discussion came about as a result of two things going on, one, senior citizens complained they were being abused and being treated badly, without respect Two, there was an issue of whether or not the cabs, over a long period of time, should have gotten a raise which this committee agreed to and part of this had to do with the fact that we thought it was absolutely, totally, completely unacceptable and without question there was no excuse whatsoever for any abuse. The way it was presented to us was these drivers are upset because the rates are so low on top of which theyre getting a coupon and are losing all this money. Alderman Feldman said he posed the question to the cab companies, if we raise the rates is it going to end the resentment, is it going to end the anger and abuse, and he was told over and over and over again, yes it will. We just passed that increase and now suddenly out of nowhere what we just did had nothing to do with it, he's still hearing the resentment and the beginnings of an excuse for abuse and disrespect what it came to before, He does not see any difference now. Mr. Wolff said this all started in 1994 when we asked the City for a rate increase. We went through Mr. Stafford and got all this set up and then all of a sudden Human Services came in because of the senior citizens situation. We never asked anything about anything except for a rate increase. Alderman Newman noted Mr. Wolff was present at this committee's last meeting when Alderman Rainey said when we started to address the coupon program the reason for some of the resentment on the part of the drivers was the low rates and what she wanted to do was exactly what we did. Everyone on this committee voted for that rate increase and said we were going to come up with a fair coupon value, which he thought we did, and suddenly it's no good. Mr. Wolff said at the meeting they had it was quoted 59.00 or $7.00 for the coupon. Alderman Rainey asked who quoted those rates. Mr. Stafford responded the issues came up as to what are the options and they said they could be $9.00, $7.00, or S5.00, and we talked about those rates. In terms of staff we came bark with $5.00 or $6.00 as a reasonable number. If you're going to ask the drivers and cab companies what's their favorite number they will say $9.00 or $7.00 but staff isn't quite there and thinks $5.00 is a reasonable number. Mr. Wolff said this is absolutely correct and thinks the rate increase is fair. This is the very first time we found out that you decided on $5.00, so if you decided on $5.00 there is no quarrel because that's your decision. The fact is we're just trying to tell you $7.00. Alderman Newman said information has to start coming to this committee. The first information we have to get annually is what the driver's are being charged per day by the companies to rent the cabs and we have to find out where our increase is ending up. He recalled at the last meeting we were basically talking about a $5.00 coupon. Mr. Wolff said they're trying to point out some things about the 55.00. Alderman Newman asked if there are certain drivers who the companies will say will do more of the coupons than others, can they volunteer for it, because some drivers might think if they do more coupons they won't be sitting in some of the cab lines. Mr. Wolff said that is a possibility what they do is try to circulate around the senior homes so they have cabs available for them, good cabs. Alderman Newman said he feels defeated before he starts because as soon as we get out of the gate with the rate increase and make the change we're already hearing the coupon's not good enough. Mr. Wolff responded, you won't hear that. Mr. Miller said in the original proposal they submitted they said not to change even the amount of the coupon. They said $3.50 was fine if it was deducted from the metered rate. Alderman Newman interjected that's not happening and Alderman Rainey added that is the only thing she totally rejects. She is willing to look at a $6.00 coupon but totally rejects deducting the amount of the coupon. Alderman Newman said our concept is the coupon pays for the ride. Mr. Miller said originally they were asked to think outside the box, but thinks they could have done some research and been more prepared for this in giving you better numbers. This is the second time they came before this committee and got blindsided. Alderman Newman said you can't be blindsided, this is all public information. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Miller if there has been dialogue with staff, did they know what you were about to propose. Mr. Wolff said this is the first they hear of the $5.00 and that's all right if that's what you decided. Alderman Feldman said the $5.00 coupon is almost a 50% raise that's more of a percentage than the raise in the fare. Mr. Miller thought they were going to get a percentage in drivers who are going to grouse about if even if it were $12.00 and thinks there are going to be drivers who don't want to take it, but thafs their problem. As an industry we have been talking about it with drivers from all four companies, and he's just expressing their feelings, they resented it over the years and are feeling that now if the increase doesn't go through. Alderman Newman said the increase is through. Mr. Miller said they're telling the drivers they're getting an increase and they will make money in other places that will subsidize what they may lose here. We're trying to help them understand that is this part of the service we do for a community. We're dealing with a lot of different cultures and a lot of things are not getting through very quickly, staff can tell you we've had problem. Recently we've improved relations about complaints and we're still having problems. Alderman Newman wanted it understood from his point of view, if we raise the rates this time and fix the coupon problem and we do not get a better attitude towards the seniors from the drivers, he will sit a long time without ever voting for Page 10, another increase. The problem needs to be solved. Alderman Newman deferred to Mr. Stafford's map of the City to see how many of the rides from various destinations are $5.00 rides. Mr. Stafford said basically S5.00 covers about half the City. Alderman Raney asked if this is with the new meter rate, to which Mr. Stafford responded, yes. Evanston Hospital was used as an example to show how far S5.00 will take from you the hospital or the distance one can get to hospital for $5.W. St Francis Hospital was also taken as an example to show a S5.00 ride to or from the hospital. The Evanston area that a S5.00 ride takes in is quite extensive. Mr. Stafford said we've increased the rate and the whole idea of the rate charged by the cab is the cab rate is designed to cover back the cost of operating, the gas, the depreciation. etc. Even though the meter ra•.e may be $6.00 and the driver gets S5.00 he could still be making money because the opportunity cost is sitting there not doing anything. To go one step further, if we did S9.00 and it covered the entire City the cabs would be making money on most of the rides at the expense of us and if you do it for the S7.00 it gets closer, $6.00 is reasonable. He thinks somewhere between $5.00 and S6.00 is a reasonable number because after that point we're losing and we have our money invested in this. Alderman Rainey asked if it can be shown where the $5.00 area is to get to the Levy Center. Mr. Bames pointed out a distance of 1.75 miles. Alderman .lean -Baptiste noted that does not take into consideration traffic. Alderman Newman said when the Levy Center is built our program won't work for most of the seniors. Alderman Feldman asked that we think about what we're doing here, we just increased the rate and then we're being punished by those rates by saying that the $5.00 we're giving doesn't represent enough. Conceivably d we' d have given them triple the amount of money they would have screamed even more. If we had the $5.00 and did not give them an increase in rate that $5.00 would have gone a lot further, so we re being punished by the logic as well. Now the nde that used to cost $4.00 now casts $6.00 and we're getting nothing. Mr. Stafford said that is one of the reasons we're also advocating that we do have to increase the coupon because we think between S5.00 and $6,00 is reasonable and think the City is losing money in terms of where our subsidy dollars are going. Alderman Feldman said whatever we come out with, and he's sure it will be something we can all live with, he is not going to sit here and again listen to the citizens of this community coming back and saying they're abused and disrespected for whatever reason by the cab drivers in this community. If that means that we have to change the law then that's what we do, if it means their license has to be taken away. or that we have much more stringent laws that's what we'll do. This just cannot go on, there is not a single human being in this community that has to suffer that for no other reason than they're taking advantage of a City program designed to help them. There is no acceptable reason for that and we're not going to take that. Whatever it is we have to do prevent that he will see that it's done, its not going to happen any more. Alderman Rainey said in her ward and Alderman Feldman's ward they have a tremendous aging population. These people do not live in senior housing. Since we've begun this discussion she found the seniors she has talked to in her ward don't know about the taxi coupon program, something she feels very bad about. They don't use coupons because they don't know about the program, but they're going to learn about the program. She has heard of some seniors not using the coupons because of the hassle. She asked what it would cost to get to Evanston Hospital from south of Main Street Mr. Bamer asked for a specific address and Alderman Rainey gave an address from the middle of the ward. The program keyed this in as 3.19 miles. The program cannot calculate the fare but Mr. Stafford thought the fare would be approximately $8.DO. Alderman Jean -Baptiste directed his comment to the media present that he thought we have yet to dialogue with the drivers, the two gentlemen in attendance represent owners. He can see the headline now, the Human Services Committee is not going to tolerate whining drivers or something to that effect. Drivers are not here to respond to what it is that we are talking about. We have not heard their perspective, the owner's interests are not the driver's interests. When we talk about this program and taking a firm stand, we have to be able to communicate that to the drivers and he would suggest we do that_ He wanted it noted we are here talking about how this committee will not tolerate drivers dissatisfaction when they promise to accept the terms we laid down. but the drivers are hot here, the owners are here and the owners have a different interest. It is very important that we find a way to dialogue with the drivers to at least try to get their opinion as to what it is that we are doing and then they'll know what our terms are because right now he does not know what has been communicated to them and until they're here and dialogue with us we will not know that. We have to come back and have some dialogue with the drivers before adopting any decisions on the coupons. Alderman Newman asked how many drivers there are in Evanston. Mr. Wulff said probably 350 to 400 because they double shift. He said Mr. Lookis, Interim City Collection Manager, can tell what the drivers said because he conducted the class with the drivers. Mr. Lookis, who with the help of Mr. O'Sullivan set up the meetings, said half of the drivers said the way they view the coupon program is they dose money on some of them and make a tremendous amount of money on others. If they have a very short ride with a $3.50 coupon, at the old rate, overall it balances out A lot of the drivers were very upset about some of the issues brought up and showed very little remorse in a lot of ways towards senior citizens, they felt what they did and what they said was justified. They felt they were being taken advantage of by the amount of the coupon and have a lot of remorse in terms of the complaints we had from seniors. Some of them would never even apologize. Page 11. Alderman Feldman said to him the issue is not whether or not this committee decides to accept dscontented drivers, the issue is whether that discontent is accepted as an excuse for abuse and disrespect He cannot guarantee that everybody is going to love everything vve do, but what he is suggesting is automatically there is no excuse no matter what we do for abusing elderly citizens. There may be other issues that they have to address but you do not take tt4se issues they have with the City out on elderly people. Alderman Newman asked how many coupons would a driver typically take in a day. Mr. Wolff said the company takes in 1500 coupons a month Alderman Newman said it sounds to him if there are 300 drivers a driver comes in wpm four a month. His reaction to that is he would be glad to go to the c;d rates and raise the coupon to S7.00. When we raise a rate we take care of 98% of your rides His point is if we have 3D0 drivers and each are doing four rides a month to him that is not much fora Crt/ to ask He does not feel he's taking a lot out of their pocket going with $5.00. In giving them the rate increase we've improved their situation for 95% of time rides and he's satisfied with the $5.00 coupon, by giving them a rate increase he's improved their situation for 95% of their rides. Alderman Rainey added for 95% of time distances. Mr. Miller said when they originally started this they were not under the assumption that there would be a rate increase, with that in the picture the flat rate is a lot more acceptab?e In answer to Alderman Feldman's position they're in total agreement with him as they do not condone anything that is going on with the seniors as the staff can tell you. They have worked timelessly and spent hours in meetings over the last two months to solve some of those problems. Alderman Newman asked the committee to consider the fad that these drivers are probably only picfting up four coupons a month and considering we fix the rate, does not think $5.00 is unreasonable because some of these rides will be S2.00 rides. Some seniors only want to go across downtown because they may be in a walker. Alderman .lean -Baptiste said before Alderman Newman calls for a consensus he would ask how much does the company charge the driver a day. Mr. Wolff said the rate for a cab today can run from $35.00 to S45.00, Alderman Newman interjected its much more than that in Chicago, its $85.00 a day. Mr. Miller said there are five or six different programs that people rent their cabs at. For some the driver buys the car and does the maintenance, some the owners do the maintenance as you can see in the difference in the cars out here. The rates have stayed the same for the last six years, in fact some of them have actually gone down because he could not find drivers. Part of the other problem here is, yes, there are owners and there are drivers. The drivers are complaining, a lot of them have legitimate complaints but a lot of them don't, a lot of misunderstanding in communication gets resolved once we talk about these issues. We're on the same page with you, we're developing harder sanctions for some of these guys who are violating people's rights and we don't condone nor do we accept it either. We tO our drivers, " You take that senior as if you were taking your own mother and if you dorm t take them that way then don't drive for us, get out" We've affirmed that with the City and worked with them on it. What we're saying is we're fine with the fiat rate. Some of the drivers will never be fine even 'rf you give them S50.00 for a $3.00 ride. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked approximately how much the average driver makes. Mr. MiAer said for a day shift $45.00, for a night shift roughly S35.00. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much does a day shift make, to which Mr. Miller responded between $25.00 if he's inexperienced to S100 00 if he's experienced. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said a driver may net between $25.00 and S100.00 a day for a 12 to 14 hour day. Mr. Miller said usually it should be under 12 hours for the shift cab, a 24 hours cab may go from between S60 00 to S70.00 if the driver keeps the 24 hours he increases his earnings. Alderman Newman remarked of the 350 dnivers you have if there are 50 drivers that have a chip on their shoulder's against seniors don't steer them any seniors, steer the seniors to the drivers who don't mind picking up the seniors. He's asking if that would be difficult from an operational standpoint, to which Mr. Miller said, yes it would be at Norshore with the current owners we have because a lot of the staff is aware of a lot of problems and some of our guys are screaming there is unfairness in the company. All drivers should have an even chance no matter how well trained. Alderman Newman asked if out of your 300 drivers can any sign up who want to be called by the dispatcher to pick up seniors. Mr. Miller said is it possible, yes, is it likely, no Alderman Feldman asked if riders have to identify they have a coupon when they call to %frith Alderman Newman responded no, but the drivers know from a lot of the addresses they're getting seniors passengers. Alderman Newman asked if anybody wants to go beyond S5 00 at this point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said looking at the numbers if a successful driver walks away with S100.00 after a 12 hour day he makes about S8.33 a hour. Mr. Miller said in the summertime guys make $25.00 a day and go home happy. Again, its over the long haul that the driver looks at it, there are drivers that sometimes make a lot more than S 100.00 above their costs. It was previously said four coupons a driver, but he has a driver who gives him ten coupons a week. he's an experienced driver who helps the people and accepts whatever comes to him on the radio. Then there are drivers who dodge radio calls Alderman Rainey asked how are requests for service dispatched. Mr. Miller said it's an address. Alderman Rainey wanted to know how a cab driver gets selected to take a pickup. Mr. Miller said they are cabstand based, which is the way their dispatching system was set up. Its getting tougher now particularly on the south end with limited availability they have guys that orders just pop off of because of transients and shopping in the area. They also use those cabstands for orders in Rogers Park. Alderman Rainey did not know wiry it should be so difficult because every night there are eight cabs lined up in the parking lot in front of the New China Buffet in the Howard and Wester Shopping Center. She thinks you have a pretty good dispatch plan and does not care why you do it, that's fine with her, but you have more cabs there Page 12. than she sees anywhere, don't say you don't have the location in South Evanston. If there are five, or eight, cabs at the cabstand how is the driver selected. Mr. Miller said the first one there is the first one in me line and gets the first call that comes. Alderman Rainey asked wt at happens when you're in a cab and you hear orders being dispatched, does the cab driver say he can take that order as r*'s dropping somebody a door away from there Mr Wolff said if the stand is empty. Mr. Miller added what we're trying to do is allocate cabs in areas that are the busiest Alderman Newman asked for input on the value on the coupon. Alderman Feldman sand Alderman Jean -Baptiste is interested in an additional amount of information, which he is ready to hear but thinks tnai is a part of the equation we have not heard and would postpone this until we hear from the them. Alderman Rainey wants to hear more about the business that the cab drivers don't believe that were raising the rates. Mr. Miller said he trunks they will believe it but right now they are holding their breath. Alderman Rainey said when a does happen and they are told about it they will believe that, won't they. Alderman Newman said he would like to hook up the 55.00 coupon wth the rate changes at Monday night's Council meeting because we're not clear we're going to have a consensus here. You can bring all the drivers you want on Monday night to talk about the rates because he's not voting for a rate increase if seniors aren't treated well. Alderman Newman asked what happened regarding the Mr. 99, Norshore complaint This driver chased the woman into the building and embarrassed her because she wanted to go into the building and get her coupon. There was a power failure and the elevators were not working. Mr. Miller said 99 was taken off the air and was scheduled to meet with the City. What we have is a process where first we deal with the dnvers and then if the City asks to see them they're sent to the City and taken off the radio service until they meet with Mr. O'Sullivan and Mr. Lookis. Alderman Newman asked what the status is with this complani Mr. Lookis said this was one of the drivers who defended himself and felt he was within his rights as he was not going to get paid. He was not paid because she could not get her coupon. Our comments back to him were that the Cab Company was going to deal with part of these issues but we felt that out of respect for anyone he could have come back. Alderman Feldman said if we had a system where if that ever happens again, for whatever reason, they're not getting a coupon there has to be a facility someway that can call the City and say this is what happened and they're owed a coupon. We can take their number and send them a coupon. Mr. Lookis said that's what they're trying to do. A lot of drivers claim people are abusing the program and they want to do something about it. They say grandparents are giving grandchildren the coupons, to which Alderman Newman said in such cases they should not accept the coupon. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what happens if they tell the dnver at the end of the ride they have a coupon. Mr. Lookis said they're supposed to identify they're a coupon user at the beginning of the ride. Alderman Newman asked what happened regarding the complaint with Mr. 35 and the Oakton and McCormick cab incident. Why did this complaint go as far back as August 14, 2000? Mr, Lookis said they tried to give a cross section of the kind of complaints that come in. Mr. Wolff said at the time of this complaint Susan Sabir was with the City and wrote him a letter stating the facts. They called Mr, 35 in, everyone met in Ms. Sabir's office and decided this driverwould not work for a week. Alderman Newman said there is week before voting on this issue and would suggest and hope Mr. Miller and Mr. Wolff will get back to their drivers so we find can out whether the $5.00 rate will be acceptable. If its not going to solve the problem that has to be a factor in considering the rate increase. Mr. Miller said in the issue regarding the grandchild, if the child was handicapped or disabled they would accept the coupon. Another issue concerns increasing the rent, it should be on record that we said, at feast for Norshore, we as owners would not raise our rates for at least three months. There is an inference that the owners are going to make out from this and that is not necessarily true, he said that off the top of his head, but they are not going to be increasing their rates. We have to get a consensus from the Association that takes a vote of the membership. Alderman Rainey asked how many members there are in the Association and what does it mean to be a member. Mr. Miller said there are 25 members, not only cab owners or company owners but people who can buy radio service, it's a complicated thing. Alderman Newman supported the $5.00 coupon unless we hear Monday night that 50% increase with the rate increase still isn't good enough. Mr. Wolff wanted to go on record that he knows their guys will go for it, unless Alderman Jean - Baptiste wants to see drivers, theyll come in. They just found out tonight about the $5.00. Alderman Rainey asked if there was anyone present from Best or Better Cab Company and was informed the owner of the companies was ill and not in attendance. She asked what about 303 Cabs, Mr. Wolff said those are Magic Cabs in Evanston. Alderman Rainey asked if they also have to accept the coupons and if their meter rates are the same as the City's meter rates. Mr. Stafford said they inspect the Magic 303 Cabs, there are 303 and Magic 303 cabs. Mr. Miller said they drive in other municipalities and their rates are very much higher than Evanston's rates they charge different rates for different suburbs. Alderman Newman noted were at $5.00 on the coupon and the issue is what are we going to charge the seniors. The options we have are $2.50, $3.00. and 53.50. Alderman Rainey suggested leaving their charge as it is then consider it as a budget issue. Alderman Newman did not want to raise the cost to the seniors as he does not think seniors can afford an increase, nor does he think we got into this issue to raise the cost of the coupon to seniors, we got into it for a different reason. We want to promote transportation to the new Levy Center and this will be one way that will happen. Page 13. Alderman Rainey said she has recently discovered the lack of knowledge of people outside the central senior housing district have of this coupon program. She would like to have a massive advertising campaign conducted so that all seniors have equal access to the coupons. For people in her ward, especially all the seniors who We along Dodge, to go and buy these coupons it would cost them S9.00 by cab. Perhaps this purchase could be done with a water bill as somehow we have to have a way to ge: tri s information out. Not all seniors read the Review or the Roundtable, we need to have some sort of blitz campaign on this Alderman Feldman asked if the coupons are sold somewhere beside the City and was told they are sold at the Levy Center and the United Way office. Alderman Rainey suggested they also be sold a couple days at the new Howard Street Outpost and asked why they can't be sold at the Jewel and Dominick's, which would be a wonderful place to sell them. Alderman Newman said advertising altemative distributions of the coupons will come back to the commie. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Stafford what number without an increase for the coupons, will be forwarded to the Budget Committee. Mr. Stafford said the cost increase from $1.50 to S3.00 a coupon, about $40.000 for the year. The September 1" date will be S20,000 and S40,000 for next year more. Alderman Rainey asked how the coupon sales have gone from one year to another. Mr. Stafford said he would get that information for the committee. Mr. Terry added the overall trend seems to be the sales are dropping. Alderman Rainey asked what that can be attributed to, to which Mr. Terry said first and foremost demographics. Evanston's number of older adults dropped again from 1990 to 2000 and dropped from 1980 to 1990. Secondary, it is our feeling that people have stopped using the program based on some dissatisfaction. Mr. Stafford said if we move it from $3.50 to $5.00 there is going to be increased sales in a significant amount over S40,000 and he just wanted to raise that point. Alderman Newman asked if because were increasing it to $5.00 do we think there is no longer going to be any abuse to the seniors and more people will use the program. Mr. Stafford said no, if the subsidy is more rt's a greater good for a lesser dollar. The aldermen did not think that argument works. If we engage in a campaign to let more seniors know then they will buy more. Alderman Newman said if the City is overwhelmed with the demand because we did such a great job advertising then well deal with the problems. To him, right now, seniors are probably the ones who are apprehensive about using the program and just by increasing the value of the coupon to $5.00 are we necessarily going to have a run to use time program. Hopefully, overtime. when word gets around the service is going to dramatically improve because we're all happy with the rates and the cost of the coupon and we can put all this to rest. Alderman Feldman moved to increase the taxicab roupon to $5.00 and keep the senior's c_nst at $2.00. Alderman Newman seconded the motion, motion unanimousty passed. 14-0?. Alderman Rainey thought when the advertising about the program is put out there should also be information to seniors on ways the coupon should not be used Regarding the complaint form, she thinks it is important to give good points to the good driver just as it is to give the baseball bat to the bad drivers. The more positive things that are said about the program the more it will be used and we want seniors to use the program. Why have a program you do not want people to use. Alderman Newman asked if it is necessary to have an ordinance to mandate the taxicab educational program every other year. Mr. Stafford said it is already in place and was instituted for a year and he would like to make clear that we think we have one of the better programs in the state. It is mandatory and ongoing. Alderman Newman questioned that it was done all of sudden before this meeting. Mr. Stafford said that because of the issues raised by the committee the reporters got more and more interested in the issue and came up with that. Alderman Newman asked about the new complaint form and was told it has been distributed. Ms. Flowers said it has been distributed to all the senior buildings, the Levy Center, and will be sent to all new applicants to the program. Alderman Newman asked who gets the complaints and was told Mr. O'Sullivan. Alderman Newman requested that every single complaint be submitted to this committee on a quarterly basis and then the companies can be brought back to talk about the complaints. Mr. Miller said in the past two weeks there have been several very nice meetings that got other issues on the table and our drivers needed to hear the City is not going to take the driver's abuse any more, which was very helpful. Mr. Lookis said it was good for us at the City to hear the drivers' perspective as well. Mr. Miller's one concern is that cab companies be made aware there is a complaint. It is now happening through Mr. O'Sullivan and Mr. Lookis, but there are other complaints that they were told about months ago they have not yet seen. Once they know they can do something about these complaints, and they have. Mr. Wolff said they had 1300 coupons last month and only two complaints. Alderman Newman said this committee is going to be looking at the complaints for a while and the cab owners are invited when the complaints are looked at if they have any comments they will also listen to them. We would like information on your rate increases and feedback on the drivers from the entire coupon situation more than once a year. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked it there could be some kind of tool for the drivers to be able to communicate to the City about their own concerns. Mr. Stafford agreed the lines of communication should be open. Alderman Rainey hoped everybody rsoticed that the last Taxicab Advisory Board meeting was May of 1999, Page 14. Alderman Newman brought up the composition of the Taxicab Advisory Board, The Board should consist of seven members, one owner of a taxicab company, one independent owner, one taxicab driver, one user of senior taxicab coupons, and three representatives of the public at Large. He noted asked there are currently five vacancies on the Board. Alderman Newman remarked the way this Board has been operating there will not be anybody on this Board the end of September. Alderman Raney sard some interest should be generated for this Board. She is sure the cab drivers will take care of their own representatives Mr. Stafford said they are soliciting from seniors for members. Alderman Newman asked if anything has been heard from the Mayor regarding this issue to which Mr. Stafford responded he spoke with the Mayor and she is again so5ribng members Alderman Feldman asked who will be the Chair of this Board and was told there are no Chairs on this Board Alderman Newman thought all the members who have ever been on this Board should be invited to the Monday right Council meeting and as this is being discussed they can be asked why this Board has been so invisible. Alderman Newman called for any further discussion or comments on this issue. Mr. Stafford said he wished to thank staff especially Nancy Flowers who has done a great job coordinating and working with his office. Also he would like Mark Vamer, GIS and the information people to know how much they're appreciated. He knows there are still issues to deal with but wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for their assistance. The committee was in agreement and very much appreciates the great job done by staff people. Vill. POULTRY REGULATION Alderman Newman noted the communication received on the poultry regulation is being handled administratively. Mr. Terry noted an additional communication was received today and he met with Mr. Montoya this moming to conduct a personal inspection of the rooster. He reviewed the health records of the rooster, who resides in a very nice coop, and believes it has been agreed to keep it clean. If there are neighborhood complaints that will be a reason for the City to move in. Currently he is not aware of any complaints from citizens and contacted the Animal Control officer who could not identify the original complainant. He received a letter today from the Warren Cherry Preschool asking the Human Services Committee to "Save the Rooster." He has spoken to legal staff and w4h the Administrative Adjudication process regardiiig a petition for residents of the block and a few other communications. There are a couple of issues that are yet to be resolved, but the City Manager is confident this can be resolved administratively. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if he is recommending any changes in the ordinance to which Mr. Terry responded, not at this time but he will look at it. He will say poultry are becoming more domesticated and he has viewed some interesting web sites which may be something we can address at some point. but is not an immediate recommendation. This is a subject that can be looked into at another time. Alderman Rainey asked it the City is considering licensing this rooster to which Mr. Terry said, no, not unless there's charges for showing. The committee appreciated all Mr. Terry's efforts in this matter. IX. ARTS COUNCIL UPDATE (HELD OVER FROM MEETING OF JULY 2, 2001 ) This communication will be discussed at a later date. X. TOWNSHIP PERSONNEL ISSUES The committee inquired whether this is an Executive Session item and was informed by Ms. Brenniman it is the committee's option and is covered under the Open Meetings Act. There is an exception where you can open and close sessions covered to discuss personnel issues and she has the language you can use if you chose to do that The exception is a public body may vote to close meetings to consider the following subjects; the specific exception is the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of a public body including hearing testimony on a complaint to determine its validity. Alderman Newman asked the committee what is other people's perception of the issues that we are going handle under this subtitle. He thought the first issue was the allegations about people being improperly paid. Inclosed session the Council got the reports and referred it to the Human Services Committee. Mr. Stafford was asked if anybody here was looking into the allegation in regard to people being paid who didn't work. Mr. Stafford said not yet because staff hasn't been directed to do that. Mr. Terry wanted to note for the record he spoke to the Township Assessor this aftemoon and she indicated she had a family obligation tonight not knowing for sure that this was on the agenda tonight She also said given possible litigation involving personnel matters she wasn't sure what she could share with the committee. Historically there has not been too many issues like this and it has not necessarily been a City staff function but to engage an outside auditing firm if there are investigations that the Trustees feel are necessary in keeping the borders between City and Township Gear. Alderman Feldman said he feels very uncomfortable in this position. He can listen to people talk but has no way of judging or knowing, this is testimony not sworn testimony. He has no way of knowing what is truth or not truth or anything, but he feels he is in the midst of a family quarrel where he is supposed to do something about it How can anything be Page 15. done regarding this issue without an auditor's report or any other information. How is he supposed to know what somebody did at 7:00 in the evening in a given office, how does anybody know. The Assessor is not present. Alderman Newman asked if the gist of Alderman Feidman's comment is that we should find out or we don't have enough information right now. Alderman Feldman said the gist of it is in spite of the fact that this on the agenda and given to the Human Services Committee he has absolutety no idea what we are supposed to do with this and does not think were prepared for this. Ms. Brenniman said at this Font Legal staff has copies of the relevant statutes that indicate what this committee's responsibilities are to the Assessors position (copies of these statutes were distributed to the committee.) Ms. Brenniman went on to say this basicalry. as shown on the 3" page of Section 200 of the handout, deals with budget making, the Assessor is charged under this statute of preparing the budget and then the Trustees are charged with adopting the budget. You have control of the budget and decide whether or not it's going to pass. Alderman Newman asked about execution of the budget and was told they have a right to look into budget issues. Ms. Brenniman said on page 241, the last page of the handout. there are three relative sections, one, Secbon 265 deals with deputies and employees and this section authorizes the Township Assessor, if she is not able to perform all the duties, to appoint a deputy to assist in making the assessments and/or any other employees required for the operation of the office. That is her call, as far as the budget is concerned you still have control over that. Alderman Newman asked if once we allocate money is it the Assessor's decision who the staff is, Ms. Brenniman said that is absolutely correct. Under Section 270, Salaries, the Trustees set the salary of the Assessor at the same time that they do the Township Supervisor. The expenses are under Section 280, that says the Trustees shall provide office storage space, equipment, supplies, personnel, and other items that are necessary for the office operation. Alderman Newman wanted to address issues on what the committee thinks should be addressed. Alderman Rainey thought this committee should be addressing, not a personnel issue, but the general overall behavior. lack of professionalism, lack of ability to retain staff, and what she calls the overall indiscretions of our current Assessor. While we have no ability to deny her the right to check for people to go to Hawaii if she considers that within their duties, she does think we would be hard put to identify the hiring of a guard that she directed to be armed, but was not eventually armed, how could we say that purchase was necessary for carrying out the duties of that office. As Trustees we are subject to great ridicule. The letters in the newspaper from people who are highly respected in this community, are just lambasting this behavior. She does not care whether it is right or wrong behavior, we have great indiscretion being used, this is an embarrassment to the City of Evanston even though she's the Township Assessor, we're coterminous which is what bothers her. It bothers her that hardly anybody in the community is supporting this behavior, yet there is an incredible unwillingness on the part of the Trustees to confront this issue head on, which she does not understand. Alderman Newman appreciated Alderman Rainey's comments and said his understanding is when you have an elected official, lets say we're evaluating the Township Assessor and it is decided the Assessor is not functioning in the office, the Trustees have no authority to remove eiat person. Alderman Rainey interjected we dent have the authority to remove a taxicab driver but we want to talk to them, this is a person of the same body and if one of the aldermen in this town was going around acting crazy we have the abitrty to sit down with that person and say let's talk about this and what's going on with you. We have a certain reputation to maintain and want people to trust in the public body. What she is hearing from people she does not know, but knows of them by reputation, is they're very concerned with the behavior of this public official. That is all she's saying. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Rainey if she wants to discuss compliance and issues with the Assessor with the hope that we can Lobby her or get her to act differently. Alderman Rainey said what she does not want to do is to sit down with her and ask what about this or that, because every time anybody makes a new report or she sends out a new defensive letter its like Pinocchio's nose, it gets bigger and bigger, and the story changes. What she wants to hear from her is how she thinks things are going in her office, what she sees as her role, and how she plans on carrying this out, because she is absolutely willing to guarantee that as time goes on this will occur more and more, We'll have other instances like this. The reason this is our problem is because every one of these people is suing the taxpayers of the City of Evanston and its unfair. These are not frivolous lawsuits, these people feel they've been harmed, humiliated, and embarrassed and carried out of this building by armed guards, which the taxpayers are paying =_- for. Here we are dickering over whether we should charge senior citizens another fifty cents or not. These lawsuits could end up being tens of thousands of dollars and she may be the very cause, which is why we have to get to the very root of that cause. E Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought as leadership in the City of Evanston the Council may take an advisory position and say they want peace to prevail, and want the City officials to manage the perception that we are handling our business correctly. That is just a general statement, behind closed doors we may be able to get the Assessor in and say to her she has to try to keep things under control. He does not know whether her complaints are baseless because there is a presumption in this statement that she is off the mark in terms of whatever her issues are in that office and he does not - think we have the authority to go in there and make that investigation. He would be supportive of an advisory statement but does not think we have the authority to get into personnel decisions she is making and does not see any leeway but to go forward as a committee to address the specific complaints which have been put before us. Alderman Newman remarked that Alderman Jean -Baptiste is saying we cannot get into this because we do not have any authority. Alderman _- Rainey said everybody fires people in management positions, they don't get sued. If its not this great flourish of publicity Page 16. and bad press then there is something there that we're not getting a handle on and she wants to see if there is something we can do to help her not have this happen because she believes this is going to happen. Alderman Feldman agrees with the trouble we're in and exactly what's been happening. The problem is he does not feel comfortable in any way to establish blame and would not want to say that one person is responsible and one person isn't. There is no way he can understand that There are people that feel they've been unjustly accused and they may be absolutely right From the Assessor you get another point of view and he has no way in determining that he does know. as Alderman Rainey indicated, there has been an unfortunate volume of discontent and disharmony in that office. We all know that and that can't go on. The only way he'd feel comfortable with any kind of understanding is if we chose to have an investigation to establish some facts, as we don't know what the facts are. Alderman Newman agreed that we don't know what the facts are, but the question is are we going to initiate a process in order to find out what happened in these particular situations and will that process, if we initiate it, adversely affect us in any lawsuit that is going to come. We might be aiding and abetting who ever is going to be suing the Township and whatever judgement they're seeking. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not know if any information we gather will be privileged. As Alderman Rainey has said the only way we can channel our discontent is through an advisory statement and let the rest play itself out Alderman Feldman said an advisory statement has to indicate a point of view and a point of view regarding something unless we just want to say, stop having trouble in your office, as the Trustees are very concerned about what seems to be a pattern of difficulty in that office. Alderman Newman was sure there is a pattern, he's not making any comment about the second case, but in the first case he's not sure there was a pattern and that is not to say that in the first case the person didn't do some very valuable work for the City. Mr. Terry reminded the committee that the one strong power the Trustees clearly retain is their statutorily auditing power to the extent of any allegations that have to do with inappropriate expenditures. One of the things he does not know and asked Mr. Stafford is if the presence in the newspapers during the last two or three weeks would be enough cause for the auditor, since he's doing an audit now, to do an extra due diligence In terms of the past fiscal year. Obviously the committee also retains a right to ask him to investigate questions as to the current fiscal year. The committee does have power as it relates to auditing in terms of financial questions. Another thing he would remind the committee is a month or so ago a communication was received from the Township Supervisor cautioning that the Assessor's expenditure level was exceeding the budgeted level. One of the questions, as yet unknown, is assuming the maximum expenditure level is breached does the Assessor have authority to spend above and beyond the budgeted level. He does not know that we resolved that question on any checks and balances. If the committee chooses to pursue that, that is another issue. Alderman Newman remarked that the behavior of this particular elected official is behavior that was empowered by the voters in this town. There is a whole process for running for office but there is no process for recall. Ultimately the voters have this responsibility. This is an office for which we could not find a person because of the educational requirements and it was vacant for a long. He would be very glad if we had the authority and were told that there was wrong doing and to fully investigate it, to come to a result where we have the authority to remove, which we do not have. The only path we will go down in terms of evaluating the Assessor is a path to nowhere because it is the voters who are responsible and as a group they have to decide and put up somebody else at the election. Putting that aside we do have the authority to not fund the office and have the authority to follow up on the expenditures of taxpayer money. He is, therefore, going to move that we immediately begin to investigate the most glaring charge which was people were being paid for work not performed. He would not want to hire a consultant to gather the initial facts just to see whether or not there is probable cause to believe that there may have been some wrong doing, because if there is it should be fully investigated and maybe we'll hire somebody. If there is no probable cause then the public deserves to find out whatever charge was brought on the issue of the ghost pay rolling there was insufficient evidence to find it was valid. Alderman Newman moved to investloate and ask the Finance Directors office to do the lnitial lookina into those facts In terms of the ghost pav rollinq. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste was concerned by our discussion that we are doing exactty what we said we had no authority to do. We are communicating that the Assessor has gone astray and is doing a number of things that is casting all kinds of ill will inside that office. It is beyond our authority to deal with her behavior unless there is an allegation in response to some personnel action that she has taken. Alderman Newman said there is an allegation that people are being paid for work that has not been performed and he thinks we need to look into that Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed with Alderman Newman but his problem is we need to focus and deal with that and understand that all of this discussing we're engaging in as to how she is conducting business in the office, personnel action, armed guard, etc., casts a particular perception on the Assessor and what the Assessor is doing beyond budget issues. Our authority is budgetary, he agrees we need to look at that particular issue and whatever advise we need to offer we can offer through some kind of Executive Session. In terms of the broad discussion as to whether or not there is any basis for her personnel action, because initially she came to us and wanted to put on our agenda an issue relating the behavior of one of her employees. We've not discussed those issues and we have to stay very narrowly in terms of our discussion. Alderman Newman said what we Page 17. are now discussing is to ask the Finance Director to take an initial look at whether or not there was any irregularity in the issue of people being paid. Alderman Rainey was not sure that is the job of our Finance Director. It seems to her if there are real live charges of that that's a State's Attorney issue, it's a criminal action, and she does not know that she wants our staff investigating that. She would like to direct Irwin Lyons, who will be doing the Township audit this year and who we have already started paying, to pay special attention to the documentation of expenditures in the Assessor's office which she does not think is a malevolent request. There never have been issues in this office, its always been a very neutral office and run in a very professional way. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Stafford if Mr. Lyons can determine whether or not people were paid for work not performed. Mr. Stafford said, yes, it is very appropriate as a Town Trustee to direct their auditor to any event that comes to the light that would happen either during the audit or a subsequent event which may or may not be and to have that auditor investigate that as part of their normal scope. It would be very appropriate for the Township as Trustees to do this. Alderman Newman amended his motion to have Mr. Lyons conduct the investination. Alderman Feldman seconded Alderman Newman's amendment to his motion Alderman Feldman said in the committee's discussion of the ethics ordinance and the issue about amendments to it, one of the things we were very, very concerned about was notification of an issue being brought before the Ethics Board, explanation of charges, of accusations, or the whole idea that an investigation doesn't go forward without people knowing about it, without being present in the room when accusations are made. We're talking about some charges that were made in the newspaper, that has never come before this Council as an official body or as Trustees. Alderman Newman and Alderman Rainey said they got communications about the ghost payroll that went to all the Trustees. Alderman Feldman said that was individual correspondence that was not before the Council. All he is saying is we have to be as scrupulous in fairness with this as what we demanded in amendments to the ethics ordinance, that she be informed these are the concerns of the Council, what the reasons are, what we're going to do about it, and that she be invited to come to this committee. Alderman Newman said she was invited to be here tonight, to which Alderman Feldman responded she said she could not come because of a family commitment Alderman Newman responded she did not call him, the committee Chair. Alderman Rainey said first of all we should cover her under our ethics ordinance, to which Ms. Brenniman said she is covered under that ordinance. Secondly, nobody needs to be warned or given prior notice of their documentation for an annual scheduled budgeted audit Alderman Feldman agreed, but he would see this as a perfectly legitimate action that has been surrounded by defamatory language that we feel there's insult, but he does not know that anybody has ever been provers of that in any way. Alderman Rainey did not think anybody has accused her of anything, she has commented on her behavior which she thinks is pretty outrageous, but is asking that our auditor pay special attention to her documentation, which Alderman Feldman said he would support Alderman Rainey said this is a Standing Committee of the Evanston City Council, which is solely obligated to deal with Township issues. When an elected official chooses not to attend a meeting or send a representative, a problem we have had in the past, it is not our fault She has the responsibii'rty, she was elected by all the taxpayers. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented, isn't this discussion a response to her coming to us to say she had some concern. He does not have any history with this or with her, maybe other committee members have some history with her. From his understanding she came to us and said there is a mess going on and some abuses by some employees she had to respond to and would like to inform us and keep us abreast of what is going on. All we're talked about tonight is how bad this woman is, regardless of her presence or absence we have to step back for a minute and try to understand where this came from and try to set a process to handle this outside of this kind of forum. Alderman Newman said we have a process and the process is going to be an audit, but he would like to clarify that he has not cast any aspersions whatsoever upon the Township Assessor. He is just responding to his own individual duty to investigate claims and allegations that are made in regard to public money. Prior to this Assessor being elected and serving there were multiple problems in the Assessor's office and at this point in time he has no idea whether any of the allegations in regards to the monies are true or not we're just going to find out, if it turns not to be true then we're happy and we'll give the Assessor a clean bill of heatth on those issues. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed that once we're through with the investigation if we find it's dean we need to publish that information, to which Alderman Newman said we will. Alderman Rainey asked if there is a reserve for legal expenses for Township lawsuits, and was informed there is a line of $10,000 of which there has been some money spent Mr. Terry wanted to respond indirectly to Alderman Feldman that the uniqueness of this situation is given that the Assessor is an elected official and given the committee has already, over the past year, heard that the Supervisor and Director have no control/supervisory authority over the Assessor, there is a reluctance on the part of many City staff, given the nature the headlines, to get into any kind of communication with the Assessor. That is why, in the law department Mr. Siegel is handling her matters as opposed to other City staff. A part of this may be establishing a chain of Page 18. communication because it is realty between the Trustees and the Assessor in terms of whatever goes forward from here, and not something City staff, the Supervisor, or the Township Director has a role in. Alderman Newman said the Supervisor does have some control because she ultimately has some relationship to that budget, it is a sub part of her budget. The bills go to the Supervisors office to be paid. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion and does not have a problem with that, all he's suggesting is that until we, this body, has evidence to indicate anything at all, that's all we deal with. Nothing more, no rhetoric about anything having to do with the way the Assessor conducts her office or any other implications that might need further investigation. Alderman Newman recalled the motion for the one item the committee is acting on, to have Mr. lvons conduct the investigation. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion that was unanimously sassed f4-01. Alderman Newman hopes the committee is together on making it clear to the people wrung to the Review, the Council or the Trustees have no authority to remove the Assessor even if wrong doing is found, XI. SEPTEMBER MEETING DATE The next Human Services Committee meeting will be: Wednesday, September 19'h, at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was adjourned at 10:10 p.m. Respectfully submitted. Audrey Trottky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 19. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL. HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, October 1, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey Maureen Berry, Carta Bush. Frank Kaminski, Jay terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Moran, Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township), Susan Cantor (Mental Health Board) Alderman Newman Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:28 p.m. p.m. 11. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF AUGUST 6, 2001 The minutes of the August 6.2001. meetina were unanimously aanroved. 14-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Newman noted a response to the committee's July inquiries was included in the packet and called for questions or comments related to the August and September Township monthly bills. Not hearing any questions or comments Alderman Newman called for a motion to approve these tills. Alderman Rainey motioned for approval of the Auaust and Seotember Townshlo monthiv bills. seconded by Alderman Feldman, motion unanimously approved, (4-0). Alderman Newman congratulated and extended the committee's appreciation to the Township staff for continuing to keep the number of cases down. IV. TOWNSHIP PERSONNEL ISSUES Mr. Terry informed the committee Kathleen Brenniman, legal counsel, was not in attendance due to her husband's illness. Alderman Newman noted Ms. Brenniman's packet memo gives a clear position as to what this committee can do regarding this issue, which isn't much, nor does the auditor give us much on this. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Rainey if she wished to have Ms. Brenniman come to another meeting to further discuss this issue. Alderman Rainey responded it seemed quite clear to her that we keep being told over and over again that we have absolutely no authority here but what we need to have happen is when the budget comes around remind one another that is where we have control. Alderman Feldman asked if we're talking about getting the legal staff to determine anything more than the memo just received from them. Alderman Newman said the memo basically says that as an elected official, that elected official is answerable only to the voters and as far as employees its very similar in the way the Council acts in relation to the City Manager. The Council has no authority or control over any empbyee hired by the City Manager except during the budget process and if the Council doesn't like a department he supposes they can eliminate their budget. The auditor's letter said based on the information he had, he was unable to surmise anything not on the up and up. This is where we are based on all the inquiries we've made to date. Alderman Feldman posed as an example having a situation involving the way in which the office Is run the result might be the one thing were concerned about, money. As an exaggerated example, in any elected officiars office they proceed in such a way as to incur, as a direct result of their own personal operating procedures, astonishing legal expenses of so much money that 0 dramatically takes away from the funds used to operate the office. Alderman Newman said we have Page 1. that procedure in place, we could choose not to approve the bills to be paid if they go over budget If there was a $10.000 legal expenditure and we ascertain that they spent in the fiscal year $100,000 he would think that after $10,000 is spent we would have the right not to authorize any bills Alderman Rainey noted the situation would be a little different, we would refuse to make money available to pay the bills because we can't deny paying bills Alderman Newman stated an elected offrc:al whether it be the County Treasure, the County Assessor, the County Cleric, the Clerk of the Circuit Courts. elected Judges. e:c., all only answerable to the voters. There has been some comment about this in letters that the Council or the Trustees have authority over the Assessor elected by the entire Township. In the Law Department's memo we're finding out we really don't have this authority other than choosing not to fund the office to the extent we have the ability to Alderman Rainey remarked the meeting the committee just previously attended might hold an answer to those who are concerned about the Assessor's behavior and that is an ethics suit can be filed, as the Township is covered by the Ethics Ordinance. The Assessor has either committed a crime or committed an ethical violation but we can't refuse to pay her bills. Alderman Rainey said the big mistake was her becoming Assessor. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said at this point in time the law restncts what we can do and we will have to live with this and exercise authority where we have the authority to do so. Alderman Newman asked about the ghost payroll as our auditor has no ability to do anything, to which Alderman Rainey thought that is for a somebody like a grand jury to decide, Alderman Newman added or the voters the next time around. Alderman Newman suggested the committee accepts the memo and if there are any questions for Ms. Brenniman they can be addressed at the next Human Services Committee meeting, as Ms. Brenniman is usually in attendance. Alderman Feldman wondered it the Trustees have been apprised of the progression of the legal suits that are encumbering the Assessor's office. Alderman Newman said the Assessors office won the discrimination lawsuit but that lawsuit is up on appeal. The committee questioned what the second lawsuit is Mr. Terry said a week ago a letter addressed to him and the Trustees was sent from an attorney planning to represent one of the former employees but none of the people in question would have any standing in any kind of any kind of suit_ Mr. Terry said copies of that letter were provided to all committee members and also to Mr. Siegel, Corporate Counsel. He does not know what happened after that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked whether the request is was what to settle or for an ongoing lawsuit we need an update as to how the discussion is going. Mr. Terry said he would ask Mr. Seigel for some information for the committee. Alderman Feldman urged that a short memo be sent to other members of the Council asking whether they have any specific interests or suggestions as to what we might r+,:, the memo regarding our position. Alderman Newman said he asked Mr. Terry to find out whether or not the Assessor intended to attended this Human Services Committee meeting and the note he received from Mr. Terry regarding the Assessor's response was she Is not going to appear before this committee on this subject unless the committee is willing to go into closed session. That is current status of this situation and we will be able to revisit this at budget time, V. HOME DAYCARE BACKGROUND CHECKS Alderman Rainey inquired about what is going to be done regarding this situation, Mr. Terry said we do not know and was - told today by Ms. Brenniman that one of the staff ,n the Law Department just completed some research on the same she has not yet had a chance to review it and hopes to soon have a legal opinion. Alderman Rainey asked why this decision is being made as she thinks we pay a large fee to access that service. Mr, Terry did not know why, all he can assume is that Police Departments throughout the state have been concerned as to potential abuses of the background check system and State Police Department across the board have decided that local Police Departments can't access those systems anymore unless an imminent arrest is involved. No local Police Departments will be doing background checks. Alderman Feldman asked if we could get some information as to what those abuses might be that this action is intended to remedy. Mr. Terry said superficially issues such as profiling and getting other background checks. Its not necessarily -_ the Evanston Police Department it's other Police Departments, but the State Police Department is saying from now on all background checks will be conducted by them and not by local departments and understands this is a statewide issue. Alderman Rainey asked if this will be done by the State does that mean we can send our applicants' names to the State _ and they will run them, to which Mr. Terry responded, that is the 564,000 question. It is his understanding that when we send fingerprints of liquor license applicants it takes a long time for us to get it back, timeliness is an issue for home day care and whether we can have direct access to the State Police and request that they do the background checks. The question the Law Department is currently looking into whether a local government can have the authority to do that or whether we would have to go through DCFS. Alderman Rainey said since we are denied that access, registered child molesters could become daycare providers, which is the reason we do background checks to weed out those undesirables. Alderman Feldman could not understand they're disregarding the potential safety of young children. Mr. - Page 2. Terry explained what they are saying is it has to go through DCFS, DCFS can handle it all, except the City of Evanston has different local standards than DCFS does For example. DCFS doesn't license unless you're seeing more than three children in the home, Evanston reouires a local permit if you're seeing any children in the home. Evanston requires backgrounds on every adult that res aes in the home, he is not sure if DCFS does that The Police Department gives us information as to the number of pole calls to a particular address and whether that has any bearing on childcare, which we could get but without the backgrc.jnd on the adults that are gong to be present. Given our history with DCFS it is not clear that DCFS will provide that in'ormat:on for us for our local license. DCFS may only care about their own state licensing process. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr Terry based on what he knows what he would suggest, to which Mr. Tent' said he does not have a good suggestion urtil we know how hard and fast the state's position is right now. He has suspended home daycare permits because he strongly believes and does not feel the permit is worth giving without a background check. Does that now mean if the state holds to its position we get out of the daycare permit business? He does not know, but that certainly is a decisicn he would come to this committee for further discussion at this point, Alderman Feldman said the question then is if we get out of the permit business are we getting out of regulating home daycare, to which Mr. Terry responded, yes. As soon as the Law Department gives him some information he will get it rack to the committee. Alderman Newman remarked as noted in the memo this also applies to liquor license applicants, which is also problematic. Alderman Feldman said if the Cound cannot get background checks and it refuses to issue permits without background checks it then becomes a community issue. A community issue has to be played out in Springfield and pressure has to be brought which sounds to him as a much more reasonable position than suddenly abandoning standards and allowing young people to be placed in jeopardy. Mr. Terry said he would agree and has already mentioned and expressed his concern about this to one of our state elected officials. Alderman Newman suggested seeing what happens and if some interaction with people from the state is needed they'll follow up on it. V1. TOWNSHIP AUDIT Alderman Newman called for any questions or comments regarding this audit Not hearing any went on the next agenda item. VII. LEGAL ASSISTANCE FOUNDATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO LETTER REGARDING CURRENT PRIORITIES Alderman Newman asked what is to be done regarding this communication to which Mr. Terry replied nothing unless the committee had an opinion it is something they want to do. Alderman Newman asked if this agency is still keeping their office in Evanston, to which Mr. Terry responded, they are. Vlll. CONSIDERATION OF A REFERENCE TO PROHIBIT GROUND FEEDING OF ANIMALS Akierman Newman inquired as to the fact that Skokie has an ordinance for ground feeding and Evanston does not. Mr. Terry said Skokie has had an ordinance for some time that bans ground feeding on both public and private property. Alderman Newman suggested somethng is needed for the City of Evanston because as Mr. Terry mentioned in his memo there is somebody who does a huge dumping of bird feed and bread at the Main Street Metro Station and El Station which is outrageous and inappropriate and causes trouble for riders and anyone going under a viaduct Also, the pigeon population near the McDonald's has radically expanded in the last couple of years and has become a serious problem. It is not fair to the business people in the area when somebody sits down on the bench and starts feeding the animals and birds. Mr. Terry said Skokie's ordinance specifies in some detail the type of ground level feeder you can use. Ms Brenniman is much more comfortable with banning feeding on all public property than banning it on private property. Skokie bans feeding on private property by specifying the type of feeders that may be used on private property. Alderman Newman asked to look at Skokie's ordinance and asked staff to submit two versions of a proposed ordinance for the Committee to consider. IX. DISPOSITION OF COMPLAINT AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Feldman had a question regarding whether bon fires could be lit on private property, and d logs can be burned in your yard? Chief Kaminski said that is against the law. Alderman Newman asked committee members if there were any questions or comments for Chief Kaminski regarding Complaint CR #01-05. Hearing no complaints, Alderman Feldman moved to accept the disposition of Complaint CR #01-05. Alderman Newman seconded the motion. motion unanimously accepted (4-0). Page 3. Alderman Newman brought to Chief Kaminski s attention the oopy of the police report sent to him regarding an instance with several University students, one being on the basketball team When an Evanston resident asked the students to be quiet, the students beat up the resident and actually went into his home. To him this was a very, very serious happening and something all members of the Council should be aware of. in view of our having this cooperative agreement with the University, that we annually review, he would Lke to have the committee, as par; of our review process of that agreement find out exactly what actions. if any, have been taken by the University disciplinary system and also the athletic director. Alderman Rainey asked if the student was arrested and was told ne was arrested. She said the committee does not know anything about this incident and asked if the happening could be shared wrath the committee. Alderman Newman sand without getting into the names and addresses, there was an Evanston resident who went outside of his home and asked a group of people to be quiet More than one of the group went up the steps of the resident's porch and began beating up the person complaining and when the victim tried to get away theses persons actually went inside the house. The police were called, there were two arrests made, one of the defendants is a member of the basketball team and is probably on scholarship. Alderman Newman asked if the complaining wetness was injured, to which Chief Kaminski said the offenders received the stitches. After being assaulted by the individuals the complainant defended himself and the assailants wound up in the hospital. This was not a party call, but came out as a disturbance call at a residence. Alderman Newman wanted it known that in this neighborhood on any night of the week there are large numbers of big groups, with as many as thirty to forty people, on a street corner after ten or eleven at night up and down the streets in this area. We need to hear what the University is doing about this because the University has a disciplinary tribunal. He wants to know if there is going to be any independent University investigation of what happened to get a ginsp of whether or not the University administration shares in the outrage he feels in something like this happening. Alderman Rainey asked Chief Kaminski if the victim is pressing charges and was told he is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the defendants were arrested and placed in jail. Chief Kaminski said they were placed in our jad and then they bonded out. Alderman Rainey asked what the charges were. Chief Kaminski replied battery. The State's Attomey reviewed any felony charges and did not approve felony, the only charge was battery. This was not breaking and entering, they pushed into the doorway and followed the resident in. Alderman Newman asked if the committee agrees that we're interested in the University's decision because if the people involved were found to be culpable independent of any finding by the court the University could still take action whether these people are convicted or not in the criminal court He's interested in how they're going to handle this and would like to know if there is a finding of guilt after the trial and whether the scholarship is going to continue. Alderman Feldman asked if the University is aware this has happened. Chief Kaminski said any time kids are involved he sends a copy of the report to Northwestern Police Chief Chafin who routes it through his University system which is the same thing we do with the parties. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a way we can write a letter to the University asking them to let us know what their position is or what they are going to do. Alderman Newman said Chief Kaminski will communicate with the University and keep the committee posted Alderman Feldman said his reason for saying this is not that were interested and we want to know what they're going to do, he wants to let them know that we're interested and we're watching this. Chief Kaminski said he will certainly let everyone know that this committee is very concerned about this incident. Alderman Rainey commented that said she is very concerned about this incident because its extremely uncivilized, however, she could bring this committee incidents of this kind constantly taking place in our community against our citizens by other uncivilized members of our community. If we're going to start doing that she would hope the committee takes those cases as seriously as this case. The other day a woman pushing a buggy with a two and a half year old baby, in the 1400 block of Dobson by a park, was accosted by a man who was later found to have a gun, who picked the baby up and threw the baby against the wall and then stole the woman's purse and wallet_ When a good neighbor chased the man the man pulled a gun on him, and this took place at 4:30 in the afternoon. She thinks there are many incidents of a serious nature that occur and she would hate for us to single out a particular incident just because 4 involved that particular person and a University student. These incidents are serious, no matter where they happen Alderman Feldman agreed with Alderman Rainey, only with the difference that there is an interest in a supervising body that has some influence over the students. Alderman Rainey could see the distinction but she is always trying to get the Council's attention for other kinds of criminal activity in our community. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why can't we pay close attention to these incidents and review them. In his opinion if we begin to take a close look at that maybe we can help our City's Police Department address what seems to be a growing trend as opposed to being one that's abating. Alderman Rainey did not think there are enough days in the week for this Council to hear all the criminal incidents taking place. Alderman Newman was not suggesting that anybody, in any area in the community, may get his or her door knocked on or have somebody making noise and a person on the street beat up the inhabitant of the house He definitely feels every Page 4. one of ttwse cases should be fully prosecuted and xlsres we had the ability to hold the Second Municir al Court system acccurrable on all types of issues, on the bonds they set. on the sentences, the delays. etc. There are cdl types of issues where everybody feels a sense of fnistration with the perspie that are coming back to our community after we have arrested them and wished somebody could come up w-t- an idea to hold that system a little bit more accountable. He has had his a&n cases where he has attempted to ca:i a -In make contact with the State's Attorney and try to bring the sense of anguish we feel over how some of these cases a-e being dealt with, which is difficult There are certain things they do not respond to Alderman Ramey said about a month ago. the last case sre was in court on was for a chronic offender in our community, a drug aod+rt. alcoholic who drove his car into somecocy' s yard A group of people from the neighborhood went to court and +vent up to the State's Attorney just to let him know we were there, and the response they got from the State's Attorney was. "so" Alderman Newman asked Chief Kaminski if he feels managing the students coming back more of the burden is on our department or has the Northwestern department picked up on and shouldered its share of the response. Chief Kaminski said they help out a lot. last week, the first back at school. there were a lot of party calls and the Northwestern Police were very helpful. Alderman Newman said he does not see a lot of the Northwestern Police on his block he sees the Evanston Police much more on Sherman. Chief Kaminski said they have been helping us out, our relationship is good, and anytime we've needed help they've been there for us Alderman Newman asked if the complaint submitted was only the fifth complaint of the year, or are there others pending. Chief Kaminski said so far this year we have only had five Alderman Jean-Bapbste brought up the Wallace complaint, to which Chief Kaminski said they've investigated that but Lnere seems to be a conflict in what is being said between the family, the young man, and Mr. Wallace. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if he would be issuing a finding on this, to which tie Chief responded that right now he does not have a complainant, the family does not want to file a complaint to involve the mother and the grandmother. They felt that the officer did nothing wrong, he called them in for statements and Mr. Wallace wrote the letter which we investigated, wry ;h is where we're at right now. Alderman Newman thanked Chief Kaminski for his presence at this meeting. iX. COMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES REVIEW PROCESS Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if the S9,000 not going to Meals at Home is the total reduction in funding, to which Mr. Terry responded, yes, for now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked there may some other budgetary impacts with the proposal by the Township for Emergency Services, Alderman Newman asked when the Township made their cuts who lost funds from the Purchased Services agencies? Mr Terry said PEER Services and St Francis hospital, both had drug programs. Alderman Newman asked if they applied somewhere else, to which Mr. Terry said not appreciably for more money, they applied to the Mental Health Board and the Cty Alderman Newman said his feeling on this is its a complete waste of time because this entire group is so politically charged_ One year we cut S10,000 from five organizations and each of those organizations had close to a million dollar budget, it was less that one percent. The committee recornmended cuts, which were reversed at the Council. Alderman Feldman remarked we have this budget and we try to eke out something, its like what's the point in spending all this time and energy for nothing. Mr. Terry said last year all the agencies came in on one night, they did not each get an individual hearing, questions were asked of some of the agencies and some agencies were not asked anything. Staff will soli do the evaluations. Alderman Feldman said he did not mind that process. Alderman Newman thought there should be a meeting without comment where the committee will review the staff analysis. Alderman Feldman said the main thing he got out of this is its good when you have people who are deeply involved in the community and it is essential that we understand what their world is and what is happening, if there are any changes do they see things which are important for this committee to know. That is what he is interested in not whether they eam their stripes for their amount of funding. Alderman Newman said one thing he can say is there is or was never any group that will give any money back. Mr. Terry said he would have the agency evaluations prepared. individual issues such as The ChildCare Network and Childcare Center may need to be revisited. Alderman Feldman thought people should come in not to justify or make a case for their funding but just to talk to this committee about what they see happening in the community. XI. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Alderman Newman wondered what happened with the issue on parks regulations and City ordinances and asked if that could that be brought back to this committee to which Mr. Terry said at some point it will come back to this committee. Alderman Newman said he would also like to have a dialogue with Chief Kaminski about the plans for their budget Page 5. XH. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 8:10 p.m. Respectfully subm' ed. Audrey TrFKsky Department of Health and Human Services Page 6. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, November S, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Newman. and Rainey Alderman Jean -Baptiste Kathy Brenniman, Maureen Barry, Carla Bush, Jay Terry, Elizabeth Holtsclaw (Health & Human Services Intern), Audrey Trotsky Alderman Bernstein, Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township), Irwin Lyons (Miller Cooper & Co.), Sharon Eckersall (Township Assessor), (See Attached List of Agency Attendants) Alderman Feldman Alderman Feldman called the meeting to order at 7:36 p.m. ll. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF OCTOBER 1, 2001 The minutes of the October 1. 2001. meeting were unanimously aaaraved t3-01. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF OCTOBER 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Rainey noted the Assessor's office showed a charge for America an Line (AOL). Ms. Eckersali remarked the charge was a three month bill for service at the rate of $23.90 per month. Alderman Rainey questioned whether the Assessors office is connected to the Internet in their current bcation, and was told by Ms. Eckersall that they are not. Alderman Rainey then asked why we are paying for AOL. Ms. Eckersall said she has two separate entities and is connected to her own system. Alderman Rainey questioned wtry we are paying for it if it's not being used for the Township and why the Township Assessor needs AOL. Ms. Eckersall responded they have to have e-mail from downtown to their office and updates from Bill Hostes for the properties. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Eckersall if she is familiar with the Internet as AOL is not needed. We have absolutely no wary to influence not paying this bill but there is no reason in the entire world why the taxpayers of the Township of Evanston sr*uld be paying for AOL for the Assessor. That is an abuse of taxpayers' money and Ms. Eckersall should say to this committee right now to please remove those charges from this bills list. Ms. Eckersall said she has a problem with that, as she can't get her information from Cook County or the Software Company without e-mail. Alderman Rainey said AOL is not needed for e-mail and that service should be cancelled at the Township Assessor's office. Alderman Rainey said she has AOL and the City does not pay for her AOL, she pays for it. Ms. Eckersall said what she has is for the taxpayers benefit not her benefit to which Alderman Rainey interjected AOL has nothing to do with taxpayers and there is absolutely no need for AOL which should be cancelled and the Assessor should assume responsibility for this. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Eckersall if she is connected to the Internet at the Township. Ms. Eckersall said she is using AOL in her office but her employees do not know she is connected because they're part time and are just there to answer phones until she can get full time help. Alderman Rainey said it did not took like the computer in the Assessces office is set up to which Ms. Eckersall said it is not she has have the software company do that. Alderman Rainey said her assessment of this is we are being taken and the taxpayers should not be paying the S24 a month, a small amount of money, it's abusive. Ms. Eckersall disagreed with Alderman Rainey to which Alderman Rainey said that is because Ms. Eckersall does not know what she is talking about. Alderman Newman asked if there are people from the City Managers office downward who have AOL, Do any of the City's 850 employees from the police department, the library, the water department, etc., have AOL? Mr. Terry said once the City got an overall Internet service provider all the AOL accounts were taken off. Alderman Newman said then at one time people did have AOL, to which Alderman Rainey said people were using their home AOL, if you are connected to the Internet you can use your own AOL account on any computer. Alderman Newman gave an example of what the City does, and used cellular phones as the example. The City is paying for these phone and does not know if the people with Page 1. the cellular phones are or are not making personal calls This is somet .ing that would have to be checked by the phone bills and he does not know if all the supervisors are going over all the b�'!s in all the departments. It's an interesting point that is being raised and he is just inquiring how the Cary was handling it The next question he would like to direct to the Township people, other than the Assessor, does the Township have an Internet connecton in the office. He was told they do and then asked if the Assessor down town and the Treasurer's office which controls the tax bills in Cook County, have information on line and is that information accessible from the Townsh o's Internet connection. if the answer to that is yes, then the information the Assessor needs is available ngnt in her office and Alderman Rainey's point is exactly correct Ms. Eckersall said if they could hook her up to it it would be okay, but sne has two separate entities and if the Township staff leaves the office before her at night, the secunty system is on anc she cannot get into their area. Alderman Newman remarked that one of the reasons the Assessor moved to the Township offices was the Assessor made an executive decision without consulting anybody on this commk,ee or any other member of the Council, and he is not being critical but making the Assessor aware of the fact that when she moved her office out of the Crvic Center to Main Street it certainly did not come before this commatee One of the reasons he assumes that the Assessor did this was to save money in terms of what the City was charging the Assessor and also that there was open space at the Township. Thus, if we're at Main and Dodge in the spirit of saving money why can't we also cooperate on the computer expenses and then we would not have this issue. Ms. Eckersall said if they can hook her up to the Internet that would be fine, to which Alderman Newman said everyone is here right now and he's asking if this can be done. Ms. Eckersall said when she was located in the Civic Center they had to have it separate. Ms. Vance said AOL allows you to have seven different screen names and it is possible for the Assessor's office to use one of those screen names. Alderman Newnan thought the idea is we're not going to use AOL just use the Township's access, but was told the Township uses AOL. Alderman Rainey remarked the Township could get their own intemet access they're paying for AOL and are not hooked up to it. Alderman Newman thought the point was if there was Internet access in the Township's office why wasn't the Assessor using it Alderman Rainey said AOL is a frivolous expenditure and suggested she would come to the Assessor's office so the Assessor can show her their access to the Assessor downtown and to Cook County. She would like to see how that is done. Ms. Eckersall said right now they cannot access the main frame because they need a different computer program which she has written into next year's budget. Alderman Rainey said that is her point. AOL is not being used to access the Assessors office. Ms. Eckersall said they e-mail anything she needs and added the other thirty Assessor offices in Cook County also e-mail. Alderman Rainey remarked that the ladies and gentlemen of the taxpaying public are getting just what they deserve and asked Alderman Newman that he take the time as she did and go visit the offices as she did. Alderman Newman said the way he is construing Alderman Rainey's statement is that we're wasting money, which sounds that she's right about, but asked why are we assuming that the Assessor is trying to get away with something. Perhaps Alderman Rainey has a better way of doing it, but he does not feel the Assessor is trying to getaway with anything. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Eckersall how many times has the Township office used AOL this month. to which Ms. Eckersall replied she has not used it because it was not hooked up. The problem was she could have used her own AOL but does not think is fair for somebody to use their own AOL because it can be accessed from allover. She wanted it strictly for the office with a code, etc., she did not want six different screen code names like plash had on there as he was using his own AOL. She wanted it separated for them to access it and not have everybody accessing the Township which is private Information and therefore should not be on somebody's personal AOL. Alderman Newman said on the City side, which is much larger, we have computer information people that go around instructing the entire City on how to use computers and what software we should use, etc. This is something the Township does not have and if we are in agreement he would like to see if we can get someone who works for the City to go to the Assessor's office and try to straighten out this problem. He asked Ms. Eckersall if she would be open to getting help from someone in the City to which Ms. Eckersall responded, of course. Alderman Feldman said he would speak with the City Manager regarding this request Alderman Rainey asked why we continue to pay for something we are not using to which Ms. Eckersall said she is waiting for the software to come from AOL, Alderman Rainey advised Ms. Eckersall to go to Target and get it free, also Best Buy and other places would have this, you do not have to wait for AOL to mail you something. Ms. Eckersall said AOL was mailing it free because they had signed up with them. At this time Alderman Rainey said she was finished. Alderman Newman said he would like to have the City's computer person meet with the Assessor within the next thirty days so we do not have to pay any more AOL expenses. Our computer people can figure out the needs of the office without AOL, which is apparently not needed, and it can be done on the Internet. Whatever Ms. Eckersall has done is she was not using the taxpayers' money in the best way and she obviously needs some assistance. Alderman Rainey thought the taxpayers' dollars wasn't being wasted out of malice but out of ignorance. Alderman Newman wanted it on record that about eight years ago the City Council voted for every member of the Council to have Page 2. a computer. At that time he got a computer which was the biggest waste of money of all time, for the reason that the City Manger's office had nobody to train the Council. He had only one training session and never learned how to use the computer. The computer sat in his house for three or four years after which time he decided it was such a waste he called up and had the computer taken out of his house and said he never wanted a City computer in his house again. He was the only member of the Council he knows of that did this, attheugh Alderman Kent never took a computer. He got his own computer and learned on his own how to use and is now a little handy with the Internet. His reason for making this point is in his opinion this was an unbelievable waste of money to the City, which at the bme he voted against and now within the last two or three years it is improving as members of the Council have computers and better use them than they did seven years ago. Some people are not as adept using computers as others which is a basic thing in this community, there is a very Large number of people in this community who cannot use computers at all and this happens to be a fact. He wanted ri made clear than in no way is he indicating in any sense or form that there has been anything intentional coming out of the Assessor's office because if we point the figure at her we also have to point the finger at other members including people on the City Council and he does not think anyone who has been on the City Council, nor the Assessor, has done anything intentionally. Alderman Feldman called for any additional comments or questions before calling for a motion to approve the Township bills. Alderman Rainey stated she will never look at the Township bills again. Alderman Newman motioned for approval of the October 2001, Township monthly bills, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion approved 12 ayes -1 no). Alderman Feldman and Alderman Newman voted ave. Alderman Rainey voted no. IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE FISCAL. YEAR 2001 FINANCIAL AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Feldman called for discussion of the audit, there being no discussion he called for a motion of acceptance. Alderman Newman moved acceptance of the Fiscal Year 2001 Financial Audit of Evanston Township. motion seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion approved f3-01. V. CONSIDERATION OF A PROPOSED ORDINANCE WHICH WOULD PROHIBIT THE GROUND FEEDING OF ANIMALS Two separate ordinances were submitted to the committee for approval. Alderman Newman moved approval of the Skokie Ordinance. seconded for discussion by Alderman Feldman. Mr. Terry noted there are two schools of thought addressing the problem. The Skokie ordinance prohibits ground feeding anywhere on public or private property. The other ordinance would only ban ground feeding on public property. At the last meeting Mr. Terry represented that perhaps Ms. Brenniman had some issues with the Skokie ordinance therefore the committee asked that both ordinances be drafted. Ms. Brenniman is present and YAII speak with any issues she might have with the Skokie ordinance. Alderman Newman noted it was previously said that the Skokie ordinance was a result of extensive research evaluation of the legislation regarding ground feeding of animals and appears to be a very effective ordinance. His question was why, on one hand do we consider the Skokie ordinance to be very effective, and on the other hand we came up with an alternative ordinance. Is it that we do not want to intrude on people with bird feeders? Ms. Brenniman said since she was not present at the last Human Services Committee meeting she has had an opportunity to look closely at the Skokie ordinance and if it is the committee' s desire to regulate on private property in the fashion that Skokie does she sees no legal problems with that. She has spoken with the individuals in Skokie who are Involved in this enforcement and has looked at the legal issues. If it is this committee's desire to go this route rather than just prohibition on public property, she sees no problem When Skokie put this together and passed it in 1992 they did extensive research and looked at all the issues in terms of what kind of feeders to allow and how many, and she feels they did an excellent job and this would be an excellent ordinance to use if the committee so chooses. Alderman Newman said he appreciated the work Ms. Brenniman has done and also appreciated the fact that we can share some of SkoMe's experiences. He noted Skokie found regulating on prorate property has brought some benefit to Skokie and asked what that benefit is. Ms. Brenniman said they feel that it presents potential health hazards because when regulating ground feeding, both public and private, you're regulating the accumulation of feed that sometimes attracts vermin and you're also regulating the kind of animals that are attracted by feed that accumulates on the ground. Alderman Newman asked if Skokie has had a response from their residents regarding the private property side where there have been objections to what they've had in their ordinance As long as one stays within the four comers of the Page 3. ordinance their ordinance ailcovs people to continue to do their awn feeding on private property, which was his thinking on going with the Skokie ordinance Skokie's ordinance is regulated, as opposed to saying you can't do anything on private property Ms Brenniman said when she spoke with the Public Health Director in Skokie and reviewed his restrictions noted that when this issue was first visited several years ago that was one of the positives about the ordnance, it gives private property owners who enjoy feeding b+rs ts-,e opportunity to do so. They're just certain restnctrons in the ordinance. Alderman Newman asked if the reason rho ordinan:es were drafted was because our initial thrust was just the public areas his. Brenneman said that was her axect on from Mr. Terry from the last Human Services Committee meeting to put together an ordinance that would regulate on loom puotic and private property and an ordinance that would regulate just on public property Alderman Newman bkea wnat was being done in Skokie and is moving for the Skokie ordinance unless somebody has another choice. his Brenniman added in response to Alderman Newman's questions when Skokie put this ordinance together they consulted ornVcioq sz and a number of people in various areas that would give input so they were being the least restrictive they could be and still take care of what they saw as health hazards. Their ordinance was a definite response to problems that were occurring by overfeeding. Alderman Feldman asked who does the enforcement of this ordinance. Ms. Brenniman said the Public Health Department in Skokie. Alderman Feldman inquired whether they were asked what kind of additional expenses they incurred as a result of this ordinance. Ms. Brenniman said she did not ask them about expenses. She was informed the ordinance was very effective. What actually led them to pass this ordinance was when previously trying to enforce this on their general nuisance ordinance the judges in Skokie fett it was not specific enough as to the definition of feed, which is why they put this ordinance together so it would be more specific. They have been very pleased with the results of the enforcement of this ordinance. Mr. Terry remarked he has had conversations with Mr. Huckleberry as well, and while they are a big believer in this ordinance in fairness we should represent virtually every commun,y can have one or two people who are exceptionally passionate about the idea of feeding birds and by no means has this totally eliminated the problem in Skokie. Skokie does, in fact, have certain individuals who despite rigorous enforcement still find ways to deposits large amounts of ground feed, but they absolutely believe it has helped. Alderman Feldman asked if there is any way in which we can get any kind of access of some of the rational they used in order to build the ordinance in the manner in which they did Ms Brenniman said she was sure we could and believes they had some communications with our Health Department. Mr Terry noted we have that material which is probably about ten years old now, but we have all of their original findings Alderman Feldman said he would like to see that and asked if the committee could receive that material by the next meeting. Alderman Rainey remarked ground feeding is one thing, but people putting unwrapped garbage out or even gartYage in plastic bags next to their cans as opposed to in them, or buildings where they throw the garbage out the window hoping to hit the dumpster, that's ground feeding. Until those garbage issues are resolved there's the little old lady who puts the feed under the Ef tracks, who this ordinance is trying to catch She'd like to see the garbage issues addressed. Alderman Feldman asked if we have any sense of how much ground feeding is going on in Evanston. Alderman Newman said from his own observation that its partially a ward issue because there's a substantial problem in front of the Mcbonald's, a beautiful area to sit out, because of people are coming there to sit and feed the pigeons. This property has had a dramatic increase in pigeons because of the feeding going on there. He has also seen this in two other places, there are large dumpings of feed that goes on on a regular basis at Main Street and to some extent at the Central Metra Station. At Main Street every other week there is a major dumping of bird feed right underneath the viaduct and its ridiculous because you can't walk under the viaduct without being hit by the bird droppings. The same problem is at Central Street by people doing mass feedings and thinks a s)gn should go up at every Metra Station about this ordinance because that is where this is being done. Also, there are feedings gang on around the downtown area, not just in front of the McDonald's. When you walk by Main Street it looks like people have dumped five bags of flour on the sidewalk and there should be some way to regulate that. Signs should be posted to let people know that in these areas the dumping of feed should not be going on. Alderman Bernstein thought we have to prohibit this on public land and regulate it on private properties. He has one problem that he has discussed historically with Mr. Terry about an individual in his ward who feeds fire to ten three pound - coffee cans of feed on a daily basis Birds come infrequently and thereat problem is nocturnal mammals that come, it's a terribly dangerous hazard. The neighbors can't do anything He has personally had conversations with this woman, who is a well intentioned woman, but she's hurting the area. Her house happens to be on a comer of a surrounding area where there are more birds, crows, squirrels, raccoons, possums. and rat evidences which makes for this terrible condition. He thinks the Skokie ordinance that mandates a 400 square inch platform, which has to be cleaned before Our - sundown every day is difficult to enforce, but he thinks is very necessary. He would concur with Alderman Newman's ' � reflections with respect to the Main Street and the Greenwood viaducts which are very, very difficult to walk under not Page 4 necessarily from the droppings but from the drop that you actually have to walk in the street to avoid the garbage. He would strongly encourage the passage of public and private regu!abons Alderman Feldman asked 1 our Public Health Department has deal w,tn this issue at all. Mr. Terry replies, yes, we have gone out on the Main Street viaduct issue and as Alderman Bemstein has ir�d+atej there is a serial ground feeder in his ward_ We intervened, he noes successfully, at the McDonald's wnere somebody across from the Library who was doing this feeding with some reguanty and were able to persuade her to not do a anymore. Short of some sort of surveillance you try to find the people w"o are doing it and persuade them it is not something they should be doing anymore. Alderman Feldman noted furs ordinance would charge the Health Department with enforcement and asked Mr. Terry if he is able to do that. kir Terry responded assuming there are nct an overhrelming number of cases, yes they can do that The question Alderman Newman raised is whether or not we would do some sort of posting to alert people that this would become prohibited acvvity. Also, there are places in parks -where sgnage would be needed. Once people notice that this is prohibited if there were cases where it did continue our department could probably handle it. Alderman Feldman asked about Alderman Rainey's issue, if not intentional feeding it works out to be the same type of thing. The definition of feeding is pumng out food for animals, if they're no* wrapping their garbage they're putting out food for animals. Would that exck4e those people from that ordinance? It is clearty part of our interest to make sure the kind of event that Alderman Rainey described does not continue. In many cases we are not able to stop that. Mr. Terry said one of the issues or semanoc debates we have gotten into in the past and a lot of what Alderman Rainey is describing is garbage being placed on the ground, which is already prohibited The question becomes whether a five pound bag of t:onm constitutes litter or putrescence matter or needs it's own ordnance to be something that should be prosecuted. In years past the sense was to specifically get at animal feeding you need an ordinance with that type of specific language in it Alderman Newman thinks this ordinance clearly deals only with one part of it, provocations, he looks at this more so as opposed to people violating our ordinance on garbage cans, he looks at it as our garbage cans not being secure. This becomes a two part process. first the squirrels open up the bags of garbage and drag the bags out of the garbage cans then it's a free for all by the birds and everything else. The result of this is in some alleys there are significant amounts of pigeons and crows. A few weeks ago one of the things the Council received information in their packets that there was somebody bidding on our garbage can contract, which will becoming up They gave us somewhat of a case where there has been improvement and listed Milwaukee and Skokie where they have been making the cans with much greater levels of plastic in the spots where the animals have been getting into them. If we continue to try to improve our garbage cans, which we seem to be moving towards, the other end of it mnll be somewhat improved, although we still have people who leave their garbage outside their garbage cans or leave their cans open What do we do with those people? Alderman Feldman said if tnis passes tonight he wants all the supportive material we have for the entire Council as that will answer a lot of questions and give a good legislative base for this kind of action. Alderman Feldman recalled the motion made and seconded that we pass the Skokie ordinance regulating feeding of animals or birds on orirvate prooertv and orohibit it on public property. The motion unanimousfv passed (3.0). Vl. DISCUSSION OF COMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES REQUESTS AND STAFF REVIEWS Alderman Feldman noted the committee received information from Mr Terry regarding agency staff reviews and considering this asked if there is a reason to discuss this issue. The commiree was thinking of discussing the possibility of pus in purchased services and according to Mr. Terry's memo this will be a subject of the City Manager and a staff discussion that the reductions in purchased services might be included in the recommended budget the City Manager will give to the City Council on December 3rd. It would seem to him that any discussion of this would be premature not knowing what the City Manager is going to do and how much he's going to do After that occurs this committee needs to decide either to sustain or reject and add or subtract at the follorwing meeting that will take place on December 10"'. Alderman Newman agreed t is premature to discuss anything, however, there are comments within Mr. Terry's critique of all the different organdabon requests and he would like to say he appreciates the time and issues raised in the memos and at some point he would like to be able to discuss some of these issues If you read the newspaper Chicago has a $150,000,000 problem and we are roughly about one -fiftieth the size of Chicago and the other communities. Everyone has a September 11"' problem that affects the entire budget including this part of the budget Our City Manger is undergoing a September 111' reevaluate in this year's budget to make some suggestions for next years budget because potentially we are $2,000,000 or S3,000.000 short of what we have projected in revenues and the only way that gap can be made up is to either make some reductions in spending or raise taxes, or we could do both, which is where we are right now. Until we hear from the City Manager there is nothing else we can say. Page 5. Alderman Feldman said the only thing he can add to that is he expects some reduction in purchased services to be included in that equation. He has no idea what the City Manager is going to suggest but it seems almost impossible to formulate any kind of a combination of cuts and tax increases that does not include some reductions. Alderman Rainey asked if that means decisions are going to be made solely on the basis of what money is available as opposed to the substance of some of the programs. Alderman Feldman was not quite sure and said we could use whatever criteria we wanted ,n evaluating whatever the City Manager proposes If he proposed a dollar amount it would then be up to us to distnbute, to which Alderman Newman added we can either accept or reject his dollar amount and then if we accept it we work with it and if we reject it have to find other ways to pay for it. Alderman Rainey asked if there is going to be a point when we discuss the substance of the proposals we have been given. Alderman Feldman recalled that last year the committee met with the individual agencies, to which Mr. Terry added it wasn't a hearing format but the committee went through each agency and identified any issues or questions they had. Alderman Feldman assumed that this year the same thing will be done. Whether or not that Is going to determine the formula he does not know as that is something the committee has to discuss. Alderman Newman remarked there has been two approaches the committee attempted to use in the last four years, In one budget we chose working in good faith which other people might disagree with. We attempted to pick and chose the organizations that we felt could afford cuts when they were necessary and what we did as a committee was overruled by the Council because the Council chose not to make any cuts. Since that time what the committee has not done any process limit of evaluating with the exception of maybe here or there and everybody has been treated the same. There are two schools of thought on the Council, one we should go through the organizations and pick out those that are most mentoricus and the other is whatever we do we to all the organizations, which is what our committee has actually done in the last four years, used both approaches. Mr. Terry said the City Manager has asked him to at feast start thinking about, and very quickly, the issues of process that could be recommended to the committee. The financial analyses will determine a dollar amount that will need to be addressed. The committee has talked about this in past years and there is very clearly one way which would be to set service priorities, childcare versus AIDS versus homeless services. Another way would be if a dollar amount were to be applied, to apply it across the board, and there is even two ways of doing that. One way would be to just divide the dollar amount by the number of agencies and cut everybody by that equal amount. Another would be cut by whatever percentage they are of the total purchased service budget. Certainly the other avenue is what percentage of an agency's budget do City and local dollars provide, the theory being as has been articulated "some could afford a cut easier than others". On the other hand he can recall others arguing in the past that an agency who was so dependent upon City dollars was not a good thing. An entire other avenue he would iintroduce into the discussion is there are certain of these services where we are actually purchasing a service and we know what we are getting for our dollars, then there are others where our dollars are more general statements of support. While they all have a practical impact in some ways they are more symbolic then the actual purchase of a service which he would argue should be one element of the discussion, as well. Alderman Feldman asked if Mr. Terry listed that distinction in his memo to which Mr. Terry responded, not yet, that is the type of material he would be prepared to bring to the December meeting Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry whatever method we use and whatever member of the Council or members of staff who suggests whatever cut, if they suggest a cut, his feeling is somebody wiil trash them as that has been the problem in the process. If the Council operates in good faith, even if people disagree with members of the Council, the member of the Council who suggests cuts more often than not ends up getting trashed, not so much by other members of the Council but other organizations themselves who receive the money. That then becomes a political retribution thing which, In his opinion, is why the process has broken down If Mr. Terry's theory would be applied, taking the agencies who you know you're getting the dollars from and those who you think you are not, in his opinion the organizations who are being cut will then, whatever the campaign is, try to maintain their funding. In his mind that is the problem in picking and choosing and not treating everybody equally. This may sound as though he is giving up which he is not. he is just using his own experiences because when we tried to use the approach of trying to make savings with the organizations we thought could afford it, whether we were right or wrong it turned out to become a very personal attacking where there were news conferences held. He is looking for a method that works and does not know what method that would be unless everybody participates. He hopes some people would acknowledge that the City has a lack of revenues and is undergoing legitimate budget problems, the same type of problems the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago, the Villages of Lincolnwood and Skokie, and everyone is having. Alderman Feldman said after all is said and done those decisions will have to be made no matter what kind of uproar it causes and we wilt have to stick with that There is a big difference between things that have happened in the past in terms of our financial situation and now, there's a dramatic difference. He does believe Alderman Newman is right as there will be a lot of unhappy people and he does not know how that can be avoided. However, because December 3rd" will be a very important meeting he would like as much material as possible for the Council. One of the questions he asked was the difference between purchasing services and general support he would not only like those agencies identified but would like to know how much money we give and if we decided to discontinue that funding what kind of Page 6. savings that would be He would like all of these scenarios done across the board, the percentages across the board, who would be affected and in what way. everything except the indMdual evaluation of agencies done on the basis of need, which the committee and Council will have to determine. Alderman Rainey asked when some of the committee's questions will be answerer. They have a couple of childcare proposals and one of things that struck her is Childcare Network's 580,000. The reason the committee agreed to that funding was because of all the people falling through the cracks when they lowered the low income guidelines to exclude people who desperatety needed assistance That money was to go to those people who previously qualified for subsidy but do not anymore. In Childcare Network's staff analysis Mr. Terry says all we're doing is 53500 a month. Mr. Terry responded since that memo he has had a couple of conversations with the Director of Childcare Network that phased the first two bills they submitted as the startup but at this point they are now projecting they will finish year spending around S77.000 of the $80,000. Alderman Rainey was happy to hear that the funding is being used. However, lately she has talked to several people who have told her that there aren't these horrendous waiting lists any more and she asked for some insight as to what's going on out there, are we meeting the need, is there a huge unmet need, a little unmet need, what area other than new boors aren't getting served? She would like some kind of assessment, as she is not aware of what is needed. Mr. Terry said he can get that information but it is more difficult in that we don't have "a central waiting list" anymore. Childcare Network still maintains a waiting list but there are now ways to access the system that doesn't necessarily involve the Childcare Network and we do not have the kind of centralized control we aNiays had before when we had these center based contracts. Alderman Rainey remarked in order to give away scarce dollars we need to know where the need is and her point is, is there a need here. Another thing Alderman Rainey wanted to inquire about, because it was impossible to get good information on BE -HIV when they came to CD, is our per client rate has gone up from $307 in 94/95 to $571 this year per client and we give them very little money given the size of their huge budget. They told us this year at CD the same as they have told us before, they can't do outreach in certain places because they don't have the money. Then they told us they provide a State clinic at Northwestern. Neither Northwestern nor the students make any financial contribution to their services at the clinic. They then told us, however, they get valuable assistance from the students as they serve as receptions and do little clerical tasks for them at the clinic. Alderman Rainey was concerned that we have to pay extra and they have never had the discussion about Northwestern paying. Alderman Rainey said she would like to know what they determine is the cost of that service per student, and are those students figured in to this S571 per Evanston client cost. Another question Alderman Rainey raised that was eluded to in a couple of the proposals. is what it costs to assist certain famllies in this community if they avail themselves of the services that are present for them to make use of. She would like to get an idea of what that might be. For example, a teen mother with a baby at Teen Baby Nursery who is an emancipated minor living in an apartment with a Section 8 subsidy also going to Family Focus, also receiving benefits from Women Infants and Children (WIC) She would like some idea of the cost for this person to make it from day to day in our community. Alderman Rainey noted that Mr. Terry made reference to several cases where people have resigned or were replaced and the one she did not quite understand was Childcare Network. They changed Executive Directors in the middle of the year when Martha Amston assumed leadership of the organization. Mr. Terry said Martha Amston Is the new Childcare Network Executive Director. We also have two agencies that had new executive directors who tasted a couple of months. Those agencies were Housing Options, which the committee does not fund, and the Infant Welfare Society. Alderman Rainey asked if this had anything to do with the condition of the agency. Mr. Terry said he thought this is Indicative of what a difficult job running an agency has become, in most cases the agencies had conducted extensive searches and it is not uncommon for this to occur. Whether it is indicative of the agency or relations with the board there is a lot of individual circumstance certainly in a couple of agency's cases where we deal with a new person every year. Then there are other agencies where the board is committed to making a good search and it takes them a long time to find somebody. Alderman Rainey noted Infant Welfare/Teen Baby Nursery says they are currently serving twelve ETHS girls and their client number is 58, then it is indicated clients equal both the mothers and the children and there is some turnover. She would like to see how that 58 number is arrived at as she was always under the impression that it was a pretty stable client number from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Mr. Terry said this is no longer the case. Alderman Rainey remarked then these clients had three or four kids apiece, which she does not think is the case. She would like to know why there were so many people going through this program when this is supposed to be the opportunity for real stabilization. One of the arguments has always has been, we're here, we make the life of the teen mom stable because we provide her with this wonderful day care program so the mom can finish school. She would like to know what is going on here. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry if there is a way to make the December 10"' meeting specifically dealing with the agency funding issues other than some other agenda items. Mr. Terry said the only other item we had scheduled on the agenda was where the park rules and will take more time. Page 7. Alderman Newman had questions on specifics The Chiidcare Net+wrk was getting S107,003 from CD, Mental Health Board, and the City of Evanston last year and now is requesting S253.000. Mr. Terry said they have an entirely new proposal in to the CD Committee for a for -profit trained childcare person Alderman Newman said he always thought our grant was around 5164,000, he knows there has been some charges and we have never gone down to $107.000 Mr, Terry said that figure was arrived at by the 580,000 for the schc:arship fund in the first couple of months and should probably be a little higher. Alderman Newman said we did nct :ing to them in terms of our allocation and did the same allocation last year that we always do Our figure has Wws fs been around $150.000, he does not know what they get from CD and Mental Health Board. Mt. Terry said the $107,000 is the $80,000 plus what they get from the Mental Health Board. Alderman Newman is right the figure should to higher. Alderman Newman also wanted to point out regarding BE-HiV that he has a motion if any organization inciuding BE -HIV doesn't answer questions of the staff or Aldermen by December 1" on any of these proposals from any of the committees that we not fund them this year. Alderman Rainey said its not that they're not answering, irs that its not making any sense, the answer is they don't charge Northwestern for their services. Alderman Newman commented he considers BE -HIV the model for ail organizations, the best organization you can possibly have that over the years has done a fabulous job which is reflected in the amount of cases that have gone down in Evanston. However, he thinks BE-HtV is unfair to the City for the reason that the last time we attempted to cut $10,000 from BE-HiV, about four years ago, their total revenues were about $1.200.000. At that time his point was that BE-HiV had such great access to the Federal and State government in funding its educational programs there really wasn't a need for our money. Since that time they have increased their revenues to $1,700,000, therefore, he will not vote for a candidate at the national or state level if he thinks there is a need for anything for AiDS if they have the money he wants them to fund it especially at the Federal level. He is a big supporter of AIDS education, however, he Finds it very difficult when an agency as fabulous as BE-HiV that has the ability to attract Federal and State funds vwil not deviate in their request and will not stop requesting money because they do not need our money. BE -HIV requests $20,000 from Purchased Services plus 520,000 from CD, $40,000. Just as an example, that $40,000 would pay for an inspector in a neighborhood that has numerous violations and is not being inspected enough. He wishes this fabulous organization BE -HIV would come to a point in time where they've raised so much money that out of the love of Evanston they would say to us they do not need our money any more. Evanston was thereat the beginning when BE -HIV had nothing and now that Evanston is having a difficult budget time your agency, which is so well funded, can be a leader in helping out the City. As much as he respects this organization, Alderman Nlewman's prediction is this organization will never do it because there is no organization, as much as they love Evanston, that wilt stop asking us for money. As a tremendous supportive advocate for BE -HIV Alderman Newman asked BE -HIV to go back to their board, out of the love of Evanston, because he loves Evanston which is the reason he devotes all his time here, and at some point in time because of BE- HIV's tremendous ability to raise money we need to declare partial victory because of the great job BE -HIV has done. John Ames, Executive Director of BE-HiV, said they need Evanston's money because they're about diversifying their funding not diminishing forces of funding. Eighty percent of their funding is garernment, three percent is from individuals, and he Is going out to Evanstonians as the new Executive Director for funding. He hopes the time will come when they can tell the City they do not need your money, but that day hasn't arrived. The new cases of AiDS in Evanston has not gone down, these are cases requiring services by this branch. They are very traditional services that all AIDS service providers started providing years ago, mental health counseling dealing with death and dying, wellness services like art therapy and massage therapy, those kinds of things which were traditionally accessed by white, gay men of middle class income or higher. Those are the services they've always come to you for Evanston so those numbers are low. The numbers of cases of HiV in Evanston, for the record, have not gone down, your own Health Department can verify that. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Ames if there are any of the numbers in Mr. Terry's analyses in dispute. Mr. Ames responded, no, not at all. Alderman Newman said he would like to be educated in terms of what Mr. Ames is saying as to why the numbers in Mr. Terryys memo states, given the declining number of Evanston in residents seen. City dollars now contribute $571 per Evanston client, up from $307 in 94-95. He would like Mr. Ames to respond to this, but would also like to know if there is any amount of money BE -HIV could raise from the Federal and State government which he would like to have a graph drawn where at some point in time, because you have been able to raise that money, you _ would find you would not have to ask Evanston for money from CD or Purchased Services. Your budget is now at $1,700,000. two years ago it was at 51,200,000. He would like to get on record if you continue to raise these unbelievable amounts of money at what point in time, when you raise $2,000,000, 52,500,000, $3,000,000 pr $3.500,000, will you stop _ asking for Evanston's $40.000 because we need money here in Evanston. He would like to have that answer before he — votes on BE-HN's funding this year. Mr. Ames said the CDC (Center for Disease Control in Atlanta) puts out a request for proposal that would select and be applicable to a community like Evanston. The largest increase they've see over the last five years is the result of a- --- $900,000 grant over three years limited our work to Chicago and is why we have a Chicago office today. You're looking at our overall budget, our overall agency has two offices and that increase is a result over 5300,000 a year over the next — Page 8. four years from CDC We cannot go to the CDC for an Evanston grant Alderman Newman asked Mr. Ames if he is saying the CDC put a Emit that you can only spend the money within the limits of the City of Chicago, and why. Alderman Feldman in:erlected this should be submitted in w-Mng to be sent not only to this committee but also to the rest of the Council. Alderman Rainey asked if it could be it the case is that all the money is in Chicago why is BE -HIV moving to a location where tie rent is going to be five times what it was last year in an Evanston location. Alderman Feldman stated to him the issue is not one of whether or not an agency needs the money, because he thinks every agency can make a case that they need the money the people served are in need. For us to try to make the case that they don't need the money or may nct need it as much as anybody else is going to be refuted, or at least attempted to be. They have to do what they have to do and we have to do what we have to do. He does not expect them to withdraw their request but thinks they have to respect the results as he respects their efforts. We have a tough job and its not going to be helped by a bunch of people saying don't worry we don't need your money now, he does not think that is going to happen. Alderman Rainey also does not think this is going to happen and would not expect it to happen, but she does think if you ask for money you should justify it. In asking questions about all this money for Chicago why would they move into a location in Evanston that is five times the rent per month as your last location, which are the kinds of things we should know. Alderman Newman said all ten years that he has been on the Council he has always thought one of the basis for us allocating money is people argue that organizations that have fantastic fundraising capabilities should not be penalized for their success because they're good organizations and he believes there is a certain truth to that In this one particular area there has been Federal policy over the last eight years, which he is not sure is going to continue and is open to that point because he knows we may be in a changing environment in Washington. In the last eight years the Federal policy has been very generous in typing one of the criteria that he has always tried to get in there is because of the tremendous success of BE -HIV and the availability of funds we are now down to roughly combined three percent of their budget This is much different than our being 71 % of the Community Defender's budget, 36% of Teen Baby Nursery, 23% of Y.O.U., which shows the availability to raise money and the impact of that on these agencies. Alderman Feldman noted there are two elements to this, one is what people need and the other is what we have. If we onty have a certain amount then in spite of whether or not someone needs and whether or not the cause is good if you don't have it to give, you can't give. All he is saying is there might come a time where you're going to cut someone who needs the money. Alderman Newman said he was merely inquiring of this one group whether or not they need our money and using this as a test case to find out if there will ever be a group in Evanston that has the type of success this agency has come to us and say we don't need the money. He understands what Alderman Feldman is getting at but would like to make his point Alderman Feldman asked it any of the agencies in attendance had anything in general to say regarding the situation they find themselves in. Martha Arnston, Executive Director of Childcare Network of Evanston, wanted to mention that the scholarships they are allocating are through the end of February and if they don't receive some funding to annualize these scholarships they will be at risk of havumg fifty or sixty children lose child care. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry if he was aware of this. Mr. Terry said he had been informed of their expenditures. Alderman Rainey asked if the committee could see how many children there are and what the subsidy is in any particular month. Ms. Arnston added at the Human Services June meeting there was a request for information from Childcare Network about demographics and children and which wards were receiving services They now have that information available Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Amston, as that information will help people on the Council understand the issues. Alexander Brown, Evanston/Skokie Valley Senior Services, said he appreciated the situation of the City and each of the Alderman are in this year. This is going to be a very difficult year for most of the agencies as well. Private fundraising that his agency is doing is way, way down and expect it is going to be a very difficult year for all of us. Alderman Feldman remarked he has been on the Council for sixteen years and this is the worst situation the City has ever been in. The night of December 10'h may or may not produce any results but there will certainly be deliberations on the budget as we move toward resolution and the discrepancy of what we will take in and what we will expend has to be resolved. Mr. Terry noted seeing Mr. Brown reminded him that last Friday morning he and Mr. Brown and a lot of other agency and City staff attended a meeting convened by the Suburban Area Agency on Aging. At that meeting he learned that they have further refined some of the census data and previously informed the committee Evanston has lost older adults again for the second consecutive decade. An interesting statistic, according to the 2000 census, is close to 30% of the people Page 9. in Evanston, sixty years of age and older, live alone, an incredibly high percentage for a community, most communities are ten, fifteen, or twenty percent Close to a third of our elderly live by themselves. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry when he included the elderly living by themselves was he including a place such as the North Shore Hotel because it's a community Mr. Terry said he did not know how the census bureau classified that, that should be congregate living. Alderman Newman said there is a difference between the North Shore Hotel and for example Noyes Court which has a much lower level of service. Then there's the Georgian where everybody has their own apartment and has a huge staff Alderman Newman said there are two approaches to Purchased Services funding, you can try to evaluate the most worthy groups. For example, he considers BE -HIV one of the most worthy groups in terms of his tremendous respect for their mission, everything they do and their effectiveness, however, he also happens to think as fabulous as they are they need the funding less than perhaps the Youth Job Center. Y.O.U., Childcare Network, or somebody more heavily dependent on City funding. There are two ways we could go about it if everybody in the City has to reduce, and there are going to be a lot of reductions because we do not have enough money. We could take the across the board approach or we can pick and choose. The last time we went to pick and choose, which is the reason there Is a paralysis here is because some of the groups went about and the effort was to try to get the people on their boards who lived in certain wards put a lot of pressure on members of the Council and it all fell apart. For example, it there was $40,000 available, which he not saying there is because it probably won't be available, across the board everybody would share equally. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Newman what would he do if BE -HIV said they don't need our money but sorry they will not be able to serve any Evanston residents. Alderman Newman said if it was used in that type of a lever situation and they felt they couldn't serve us that would be part of the evaluation, but if they simply said that so they could get our funding he worikd then have to think it over. Alderman Rainey was not saying they would say that or why they would say that, but if that was the reality would that make a difference. Alderman Newman responded, yes that would make somewhat of a difference to him 0 he definitely knew that. Alderman Feldman did not believe any cuts at all aren't going to affect citizens of Evanston. Alderman Newman remarked if somebody such as BE -HIV had a budget of 51,700,000 and they had people from Evanston on their Board of Directors, they get money from private sources and instead of $40,000 the City gave them $10,000 bringing their budget to $1,670,000 he would not jump to the assumption that they would no longer serve Evanston residents. He does not assume because we are not directly funding there are stiff State and Federal dollars going to the agencies. Another example would be the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago who has an office here, which is something we are encouraging because if we did not fund that office that office they might not be in Evanston but they would continue to service Evanstonians There is noway, under their mandate, that they would exclude serving Evanstonians in Cook County. Alderman Feldman said all he is suggesting is as a result of the situation the City is in, every person in Evanston is going to be affected not only by cuts but also by additional taxes. He does not expect anybody to comment as a denial of a 10% cut of their budget that they will no longer serve Evanston residents, to which Alderman Newman agreed those were also his thoughts. Alderman Feldman called for any further comments from those agencies in attendance. There being no agency comments, Alderman Feldman thanked the agencies for their attendance and informed them this committee will next meet on December 10" and those interested agencies should watch the television coverage of the December Ird City Council meeting to give them an idea of the Council's decisions. Vll. IMPACT OF BIOTERRORISM ON THE CITY Alderman Feldman said he has learned that the latest events having to do with bloterrodsm have had some Impact on the Health Department in terms of time being spent responding to phone calls, the department being on sites responding to anthrax. He would like Mr. Terry to think about a way that could be presented to this committee, a perspective on that and how Mr. Terry and his staff feel affected by what's the potential for bioterrorism in this community, if there is any at all, and what plans you recommend or have instituted to protect or help protect the citizens. Alderman Rainey added she would like to see something more comprehensive than that because she does not think Mr. Terrys department acts alone on those calls, there's fire and police response She would like to know the total picture and does not feel she has a good grasp on what we're really doing. She keeps hearing about a room that is filled with all these puffy envelopes that are not being looked at by anybody. Mr. Terry said when people first began to get nervous about suspicious mail or material we have had two or three public incidents which were dealt with and tested appropriately. Typical for our community's high level of service we began taking mail that people were worried about and we very quickly established a policy involving the fire and police departments. Many other communities were taking the mail and just destroying it, we made a decision to try to have it tested. The state testing lab is completely overwhelmed and access to that lab is only through the FBI you can only get something tested by the state lab if the FBI determines it to be a credible threat Except for two Page 10. things relative to public irnddents we had, nothing from Evanston has been tested at that lab. We were able to establish a relationship with Evanston 4ospital about three or four weeks ago, whereby they agreed out a sense of community service and he cannot say enough about Evanston Hospital, they were conducting tests on the material. Late last week the Centers for Disease Control issued a directive to the state and dawn to us that no hospitals were to conduct any more testing for fear of potential contamination of a hospital location. Up until present we have maintained the policy of still accepting mail, not necessarily suspicious, that people are tumirg in. Absolutely nothing that has been submitted has tested positive. There w►tl be a meeting of the Citys Emergency Team tomorrow and they will very likely move to a policy change of destroying what's termed in rather than get it tested because as a practical matter you can't get anything tested anymore. Alderman Rainey asked why somebody calls up we go out to them, we don't ask them to bag the item and bring it someplace. Mr. Terry said most of the time we will go out but these are still people who will show up with the item. The Fire Department is the first responder, Alderman Rainey said when it involves envelopes she would encourage us to say put it in a zip lock bag and send it over. She heard that a supervisor from the police department, a supervisor from the fire department, a fire truck and a police car would all respond to the call. Mr. Terry said one of the difficulties is should any of these be positive, they're crimes and you have to maintain a chain of evidence and everything else. Vlll. ADJOUNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 9:10 p.m. Respectfully submi , s Audrey Tro y, Department of Health and Human Services Page 11. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET Name: HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2462 onaay - tv ovemAer o, 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address/Organization: lam- C 2) V o .n4 F-.s c4 DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, December 10, 2001 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey STAFF PRESENT: Bill Stafford, Neal Ney, Maureen Barry, Harvey Saver, Jay Terry, Elizabeth Holtsclaw (Health & Human Services Intern), Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township), Sue Canter (Mental Health Board); (See Attached List of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Feldman 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Feldman called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m. He thanked all those In attendance for their presence at this meeting and asked if anyone would like to speak to any of the issues before this committee tonight. As no one in the audience wished to speak, Alderman Feldman announced that this is a very special meeting because in all his experience on the Council he finds this to be a very serious time. There are very difficult and serious issues before this Council not only regarding Community Purchase Services and Mental Health Board Allocations but also there are concerns other issues across the board resulting from the City Manager's message and the situation we fiscally find ourselves in. As a result the City is currently faced with issues that are as compelling as those he has ever faced in the course of the fifteen years he has been on the City Council. These issues are deeply troubling and daunting and require a great deal of us all, including the people that are involved in this, as most of you have been. Through his many years on the Council he has seen the same faces and appreciates that kind of effort, dedication, and participation in the issues that have made the City of Evanston what d is today, something of which he is deeply proud. Tonight this committee will not make definitive decisions regarding the Purchase Services budget allocations or any final decision regarding sustaining or the elimination of the branch libraries. We are going to discuss these issues and are certainly willing to hear anything anyone has to say. This decision was not made for lack of opinion or strong feeling on the part of members of this committee as we feel we are still in the investigative stage and want to hear what people have to say. There is a group of people that have been enlisted by the City Council to offer suggestions to the City Council regarding budgetary matters. As that will take place this coming Wednesday night, in all fairness it would be appropriate for us to hear what they have to say. We cannot take strong positions until we hear what that committee comes out with, and we are not certain as to what that will be. Whatever the suggestions are we have to respect and hope it will be something that would help this Council find a direction that is appropriate to the needs and values to this community. Having made these comments Alderman Feldman proceeded with this evening's agenda acknowledging that at any time during these discussions he would appreciate and welcome either comments or questions from the audience. 11. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE NOVEMBER 5, 2001, MEETING The minutes of the November S. 2001. meeting were unanimously aooroved f4-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF NOVEMBER 2001 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Rainey inquired whether the Assessor was in attendance at this meeting. Upon hearing she was not, Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Hilliard how to get questions to the Assessor's office short of writing a letter to the editor. The only expenditures Alderman Rainey saw on this month's bills list were for individuals, which she assumed those were payroll checks and wondered which of those people is the Assessor's sister-in-law and which is the Assessor's roommate. Alderman Rainey also asked which person was fired because of her anthrax outburst, claiming the ventilation system at the Township offices were spewing anthrax on her and who therefore felt the need to be tested for anthrax. Mr. Terry said the Township Assessor called him this morning and indicated she had been out of town for while. As this committee recalls from a Call of the Wards a few meetings ago, both Alderman Engelman and Alderman Rainey raised a number of questions about the Assessor's office. He transmitted these questions to the Assessor. The Assessor indicated she had just seen that letter because she was out of town and was drafting a response that she would get to Page 1. the entire Council. The Assessor also mentioned there was an article in the current Roundtable that she felt answered some of those questions and indicated she would soon have material for the Council, Alderman Feldman called for a motion to approve the November Taornstup bills. Alderman Jean•Banliste motioned for approval of the November 2001 Townshin bills. seconded by Alderman Ralnev„ Motion unanimousty approved f4-0l. tV. REVIEW OF THE FY 200212003 COMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES BUDGET ALLOCATIONS Alderman Feldman thought this would be a good time for anyone in the audience to speak, as this committee will make its recommendations to the City Council based upon what they hear tonight and at other deliberations early in January. He referred to Mr. Terrys memo recommending formulas for the agencies and the committee to consider regarding the possibility that this committee and the Council should decide to reduce allocations, Alderman Feldman said if no one has anything to say that is fine and the meeting will continue. There being no comments from the audience Alderman Feldman asked the committee if they had anything to discuss at this pwt hearing none he went on to the next agenda item. V. DISCUSSION REGARDING A PROCESS FOR EVALUATING BRANCH LIBRARY SERVICES John Sagan, President of the Ubrary Board, said he and Neal Ney would be happy to answer any questions the committee had but they did not have a statement to make. Alderman Feldman remarked that he read, either in a memo or minutes cf the Library Board, that there were several options considered by the Board as to how they could conceivably reduce their budget. He asked if it was correct that the one they suggested. not that they acknowledged, was for Mr. Ney to submit a budget to the City Council that would call for the closing of both branches of the library. Mr. Ney said he submitted two budgets to the City Manager, one representing wards which meet the criteria set up, that one did close both branches. Alderman Feldman said his question is, Is there any consideration of those two budgets, one the closing of the branches and two the listing of the different alternatives you have. Mr. Ney said there are certainty limitations of operating of which 70% of the budget is in salaries and 14% is materials. Any time that we start making a substantial reduction you've got cuts in materials. The question then Is what does the least damage to the overall picture of library services and his judgement is that the community's biggest investment is in the resources at the main library. Making them less available in order to maintain branches seems to be counter productive. Maintaining all the hours of the branches and the main library and taking the entire amount of money out the materials budget seems to be even more counter productive. There isn't any other way to get $100,000 or $80,000 out of the budget other than doing one of those things At this point the alternatives he wrote out for the Board are mostly irrelevant because at that time they were assuming Mey had to make an $85,000 cut in the budget. They looked at four options, two which involved closing only the South branch, one involved reducing the hours of the main library, and one involved closing both branches. All four options also involved other cuts in the budget. Almost all of those other cuts have been included in the City Manager's budget, therefore the alternatives they were looking at this point don't work. At the meeting last Tuesday he did outline another way of reaching more or less the same dollar amount -_ would be if the main library did not open before 100 p.m. on weekdays, closed all day on Friday and some reductions were made in the materials, they could then achieve the same bottom line He did not recommend that, but said that would be another way of reaching the same point Alderman Feldman asked how much that would save, to which Mr. Ney responded it would be arduous aiming at the same dollar amount, St 17,000. Alderman Feldman asked what it would additionally cost to just close on Friday and open the other library at the same time all the other days. Mr. Ney said he would have to get that figure Alderman Feldman wanted to understand the ramifications of that and asked why Friday was mentioned, was that the least busy day. Mr. Ney said they looked at -_ weekday mornings and Fndays because those are the least busy times He cautioned that the number of people using the main library at those times are still far greater than all the people who use the branches in a year. If you did that on an annual basis you'd be dealing with more people at the main library than you would be dealing with at the branches, during all the hours that the branches are open. None the less, those are the library's lower used times. Alderman Feldman said he could not believe that the vast majority of people who use the library on Friday, only use the library on Friday. Whereas, if you close a branch they can't use the library at all any bore during the year. If you either close in the morning or on Fridays there are still six other days and vast numbers of hours in which somebody could get to the library to use it. While he understands the usage of it, and he is sure any day could be picked, that doesn't mean they can't access the library at another time. There may be people who can only get to the library on Friday which he does not know whether or not that is possible, but we know there are people who access branches that if they are not there they can't use any time during the year. He is not suggesting they can't go to the main hbrary. As Mr. Ney said there are a lot of W- people who use it. What he is indicating is that those are the less used times of the week. Mr. Ney said they had 1,257 =_ users last Friday, that's a light day, he said he knew that number because they lust had it checked. Alderman Feldman Page 2. asked what was the library's busiest day, to which Mr. Ney responded tires busest day is Sunday between noon and 6:00 p.m. Alderman Feldman asked if there are any communities that do not have their libraries open every single day of the week nor the same hours as our library. Mr. Ney responded, yes there certainty are such communities, but the Illinois State Standards calls for a 72 hour a week schedule for a community o' cur size. which is what our schedule is. We just looked at a management profile that was done for fiscal year 19992D00 by the Library Research Federation at the University of Illinois and they d4 comparison tables comparing us to me ten tibranes with the same or closest equalized assessed valuation. In the ten libraries with the closest operating budget and trre average hours per week both of those were just a hair under 72 hours. Clearly most libraries in those categories are pretty close to those schedules. Certainly there are libraries that don't have Sunday hours, there are libraries ma? are open later in the day. some libraries close earlier in the evening. In terms of looking at libraries our size ana in cur income level, the 72 hours is pretty much standard. They are not necessarily the same 72 hours, we have more weekend hours, we open at noon and close at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, we open at 9:00 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m. on Saturda*j, and 5,00 p.m. is more common and 1:00 p.m. for opening on Sunday. Alderman Feldman asked if the Library Board ever considered closing rNo branches of the library, the ones that exist, and building a mega branch. A branch that would have all types of facdMes on a smaller basis than the main branch but would offer the kinds of services we've heard about in reports from the Library Board The kinds of branches, if they exist, that would best serve the community as a justification from the library building point of view in an area that would be reasonable and distant from the main library. In other words, a larger branch but one that could serve the outlying sections of the community. Alder -man Feldman asked if that has that been considered? Mr. Sagan said they certainty have considered that, they've considered as many options as they possibly can As this committee knows they have had a difficult time with their attempts and their exploration of moving the south branch to the Dempster Dodge area, but clearly this would be a branch. not a mega branch, but a branch that would be built and designed as a branch library with the capability for better spacing, ADA accessible, and everything else. The idea of closing both branches and then opening them in one branch somewhere is an idea they have thought of and that has been suggested that we have by some citizens. The questions always boils down to is there enough money, where would you put d, how would you decide where it goes in the City? All very difficult questions. Alderman Feldman said he is fully aware of all of the difficulties and of the atmosphere in which you have to make these kinds of decisions, but initially you have to decide one thing, whether it is a good idea and does it have merit. The next thing you have to do is decide whether it's possible. Alderman Feldman wondered whether it was thought that rather than having one, two, or even three branches of the library, all of which cost money, whether or not it might be a good or better idea to invest that much money in a top flight state of the art branch library. Alderman Newman did not think that question could be answered, as they cannot build another branch library unless they have the funding to do it Alderman Feldman added they thought about a West Side branch and did not have any funding for that either. Alderman Newman said they thought about that within Me context of having at least the same budget as they were going to have last year. Mr. Ney and Mr. Sagan agreed that was correct Alderman Newman thought the problem with this branch idea is that we really need to go back to the drahnng board as we can't expect to have the Library Board solve the problem of what type of library service we should offer because the Library Board needs to be in concert with us on the amount of funds they are going to have available. We should go back to the State of Illinois report and the City Council should try to come to a consensus with the Library Board on the basic policy we're going to have on library service, are we going to centralize or are we going to be committed to me branch approach if that is the approach we are going to take. He does not think the Library Board can do this by themselves because they don't control the budget If they were able to raise the budget they would be able to say they can do two or three branches, therefore he does not think we can put it upon them. As part of their hearings we've discovered that most people in the neighborhoods of the two branch libraries want to continue those branches and in addition to that there is also a constituency that would like to have a third branch library The City Managers budget currently recommends lowering the amount of funding for library services as opposed to increasing it. What we need to do is have the Council make a decision which we are not yet at whether or not we're going to be committed to the level of funding wtricn is necessary to maintain the branches. If we are going to maintain the current level of funding then this committee and tie Library Board have to start having a series of meetings to figure out what our library policy is going to be and to what extent its going to be funded. Alderman Feldman remarked that the basis of his questions is to find out what they're deliberations were and whether they thought of that He agreed with Alderman Newman that we have to go track to the original report referred to in regard to the function of the branches and determine whether this community is going to have one, two, three or more branches, or any branches. If we maintain the present funding for the branches we have to go back and decide where we're going from here. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste thought the approach to this particular issue first has to have an analysis of what it is that the community needs, what do we want, how do we best serve the interests of the community in terms of delivery of library services. Once we have made that decision as a long-term objectrre we then begin to strategize as to how we fund what we want. He thinks we have to take that kind of approach regards to the tudget and a number of projects we may want Page 3. to look into. If we were to take the library issue from the present standpoint most of us would come to the conclusion that n doesn't appear that we have enough money to fund branches in general However, 6 we believe that serving the community means having branches then we need to start thinking beyond this year and think down the line. For example, during the deliberation of the allocation of funds from CDBG there was strong consideration whether or not we should allocate funds to fund the development of a West Side branch. Because we have not come to a vision as to what we want to do it makes sense to allocate the funds first before we had the vision In this instance he does not think we are to allow the short-term dictate what it is we do in regards to library services We should start thinking long term and if this year we cannot fund the building of a new branch or we cannot fund the conbnL--d existence of the South Side Branch or North Side Branch, we should think about whether or not we want to come back to that, whether or not we want to focus on a central library, get two bookmobiles again, get other activities going to spread the services to as many of our residents as possible_ The topic on evaluating the branch library services is the reality that every community that has a branch wants to retain the branch. Due to the public hearings held the "West Side' of the City came out in strong force to express their desire for a branch library to be placed at Dempster and Dodge with ample parking, and state of the art everything that we would want Again, the short-term crisis cannot end that context. We can come to a conclusion as to what we want to dictate what we want in the tong term. As opposed to the State of Illinois report dictating what we should do it should inform us as the public heanng does and everything else, to determine what we want in the long term and then see how we can make those things happen. Short-term evaluation in the context of the crisis would say we can't afford it but we have to think beyond today. Alderman Newman said he did not mean to say whatever was in that report should be what we should do. That was information that had been acquired by a consultant hired by the City and the Library Board and he thought if we were going to talk about what to do with branch policy we might as well have the benefit of that information. He does not think of it in any limits of where we go but thinks they're limited to the extent that were limited in the amount of funds we have available and we have to try to solve that problem. Mr. Sagan said there is no doubt that we are limited by funds and the City Council controls to a large extent the purse strings. We have a ten-year strategic plan that we worked on. When this plan and vision started out we were lucky enough to get some funding. As part of that were dedicated to the idea of outreach to be able to reach all Evanstonlans with library services We think that branches do that and from the e-mails, letters, and phone calls he and other Board members have received. Evanstonlans feel the same way, As we know there is not enough money now to have a third branch and there may not be enough money to have other branches but it is his belief that if we close the branches we will never reopen them. This is a very important decision and one which we need to work together on to reach some solutions. Alderman Feldman noted that one of the things he found to be most effective in many major decisions when you have a committee such as this committee working side by side with the Library Board you try and deal with that issue and he looks forward to that kind of a collaboration. Once we get through this budget cycle and create that kind of vision, understanding, or plan that may or may not coincide with the Library Board's vision, but one that we really have to pay attention to and one that might have significant support in the community and on the Counal is how to figure out if not at Dempster and Dodge, it not now when, whether or not any of our locations are the perfect ones and if they are not what do we do about them. Rather than have the Library Board meet and decide there may be opportunities for us to meet together and talk about this and see if we can work on this in a mutually acceptable way of solving that problem. When the library was initially built it was made up of members of both the Library Board and the City Council. That worked very well to solve problems that were not easily solved, maybe we can do that again. Both Alderman Rainey and Alderman Feldman were chairs of that committee for a while. Alterman Newman inquired whether this is going to be done after the budget is through, and will this issue be taken up first so we can know where we are in terms of available funding Mr. Sagan noted that many members of this committee know the Board is opposed to closing the branch libraries and they will be happy and look forward to working with you. He wanted to be on record as saying the Library Board supports whatever funding can be arranged for them. Alderman Newman asked if he could get a translation of that and asked if the board supports raising the City's share of the property taxes of 20%. Mr. Sagan responded they would have to work through that and are not answering that as they think there are other places to make cuts and are willing to work with you. Alderman Newman noted that right now the City Council has to find $3,600,000 in cuts and there are a significant amount of revenue increases being proposed. By law the City is required to have a balanced budget and he would be glad if the Library Board has some recommendations as opposed to closing the branches or cutting library services and what we should do to obtain the 53,600,000 in savings because that is part of the process. No one on this committee wants to cut anything. If you say there are other places to cut he would be interested in hearing where those other places are. He' s not asking that you tell him right now where those other places are, but if you want to communicate with this committee =_-- as a board where and how you think we should make up that $3,600,000 he would be glad to have the benefit of the advice. - Page 4. Alderman Rainey supported what Alderm-ain Newman said and remarked that not only the Library Board but also others come to ttus committee and the Council and say their program is the best and it can't be cut We know you believe that and -he believe rt too, but there are two sires to the spreadsheet. There's the income and there's the expenses and if you want an ex;>enditure on your behalf there ras to be some justification on the other side of that sheet showing how that can to pc ssible given this shortage we're currently facing Therefore, when you justify your program she thinks all of us now rave a financial responsibility to also come forth with how that can rabonalh� happen It's not just that you need this $300.rOX or whatever amount it's a wonaerful program and we have to give it to you. but help us out on these decisions. That's v ta: the citizens' group is hopefu!:y gang to aid us with on Wednesday and in the other meetings to come. There has to be community support If this ent::e community wants to support increased funding or even continuation funding then they %%1t1 have to point out some cuts or indicate a willingness to participate in generabrng new revenues. Alderman Feldman commented on a cal: he received this morning from a gentleman in his ward. This gentleman was told 1y an agency where he received some type of aid, (not mentioning the agency). asking him to be sure to ask that we fully fund that agency. In the discussion that ensued he wasn't at all aware of the kind of budget shortfall we have, nor was he avrare that there were significant other agencies considered, nor that the City Manager along with many of his cuts props sed elimination of people's jobs. He wasn't told that by this agency that he was recruited by, to call his Alderman. When he found out that as a result of this there were people that might be losing their jobs, he was mortified and said if he'd :save known that he would not have made that call. Alderman Feldman said this leads him to the conclusion that there people are who are very eager to advocate for their specific purpose but there are other considerations that, he woufd hope they would consider in that whole process. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to encourage everybody to come to the December 12" citizens' participabon group meeting to fight to bring some alternatives to the table and to look critically at the budget and please try to engage in this process We've had a proposal by staff but the City Council members are still lockarsg into exploring different alternatives. Alderman Newman asked what now happens with the budget proposed by the City Manager. Mr. Safford responded the budget that was proposed the other night is the one that is being put in the document for the Council on December 310. Alderman Newman asked if there will be a proposed reduction on Purchased Services of $225,000 but without any allocation of that reduction, to which Mr. Stafford said that is right. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Feldman, Convnittee Chair and Mr. Terry when there will be meeting to revisit tonight's agenda rtem on the Review of FY 2002/2003 Purchased Services Budget Allocations, unless as part of the budget process the Council decided to make that reduction itself. Alderman Feldman said he would Ike to have that item before this committee, at least to revisit it. It was the committee's decision to meet Wednesday, January 16, 2002 at which time the Human Services Committee will have the full mutts of the meetings of the citizens Alderman Rainey suggested that a communication be sent to the Budget Committee for their reading on Wednesday night so they know that we need information from them as they develop this. Alderman Feldman said he would glad to do that with Mr. Terry and without any complication or communication from the Budget Committee regarding anything else. The Human Serinces Committee will meet on Wednesday, January 16. 2002 and take up the review of Community Purchased Services budget allocations Alderman Feldman said he would also like staff to begin working with the Library Board staff, very shortly after the budget process is over, to start this dialogue regarding future library plans. VI. COMMENTS FROM TEEN BABY NURSERY Statement from Kathy Shearer, Teen Baby Nursery. Ms. Shearer referred to the memo written about Teen Baby and the fact that it is a program created by the City and Coalition thirteen years ago. which is true. The Infant Welfare does have an investment in this program. Over the last couple of years through Early Head Start we've had capital money put into the program of which we had to match 20%, and that 20°% Infant Welfare put in was capital improvements of about $9,000. With some short fall in State funding that will occur in the next few years Infant Welfare has incorporated those short fad into its own budget. This is a program with a unique beginning but Infant Welfare is very much invested in this program There are references to the Coalition Network that originally formed this program that in many ways the individual that are part of the network have changed. There r5 still a network that was very much rejuvenated a few years ago_ Now District 65 is part of that network and part of the change also includes a higher level of involvement from the High School in that the High School is starting a kind of a network as well. To avoid redundancies we have put the two together so there is still a group but the financial responsibility is Infant Welfare's responsibility. Infant Welfare was programmed financially and has operational responsibilities but there is a network that oversees the issues related to teen pregnancies. Alderman Feldman wanted to clarity if what Ms. Shearer was saying was that District 65 and District 202 are interested parbes and help in ways other than money. Ms. Shearer said District 202 was eng.nally involved in this network. District 65 is an additional member that is involved. District 65 does not financially participate but they are involved in the network, Distnet 202 does financially participate to the extent of 520,000. Alderman Feldman asked if that financial participation has been given since this network's conception. Ms. Shearer said the original amount was 515.000 and three years ago Page 5. they increased their contribution to $20,000. Alderman Feldman asked if they do anything else such as give extra office space in the High School, to which Ms. Shearer responded they do provide other services to teen moms. She would be more comfortable if you talked to the High School about the specific services and the dollar level as she does know they offer services but does not know the specifics. Another aspect of this is when the funding changed significantly the biggest financial hurdle they have to face is the decrease in state dollars that Infant Welfare will receive for Teen Baby That is not because the reimbursement rate has gone up or down, that is because of the change from the contract system to the certificate system. in the past they were able to pod money to get them up to a certain percentage to get a certain level of state funding. Now they are going to be in a new situation so their level of state funding, which they're going to estimate to be about $20,000, will decrease. That will be their biggest hurdle. They have received increased funding from the Federal government in terms of Early Head Start On the chart showing the significant increase in Federal funding there is increased staff. The increase Federal funding correlates the two staff increases, a family support specialist and a sixth teacher. Those increased positions do correlate to increase services, the family support specialist which is funded by Early Head Start has an outreach aspect to that and has already significantly helped the program. Alderman Feldman asked if that correlates to an increase in the number of clients, and was told it did not Ms. Shearer said this is a high unit cost that is measured by the child, they are in day care and they take care of the child. The estimated unit cost Is about $9,100 a year per child, day care is very expensive comparing this to their cost our unit cost of taking care of a child which is about $8,000. This is a little higher because of the nature of the program, but day care itself is expensive. The other comment she wanted to make to respond to the comment that this program Is stale and needs rejuvenating in the sense that they have increased the services to the family support person. She would say that the twelve moms using the program and the six moms they are going to enroll In January don't think this is a state program. This is new to them and the moms and the children need it now. Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Shearer for her comments and thanked all those in attendance. He asked if the committee had any further questions or comments. Not hearing any, Alderman Feldman called for a motion to adjourn. VII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at &05 p.m. Respectfully submitted. Audrey Trotsky Department of Health and Human Services Page B. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - December 10, 2001 Name: ret R�Yle�U�CtZZQ rip �- -rf ; 00: 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address /Organization: Vetj-,-42 - V, �u�..ti ti-zs • SsA I fJ4p) �' 7>kpIS a7rl 4�rt er{' CJ e re- r-,A. r d r :N 9 1 1.., 11 V (,,,1S 5F GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - December 10, 2001 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Name: �y r Address/ Organization: [� c7 C-{ f,L�' i� V [ s n1 nLl 1= J it w lot Fe f rf 1 / C hill CS rC C-t,i-k1of' %Y,,, DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, November 4, 2002 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Jean -Baptiste. Feldman, and Newman STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Srenniman, Doug Gaynor, Paula Haynes, Jim Wotinski , Neal Ney, Sally Schwarzlose, Connie Heneghan, Maureen Barry, Bob Domecker, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Ann Rainey, Township Su;ervisor Pat Vance, Jane Grover (Mental Health Board). Janet Webb (Recreation Board), John Sagan, Jean Perry, Steve Prout, Jonathan Frschel (Library Board), HcZ?y Reynolds, Tom O'Brien, Beth Steffan, Jean Esch (Ladd Arboretum), Michele Rodriguez (Interfaith Housing) PRESIDING: Alderman Jean -Baptiste 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at T.03 p.m. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETINGS OF AUGUST 5' AND SEPTEMBER 30TH 2002 Alderman Feldman moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Newman, minutes of both meetinas were unanimously approved (3-0). Alderman Jean Baptiste called attention to the minutes of August 54, 2D?2 where questions were raised regarding how the Township determines the granting of funds for Emergency Housing and what rules and regulations govem those decisions. He asked if Supervisor Pat Vance could respond to some of the issues raised and speoficaliy referred to rules regarding Emergency Assistance in terms of allocation of funds plus clarification of other issues. The funds referred to dealt with Section 8 and the Housing Authority, Ms. Vance thought true question referred to how the Emergency Assistance Program operates. The Emergency Assistance Program and services offered are supposed to be for extenuating circumstance in emergency situations which we can possibly prevent or eliminate in three areas, housing, utilities, and food. In terms of housing it is usually preventing an eviction It is not our policy nor will it be to subsidize Section 8. Section 8 housing vouchers go directly to the landlord. The properties that were involved on the two instances in questions were properties that are actualty owned by Housing Authorty as we do have a few of those properties scattered around the area. In regard to the two properties in question there were extenuating circumstances that were looked at, one involving a person being diagnosed with a debilitating ii;ness being able to back and forth to work and getting his disability benefit into play. In that particular situation they found We person had periodically been behind. The $500 amount we assisted with was in addition to what each one of these people also had to come up with. Looking at the situation the circumstances surrounding was a possible eviction. The other case involved a mother who was not able to go to work due to circumstances dealing with a molestation involved with her daughter which went on for a period of time and presented a drop in the source of income Depending upon the circumstances, we are not in the practice of paying for a person who comes in with a Section 8 voucher who has not paid their part of it We look at what the circumstances are, it may be that person lost a job and there is going to t>e a period of time before Section 8 will readjust So far we have not paid of any of those, they are taken up with the Hcusing Authority. In terms of utility payments, these payments are made in order to prevent the disconnecting of the utility or to help get the utility back on. We have had some people who encountered having no water and in most of these cases anytime we have an emergency service payment it is also coupled with money that has been paid by the person. One of the key things in terms of addressing an emergency is to make sure that once ifs addressed to see if the person will be able to maintain it afterwards. If they're not going to be able to maintain it then they will be back in the same predicament, you have not have addressed the situation, and the emergency will be an ongoing situation. Alderman Feldman remarked that is an interesting criteria, if somebody sees their way out of it then there's a positive response and if they don't see their way out of it then they're hopeless and they,don't get it. Ms. Vance said for example in some cases we have dealt with if a person comes in to us with an electric bill of 52,000 we only pay $125, the Electric Company is not going to turn their electric back on for the S125, what we have to do is see if there are other community resources they can pool together plus their money, plus the S125. Alderman Feldman asked what if the electric bill would be covered by your payment and as you saw the situation the prospect for future electric bills would be very dim. Ms. Page 1. Vance said they would pay the electric bill because they may not have an income and there are other programs and services where they vrould hope they could cet a job. Alderman Feldman asked if it is really that with your money you want something to happen that creates some kind of relief rather than just pay somebody one -tenth of it and the client remains in the same situation. Ms Vance said a lot of times these small amounts may do it other times it will take working and networking with other organLzabons to pool together different resources to address that particular need Alderman Feldman asked Ms Vance if she would suggest that people in reed come to you before the situation is monumental. Ms. Vance said anybody in social service tries to make a suggestion that people come before it gets to a drastic point Sometimes some type of imervenbon can happen because there a-e cases where it can be worked out with the landlord especially if the person has been a good tenant and if they pay a ce--.ain amount they will allow the remainder to be paid on a delinquency bans and work it out Those types of situations rave been worked out to help people stay in their housing. We try to do what it wiil take to keep them in their housing or keep their utilities on, but in most cases you will not find enough resources to pay the large bills we're getting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste brought up for clarification one more issue that was raised, the payment made to park University Enterprises by the Township. At the time this question arose Mr. Hilliard did rot know who that entity was. Ms. Vance said she just got this question and did not look it up, but Park University Enterpnses is where we have all these different mortgage companies who are holding properties. What she will do is get a response out to this committee tomorrow because they do have a number of different entities who manage property in Evanston. Alderman .lean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the Auqust. September and October 2002. Township monthly bills. Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Newman. motion unanlmoustX approved (3-01. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Vance what happens with the people whose names appear month after month on the roll. He understands the Township has a training program for these people. Ms. Vance responded at the General Assistance office there are three different tracks a person can get on. We have some people who are on pending SSI benefits, they cannot work. Then we have another group of people participating in the Job Club or on work sites, as some people are stationed in not -For -profit work sites doing 64 hours. We have some people in the Job Club involved in resume writing and looking at ways of trying to get employment. The last time we checked the rolls we were concentrating in looking at things we can do with ex -felons, we have 22 on the roll and because of their felons they are hard to place. We are trying to find ways to help them and get them into different things. The people on the rolel are at different levels and we are always trying to get them off the roPl. IV. A DISCUSSION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING AS AN EVANSTON VALUE Alderman Newman wanted to point out that this item, housing , is really a P A 0 agenda item. As a matter of fact at their last meeting they had a report to start a Task Force on Affordable Housing Set Aside from the Housing Commission. Under the Council rules Housing falls under P 8 0 as it is a very common strategy in dealing with affordable housing related to zoning. Sometimes you can give additional zoning allowances to try to encourage affordable housing which is why is fits in there for which there are pro and con arguments. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said to a certain extent he tends to agree with Alderman Newman as some aspects have to do with zoning and the policies regarding the role of new development in addressing housing probably has to do with PAD. He thinks housing is a Human Services issue and falls in this category. if you're talking about affordable housing in general as a value for the community, then how that gets played out, whether you have to address it on a level of zoning, whether you're addressing it when negotiation with new developers to try to get them to address this particular issue, ttsat kind of negotiation can take place at P 8 D. He thinks Human Services is a natural place for the issue of affordable housing to fall under because most of the time when Interfaith Housing or otter entities are addressing housing issues for the most part they address them here or through CDBG. It seems to him there is an overlap in many different areas. The question is where do we place the discussion of policy regarding affordable housing. He thinks it starts here first and then gets implemented into the other realms. Alderman Newman remarked the whole point of this task force, which will have members of the P 8 © Committee on it is to be looking at affordable housing in Evanston and the exact nature of this agenda. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if this is a brand new task force, to which Alderman Newman responded this is a task force that was recommended by the Housing Commission to be put together. It was discussed at their last meeting and he thinks Alderman Kent will be a member of this task force but &oes not know what other members of PAD will be on it. There are several housing programs they have in terms of rehab loan programs under the Housing Department that reports to PBD. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought in light of the recent hearing regarding the Fair Housing Ordinance addressing source of income as a protected class he felt it was important that we engage in some discussion as to what the essence of that was about He noticed in the minutes of the Ajgust 57', 2002 meeting, we talked about this ordinance as a tool towards achieving one of the tactics to be used to achreve affordable housing. He felt we needed to come to some kind of a position on how we saw that ordinance, whether or not we want to pursue it, whether we do not pursue it in the form it was presented how do we pursue the whole issue of Section 8, what were the issues that were raised, in our hearing how can we address those issues to make sure that we make Section 8 serve the best interest of Page 2. the community, all of which is related to affordable housing in Evanston. We were engaged in that discussion because we were concemed about affordable housing in Evanston and therefore it is an important discussion for us to have as Human Services and even it that task force has to extend out and take into account our issues and even share information with us It is important that we discuss affordable housing as a strategy and look at the vanous things that come before us in their proper context We can talk further down the line and maybe the Rules Commmee can offer some clarification as to where that particular issue should sit on a consistent basis. For now we have been through a major hearing and we need to look at that and determine how we go forward. As Alderman Newman indicated the task force is new and it is a good thing that it is being put together because in Evanston he is not sure we have made an assessment of our needs for affordable housing and that is something we need to do. Secondly, we need to look at what it is that we offer. We offer some level of help at the level of CDBG; we offer some level of help through not -for -profit agencies that we fund; we set a precedent at 1930 Ridge when we negotiates the 10% of the apartments be set aside. We have our Department of Community Development addressing a number of issues such as the First Time Home Buyers Program, the Rehab Program; and CDBG funds CEDA to do the Handyman Program. There are a number of things that we are doing and the Section 8 issue has to be put in this same basic perspective. We need to try to address what our needs are, how are we addressing them, what is the role of Section 8, and pursuit of the objective of affordable housing, what is broken about it, and how we can fix it. We need to come to some kind of conclusion in that context Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted in the minutes of September 30"' in terms of the Section 8 issues raised there were a number of issues that raised, some very supportive of the protection of those who have Section 8 vouchers and other positions felt if we had such an ordinance it would create a lot of problems in the City of Evanston. Although we did not have unity and he does not think we will have unity to advance the ordinance at this particular point time he does not think we should not throw away the baby with the bath water. We have to find a way to rectify the problems that the Section 8 program itself poses perhaps through some workshops, further discussions with landlords and tenants, and at the same time Improve on whatever it is we are doing through the Housing Advocacy Department of the Human Relations Commission to make sure there is a coming together of the landlords and the tenants in order to best utilize Section 8, because Section 8 is going to be here we can't throw it away. He's putting this issue of how we can move forward to address Section 8 in the context of affordable housing on the table. Alderman Feldman said he is very much interested in addressing the ills that were articulated by people hesitant to enroll in the program and those gis they said that prevented them from doing it or warranted their hesitancy. If there are things we could do to mitigate some of that resistance that is exactly what we should do. There are people that feet there are serious issues with that program that prevent them from having any interest at all in joining it. If there are such issues those should be addressed and if it means addressing it at the program's genesis that's one thing, but if it also means we can do something in the community that might do that then we have to do that as well. His feeling is, which he said at that time, he has no interest in forcing somebody to join a program that they don't want to join but he certainly would do everything he could to make the program such that more people would want to join and not have any hesitancy in doing so. If that's the kind of program you're thinking about bringing landlords and tenants together to try to solve some of those problems, he would be happy to both discuss it and support it. Alderman Newman was not sure what exactly we are trying to solve at this point. Some of the testimony we got on statistics show that there are 1400 or 1500 Section 8 certificates in northern Cook County, from Howard to Lake Cook Road, and 1000 of those certificates are in Evanston. Obviously we have more multi family housing but a lot of the problem here is regional. A lot of people in Evanston have a concern about Evanston being the regional savior on all types of social problems, a lot of which needs to be addressed by what other communities are doing in the area of even having multi family tenant housing in their city. When one thinks about the population numbers this is an amazing statistic. Therefore, he is does not know what problem the ordinance on the table is supposed to solve nor does he know what problem we have the ability to solve. What we heard at the public hearing was landlords throughout the City, both African American and white, had a problem with the federal agency and how they had to relate to that program. He does not know that we have the ability, at this time, to deal with some of the aspects. There have been some suggestions as to how we can go about doing this, or to deal with those perceptions from the people in Evanston who are in the business of renting housing. He is not sure what we're trying to do here, do we have a problem with displacements in some parts of the City, and is that going on. Are the people being displaced because of condominium conversions and can't stay in Evanston, which is the problem he was thinking was possibly happening here. What exactly are we trying to get at, because he would suggest to you no matter what happened on this ordinance the rent structures in Evanston are very high. Most of them far surpass the Section 8 vouchers. To him we really have to look at this in terms of Evanstonians. He's not looking to solve North Chicago's housing problems but thinks we need to identify through more than just hearing "I saw something in the newspaper' or " i heard this" or "people have told me". We need to find out what the problem really is for Evanstonians and then try to react to that, through any method not just this ordinance. Also, when we use the term affordable what are we talking about. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we have to come to some kind of definition of what that means, but when the question he raised up front, and was just again stated by Alderman Newman, what is the nature of the problem and what do we Page 3. offer now, is the general issue. What he proposed to staff is that we find a way to keep this issue on the agenda whether through the task force or through Human Services so that we can begin to address the issue of affordable housing in a way that is consistent and comprehensive so we know where we're going. If we're just not putting together a task force, and he knows this issue has been on the table for a long time, then we need to address it in a comprehensive, unborn manner that can achieve whatever our objective is and nght now its unclear as to what that is. Coming back to Section 8 during the hearings there were a lot of issues addressed, even those landlords who are willing to rent to Section 8 tenants are hesitant because there seems to be a problem w,th the agency itself in terms of certain issues, whether its inspections or payments, and at the same time a lot of people had a partcular perception of those renters who have Section 8 vouchers. There was a particular prejudice against that group of folks that had caused a lot of landlords to say they are not going to rent to these people. He knows that the Human Rela;:.Dns Commission has been involved in doing some workshops with same of the tenants and understands that some landlords are also involved with the Human Relations Commission addressing their issues trying to get familiar with the Section 8 program. The representative from Section 8 was very clear as to what the ob ectr es were and what she perceived some of the problems were when she gave her presentation at the September 30' hearing. She appeared to have been willing to work with the City to address the problems. There are certain things we will not be able to get rid of, we do have people with Section 8 vouchers. the question is how do we troubleshoot the problems that we have so that particular process of people accessing affordable housing is not impeded or blocked and does not become a pariah but instead works smoothly and all parties are able to troubleshoot their issues. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Human Relations Commission Director to help us direct that. Alderman Newman noted Uv real blocking is not going on in Evanston, out of 1500 certificates, 1000 are in Evanston and all over the metropolitan areas they are not building housing. The real problem is all over and Evanston has obviously found a way to do a hundred times better than our neighbors in this area. He is not saying there are not problems somewhere for Section 8 tenants, as he is sure there are, but he's not sure what we're trying to do. He's not looking to expand that number of Section 8 certificates from 1000 to 1500 because there is a lot of service not just from the City but especially the schools that will have to be provided. He'd like to identify some of the problems that Evanstonians are having. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is talking about our universe here, he's not talking about opening the floodgates for everybody with a Section 8 voucher to come into Evanston. Apparently from our hearing there is a big problem with Section 8 and how do we take care of Evanston residents who have Section 8 vouchers and what they are facing. He Is asking the staff to share with us their perceptions, what they're doing about it, and what else we should be looking at In order to trouble shoot this. At this point in time he is not addressing the Fair Housing Ordinance, he's trying to deal with the essence of what this is all about, which is to deal with the issue of affordable housing in Evanston. Alderman Feldman said one of the purposes of the Task Force is to determine what the needs of affordable housing is in this community. When we talk about it as a value, its like saying lets have a discussion on human decency and our ability to get along with one another. Affordable housing is a part of any compassionate society. We understand that, once we get beyond that what are we talking about 500 units a year, 100 units a year, how many people in this town as a result of being displaced who have Section 8 certificates can't find housing. Is it 10. 15, 100 a year. The next question is are we talking about Evanston residents who actually have certificates and are living in Section 8 housing and are displaced or we talking about other residents. If you have people here that are going to inform us about that he would like to hear that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the person who is probably closest to that issue to help us understand it better. Ms. Haynes said she did not know that she has all the answers to your questions but will tell you that she works with the Housing Authority and is probably on the phone with them a couple times a week dealing with issues and concerns. Since the public hearing a lot questions came up and one of the questions was, by approving the amendment it would open the floodgates and all these people would come to Evanston. She had them take a look at the section of voucher holders to find out where they were before they came to Evanston and to her surprise 80% of them were already Evanston residents while they were on the waiting list to get a certificate. She thinks we're talking about our folks not necessarily talking about those 900 people who immigrated from Chicago or someplace else. They were born and bred in this community, their children were already in the schools because they lived here at the time. The motivation for the ordinance was simply to provide these people the same opportunity anybody would have to apply for a unit Alderman Newman inquired regarding the information Ms. Haynes has showing that 80% of the current Section 8 certificate holders in Evanston were born here and had their children here. He wanted to know where that information is, to which Ms. Haynes said that is with the Housing Authority and they shared that information with her. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. Haynes was told this over the telephone or was she shown statistics. Ms. Haynes said they talked on the telephone and asked if she could get it in writing. Alderman Newman said he would be very interested in seeing some backup data for that and how they came to that rather than just hearing somebody over the telephone throw out that statistic, he would like to see it as it is one of the things we are going to study this year. Ms. Haynes said she will certainly ask for that information. Page 4 Alderman Rainey, from the audience, suggested that Ms. Haynes should also get that very same information for the residents of the Housing Authority senior buildings. She would be very curious to see where some of those people lived before they moved into affordable housing in the senior buildings. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said mis discussion is intended to be the beginning of the analysis in the study of this process and there are other things that we need to get information on not only if these people strictly from Evanston but how many voucher holders do we have in Evanston and what is going on with them when they are searching for housing. Are they running into difficulties as a general rule, are they finding housing, and if they are not finding housing where do they go. Since Ms. Haynes deals in the area of housing he asked if the study could be broadened to discuss housing needs in general. There are senior citizens who may have lost their homes. tr,ere are others who do not Guahty or have not yet received their Section 8 vouchers and are waiting for them. What is the problem, are these people finding housing in Evanston readily. Also, as a companion to that ;what are the things that we have in place to address affordable housing for people. He had listed a number of them previously, whether it is the non-profit agencies, the Section 8 vouchers, or other programs we have through the Department of Community Development- It would be very helpful if we could get a sense of what the needs are and how we are meeting the needs. Alderman Feldman said he would also like to know the number of condominium conversions there were over the past couple of years and certainly the recent conversions, that were buildings that housed anywhere from 1 to 100% of the occupants as Section B tenants to know the possible rate of displacement of people who hold certificates. Next he would like to know whether the figure that we're talking about are the people residing in the City of Evanston that hold certificates, that actually have Section 8 housing or are we talking about the number of people that hold Section 8 certificates including those that currently don't have Section 8 leases. Of those 900 people how many actually have Section 8 certificates with Section 8 housing. Then he would like to how many other certificates are out there that people have that don't have Section 8 leases that can't find housing. He does not know how many are, and would like to know who would know that. Ms. Haynes said she is going to start with the Housing Authority to see if they know the amount as she thinks she can ask them for the number of vouchers they have issued in Evanston to Evanston people and they would know whether or not that voucher is being used in Evanston or in another community, if it has expired, if it is still valid, and if the people are stilt are still looking for housing. Alderman Newman wanted to folbw-up on the displacement and asked if we could get the number of units that have been converted to condos and the addresses of where those units have been converted as that would also be helpful. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved to close the discussion and table Ordinance 80-0-02 and If necessary return to this at some other time_ Alderman Newman said he would be interested in the possibility of having a discussion in P & D when Alderman Jean -Baptiste is available to attend to talk to developers about what they see as the possibilities and also have Ms. Aiello convene a group of what they see as the future of incorporating affordable housing units in future development and what are the pros and cons. There are all types of issues because in Evanston we want everything in a development, we want good materials, a good appearance, sufficient parking, and whatever else is needed. The Council tried to get 20 affordable units at 1900 Ridge and ended up with 10 and one of the issues was the community did not want additional height. In every development project there is a lot of interest and a lot of people to please. We need to have a discussion with the people doing housing and he would be very happy to participate in and get that discussion going. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is exactly one of the things he thinks needs to be taken into account We need to use all the tools available to us to achieve that objective of affordable housing which is also something we need to define as it relates to Evanston. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled his motion to close the discussion and table Ordinance 80-"2 and If necessary return to it some other time. Motion seconded by Alderman Feldman and unanimously passed f3-01. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he sees affordable housing as a standing agenda item for this committee and it will be interfaced at the Rules Committee level to see where that issue should sit on a consistent basis. We will collaborate to the extent that we can to make sure that we address this from a long-term perspective and try to develop a policy, taking into account what our needs are and what we are doing in the first place. Alderman Newman said we should communicate with Ms. Aiello to try to pull this meeting of developers together to talk about what the possibilities are. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added as part of the process of getting this information he would like to have the not -for - profit agencies in Evanston as the principal objective of affordable housing to also sit in on this discussion interface with them and address what theyre doing, what they see, and how do they see the problem. He would like to get everybody's views to have a comprehensive policy in the program of work to address that value. V. A REVIEW OF THE RECREATION BOARD GOALS AND OBJECTiVES Mr. Gaynor introduced Janet Webb, current President of the Recreation Board. Ms. Webb said the Recreation Board held two retreats in the fall of 2002. During these meetings the discussion focused on two areas, the role of the Board and the activities of the Board that we would undertake for the 2002 - 2003 year. In our discussion on the role of the Board we talked about the Board as being advocates for recreation. conduits for community input, ombudsmen, Page 5. governance, oversight to staff hiring, and budget. In looking at that fist of things we decided that there were two things that we really wanted to focus on this year and those two things are going to be advocates for recreation and a conduit for community input The Recreation Board fully understands that Council has the plat of activities you must look at, we also understand that for the Recreation Department of Southeast Evanston is a top pncrity for our Board. However, we understand that may not be the top priority for you but we feet as our role as advocates d is important that we continue to research ways to meet the needs of the Southeast Evanston Community. It is our goal to cpen lines of communication with Ridgeville and to continue our efforts to improve recreation in that area. In the rc;e of ombudsmen we are looking at other ways to involve more people into the input of the activities that are going on and in locking at that we are pianning in either December or January to have a Town Meeting to focus on women's soft t:aT We are going to look at one particular area and invite all of the people who are involved in that area to be a part of ti"e conversation to talk about their concerns and issues of the program and see if there are ways we can provide a better program. We are going to start with women's softball and will continue that list with various other activities through the year. The reason we wanted to come here tonight was to let you know what the Board is doing to keep you aware of our activities and let you know that if at a future date you would like to schedule a meeting with the entire Board to talk about this issue we are available. We just want to make sure we have an ongoing communication with this group to let you know what we as the Recreation Board are pursuing. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the committee has the minutes of the retreat to which Ms. Webb said she just shared with you the minutes of the retreat but can have them typed and given to the Committee. Alderman Newman made a reference to the Recreation Board's list of $100,000,000 worth of projects presented a couple of years ago and thought the Recreation Board needs to share that with the City's top budget people, find out what the City's constraints are in the near future and go back in your list of S100,000,000 and give us an idea as to what the highest priorities are out that entire list. There is a lot of competition for the capital improvement dollars which is paid almost exclusively out of property taxes. His view right now is that Parks and Recreation Is doing as well as it can possibly be doing considering the competition for those limited dollars and he would argue that compared to other communities around us we are not spending nearly as much in parks areas but the limitations are real and it would be very helpful if we could take a look at that entire list as he knows some things are being taken off. Alderman Newman asked when the study on the Crown Center will be ready. Mr. Gaynor responded probably next January or February. Alderman Newman knows that this will eventually be going to A & PW, but it would be interesting for us to get a presentation here also to see where we are and what people think. That would be a good time to meet with the entire Board. Alderman Feldman said what he would urge, which he has urged before for you to keep the vision of what the recreation aspirations are in this community and the unmet aspirations and how they could be executed. We always have to be reminded of not just what we have but what we might have and what other communities are doing as they see their needs being met. He would look to the Board to be that kind of presenter, have that kind of vision of excellence and progress to keep our parks and recreational facilities constantly on the upgrade and if we should ever become wealthy dramatically improve. Ms. Wells thought the Board feels very strongly that is their role and they will continue to serve in that manner. Alderman Jean -Baptiste referred to Ms. Wells' indication that two of the main objectives they would like to work on are recreation for Southeast Evanston and women's softball. He asked what is the assessment of the needs of West Evanston or is it perceived that Robert Crown Center provides that need. Ms. Wells asked if Alderman Jean -Baptiste is referring to Southwest Evanston to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is referring to West Evanston from Oakton to Church down from McDaniel, around the 24 Ward area, not the entire ward but just that section of that ward. He asked Ms. Webb if she perceives the need of that particular neighborhood to be served by Robert Crown, Ms. Webb said they have felt from the studies taken place the feeling has been that area did have facilities that were available, Robert Crown, and the area that did not have brick and mortar is Southeast Evanston the one place where we are currently doing our program out of a trailer. That is the area of biggest concern and has been for the Recreation Board for at least 7 o 8 years. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is the closest recreational center to that location and was told Robert Crown. Alderman Newman mentioned he attended a FAM basketball game and each team has about 20 kids, which means kids 11 through 20 on one team are not going to be able to play very much. That is an example if there was more gym space there would be more of an opportunity for the teams to play. They are at Fleetwood Jourdain all the time and there is a major need, there is no question that there is the need for gym space. Ms. Wells said currently there are 487 students in the FAM program, 22 are teams, 14 boys, and 8 girls. There are 22 players per team. Games being played at Fleetwood and also at Chute, 11 games are played on a Saturday, 6 at Fleetwood, 5 at Chute. The question was raised why there are no games played at Crown to which Ms. Wells responded they are only woricirg through those two locations, because they have to staff and coach the games. Ms. Wells said the bigger problem is not so much the playing time it's the practice because each of those 22 teams have to practice twice a week. that is 44 time slots, so we do use Crown and many of the elementary and middle schools for practices. Gym space is a major concern as probably about 30 kids were turned down this year because we have limited draft to only one day due to the overcrowding. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked if how to alleviate the problem has been talked about Ms. Wells said again looking at Southeast Evanston Page 6. if we were able to put a facility in tr-ere, there would be gyms in the facility. She understands there are so many other things that have to be looked a: isut for them that is one of the things they have to look at they do need additional space. Vi. AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT BRANCH LIBRARY ISSUES Alderman Jean -Baptiste believed Alderman Newman made the initial request for the Library Board to present today. Alderman Newman remarkec tea: this request was about six or seven months old when it was hoped there would be some money somewhere in tre budget but he is always glad to talk with the library Mr. Ney introduced Board Pres4ent Joan Sagan, Board members Jean Perry, Jonathan Fischel, and Steve Prout, South Branch Manager Sally Schwarzlose, and North Branch Manager Connie Heneghan Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if they want to share with the committee where we are at this point in time with the branch library in light of all the issues that have been raised over the past few years. Mr. Sagan hoped everyone had the chance to read Mr. Ney's memo dated October 3r which both gives us a good summary of the history of branch libranes in Evanston and where we have been and where we hope to go Since the Library Board remains comm;red to branch libraries and to the branch library system as you all know we attempted last year, very seriously and for quite a long time, to explore the possibility of opening either a second branch moving the south branch to the 2n0 Ward or opening a third branch which we would have loved to have done had we had enough money to do so. As you also are well aware due to the budget situation here in Evanston we don't have money to do that and explored a number of different avenues. To date we have been unable to come up with additional money so right now while committed to the branct-,es he thinks our hope of opening a branch in the 2�° Ward at Dempster and Dodge at this point is just a hope as we do not have a feasible mechanism for doing that. Alderman Newman appreciated the memo and said if we end up doing a branch out west that somehow we'd end up Improving the Crown Center Men we would take a look at that issue. It was interesting to read this memo and some of the history of the West Side branch that we previously had which we need to talk about whenever we get to a branch situation. One question he has is how much money was received for the painting that was sold and how is that money currently being invested. Mr. Ney said they received $900,000 and the money is invested in the library's endowment fund, some of it is equities, some in bonds, and some in cash vehicles. He can get a copy of the investment policy for the committee. Alderman Newman asked what the money is generating per year. Mr. Ney thought the income was about $14,000 but was not sure of that figure. Alderman Newman said thinking about that S900.000, and knowing that we have a tough year maybe the City can somehow find a way to cover this interest and a little bit more projecting when rates will be better than they are now. We can talk about investing that S900,000 into some library type uses right now, perhaps the enhancement of the Children's Library. Mr. Ney said they do use the income for library purposes and actually have some of the endowment incon-,e set aside for physical improvements to the children's room There are reserves set aside for both additional financial development and for the children's room improvements. Alderman Feldman asked if the income rs only S14,000, to which Mr. Ney interjected it is more than that but he would have to check the figures. A Board member said the figure is in a range of $40,000 to S60,000, that money is earmarked among other things for the chi dren's room. Alderman Feldman said the discussion regarding that money was a policy of the Board to put into investments and use the interest as an endowment fund to have a source of independent income. Mr. Sagan said that is correct and you may recall when they made a decision to sell the painting it was quite controversial. One of the criticisms received at that point in time was that we were going to take that money out of the library out of that beautiful picture which everybody loved and simply use it for library purposes. We said it belongs to the library and we will use it but we will put it into an endowment and watch it grow so that income will be able to be used for generations to come by Evanstonians. Mr Ney said the money was actually added to the library's existing endowment which dates from 1908, The endowment is currently S1,700,000 including the S900,000, which is the largest portion of the endowment. Alderman Newman asked if the decision has been made to redo the Children's Library. Mr. Ney said that is probably a little ahead of where they are. They set aside some money for improvements to the Children's Library and they working on putting together a program. At this point they certainly need to have a better idea of what they want to do before any final decision is made. Mr. Bethel added they are excited about the possibility of redoing the Children's Library. Alderman Feldman asked if the Board is doing any type of surveying of people using the Children's Library and trying to rind out what they think before deciding what they want to achieve there. Mr. Bethel said there are two things, one is we have one the worid's, not just tt is community or the state's, experts on children's readings and children's libraries, Junko Yokota from the National Comae is a Board member and has been quite supportive and interested in making that library better. We have also have aldermen such as yourselves and Alderman Wynne who are very much interested in doing something for the Children's Library. Also, they have explored it in other ways as well and think that is something that were we to have the money and have the ability that would be money well spent. Page 7. Alderman Newman thought if the Main Library children's section was more appealing to the entire community people might take a different view on the branches, he's not saying they would but thinks it would help. He's glad to hear you have this Board member and is interested in what your plans are but he would lake to see some community outreach from the people who are there and are using it possibly at the branches, what they are looking for and what we'd like to have in our main branch Childress Library. He'd be interested in finding out if people in Evanston are going to Wilmette or Skokie as opposed to coming to ours, maybe they're happy with our library Mr. Ney said he could not answer Alderman Newman's specific question witrout spending some time but they do have pretty substantial survey data from that Himmel and Wilson Study of 1999 which did deal with wnere people got library service, where they used it, where they lived in town, and that sort of thing. They have maps showing where one week's worth of library users came from where the individual houses are and also %teat library they used. Alderman Feldman said he was fascinated math the mention in the memo that the north branch alone is busier than five community libraries in the north suburban library system. 'there are library boards overseeing entire library operations that are less used than a branch library in Evanston. He wanted to know which are the 7 out of the 49 that circulate more items than the Evanston Public Library. Mr. Ney responded Skokie, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, Gurnee, and Palatine. Alderman Feldman asked of those libraries which has the greater population to which Mr. Ney responded Schaumburg does, Arlington Heights is in our same population category and Palatine is a little larger. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked as you probably have read the City once again is facing a major budget deficit. Last year it was S3,500,000 and this year talk is it is about S3,000,000 which means from last year to this year we have close to S7,000,000 less in terms of resources, Have you thought about what life without branches would be like, Mr. Ney said he thinks about it with great regularity. His recommendations this year if he was asked to make substantial budget cuts would be the same as it was last year. Closing branches is the way to make the reduction while doing the least damage to the remaining library services and causing the least harm to the majority of the population in the community. Not that he wants to do that or he thinks its a good idea. but if we had to make that cut he thinks that would be the way to do it. That would be his recommendation again unless he is told that its off the table and he would have to do something else at which point he thinks the alternative becomes you close the Main Library from 9:00 a m to 1:00 p.m. in the morning. There aren't many places to cut. 80% of the budget is salaries, 20% is materials more or less and there is a whole lot left if you're going to make a big cut you have to employ fewer people and buy less stuff. Mr. Sagan said we are Evanston the City of passionate people and people feel passionate, as we all know from last year and years before, about their branch libraries. As a Board we would rather not close the branch libraries because we know how important it is. We can simply see what the 2"0' Ward wants and they hope some day to have a branch library, how important branch libraries are and what a vital function they serve in this City but its clear that as we face declining budgets we wilt have to do something drastic and that may involve closing the branches, Alderman Feldman did not envy the kind of decision that the Library Board has to be make almost as much as he does not envy the kind of decision we have to make. You have established the idea that the manches clearly serve a need but when we look at the statistics and see that while there is a need and there are people that are passionate about it the need other than the value itself is not defensible. In other words the reason we're keeping it is because we want it and because there area group of passionate people that say that they need it and maybe some tradition If you were to build a library system and start from scratch he doubts very much whether any one of those branches would be here because you could not defend it to the community. If you said to spend this kind of money on branches people would say are you crazy and yet reversing it we're doing exactly that_ He thinks the Library Board has admitted to that in a sense that while we'd know it is serving people the amount of money or the bang for the buck, so to speak, drops dramatically. The thing that concerns him is whenever we talk about dosing a branch or two branches the amount of money that we save somehow seems to evaporate very quickly. To say we'll need to take one or two staff and put them in this department or another department it then starts to mitigate the savings that we think of_ Correct him if he's wrong, when you think of closing a branch do you think of all of the money budgeted to that branch being saved for the City. Mr. Ney said firstly they need about two months to close a branch, to empty it out so we can close the door and relocate collections and do things of that sort that have to be done. Last year they budgeted all of the salaries for two months, figuring that would be what it would take to do the closing, moving collections, selling furniture and getting all of that taken care of, then those salaries would be savings. We proposed transferring one position, that of Sally Schwarzlose, who is our resident expert on early childhood, to the Children's Department. That was the only transfer, thus all of the salaries would have been savings the second year, the materials budgets would have been savings the second year, rent would not have been budgeted. There were some pretty substantial savings. The only real permanent transfer was that one full-time position that we proposed. Alderman Feldman noted a reference to the meetings that were held in regard to this very same issue where you talked about 99 people that attended the first rneebng and 32 people that attended the second meeting. He assumed that wasn't the only public input you had, you probably had letters and phone calls and things of that nature. Mr. Sagan said he still gets public input today, he gets stopped on the street by people saying," you're not going to do it all over again this Page 8. year are you." Alderman Feldman said maybe they re the same people. Mr. Sagan said the first meeting was very well attended, 99 people, they had speakers including Alderman ,lean-Bapbste's son, who did a wonderful job speaking in favor of the branch at Dempster and Dodge. The second meeting was scheduled for September 11 �" and was postponed and rescheduled a month later and only 32 people attended that meetlrg but they had numerous phone calls messages, and letters. Alderman Feldman said it is interesting that you interpret t*at number and the kind of encounters you have had with people by letters and phone calls, etc., as a very substantial support for branch libraries. Mr. Ney said you heard from many more people than we did last year, to which Alderman Feldman responded he will tell you he did not hear from 100. What he is trying to get at is where is the energy for this coming from. is a coming from the community or coming from the Board. What would have happened if there wer^ only 34 people there at the meeting regarding the closing. A Library Board member remarked public hearings were conducted to gather information for one purpose, to try and get community input on the possibility of relocating the current south Branch to the West Side. It was not in any way to gather information for community support for branches. Alderman Feldman said if that's the case you must have gotten it another way, Alderman Jean -Baptiste added we got it during the budget hearing that was what was on the table the support or lack of support for branch libraries. Alderman Newman commented there was another discussion of branch library closures about 4 or 5 years ago when one huge meeting took place. The people who want those branch libraries are people who don't live anywhere near them, It's a great budget cut The support from the people is overwhelming, its not a figment, its substantial, its real, especially on the north end. It is a huge staple for children and families who go to Haven School and is by no means imaginary, it's very real. We will find that out if this gets hack on the table. He would lust like to comment, he believes there is nobody on the Council who wants to close a branch library. The situation is eArernety frustrating because we have other factors, the state government's financial woes is carried down to us. If there is any politician running at the state level promising to cut taxes what they really mean is they want either to raise taxes at the muniapal level or cut services at the municipal level because if they cut your state taxes that would have an impact on somebody. We really have a very difficult situation right now because of the reduction in several very key state revenues. Nobody wants to close the branch libraries and he thinks In good faith what everybody is talking about is this is not one of those areas where a rational argument can be made that there is some duplication, there is no question about that, which is why some people, especially people who do not live anywhere near branches, you wifl find them being the most gung ho to close the branches. Alderman Jean - Baptiste added that is also the basis upon which people on the West Side have failed to get a branch library. It's a realistic assessment of what resources are available at this point in time. He would suggest revisiting that discussion again probably when we address what may be on the table to be cut. If there is no more substantive discussion in terms of library services and the branches he suggests moving on. Alderman Feldman recalled what his thoughts were about some of last year's meetings. It had to do with the fact that some of the options if we built a library at Dempster and Dodge, one of the options would be to close the library at Chicago Avenue which is when he began to hear that people were not objecting to another branch but they were objecting to the idea that their library would close. He would be a lot more comforted with the idea that people in a gnien area support having a library there as Alderman Newman indicated those people that aren't near a branch are the ones objecting. If you look at it they represent a lot more people than those people than those around the branch, if the South Branch especially had a circulation level that matched the vociferousness of tl�e desire to keep it then he would feel comforted and would say okay, people live around it and those people not only wanted rt to stay but they use it. One of his concerns is that it's not being used in a manner that helps justify it. Mr. Sagan said they tned, as you may know, for a number of years prior to last year to find a better location for the South Branch. The problem there is there is absolutely no parking except street parking. It is bounded immediately on the west by Chicago Avenue and its difficult to find a better location. A Board member addressed Alderman Feldman regarding a comment he made that it appears if you close the branches the money saved may not be all the money we think we might save. Akdemian Newman commented about services being cut into budget crunches statewide. Page 10 of Mr. Ney's memo says. 'I assume that 50% of the branch use would transfer to the Main Library, and that the Library would lose 50% of the current branch use." What that means is that it takes money and people to serve people, so when you overload a system that is already compared to Arfington Heights or Skokie service more people with more usage on a per capita basis than Evanston is currently, service will suffer if you don't replace that money at the Main Branch. Alderman Newman remarked you're making an interesting point if 50% of that usage that was going to the branches ends up at the Main Library you're somehow going to have to upgrade the resources at the Main Library to deal with that additional use and the $225,000 or 5250,000 may not be a real number, which he thinks is a fair point. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said he is sure that discussion is going to repeat itself. Alderman Feldman said it is also a recipe for a paralysis, Mr. Sagan said they don't want paralysis, they want to do their long range planning and in the City bring library services and resources to everybody. The discussion they have had for a number of years, and he thinks they will continue to have, is on how best do we do that, we don't know the answers. Alderman .lean -Baptiste suggested this discussion be continued to address that very point What would be the needs of the Man Library if the branches were to close and how much of that savings would be absorbed in a real way. Perhaps you can elaborate that thought for us so we can have Page 9. a clear picture. Alderman Newman said it needs to be made by the Board and we need to have a lot of amplification of this last page of the memo. Mr. Ney said it is actually very difficult because there are so few branch closings in the Chicago metropolitan area that you can look to see what happened. The only one in recent years was in Niles and was kind of odd because they closed the branch and brought all of the resources into the Main Library where use went way up which is the only time anything like that has happened in 40 years making it very difficult to find information about it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said but you will be able to come to some kind of analysis not only about the use of the resources but what happened to existing resources, are we overloading because he thought we underutilized the central library. Mr. Sagan said it would circulate more books and answer more questions for full time equivalent. Alderman Newman said no one on this committee is making any proposal at this time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented this is an old question that made its way to the agenda at this particular point in time. Mr. Sagan said they appreciate that you, as well as we, are committed to giving library services to everybody. VII. A DISCUSSION OF CITY POLICIES ON SPECIAL EVENT DISTRIBUTION Alderman Jean -Baptiste announced a report was received from Mr. Gaynor regarding this issue and Ms. Holly Reynolds and others are in attendance to especially address this issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to give a summation of the report presented to the committee to know what the facts are_ Mr. Gaynor said his report represents the events that occur during the summer months in the park system. The request was received last week and they categorized downtown streets, lakefront parks, lakefront streets, lakefront downtown streets, lakefront neighborhood parks, neighborhood streets, and private property and neighborhood parks. They then listed every one of those park activities or permits or events requested in anyone of those parks that they were able to pull from their data. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor for statistics on how many activities we do a year and where they are held to help everyone understand the picture. Mr. Gaynor reported we have a total of 2,093 activities and are broken out based on the downtown streets, in 2001 we had 4, and in 2002 we had 3, and had them listed, Last year lakefront parks had 15 events this year we had 14. Lakefront streets 2 in 2001, and 2 in 2002. Lakefront downtown streets 1 in 2001, and 1 in 2002. Lakefront neighborhood parks 2 in 2001, and 2 in 2002. Neighborhood parks 8 in 2001 which is a weak number because we were not able to bring up all that data, 56 in 2002. Neighborhood streets 10 in 2001, and 13 in 2002. Private properties 0 in 2001, and 2 in 2002. Alderman Feldman noted that in the information received from the community they talk about the number of days the park is being used for events as opposed the events themselves. For example, if you have one event that occupies 3 days you're comparing apples and oranges. A one -day event in a neighborhood park and a three-day event on the lakefront are both marked as one event. Not knowing how accurate this report is the focus and idea raised is that some events take more time than others and we have to think about the amount of time as well as the number of events that the parks along the lake, as well as the other parks are being used. Alderman Newman remarked how many events there were is not an issue. As an example, one of these events is a walk and he is not sure what organization it is for, they bring in 40 portapotties, they have cheering sections that start at 5:00 a.m. This event with 40 portapotties was complained about in Clark Square thc^ it was to be held at Dawes in Centennial and some neighbors complained about it there. One of the things a group of neighbors, that are in attendance tonight are trying to achieve is if you have an event with 40 portapotbes and cheering sections its not fair for the City to say, when you have all these lakefront parks, to be held in the same park every year, it should be spread around. A concern that he has and would like to have addressed tonight is the whole policy, that started in 1969, that we have a City Ordinance that says the Human Services Committee will approve special events that have over 100 people. What has happened, because our committee has not been meeting as often, these events have been moved to A & PW for approval, which is one of the issues he wants to discuss tonight. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would go into that and called upon Ms Reynolds. Holly Reynolds said they were here tonight because of the discussion which took place at A & P W in early September when the Duck Pluck Lagoon event was introduced for approval. During that discussion it was suggested that people who rive at the lakefront don't want activities there and don't want people going down there. in light of that it seemed worth while to make these remarks at A & P W which we asked to do and then teamed last week that the item had been moved here to Human Services which why we're here. That is actually appropriate because as Alderman Newman saie this is the committee that handled the issue when it first came up 13 years ago in 1989. The few of us here represent the neighborhood around Dawes and Centennial Parks and the Southeast Evanston Association membership, both groups, as well as park users from elsewhere in Evanston, have been interested in acting in lakefront matters since i9a9. We've also talked with Mr. Gaynor about these things that she is going to mention tonight although they understand there is no action to take at this moment but in light of what happened at A & P W they just thought they wanted to clarify a few things. In recent years there has been marked increase in the organized activities in the five blocks between Greenwood Street and the turn at Sheridan Road, which are Dawes and Centennial Park. Page 10. A quick history will just give some context. which Alderman Feldman was part of For years in the past the lakefront parks were used by sunbathers, people reading newspapers, walkers, runners, and a lot of other individual users. Then in the 80's organized events started to become popular and some naturally came to the lagoon area They represented a marked changed in park use but as many things everyone took the occasional use in stride. Then suddenly in the summer of 1988 things changed. As requests increased that summer several large festivals were added to the lakeshore. Inadvertently some line had been crossed in the use of the area and as a result, then City Manager Joel Asprooth and Parks and Recreation Director Don Wirtn sent a memo to this committee of City Council alerting them to the harmful effect attempted on overuse of this area. In the memo they said, "In addition to the t�vo festivals, the weekly starlight concert series, the concession restroom facility, the 4`" of July celebration, the boat ramp traffic, and the normal summer use of this area result in extraordinary pressures on a fragile resource. It is nearly impossible to sustain turf and other plant materials. Traffic and parking problems are well documented." As she is sure everyone knows the general use of the park today is ever so much greater than it was in 1988. The dog beach has been added with increased use, but as anyone who goes to the lakefront parks knows this stretch is extremely heavily used whenever the weather is decent, particularly in July and August. In 1989 the City Council formed a subcommittee of the Human Services Committee to evaluate lakefront activity and particularly the lagoon area. A number of meetings held over a number of months included active participation by Council members, City staff, and Evanston residents from this neighborhood as well as from elsewhere in the City. After a great deal of testimony and discussion the subcommmee on the lakefront of this committee, the Human Services Committee, and the City Council agreed that the level of activity was deleterious to the park and neighborhood and the scheduled events in Dawes Park should be limited to the two established festivals, the 0 of July celebration and the 6 starlight concerts. First Ward Alderman Mary Juliar expressed concern about the starlight concerts foreseeing that while small and sparsely attended then they could grow into larger events with greater impact of traffic and people, which in time of course they have. Agreeing to protect these parks in the surrounding neighborhoods there was much discussion about using other parks around Evanston for abided events. The Council asked City Manager Joel Asprooth to evaluate other parks for capital improvements needed to enable them to host these events so that other parks could be upgraded and new events in the future could be dispersed among them The agreement held for some time then runs and walks started to become popular and through no malfeasance but loss of institutional memory new events began to arrive. Suddenly by 2001, the numbers from schedules of events given to us by Mr. Gaynor. 21events were using Dawes and Centennial Parks, 12 of them had amplification, the 12 new events had came into these parks. Not only had the numbers become overwhelming but the new events changed with time. Those which start almost always grow, increase in numbers and often change. The North Shore Century Bike Ride, for example, which started in 1993 was at first a small quiet group of bikers. A year or two ago they had become a sizeable group and ended their ride with an ampffied combo band along with the massage tables and refreshments and other trappings which naturally approve such events. Alderman Newman mentioned 40 portapotties which no one wanted, forget when they arrived on Saturday evening in Dawes Park across from the Evanston Historical Society attended by loud cheering from the event organizers of the 891 Avon Breast Cancer Walk. At 6:30 the following morning bullhorns awakened the neighborhood and enthusiastically punctuated the rest of the day and an encampment of tents, food and drink booths, and first aid stations filled Dawes as thousands of people streamed through. Other than starting at 6:00 in the morning the police loud speakers were coming through to clear parked cars from neighborhood streets. In sum we believe that some balance should be found and that if Evanston decides it wants to accept all who ask to stage their event here the entire City should share the burden and the cost of that. We should also note that of the 9 events which the Council has reached be the limit for these parks. 3 are among the largest held anywhere in the City. In sum, again we believe we have a reasonable goal which is simply to start dispersing new events which are added since 1989 Thank you very much Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to give us a sense as to what we've been doing to disperse these events. Mr. Gaynor said this past year he moved two events off the lakefront. A third event the Ricky Byrdsong Race we moved to Sunday and have placed a considerable amount of change in that program. He does not believe there was any inconvenience to the residents this year as opposed to the previous year when there were a number of problems. We have started to limit those kinds of activities putting them in other areas, if they re possible. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked that some of the starlight concerts are now being held at James Park. Mr. Gaynor said we have concerts 6 at Dawes Park at the lagoon and 6 concerts at James Park, a total of 12 concerts He made a mistake a year ago and added a concert to make it 7 and apologized for that one mistake. Relay for Life, which was a very significant event at the lakefront was moved to James Park. As a matter of fact it worked out so well the organizers of the event requested to have this at James Park again. They felt it was a much better venue for what they do. Mr. Domecker added they moved two other events, the Rotary Picnic and the 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk. Mr. Gaynor said they have had discussions with Alderman Newman and members of the committee and indicated they will rotate where the portapotties will go. In his opinion they now do a much better job of controlling the loud speakers, they are not out as loud as they have been in the past. We do bring our rangers out. Some of these walks do occur early in the morning, as indicated, but the balance to that is many are over within a couple of hours and therefore do not create problems for the rest of the area as the area becomes more and more crowded as the day goes on. Also, they did move the bike ride off the lakefront this year and think it went well. Page 11. Alderman Jean-Baptste inquired as to the impact the Duck Pluck had on the area. Mr Gaynor said there were less than 200 people, they were done in less in two hours, it was a poor weather day, and two Aldermen and the Mayor attended. Alderman Jean-Baptste asked how it went cast year when the weather was good. Mr. Gaynor said ,t was the same thing there were about 2C4 people who attended. Ms. Reynolds noted it was laud, to which Mr Gaynor said they do use and amplification for anrouncing Tom O'Brien, lives at 210 Davis Street, which in essence overlooks the lagoon. He would lake to give three quick perspectives, one wt-.at rrs like to live in the neighborhood where 75% of your weekend days dunrig the summer contain an event. He thinks : ne characterzation of us in the lakefront trying to keep people out is quite unfair and what the actual effect of this is it keeps other Evanstonians out He uses the lakefront all the time, the fact that he can't park there doesn't keep him away from ,. Alderman Feldman wished to comment he was at that meeting that represented the view of one Alderman and he wanted to clarify that the A & P W Committee does not at all characterize as that Mr. O'Brien said just in reading the minutes he saw that characterization and wanted to make the point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought it was a cribcsm and not a general perspective. Mr. O'Brien went on to say in terms of living there he is in the habit of bringing lemcnade to the traffic officers, giving them lists of people who may be coming to his house that day so they will let them through to park somewhere near his house if they could possibly find a spot It is a major inconvenience. He chose to live there and he knows that is part of the deal, but he thinks the issue needs to be managed and Mr, Gaynor and Alderman Newman have been very proactive in working with us. Also, Mr. and Mr. Reynolds have provided a lot of leadership over the years on this issue. The thing that concems us about the Duck Pluck was not in fact the Duck Pluck, which was a very small event, but the way that 4 happened. It seemed to go around agreements that had been put in place with people pumig a lot of effort behind it then in an instant to see where we could all of a sudden be over ridded. His last point was made by Ms. Reynolds and Mr. Gaynor at the September 9"' meeting, this puts an awfut lot of stress on the park, it is a mere environmental stress than the park can handle. Mr. Gaynor wished to make a comment, the letter or reference made by Ms. Reynolds regarding environment from the previous Parks Director and City Manager obviously occurred before he came to the City He spent 7 years as a director of a County Park System which was totally an environmental resource management job, 53,000 acres of parkland and he believes he has sofne expertise when it comes to looking at environment Although it is difficult for us to maintain the facilities at the lakefront because of the use he is going on record saying it is not stressed out and the current use now is not placing the environmental issues of the lakefront at risk at this point Mr. O'Brien said he just saw it in the minutes and although he does not have that expertise he sees the grass the next day because he's out there every morning. The last point he would like to make is it impacts directty the people who do live there, but in a way they are kind of the eyes of Evanston. The only ottw people who are there for every event are Mr. Gaynor and Mr. Dornecker who are down there at 6:00 a.m. setting up tr►e barriers. He thinks preserving the park for a!t of Evanston is an important virtue and when there are large events there that crowds a lot of people out who might use the park on a given day. We can do more in terms of criteria, a Duck Pluck to raise funds for the Evanston Environmental Center seems to him should have better priority than maybe something that seems like a good cause like the Breast Walk which is organized by peop'e we don't know and you could set p6on;t3es for how you do these things. In some of our previous discussions he feels Evanston is the City that says yes as opposed to many of our neighbors perhaps who are less welcoming to organize having such events and we ought to level the playing field a little bit and perhaps make an application process that favors local events. if there are costs imposed by curtsiders he thinks you have already dealt with nat in some ways. We reed to continue to manage this and if we have an agreement on how many events there are going to be and what the process is for approval of new events that we follow it That's why the Duck Pluck mattered because it is a big event in and of itself Mr Gaynor wished to make a reference to the minutes that Duck Pluck 2 was not recommended by staff. Beth Steffan, President of the Southeast Evanston Association, commented there have been so many things that have already been said about this issue she can't add very much, but has a few things to say which she will mention. This was brought to her Board's a :ention in the Spring of 2001. It was a problem for our neighborhood. Most of the concerns of the Southeast Evanston Association are really to discuss and try to find solutions to problems within our residential neighborhood which is Southeast Evanston. When this issue came to our attention we discussed it and at that time some members, including herself, decided to set up a meeting with Mr Gaynor to discuss the increase of the heavy concentration of events that was happening over a period of two and three years. One of the things that we determined at that meeting was that there was no limit to the acceptance of events in Evanston, there was no consideration. When Mr. Gaynor was talking about these events and we were looking at the numbers at that time it was 20 o 21 events and we asked if there was any limit and were told there is not limit and the Parks and Recreation does not decade that, it's the Council who determines that We were there to discuss if there somehow could be a quota or a cap, if that was possible. If it wasn't, then we would have a solution that would be more democratic. She knows how she is about events in her neighborhood, she finds them onerous and cannot tolerate them if they're too long, if they're all day, if it's noisy, and starts in the morning. She has very few in her neighborhood and does not know what it would be like if she lived in this neighborhood. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Steffan where she lives and was told she lives off Dempster betheen Judson and Hinman and they have the Y.O.U. event in front of their house. Everybody here should try to put themselves in the place of these resodents that have to tolerate 75% of their weekends wih an event in front of their house in the Page 12. morning. If they wanted to have a party in their yard or they were having a family reunion or anything. they would have to put up with this other event On top of the usual events that take place at tie takefront, there's the beats, windsurfing, swimmers, picnickers, and trien there are these events. She thinks it's a irde brt too much on the part of tt;e City to ask one neighborhood, a five -block area, to have live with the majority of these events on the lakefront. The Southeast Evanston Association discussed this matter and tried to come up with sur4^.,ons rather than just state the problem and the three concerns were of course the environmental impact not only the grass and the trees but walking through the park and having a silent tranquil walk through the park is also an environmental issue On a weekend if there is an event every morning you can't do that if mat s t; �e only time you can walk and have ma: tranovi€ walk through the park you're not going to get it in the summer in Evanston. not there in that park. There are so marry other parks along the lake their Board feels one of the solutions was there could be a rotation of where these staged everts that are not the residents of Evanston that are sponsoring these events. If we could possibly rotate the events that are staged that are outside that we say yes to unendingly. For example, there's a park south of Dempster that could be a staging park, that's Barnum Park. Where is also the Clark Square and Crown Park where there could be staged everts. James Park could probably take more staging events and there is also the Canal area. If the City is intent on not capping these events then they have to be democratically disbursed throughout the City not just having these Five blocks put up with this all summer, that's too much to ask It is her hope that we can also dispel the impression that the lakefront residents want to remove all the events from the lake and thinks Parks and Recreation could be more creative in moving it around the City. Jean Esch, Ladd Arboretum member, spoke on behalf of the Duck Pluck event and said apparently the Duck Pluck was the straw that broke the camel's back. There was a misunderstanding in that the initial event which was held in 2001 was promoted as a one-time affair. She does not believe that the Nature Center ever really thought about it as a one-time affair. Number one, it comes about a month or so after the other major events that go on at the lakefront Number hvo, its about two hours on a Sunday afternoon, from 3.00 to 5:00 p.m. What is interesting about is it that's an Evanston program that is put on for Evanston residents, their children, their grandchildren, and maybe cousins and others. It is not something that is run for people out of town. Her point it that its an event that is probably 100% Evanston residents, many of whom live here and are taxpayers and its true we don't live at the lakefront we don't live. She does not think the statement that was made at A & P W that the people at the lakefront wanted to have more control over that is not even something to be considered. They certainly suffer a lot of inconvenience in their private lives with what goes on all summer long at the take. We couldn't put this at another location. Staff had suggested to us that we go to Loveless Park, and one of the reasons we wouldn't do it at Loveless is because we use about 10 or 12 high school students who have to get in the water and with oars create the current so that the ducks can move around if you take a look at Loveless Lagoon she does not think that anyone would be delighted to have their high school kids walking around in that water. She thinks it can be arranged to happen long enough after the all the summer long events tt;at rt shouldn't be an inconvenience. if she lived far away from the lake, 5 blocks or so, she should be able to go down there with her kids and her grandchildren and have the Duck Pluck. Yes it was raising funds, but it raises fun for the kids in Evanston. We're talking about something that is run by what is essentially the Evanston Nature Center so it is not an out of town organization and we'd like to continue to do it. Alderman Newman wanted to sum this up from the perspective of where he sits on the committee. First of all just to clear up the Duck Pluck event once and for all, the Parks and Recreation staff had a meeting with about 15 residents and went over the entire 2001 schedule. They talked about what events should stay at the lakefront, and what events could be moved to other parks. It was represented to that group of people that there xas this new event the Duck Pluck, a one time event, and the people at the meeting said alright it's a one time event and its not going to be another annual event. When the event came back the staff was trying to put the event at Loveless as tney tried to keep their word and make sure ney were honestly representing caps through the community group they were meeting with. It was an unfortunate situation, but he thinks the staff did exactly the right thing and has been very responsive and fair in trying to deal with this issue. When he says fair and reasonable the parks staff is always advocating for usage of parks for these special events so there has been a great deal of compromise. Nobody had an agenda with the Duck Pluck, staff was trying to maintain good relations and keep their word and at the time they did the right thing. Al'tthough that group was disappointed we ending up overruling it anyway. One of the things to keep in perspective is not so much the special events but the totality of the circumstances which he can tell you the boat ramp alone has all types of issues. The ramp is locked at 9:00 p.m. but Mr. Gaynor said people who purchase a launch permit are given the combination to the lock and come in much later. Alderman Newman said there can be incidents at 1-00 or 2:00 a.m. on a weeknight which is part of life down at the ramp. We make 5400,000 a year on the beaches throughout the year and when the beaches are being used its virtually impossible to park in the neighborhood. When you make 5400,000 in a three month period from the beaches you have a lot of traffic there and what the neighborhood is trying to do is achieve some balance and rationality. We are trying to educate people who are hearing things such as people are tying to be restrictive. For example, one year during the Ricky Byrdsong event people were not able to get out of their houses at 9:00 a.m. and they had no notice of this. People were told by the police they could not leave. Alderman Newman asked David Jennings, Director of Public Works, if we could number the walks each year, this was the fifth walk that was coming and there was no idea in terms of managing all the walks. Alderman Newman would like all the groups on this list to be notified that they have to apply to have their special event by application tumed in by March 1" . He would also like to see that these events that were originally supposed Page 13. to come to Human Services that have been going to A & P W mainly because sometimes Human Services is not meeting as the staff needs to get approval. come back to Human Services. If everybody is notified that was here last year that they need to get their applrcation in by March 1" at least maybe we would be able to have a meeting where we would approve 6, 7, or 8 of these and the r-6eighbors would be able to make one meeting to come and hear what is going on and not be surprised during me mvddie cf the summer when all these events are taking place. The current application is for 90 days prior to the event Mr. Gaynor asked if we are specifically talking about lakefront events, to which Alderman Newman responded, anyrning that reeds approval of the Council but he is mainly talking about the lakefront He wanted to know if it would be doaNe to have a March or April Human Services meeting and bring in everyone and give notice then we can see what we're doing Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if *rat he is hearing from Alderman Newman is that we need to manage events so we do not over burden lakefront residents. Right now it seems that we have a process of a conscious effort on the part of the Recreation Department to do that He is not sure whether it is a March 112 application deadline that does that or an identification of a process by which we go back to identify what events are reasonable to have that can only happen a the lakefront because of the facalaies. In 1989 you talked about an agreement where you could have the two major arts festivals, starlight concerts and the 4" of July events. That was your agreement at that time, things have changed but your needs remain and there is currently more pressure on the lakefront. The fact that they apply in March, if you have a group of 20 applicants who apply in March its still unreasonable to have 20 events there. When the application process begins March 10 and everybody in the community comes, and if your committee outvotes it and the event goes on anyway it is still a major burden to the community. He would like to discuss how do we balance the need, there is a need a resource there that people want to utilize. You are absolutely right it creates a major inconvenience in your life if 75 of your weekends are occupied by events. The question is what is the right thing to do, if we can talk about that then we can implement the process of doing whatever that it is that is reasonable. Alderman Feldman thinks this is a burden that staff cannot handle by themselves, nor should they be asked to do that. We have to set some guidelines rega.,ding the number of events that occur, the nature of those events, and a system to distribute more and more of the events to the parks. He knows that's a value that has been talked about already and is disturbed that the idea of an instdut oral memory seems to have faded and you are right he did sit on that committee. Not only did we discuss the number of events but we also discussed the number of vendors at each event One of the concems at that time was not that the events were multiplying but the events were getting bigger and bigger. He thought there is a limit on them, to which Mr. Gaynor said they have a limit of the number of food vendors for both festivals, and the number of artist's exhibitors. We have maintained that number at least the 5 years he has been here. He was disturbed by one of the things you said as it was a very inadvertent remark and would just like clarification, was it t1at we move them to a neighborhood park if we can. He does not understand that. Mr. Gaynor said first of all we have 6 concerts, the 4'" of July, and two festivals, 19 events at the lakefront this year and 9 of them are sort of City sponsored so we would be dealing with 10 events d you tried to follow along with Alderman Newman's suggestion by March 1 n. It's not the Parks and Recreation Department that is making the decisions or recommendations. Two years ago the City Manage appointed a Special Events Committee for the expressed purpose of managing special events. A neighborhood party might occur that was represented as a block party and spilled over to a park as it might have grown from 50 peeple to 150 people. The Police did not know about that and the Fire Department didn't know they couldn't get down tkie street. The City Manager said he would like somebody from every department to serve on the Special Events Committee so there is a check off. The Heatth Department is involved if there is food being they can go out and inspect to make sure the food is safe. The Police Department, Fire Department, Parks, Public Works are involved in their sarwation as well as their traffic. There are a number of people that sit at the table and review all of the special event activities especially the major events and those that are at the lakefront. For the most part those events come to the community this year and as Alderman Newman indicated because of the sporadic meetings of this committee moved them to the A & PW Committee because these requests for approval of events were happening fairly quickly and they needed advanced approval in order to start their advanced publicity for their events. This was who!e program that the City Manager put in place to specifically manage these events and in the last two years there has been a considerable improvement in managing these events. Now everybody in the City departments have to sign off to make sure that they have an awareness and that they approve One of the issues they had this year with the Aids Bike Ride was trying to get the folks down the street and across Sheridan in a safe way to the staging area. There are other concerns than where we put portapotties, there's the Police concem about traffic control, there's the Fire Department about what streets can be blocked off, but he does not want to belabor this. Alderman Feldman said that did not answer his question, the question is what does it mean when we say you move them to another area if we can. Mr. Gaynor said it depends on traffic, it depends on the event. We have an event that starts in Milwaukee and winds up in Chicago, the request comes in that they want come down as straight a line as possibia and that takes it through he lakefront parks they come down Sheridan. Could we take them out to the Canal, maybe, it may be that really messes up and creates more of a problem for the City than taking them straight down Sheridan. We look at the total situation of what the request is, then see if its possible to move not because of them not wanting to move but whars In the best interest of the City or how we can best accommodate them Alderman Feldman said that a lai.:dable Page 14. goal but he can envision 20 applications in addition to what you have now that fit into that category that somehow the logic of the event means that they're on the lakefront. Do we ever say no, Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, we have just about maxed out on those events along the lakefront because we have required the races, or the bike rides to be on Sundays. In addition to that because we are trying to manage the events and spread them out more around the City as new events come in we are sitting and taXing with the organizers saying we prefer they do something else. Alderman Feldman, said what he was trying to figure out is one. whether or not the current situation that is there now that we had last year is acceptable to the neighborhood as it stands right now without any increase, and two, whether or not when somebody comes in we say this the park that we have available for you to come into, you're welcome to do that thank you very much. If that's not acceptable then go to Wilmette or someplace else. Do we do that? Mr Gaynor said we have, we have given folks an ultimatum. Again, when you have a 3-Day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer they're going to start up in Wisconsin and they come on doom, if we say can you do this somewhere on the west side of the City you're going to nave them in front of the Council. We know that if we turn somebody down they have the right of appeal, we will bring it forward to the City Council through whichever committee and say were not recommending this and these are the reasons why, then its up to the City Council to make the final decision. But we have certain activities that are walks and races that just don't work going around in a particular park. Alderman Feldman said accept that one of the reasons we set a limit was to avoid those kinds of decisions. Alderman Newman interjected we did not set a limit, to which Alderman Feldman said we set a limit many years ago. Alderman Newman said there was no set limit, what we said was events over 100 people would come to this committee. It is open ended and the events come here for approval of anything over 100 people and right now if 75 events come and nobody objects 75 events can be approved. The City events that are designated that have limits on the number of vendors and then any special event over 100 people have to come to this committee. Alderman Feldman said what happens with that kind of a policy is each individual has to be judged. After a certain point, it is judged on its means and whether or not we have enough events. These all have merit then the question as somebody would say this is a political decision, its no longer a decision of management it's a decision that this one we will accept and the next one we won't for whatever reason. If they have a stronger constituency, if somebody knows somebody, it's kind of sloppy that way. Is there an actual limit? Mr. Gaynor said there is no limit, however, we are managing it because we will not let our environment of the park system deteriorate because of overuse. At a certain point it could occur, but it hasn't reached that point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Mr. Gaynor should not be on trial on u,at issue, that's a policy decision that has to be made by the Council in terms of what's adequate, how do we balance the interest of the community in utilization of that park of the lakefront and the interest of those who live there. Once we have reached that kind of balance through input of the various factors then we implement that. Right now you have reduced the number of vendors at the large events, he noticed it is not as active as it use to be, some of the events are being distributed to other places. The question is •what can be done, what's a proper balance. The City sponsored events are events that the community has said okay we're willing to embrace those, if he understands correctly, that is the starlight concerts, the big festival and the 40 of Ju,y and then the 10 other events. What among these events can we move to other parts of the City, can we hold at other parks along the lakefront, those are the issues to elevate the kind of burden that people are expressing that they now suffer and if we can begin to address those things to him then the process follows. Among these we have only 3, 4, 5 spots available, additional spots for Dawes Park, Centennial Park, etc., you apply by March 1" and we consider you, if you have not applied by March 1g then you are not in the running but we know that there is a limitation in terms of the number of additional events we will hold by the lakefront. The question to him is what are these additional events, what can be moved, and those that cannot be moved, why not. We can then begin to really shoot the arrow at the target. We should look at this and then come back to process. Alderman Newman very much appreciated what Alderman Jean -Baptiste said and just wanted him to get a sense cf the reason he mentions March 1", what has been happening over the past 5 to 7 years is the events for approval over 100 people for the walks, trickle in over a 7 or B month period. There is no way to keep track of them nor is there any way for the neighborhood to know. The neighborhood is organized and at one meeting there were 15 people in attendance, 4 of whom are here tonight, that met with Mr. Gaynor. They want to be kept informed and want to have the ability, when we approve an event to have input as perhaps there are things that we can do to make it better. For example, in running these City events we have probably the most dangerous traffic curve in the City, at Davis Street, right in middle cf the event and have to work with the staff to have off duty policemen there. This is the worst possible place to have special events because of the speed, the blind curves, etc. One of the reasons he serves on this committee is because of the lakefront issues and he wants to be able to give this neighborhood a chance to be present and know what's coming for the summer. The way the system has been set up the past five years is the events trickle in over a six month period and he would like to see if we do this March 1" application, then he can give the neighbors and the Southeast Evanston Association the opportunity to come to the approval meeting to be able to know what is coming this summer and be able to make their suggestions, which he thinks will be very helpful. This is not to say that the staff has not been working with us because they have been and we appreciate their efforts. We also appreciate the sensitivity of the other members of the Council. He thinks everybody knows it was one member of the Council, but what we wanted to do was educate people about what is going on at the lakefront and really make the point that this is not about limiting and keeping people out, it is about managing and making the neighborhood livable to also be a place where you can have events. He thinks we Page 15. have done that tonight and you wilt come back and talk to us at some point The March 1a notice can be handled here and we will have a calendar that can tie distributed. The people in the neighbor now do not get notice of when these events take place, sometimes they do but not consistently. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor if he could come back to this cc*nmittee's next meetin, mtn the response to issues he raised and also a response to the proposal that we tried to establisti and have people app! f by March V versus what we had, 90 days prior to the event and see whether or not that creates any issues. Mr. Gaynor said most of these events are run by volunteers and a lot of times that organizing group doesn't have the lead person who is gong to run it but they can at least send a letter of intent saying they want to run the event and give the dates and times. At a very minimum we might at least get that infcrmation. We can take a look and see how that results Alderman Newman said he very much appreciates that the committee means well and has spent time and knows the neighborhood does too because its just a matter of trying to get it all together Alderman Jean-Baptste said this will again be on the agenda at the Human Services Committee's next meeting. on December 2nd, and invited those in attendance to comeback and hear the discussions because we will identify the specific events and things of that nature. He also suggested that in looking at the additional events he does not think anybody should have an entitlement to have their events there for the next 100 years because we may want to consider locaticns if events can be held elsewhere, but you have groups that are open to a one time event by the lake, all options will be considered. IX. ITEMS FOR THE NEXT MEETING AGENDA Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted one of the items for the next agenda will be Affordable Housing. Looking through the minutes those issues, raised at the last meeting, were not even on the table for consideration. He is suggesting that we have some continuity of issues so that when we look at the lakefront we address it until we come to some kind of results. He does not know what we will be doing with regards of review of the Recreation Board's Goals and Ob;ectives nor does he think we need to return to that issue right now. We still have to work on the Current Branch Library poticy. Affordable Housing is something we need to keep going over until we identify where we're going and to what ends it is channeled. Alderman Feldman said he would return to this issue only if we can have substantive things to ado to the conversation. He does not want to come here and ask the same questions again. Alderman Jean -Baptiste sa-,d that is why he is suggesting we consider our issues as recurrent issues where we develop a vision and try to put in place a process to recommend that. Alderman Feldman stated that is fine except it turns and changes only on informatics. Alderman Jean - Baptiste remarked we don't have a disagreement, do we, to which Alderman Feldman responded even the presentation given here was half editorial. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not into an adversarial relationship v, th members of our staff, he's into trying to see if we can resolve things that we have as obstacles, to which Alderman Feldman agreed but said we need information and he was told the staff was here today to give us information. Alderman .lean -Baptiste stated what he said was since staff is here let them give us some information because he had no discussions with them prior to this meeting. Again, he is responding to the question what do we have on the agenda. So far a .s t!ia lakefront special events policy, affordable housing as a recurring theme until we figure out where this ought to fit. besides other items for future consideration. This week he is meeting with Donna Stuckert and Mark Franz about the issue cf the radio stations for public information, which will probably be on the agenda beside other items Mr. Terry said he would anticipate the Mental Health Board will be ready to come with their agency `;acing allocations for the committee's review. Alderman Newman added we also have the follow up on the Next Theater. F,Iso, Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question about the lease at the Arts Center and he suggested having them on tree agenda. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought perhaps the Legal Department ought to give a sense as to how long the lease is at the Arts Center. Alderman Newman said it would just be educational to talk about the background of that lease and .hat they do. Mr. Gaynor is saying we also have to follow up with the Next Theater. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added v+e s, .:, ulo discuss what we give them by the market value of the utilization of that building and horn this lease is in operatics A;--e man Newman said the exact relationship is that we also maintain the building. Alderman Feldman asked if there ,s an &ssue before this committee for the Performing Arts Center as a result of the coalition of the Light Opera Works on Cer.wal Street at the Evanston Theater, and was told that issue was before the Economic Development Committee. Alderman Feldman said he received a letter from their chair stating they gave up the project altogether. Mr. Gaynor sa4 he will have a recommendation for the Next Theater for the next Human Services Committee meeting. X. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:02 p.m. Respectfully submittecj, awa�l Audrey Trot y, Departmftoflth and Human Services Page 16. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, November 4, 2002 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Jean -Baptiste, Feldman, and Newman STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Paula Haynes, Jim Wolinski , Neat Ney, Sally Schwarziose, Connie Heneghan, Maureen Barry. Bob Dornecker, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Ann Rainey, Township Supervisor Pat Vance, Jane Grover (Mental Health Board), Janet Webb (Recreation Board), John Sagan, Jean Perry, Steve Prout, Jonathan Fischel (Library Board), Holly Reynolds, Tom O'Brien. Beth Steffan, Jean Esch (Ladd Arboretum), Michele Rodriguez (Interfaith Housing) PRESIDING: Alderman Jean -Baptiste 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 7:03 p.m. If. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETINGS OF AUGUST a AND SEPTEMBER 30' 2002 Alderman Feldman moved for anaroval, seconded by Alderman Newman, minutes of both meetings were unanimously anoroved 3-0 . Alderman Jean Baptiste called attention to the minutes of August 5°t, 2002 where questions were raised regarding how the Township determines the granting of funds for Emergency Housing and what rules and regulations govern those decisions. He asked if Supervisor Pat Vance could respond to some of the issues raised and specifically referred to rules regarding Emergency Assistance in terms of allocation of funds plus clarification of other issues. The funds referred to dealt with Section 8 and the Housing Authority. Ms. Vance thought the question referred to how the Emergency Assistance Program operates. The Emergency Assistance Program and services offered are supposed to be for extenuating circumstance in emergency situations which we can possibly prevent or eliminate in three areas, housing, utilities, and food. In terms of housing it is usually preventing an eviction. It is not our policy nor will it be to subsidize Section 8. Section 8 housing vouchers go directly to the landlord. The properties that were involved on the two instances in questions were properties that are actually owned by Housing Authority as we do have a few of those properties scattered around the area. In regard to the two properties in question there were extenuating circumstances that were looked at, one involving a person being diagnosed with a debilitating illness being able to back and forth to work and getting his disability benefit into play. In that particular situation they found the person had periodically been behind. The $500 amount we assisted with was in addition to what each one of these people atso had to come up with. Looking at the situation the circumstances surrounding was a possible eviction. The other case involved a mother who was notable to go to work due to circumstances dealing with a molestation involved with her daughter which went on for a period of time and presented a drop in the source of income. Depending upon the circumstances, we are not in the practice of paying for a person who comes in with a Section 8 voucher who has not paid their part of it. We look at what the circumstances are, it may be that person lost a job and there is going to be a penod of time before Section 8 will readjust. So far we have not paid of any of those, they are taken up with the Housing Authorny. In terms of utility payments, these payments are made in order to prevent the disconnecting of the utility or to help get the utility back on. We have had some people who encountered having no water and in most of these cases anytime we have an emergency service payment it is also coupled with money that has been paid by the person. One of the key things in terms of addressing an emergency is to make sure that once it's addressed to see if the person will be able to maintain it afterwards. If they're not going to be able to maintain it then they will be back in the same predicament, you have not have addressed the situation, and the emergency will be an ongoing situation. Alderman Feldman remarked that is an interesting criteria, if somebody sees their way out of it then there's a positive response and if they don't see their way out of it then they're hopeless and they don't get it. Ms. Vance said for example in some cases we have dealt with if a person comes in to us with an electric bill of S2,000 we only pay S125, the Electric Company is not going to turn their electric back on for the S125, what we have to do is see if there are other community resources they can pool together plus their money, plus the $125. Alderman Feldman asked what if the electric bill would be covered by your payment and as you saw the situation the prospect for future electric bills would be very dim. Ms. Page 1. Vance said they would pay the electhc Ul because they may not have an income and there are other programs and services where they would hope they caitcl get a lob Alderman Feldman asked if it is really that with your money you, want something to happen that creates some kind of relief rather than just pay somebody one -tenth of it and the client remains in the same situation. Ms. Vance sa:d a lot of times these small amounts may do it other times it will take working and networking with otner organizations to pool together different resources to address that particular need. Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Vance d stie would suggest that people in need come to you before the situation is monumental. Ms. Vance said anybody .n social service ties to make a suggestion that people come before it gets to a drastic point Sometimes some t{pe of rnterventxn can happen because there are cases where it can be worked out with the landlord especially if the person has been a good tenant and if they pay a certain amount they will allow the remainder to be paid on a delinquency basis and w-crk it out Those types of situations have been worked out to help people stay in their housing. We try to do what d will take to keep them in their housing or keep their utilities on, but in most cases you will not find enough resources to pay the large bills we're getting, Alderman Jean -Baptiste brought up for rar5cat►on one more issue that was raised, the payment made to Park University Enterprises by the Township. At the time this question arose Mr. Hilliard did not know who that entity was. Ms. Vance said she just got this question and did not look it up, but Park University Enterprises is where we have all these different mortgage companies who are holding properties What she will do is get a response out to this committee tomorrow because they do have a number of different entitles who manage property in Evanston. Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the August, September and October 2002. Township monthly bills. Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Newman. motion unanimousiv aoproved f3-01. 1 Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Vance what happens with the people whose names appear month after month on the roil. He understands the Township has a training program for these people. Ms. Vance responded at the General Assistance office there are three different tracks a person can get on. We have some people who are on pending SSI benefits, they cannot work. Then we have another group of people participating in the Job Club or on work sites, as some people are stationed in not -for -profit work s^.es doing 64 hours. We have some people in the Job Club involved in resume writing and looking at ways of trying to get employment The last time we checked the rolls we were concentrating in looking at things we can do with ex -felons, we have 22 on the roil and because of their felons they are hard to place. We are trying to find ways to help them and get them into different things. The people on the roles are at different levels and we are always trying to get them off the roll FV. A DISCUSSION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING AS AN EVANSTON VALUE Alderman Newman wanted to point out that this item, housing, is really a P & D agenda item. As a matter of fact at their last meeting they had a report to start a Task Force on Affordable Housing Set Aside from the Housing Commission. Under the Council rules Housing falls under P & D as it is a very common strategy in dealing with affordable housing related to zoning. SomeSmes you can give additional zoning allowances to try to encourage affordable housing which is why is fits in there for which there are pro and con arguments. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said to a certain extent he tends to agree with Alderman Newman as some aspects have to do with zoning and the policies regarding the rote of new development in addressing housing probably has to do with P&D. He thinks housing is a Human Services issue and falls in this category. If you're talking about affordable housing in general as a value for the community, then how that gets played out, whether you have to address it on a level of zoning, whether you're addressing it when negotiation with new developers to try to get them to address this particular issue, that kind of negotiation can take place at P & D. He thinks Human Services is a natural place for the issue of affordable housing to fall under because most of the time when Interfaith Housing or other entities are addressing housing issues for the most part they address them here or through CD8G It seems to him there is an overlap in many different areas. The question is where do we place the discussion of polity regarding affordable housing. He thinks it starts here first and then gets implemented into the other realms Alderman Newman remarked the whole point of this task force, which will have members of the P & D Committee on rt is to be looking at affordable housing in Evanston and the exact nature of this agenda. Alderman Jean-Sapbste asked if this is a brand new task force, to which Alderman Newman responded this is a task force that was recommended by dv Housing Commission to be put together. It was discussed at their last meeting and he thinks Alderman Kent will be a member of this task force but does not know what other members of P&D will be on it. There are several housing programs they have in terms of rehab loan programs under the Housing Department that reports to P&D. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought in light of the recent hearing regarding the Fair Housing Ordinance addressing source of income as a protected class he felt it was important that we engage in some discussion as to what the essence of that was about He noticed in the minutes of the August 5m , 2002 meeting, we talked about this ordinance as a toot towards achieving one of the tactics to be used to achieve affordable housing, He felt we needed to come to some kind of a position on how we saw that ordinance, whether or not we want to pursue it, whether we do not pursue it in the form it was presented how do we pursue the whole issue of Section 8, what were the issues that were raised, in our hearing how can we address those issues to make sure that we make Section 8 serve the best interest of Page 2. the community, all of which is related to affordable housing in Evanston. We were engaged in that discussion because we were concerned about affordable housing in Evanston and therefore it is an important discussion for us to have as Human Services and even it that task force has to extend out and take into account our issues and every share information with us it is important that we discuss affordable housing as a strategy and look at the various things that come before us in their proper context. We can talk further down the line and maybe the Rules Committee can offer some clarification as to where that particular issue should sit on a consistent basis. For now we have been through a major hearing and we need to look at that and determine how we go forward As Alderman Newman indicated the task force is new and it is a good thing that it is being put together because in Evans on he is not sure we have made an assessment of our needs for affordable housing and that is something we need to do Secondly, we need to look at what it is that we offer. We offer some level of help at the level of CDBG; we offer some level of help through not -for -profit agencies that we fund; we set a precedent at 1930 Ridge when we negotiated the 10X of the apartments be set aside. We have our Department of Community Development addressing a number of issues such as the First Time Home Buyers Program, the Rehab Program; and CDBG funds CEDA to do the Handyman Program. There are a number of things that we are doing and the Section 8 issue has to be put in this same basic perspective. We need to try to address what our needs are, how are we addressing them, what is the role of Section 8. and pursu" of the objective of affordable housing, what is broken about it, and how we can fix it. We need to come to some kind of conclusion in that context. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted in the minutes of September 30" in terms of the Section 8 issues raised there were a number of issues that raised, some very supportive of the protection of those who have Section 8 vouchers and other positions felt if we had such an ordinance it would create a tit of problems in the City of Evanston. Although we did not have unity and he does not think we will have unity to advance the ordinance at this particular point time he does not think we should not throw away the baby with the bath water. We have to find a way to rectify the problems that the Section 8 program itself poses perhaps through some workshops, further discussions with landlords and tenants, and at the same time improve on whatever it is we are doing through the Housing Advocacy Department of the Human Relations Commission to make sure there is a coming together of the landlords and the tenants in order to best utilize Section 8, because Section 8 is going to be here we can't throw it away. He's putting this issue of how we can move forward to address Section 8 in the context of affordable housing on the table, Alderman Feldman said he is very much interested in addressing the ills that were articulated by people hesitant to enroll in the program and those ills they said that prevented them from doing it or warranted their hesitancy. If there are things we could do to mitigate some of that resistance that is exactly what we should do. There are people that feel there are serious issues with that program that prevent them from having any interest at all in joining it. If there are such issues those should be addressed and if it means addressing it at the program's genesis that's one thing, but if it also means we can do something in the community that might do that then we have to do that as well. His feeling is, which he said at that time, he has no interest in forcing somebody to join a program that they don't want to join but he certainly would do everything he could to make the program such that more people would want to join and not have any hesitancy in doing so. If th+afs the kind of program you're thinking about bringing landlords and tenants together to try to solve some of those problems, he would be happy to both discuss it and support ii Alderman Newman was not sure what exactly we are trying to solve at this point. Some of the testimony we got on statistics show that there are 1400 or 1500 Section 8 certificates in northern Cock County, from Howard to Lake Cook Road, and 1 DDD of those certificates are in Evanston. Obviously we have more multi family housing but a lot of the problem here is regional. A lot of people in Evanston have a concern about Evanston being the regional savior on all types of social problems, a lot of which needs to be addressed by what other communities are doing in the area of even having multi family tenant housing in their city. When one thinks about the population numbers this is an amazing statistic. Therefore, he is does not know what problem the ordinance on the table is supposed to solve nor does he know what problem we have the ability to solve. What we heard at the public hearing was landlords throughout the City, both African American and white, had a problem with the federal agency and how they had to relate to that program. He does not know that we have the ability, at this time, to deal with some of the aspects. There have been some suggestions as to how we can go about doing this, or to deal with those perceptions from the people in Evanston who are in the business of renting housing. He is not sure what we're trying to do here, do we have a problem with displacements in some parts of the City, and is that going on. Are the people being displaced because of condominium conversions and can't stay in Evanston, which is the problem he was thinking was possibly happening here. What exactly are we trying to get at, because he would suggest to you no matter what happened on this ordinance the rent structures in Evanston are very high. Most of them far surpass the Section 8 vouchers. To him we really have to look at this in terms of Evanstonians. He's not looking to solve North Chicago's housing problems but thinks we need to identify through more than just hearing "I saw something in the newspaper' or " I heard this" or "people have told me-. We need to find out what the problem really is for Evanstonians and then try to react to that, through any method not just this ordinance. Also, when we use the term affordable what are we talking about. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we have to come to some kind of definition of what that means, but when the question he raised up front, and was just again stated by Alderman Newman, what is the nature of the problem and what do we Page 3. offer now, is the general issue. What he proposed to staff is that we find away to keep this issue on the agenda whether through the task force or through Human Services so that we can begin to address the issue of affordable housing in a way that is consistent and comprehensive so we know where we're going If we're just not pu=ng together a task force, and he knows this issue has been on the tab,e for a long time, then we need to address it in a comprehensive, unborn manner that can achieve whatever our objectve is and right now its unclear as to what that is Coming back to Section 8 dunng the hearings there were a lot of issues accressed, even those landlords who are wjltng to rent to Section 8 tenants are hesitant because there seems to to a problem with the agency itself in terms of certain issues, whether its inspections or payments, and at the same time a lot of people had a particular perception of those renters who have Secbon 8 vouchers. There was a particular prejudice against that group of folks that had caused a lot of landlords to say they are not going to rent to these people He knir+vs that the Human Relations Commission has been involved in doing some workshops with some of the tenants and understands that some landlords are also involved with the Human Relations Commission addressing their issues trying to get familiar with the Section 8 program The representative from Section 8 was very clear as to what the objeF. ves were and what she perceived some of the problems were when she gave her presentation at the September 30 hearing. She appeared to have been willing to work with the City to address the problems. There are certain things we will not be able to get rid of, we do have people with Section 8 vouchers, the quesbon is how do we troubleshoot the problems that we have so that particular process of people accessing affordable housing is not impeded or blocked and does not become a pariah but instead works smoothly and all parties are able to troubleshoot their issues. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Human Relations Commission Director to help us direct that Alderman Newman noted the real blocking is not going on in Evanston, out of 1500 certificates 1000 are in Evanston and all over the metropolitan areas they are not building housing. The real problem is all over and Evanston has obviously found a way to do a hundred times better than our neighbors in this area. He is not saying there are not problems sonwwhere for Section 8 tenants, as he is sure there are, but he's not sure what we're trying to do. He's not looking to expand that number of Section 8 certificates from 1000 to 1500 because there is a lot of service not just from the City but especially the schools that will have to be provided. He'd like to identify some of the problems that Evanstonians are having. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is talking about our universe here, he's not talking about opening the floodgates for everybody with a Section 8 voucher to come into Evanston. Apparently from our hearing there is a big problem with Section 8 and how do we take care of Evanston residents who have Section 8 vouchers and what they are facing. He is asking the staff to share with us their perceptions, what they're doing about it, and what else we should be looking at in order to trouble shoot this. At this point in time he is not addressing the Fair Housing Ordinance, he's trying to deal with the essence of what this is all about, which is to deal with the issue of affordable housing in Evanston. Alderman Feldman said one of the purposes of the Task Force is to determine what the needs of affordable housing is in this community. When we talk about it as a value, its like saying lets have a discussion on human decency and our ability to get along with one another. Affordable housing is a part of any compassionate society. We understand that once we get beyond that what are we talking about 500 units a year, 100 units a year, how many people in this town as a result of being displaced who have Section 8 certificates can't find housing. Is it 10, 15, 100 a year. The next question is are we talking about Evanston residents who actually have certificates and are living in Section 8 housing and are displaced or we talking about other residents. if you have people here that are going to inform us about that he would like to hear that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the person who is probably closest to that issue to help us understand it better. Ms. Haynes said she did not know that she has all the answers to your questions but will tell you that she works with the Housing Authority and is probably on the phone with them a couple times a week dealing with issues and concerns. Since the public hearing a lot questions came up and one of the questions was, by approving the amendment it would open the floodgates and all these people would come to Evanston. She had them take a look at the section of voucher holders to find out where they were before they came to Evanston and to her surprise 80% of them were already Evanston residents while they were on the waiting list to get a certificate. She thinks we're talking about our folks not necessarily talking about those 900 people who immigrated from Chicago or someplace else. They were bom and bred in this community, their children were already in the schools because they lived here at the time. The motivation for the ordinance was simply to provide these people the same opportunity anybody would have to apply for a unit. Alderman Newman inquired regarding the information Ms. Haynes has showing that 80% of the current Section 8 certificate holders in Evanston were born here and had their children here. He wanted to know where that information is, to which Ms. Haynes said that is with the Housing Authority and they shared that information with her. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. Haynes was told this over the telephone or was she shown statistics. Ms. Haynes said they talked on the telephone and asked if she could get it in writing. Alderman Newman said he would be very interested in seeing some backup data for that and how they came to that rather than just hearing somebody over the telephone throw out that statistic, he would like to see it as it is one of the things we are going to study this year. Ms Haynes said she will certainly ask for that information. Page 4. Alderman Rainey, from the audience, suggested that Ms. Haynes should also get that very same information for the residents of the Housing Authority senior buildings. She would be very curious to see where some of those people lived before they moved into affordable housing in the senior buildings. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this discussion is intended to be the beginning of the analysis in the study of this process and there are other things that we need to get information on not only if these people strictly from Evanston but how many voucher holders do we have in Evanston and what is going on with them when they are searching for housing. Are they running into difficulties as a general rule, are they finding housing, and if they are not finding housing where do they go. Since Ms. Haynes deals in the area of housing he asked if the study could be broadened to discuss housing needs in general. There are senior citizens who may have lost their homes, there are others who do not qualify or have not yet received their Section 8 vouchers and are waiting for them. What is the problem, are these people finding housing in Evanston readily. Also, as a companion to that what are the things that we have in place to address affordable housing for people. He had listed a number of them previously, whether it is the non-profit agencies, the Section 8 vouchers, or other programs we have through the Department of Community Development. It would be very helpful if we could get a sense of what the needs are and how we are meeting the needs. Alderman Feldman said he would also like to know the number of condominium conversions there were over the past couple of years and certainly the recent conversions, that were buildings that housed anywhere from 1 to 100% of the occupants as Section 8 tenants to know the possible rate of displacement of people who hold certificates Next he would like to know whether the figure that we're talking about are the people residing in the City of Evanston that hold certificates, that actually have Section 8 housing or are we talking about the number of people that hold Section 8 certificates including those that currently don't have Section 8 leases. Of those 900 people how many actually have Section 8 certificates with Section 8 housing. Then he would like to how many other certificates are out there that people have that don't have Section 8 leases that can't find housing. He does not know how many are, and would like to know who would know that Ms. Haynes said she is going to start with the Housing Authority to see if they know the amount as she thinks she can ask them for the number of vouchers they have issued in Evanston to Evanston people and they would know whether or not that voucher is being used in Evanston or in another community, if it has expired, if it is still valid, and if the people are still are still looking for housing. Alderman Newman wanted to follow-up on the displacement and asked it we could get the number of units that have been converted to condos and the addresses of where those units have been converted as that would also be helpful. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved to close the discussion and table Ordinance 80.0.02 and if necessary return to this at some other time. Alderman Newman said he would be interested in the possibility of having a discussion in P 8 D when Alderman Jean -Baptiste is available to attend to talk to developers about what they see as the possibilities and also have Ms. Aiello convene a group of what they see as the future of incorporating affordable housing units in future development and what are the pros and cons. There are all types of issues because in Evanston we want everything in a development, we want good materials, a good appearance, sufficient parking, and whatever else is needed. The Council tried to get 20 affordable units at 1900 Ridge and ended up with 10 and one of the issues was the community did not want additional height In every development project there is a lot of interest and a lot of people to please. We need to have a discussion with the people doing housing and he would be very happy to participate in and get that discussion going. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is exactly one of the things he thinks needs to be taken into account We need to use all the tools available to us to achieve that objective of affordable housing which is also something we need to define as it relates to Evanston. Alderman Jean-Baotiste recalled his motion to close the discussion and table Ordinance 80-"2 and if necessary return to it some other time. Motion seconded by Alderman Feldman and unantmousty passed (3-0). Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he sees affordable housing as a standing agenda item for this committee and it will be interfaced at the Rules Committee level to see where that issue should sit on a consistent basis. We will collaborate to the extent that we can to make sure that we address this from a long-term perspective and try to develop a policy, taking into account what our needs are and what we are doing in the first place. Alderman Newman said we should communicate with Ms. Aiello to try to pull this meeting of developers together to talk about what the possibilities are. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added as part of the process of getting this information he would like to have the not -for - profit agencies in Evanston as the principal objective of affordable housing to also sit in on this discussion interface vrith them and address what theyre doing, what they see, and how do they see the problem. He would like to get everybodys views to have a comprehensive policy in the program of work to address that value. V. A REVIEW OF THE RECREATION BOARD GOALS AND OBJECTIVES Mr. Gaynor introduced Janet Webb, current President of the Recreation Board. Ms. Webb said the Recreation Board held two retreats in the fall of 2002. During these meetings the discussion focused on two areas, the role of the Board and the activities of the Board that we would undertake for the 2002 - 2003 year. In our discussion on the role of the Board we talked about the Board as being advocates for recreation, conduits for community input ombudsmen, Page 5. governance, oversight to staff hiring, and budget In looking at that list of things we decided that there were two things that we really wanted to focus on this year and those two things are going to be advocates for recreation and a conduit for community input. The Recreation Board fulhf understands that Council has the plat of activities you must look at, we also understand that for the Recreation Department of Southeast Evanston is a top priority for our Board. However, we understand that may not be the top priority for you but we feel as our role as advocates it is important that we continue to research ways to meet the needs of the Southeast Evanston Community. it is our goal to open lines of communication with Ridgeville and to continue our efforts to improve recreation in that area. In the role of ombudsmen we are looking at other ways to involve more people into the input of the activities that are going on and in looking at that we are planning in either December or January to have a Town Meeting to focus on women's soft bait. We are going to look at one particular area and invite all of the people who are involved in that area to be a part of the conversation to talk about their concerns and issues of the program and see if there are ways we can provide a better program. We are going to start with women's softball and will continue that list with various other activities through the year The reason we wanted to come here tonight was to let you know what the Board is doing to keep you aware of our activities and let you know that if at a future date you would like to schedule a meeWV with the entire Board to talk about this issue we are available. We just want to make sure we have an ongoing communication with this group to let you know what we as the Recreation Board are pursuing. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the committee has the minutes of the retreat to which Ms. Webb said she just shared with you the minutes of the retreat but can have them typed and given to the Committee. Alderman Newman made a reference to the Recreation Board's list of $100,000,000 worth of projects presented a couple of years ago and thought the Recreation Board needs to share that with the City s top budget people, find out what the City's constraints are in the near future and go back in your list of $100,000,000 and give us an idea as to what the highest priorities are out that entire list There is a lot of competition for the capital improvement dollars which is paid almost exclusively out of property taxes. His view right now is that Parks and Recreation is doing as well as it can possibly be doing considering the competition for those limited dollars and he would argue that compared to other communities around us we are not spending nearly as much in parks areas but the limitations are real and it would be very helpful if we could take a look at that entire list as he knows some things are being taken off. Alderman Newman asked when the study on the Crown Center will be ready. Mr. Gaynor responded probably next January or February. Alderman Newman knows that this will eventually be going to A & PW, but it would be interesting for us to get a presentation here also to see where we are and what people think. That would be a good time to meet with the entire Board. Alderman Feldman said what he would urge, which he has urged before for you to keep the vision of what the recreation aspirations are in this community and the unmet aspirations and how they could be executed. We always have to be reminded of not just what we have but what we might have and what other communities are doing as they see their needs being met. He would look to the Board to be that kind of presenter, have that kind of vision of excellence and progress to keep our parks and recreational facilities constantly on the upgrade and if we should ever become wealthy dramatically - improve. Ms. Wells thought the Board feels very strongly that is their role and they will continue to serve in that manner. Alderman Jean -Baptiste referred to Ms. Wells' indication that two of the main objectives they would like to work on are recreation for Southeast Evanston and women's softball. He asked what is the assessment of the needs of West Evanston or is it perceived that Robert Crown Center provides that need. Ms. Welts asked if Alderman Jean -Baptiste is referring to Southwest Evanston to which Alderman .lean-Sapuste said he is referring to West Evanston from Oakton to Church down from McDaniel, around the 2n4 Ward area, not the entire ward but just that section of that ward. He asked Ms. Webb 0 she perceives the need of that particular neighborhood to be served by Robert Crown, Ms. Webb said they have felt from the studies taken place the feeling has been that area did have facilities that were available, Robert --- Crown, and the area that did not have brick and mortar is Southeast Evanston the one place where we are currently doing our program out of a trailer. That is the area of biggest concern and has been for the Recreation Board for at least 7 o 8 years. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is the closest recreational center to that location and was told Robert Crown. Alderman Newman mentioned he attended a FAM basketball game and each team has about 20 kids, which means kids 11 through 20 on one team are not going to be able to play very much. That is an example if there was more gym space there would be more of an opportunity for the teams to play. They are at Fleetwood Jourdain all the time and there is a major need, there is no question that there is the need for gym space. Ms. Wells said currently there are 487 students in the FAM program, 22 are teams, 14 boys, and 8 girls. There are 22 players per team. Games being played at Fleetwood and also at Chute, 11 games are played on a Saturday, o" at Fleetwood, 5 at Chute. The question was wised — why there are no games played at Crown to which Ms. Welts responded they are only working through those two locations, _- because they have to staff and coach the games. Ms. Wells said the bigger problem is not so much the playing time it's -- the practice because each of those 22 teams have to practice twice a week, that is 44 time slots, so we do use Crown - and many of the elementary and middle schools for practices. Gym space is a major concern as probably about 30 kids were turned down this year because we have limited draft to only one day due to the overcrowding. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked if how to alleviate the problem has been talked about Ms. Wells said again looking at Southeast Evanston Page 6. if we were able to put a facility in there, there would be gyms in the facility. She understands there are so many other things that have to be looked at but for them that rs one of the things they have to kook at they do need additional space. VI, AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT BRANCH LIBRARY ISSUES Alderman Jean -Baptiste believed Alderman Newman made the initial request for the Library Board to present today. Alderman Newman remarked that this request w-as about six or seven months old when it was hoped there would be some money somewhere in the budget but he is always glad to talk with the library Mr. Ney introduced Board President John Sagan. Hoard members Jean Perry. Jonathan Fischel, and Steve Prout. South Branch Manager Sally Schwarzfose, and North Branch Manager Connie Heneghan Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if they want to share with the committee where we are at this point in time with the branch library in light of all the issues that have been raised over the past few years. Mr. Sagan hoped everyone had the chance to read Mr. Ney's memo dated October 30'' which both gives us a good summary of the history of branch libraries in Evanston and where we have been and where we hope to go. Since the Library Board remains committed to branch libraries and to the branch library system as you all know we attempted last year, very seriously and for quite a long time, to explore the possibility of opening either a second branch moving the south branch to the 2 d Ward or opening a third branch which we would have loved to have done had we had enough money to do so. As you also are well aware due to the budget situation here in Evanston we don't have money to do that and explored a number of different avenues. To date we have been unable to come up with additional money so right now while committed to the branches he thinks our hope of opening a branch in the 2"4 Ward at Dempster and Dodge at this point is just a hope as we do not have a feasible mechanism for doing that. Alderman Newman appreciated the memo and said if we end up doing a branch out west that somehow we'd end up improving the Crown Center then we would take a look at that issue. It was interesting to read this memo and some of the history of the West Side branch that we previously had which we need to talk about whenever we get to a branch situation. One question he has is how much money was received for the painbng that was sold and how is that money currently being invested. Mr. Ney said they received $900.000 and the money is invested in the library's endowment fund, some of it is equities, some in bonds, and some in cash vehicles. He can get a copy of the investment policy for the committee. Alderman Newman asked what the money is generating per year. Mr. Ney thought the income was about 514,000 but was not sure of that figure. Alderman Newman said thinking about that S900,000, and knowing that we have a tough year maybe the City can somehow find a way to cover this interest and a linle bit more projecting when rates will be better than they are now. We can talk about investing that $900,000 into some library type uses right now. perhaps the enhancement of the Children's Library. Mr. Ney said they do use the income for library purposes and actually have some of the endowment income set aside for physical improvements to the children's room. There are reserves set aside for both additional financial development and for the children's room improvements. Alderman Feldman asked if the income is only S14,o00, to which Mr. Ney interjected it is more than that but he would have to check the figures. A Board member said the figure is in a range of $40,000 to S50,000, that money is earmarked among other things for the children's room. Alderman Feldman said the discussion regarding that money was a policy of the Board to put into investments and use the interest as an endowment fund to have a source of independent income. Mr. Sagan said that is correct and you may recall when they made a decision to self tt+e painting it was quite controversial. One of the criticisms received at that point in time was that we were going to take that money out of the library out of that beautiful picture which everybody loved and simply use it for library purposes. We said it belongs to the library and we will use it but we will put it into an endowment and watch it grow so that income will be able to be used for generations to come by Bvanstonians. Mr. Ney said the money was actually added to the library's existing endowment which dates from 1908, The endowment is currently S1.700,000 including the 5900,000, which is the largest portion of the endowment Alderman Newman asked if the decision has been made to redo the Children's Library. Mr. Ney said that is probably a little ahead of where they are. They set aside some money for improvements to the Children's Library and they working on putting together a program. At this point they certainly need to have a better idea of what they want to do before any final decision is made. Mr. Bethel added they are excited about the possibifity of redoing the Children's Library. Alderman Feldman asked if the Board is doing any type of surveying of people using the Children's Library and trying to find out what they think before deciding what they want to achieve there. Mr. Bethel said there are two things, one is we have one the worlds, not just this community or the state's, experts on children's readings and children's libraries, Junko Yokota from the National College is a Board member and has been quite supportive and interested in making that library better. We have also have aldermen such as yourselves and Alderman Wynne who are very much interested in doing something for the Children's Library. Also. they have explored it in other ways as well and think that is something that were we to have the money and have the ability that would be money well spent. Page 7. Alderman Newman thought if the Main Library children's section was more appealing to the er-,,e comm unity. people might take a different view on the branches, he's not saying they would but thinks it would help He's glad to hear you have this Board member and is interested in what your plans are but he wculd like to see some ccrr-: Ln,ty outreach from the people who are there and are using it possibly at the branches, what they are looking for and wtiat we'd like to have in our main branch Children's Library. He'd be interested in finding out if people in Evanston are going to Wilmette or Skokie as opposed to coming to ours, maybe they're happy with our library. Mr. Ney said he could ^ct answer Alderman Newman's specific questcr. without spending some time but they do have pretty substantial survey data from that Himmel and Wilson Study of 1999 n'nich did deal with where people got library service, where they used it. where they lived in town, and that sort of thing They have maps showing where one week's worth of library users came from where the individual houses are and a=so what library they used. Alderman Feldman said he � as fascinated with the mention in the memo that the north branch afore is busier than five community libraries in the rorth suburban library system. There are library boards overseeing enLre library operations that are less used than a branch library in Evanston. He wanted to know which are the 7 out of the 49 that circulate more items than the Evanston Public Library. Mr. Ney responded Skokie, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, Gurnee, and Palatine. Alderman Feldman asked of those libraries which has the greater population to which Mr_ Ney responded Schaumburg does, Arlington Heights is in our same population category and Palatine is a little larger. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked as you probably have read the City once again is facing a major budget deficit Last year it was 53,500,000 and this year talk is it is about S3,000.000 which means from last year to this year we have close to $7.000,000 less in terms of resources. Have you thought about what life without branches would be like. Mr. Ney said he thinks about it with great regularity. His recommendations this year if he was asked to make subs:antial budget cuts would be the same as d was last year. Closing branches is the way to make the reduction while doing the least damage to the remaining library services and causing the least harm to the majority of the population in the community. Not that he wants to do that or he thinks it's a goof idea, but if we had to make that cut he thinks that would be the way to do it. That would be his recommendation again unless he is told that its off the table and he would have to do something else at which point he thinks the altemative becomes you close the Main Library from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m, in the morning, There aren't many places to cut. 80°% of the budget is salaries, 20% is materia!s more or less and there is a whole lot left. If you're going to make a big cut you have to employ fewer people and buy less stuff. Mr. Sagan said we are Evanston the City of passionate people and people feel passionate, as we all know from last year and years before, about their branch libraries. As a Board we would rather not close the branch libraries because we know how important it is. We can simply see what the 2-4 Ward wants and they hope some day to have a branch library, how important branch libraries are and what a vital function they serve in this City but its clear that as we face declining budgets we will have to do something drastic and that may involve closing the branches. Alderman Feldman did not envy the kind of decision that the Library Board has to be make almost as much as he does not envy the kind of decision we have to make. You have established the idea mat the branches clearly serve a need but when we look at the statistics and see that while there is a need and there are people that are passionate about it the need other than the value itself is not defensible. In other words the reason we're keeping it is because we want it and because there area group of passionate people that say that they need it and maybe some tradition. If you were :o build a library system and start from scratch he doubts very much whether any one of those brarcres would be here because you could not defend it to the community. If you said to spend this kind of money on bran&es people would say are you crazy and yet reversing it we're doing exactty that He thinks the Library Board has admitted to that in a sense that while we'd know it is serving people the amount of money or the bang for the buck, so to speak, drops dramatically. The thing that concerns him is whenever we talk about closing a branch or two branches the amount of money that we save somehow seems to evaporate very quickly_ To say we'll need to take one or two staff and put them in this department or another department it then starts to mitigate the savings that we think of. Correct him if he's wrong, when you think of closing —_ a branch do you think of all of the money budgeted to that branch being saved for the City. Mr. Ney said firstly they need about two months to close a branch, to empty it out so we can close the door and relocate collections and do things of that scrt that have to be done. Last year they budgeted all of the salaries for t-ro months, — figuring that would be what it would take to do the closing, moving collections, selling furniture and getting all of that taken care of, then those salaries would be savings. We proposed transferring one position, that of Sally Schwarzlose, who is our resident expert on early childhood, to the Children's Department That was the only transfer, thus all of the salaries _ would have been savings the second year, the materials budgets would have been savings the second year, rent would not have been budgeted. There were some pretty substantial savings. The only real permanent transfer was that one full-time position that we proposed. Alderman Feldman noted a reference to the meetings that were held in regard to this very same issue where you talked about 99 people that attended the first meeting and 32 people that attended the second meeting. He assumed that wasn't the only public input you had, you probably had letters and phone calls and things of that nature. Mr. Sagan said he still gets public input today, he gets stopped on the street by people saying," you're not going to do it all over agar this Page 8. year are you." Alderman Feldman said maybe t~e�re the same people. Mr. Sagan said the first meeting was very well attended, 99 people, they had speakers inGuC:ng ,merman Jean-Baptiste's son, who did a wonderful job speaking in favor of the branch at Dempster and Dodge. TI a send meeting was scheduled for September 11' and was postponed and rescheduled a month later and only 32 pecp;e a -ended that meeting but they had numerous phone calls, messages, and letters. Alderman Feldman said it is +nterest;ng mat you interpret that number and the kind of encounters you have had with people by letters and phone calls. etr . as a very substantial support for branch libraries. Mr. Ney said you heard from many more people than we did last year, to rvrccn Alderman Feldman responded he will tell you he did not hear from 100. What he is trying to get at is where is the energy for this coming from, is it coming from the community or coming from the Board. What would have happened +f there were only 34 people there at the meeting regarding the closing. A Library Board member remarked public heanrgs •ire conducted to gather information for one purpose, to try and get community input on the possibility of relocating — e G-:rrent south Branch to the West Side. It was not in any way to gather information for community support for branches. Alderman Feldman said if that's the case you must have gotten it another way. Alterman Jean -Baptiste added we gat it during the budget hearing that was what was on the table the support or lack of support for branch libraries Alderman Newman commented there was another dscussion of branch library closures about 4 or 5 years ago when one huge meeting took place. The people who want those branch libraries are people who don't live anywhere near them. Its a great budget cut The support from the people is overwhelming, its not a figment, its substantial, its real, especially on the north end. It is a huge staple for children and families who go to Haven School and is by no means imaginary, its very real. We will find that out if this gets back on me table. He would just like to comment he believes there is nobody on the Council who wants to close a branch library. The situation is extremely frustrating because we have other factors, the state governments financial woes is carried down to us. If there is any politician running at the state level promising to cut taxes what they really mean is they want either to raise taxes at the municipal level or cut services at the municipal level because if they cut your state takes that would have an impact on somebody. We realty have a very difficult situation right now because of the reduction in several very key state revenues. Nobody wants to close the branch libraries and he thinks in good faith what everybody is talking about is this is not one of those areas where a rational argument can be made that there is some duplication, there is no question about that, which is why some people, especially people who do not live anywhere near branches, you will find them being the most gung ho to close the branches. Alderman Jean - Baptiste added that is also the basis upon which people on the West Side have failed to get a branch library. It's a realistic assessment of what resources are available at this point in time. He would suggest revisiting that discussion again probably when we address what may be on the table to be cut, if there is no more substantive discussion in terms of library services and the branches he suggests moving on. Alderman Feldman recalled what his thoughts were about some of last years meetings. It had to do with the fact that some of the options if we built a library at Dempster and Dodge, one of the options would be to close the library at Chicago Avenue which is when he began to hear that people were not objecting to another branch but they were objecting to the idea that their library would close. He would be a lot more comforted with the idea that people in a given area support having a library there as Alderman Newman ,nd cated those people that aren't near a branch are the ones objecting. If you look at it they represent a lot more people man those people than those around the branch. If the South Branch especially had a circulation level that matched the vociferousness of the desire to keep it then he would feel comforted and would say okay, people live around it and those people not only wanted it to stay but they use it. One of his concerns is that it's not being used in a manner that helps jus`u f it Mr. Sagan said they tried, as you may know, for a number of years prior to last year to find a better location for the South Branch. The problem there is there is absolutely no parking except street parking. It is bounded immediately on Me west by Chicago Avenue and its difficult to find a better location. A Board member addressed Alderman Feldman regarding a comment he made that it appears if you close the branches the money saved may not be all the money we think we might save. Alderman Newman commented about services being cut into budget crunches statewide. Page 10 of Mr. Ney's memo says, "I assume that 50% of the branch use would transfer to the Main Library, and that the Library wouil lose 50% of the current branch use." What that means is that it takes money and people to serve people, so when ycLi overload a system that is already compared to Arlington Heights or Skokie service more people with more usage cn a per capita basis than Evanston is currently, service will suffer if you don't replace that money at the Main Branch. Alderman Newman remarked you're making an interes~-ung point if 50% of that usage that was going to the branches ends up at the Main Library you're somehow going to have to upgrade the resources at the Main Library to deal with that additional use and the 5225,000 or $250,000 may not be a real number, which he thinks is a fair point. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said he is sure that discussion is going to repeat itself. Alderman Feldman said it is also a recipe for a paralysis. Mr. Sagan said they don't want paralysis, they want to do their long range planning and in the City bring library services and resources to everybody. The discussion they have had for a number of years, and he thinks they will continue to have, is on how best do we do that, we don't kna+( the answers. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested this discussion be continued to address that very point. What would be ti-.e needs of the Main Library if the branches were to close and how much of that savings would be absorbed in a real way. Perhaps you can elaborate that thought for us so we can have Page 9. a clear picture. Alderman Newman said it reeds to be made by the Board and we need to have a lot of amplification of this last page of the memo. Mr. Ney said it is actually very difficult because there are so few branch closings in the Chicago metropolitan area that you can took to see what happened. The only one in recent years was in Niles and was kind of odd because they closed the branch and brought all of the resources Into the Main Library where use went way up which is the only time anything like that has happened in 40 years making it very difficult to find information about it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said but you will be able to come to some kind of analysts not only about the use of the resources but what happened to existing resources, are we overloading because he mought we underutilized the central library. Mr. Sagan said it would circulate more books and answer more questions for full time equivalent. Alderman Newman said no one on this committee is making any proposal at this time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented this is an old question that made its way to the agenda at this particular point in time. Mr. Sagan said they appreciate that you, as well as we, are commmed to giving library services to everybody. VII. A DISCUSSION OF CiTY POLICIES ON SPECIAL_ EVENT DISTRIBUTION Alderman Jean -Baptiste announced a report was received from Mr. Gaynor regarding this issue and Ms. Holly Reynolds and others are in attendance to especially address this issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to give a summation of the report presented to the commmee to know what the fads are. Mr. Gaynor said his report represents the events that occur during the summer months in the park system. The request was received last week and they categorized downtown streets, Lakefront parks, takefront streets, lakefront downtown streets, lakefront neighborhood parks. neighborhood streets, and private property and neighborhood parks. They then listed every one of those park activities or permits or events requested in anyone of those parks that they were able to pull from their data. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor for statistics on how many activities we do a year and where they are held to help everyone understand the picture. Mr. Gaynor reported we have a total of 2,093 activities and are broken out based on the downtown streets, in 2001 we had 4, and in 2002 we had 3, and had them listed, Last year lakefront parks had 15 events this year we had 14. Lakefront streets 2 in 2001, and 2 in 2002. Lakefront downtown streets 1 in 2001, and 1 in 2002. Lakefront neighborhood parks 2 in 2001. and 2 in 2002, Neighborhood parks 8 in 2001 which is a weak number because we were not able to bring up all that data. 56 in 2002. Neighborhood streets 10 in 2001, and 13 in 2002. Private properties 0 in 2001, and 2 in 2002. Alderman Feldman noted that in the Information received from the community they talk about the number of days the park is being used for events as opposed the events themselves. For example. if you have one event that occupies 3 days you're comparing apples and oranges. A one -day event in a neighborhood park and a three-day event on the lakefront are both marked as one event Not knowing how accurate this report is the focus and idea raised is that some events take more time than others and we have to think about the amount of time as well as the number of events that the parks along the lake, as well as the other parks are being used. Alderman Newman remarked haw many events there were is not an issue. As an example, one of these events is a walk and he Is not sure what organization it is for, they bong in 40 portapotties, they have cheering sections that start at 5:00 a.m. This event with 40 portapotties was complained about in Clark Square then it was to be held at Dawes in Centennial and some neighbors complained about it there. One of the things a group of neighbors, that are in attendance tonight are trying to achieve is if you have an event with 40 portapotties and cheering sections its not fair for the City to say, when you have all these lakefront parks, to be held in the same park every year, it should be spread around. A concern that he has and would like to have addressed tonight is the whole policy, that started in 1969, that we have a City Ordinance that says the Human Services Committee will approve special events that have over 100 people. What has happened, because our committee has not been meeting as often, these events have been moved to A & PW for approval, which is one of the issues he wants to discuss tonight Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would go into that and called upon Ms Reynolds. Holly Reynolds said they were here tonight because of the discussion which took place at A & P W in early September when the Duck Pluck Lagoon event was introduced for approval. During that discussion it was suggested that people who live at the lakefront don't want activities there and don't want people going down there. in light of that it seemed worth while to make these remarks at A & P W which we asked to do and then learned fast week that the item had been moved here to Human Services which why we're here. That is actually appropriate because as Alderman Newman said this is the committee that handled the issue when it first cane up 13 years ago in 1989. The few of us here represent the neighborhood around Dawes and Centennial Parks and the Southeast Evanston Association membership, both groups, as well as park users from elsewhere in Evanston, have been interested in acting in lakefront matters since 1989. We've also talked with Mr. Gaynor about these things that she is going to mention tonight although they understand there is no action to take at this moment but in light of what happened at A & P W they just thought they wanted to clarify a few things. In recent years there has been marked increase in the organized activities in the five blocks between Greenwood Street and the turn at Sheridan Road, which are Dawes and Centennial Park. Page 10. A quick history *11 just give some context, which Alderman Feldman was part of. For years in the past the lakefront parks were used by sunbathers, people reading newspapers. walkers, runners, and a lot of other individual users. Then in the 80's organized events started to become popular and some naturally came to the lagoon area. They represented a marked changed in park use but as many things everyone took the occasional use in stride. Then suddenly in the summer of 1988 things changed. As requests increased that summer several large festivals were added to the lakeshore. Inadvertently some line had been crossed in the use of the area and as a result, then City '.tanager Joel Asprooth and Parks and Recreation Director Don Wirth sent a memo to this committee of City Council alertng them to the harmful effect attempted on overuse of this area. In the memo they said. "In addition to the two festivals. the weekly starlight concert series, the concession restroorn facility, the 4_ of July celebration, the boat ramp traffic, and ine normal summer use of this area result in extraordinary pressures on a fragile resource. It is nearly impossible tc sustain turf and other plant materials. Traffic and parking problems are well documented." As she is sure everyone knows the general use of the park today is ever so much greater than it was in 1988. The dog beach has been added with increased use, but as anyone who goes to the lakefront parks knows this stretch is extremely heavily used wherever the weather is decent, particularly In July and August. In 1989 the City Council formed a subcommittee of the Human Services Committee to evaluate lakefront activity and particularly the lagoon area. A number of meetings held over a number of months included active participation by Council members. City staff, and Evanston residents from this neighborhood as well as from elsewhere in the City. After a great deal of testimony and discussion the subcommittee on the lakefront of this committee, the Human Services Committee, and the City Council agreed that the level of activity was deleterious to the park and neighborhood and the scheduled events in Dawes Park should be limited to the two established festivals, the 441 of July celebration and the 6 starlight concerts. First Ward Alderman Mary Juliar expressed concern about the starlight concerts foreseeing that while small and sparsely attended then they could grow into larger events with greater impact of traffic and people, which in time of course they have. Agreeing to protect these parks in the surrounding neighborhoods there was much discussion about using other parks around Evanston for added events. The Ceurcil asked City Manager Joel Asprooth to evaluate other parks for capital improvements needed to enable them to host these events so that other parks could be upgraded and new events in the future could be dispersed among them. The agreement held for some time then runs and walks started to become popular and through no malfeasance but loss of institutional memory new events began to arrive. Suddenly by 2001, the numbers from schedules of events given to us by Mr. Gaynor, 21events Were using Dawes and Centennial Parks, 12 of them had amplification, the 12 new events had come into these parks. Not only had the numbers become overwhelming but the new events changed with time. Those which start almost always grow, increase in numbers and often change. The North Shore Century Bike Ride, for example, which started in 1993 was at first a small quiet group of bikers. A year or two ago they had become a sizeable group and ended their ride with an amplified combo band along with the massage tables and refreshments and other trappings -.%+rich naturally approve such events. Alderman Newman mentioned 40 portapotties which no one wanted, forget when they arrived on Saturday evening in Dawes Park across from the Evanston Historical Society attended by loud cheering from the event organizers of the 8, Avon Breast Cancer Walk. At 6:30 the following morning bullhorns awakened the neighborhood and enthusiastically punctuated the rest of the day and an encampment of tents, food and dnnk booths, and first aid stations filled Dawes as thousands of people streamed through. Other than starting at 6:00 it the morning the police loud speakers were coming through to clear parked cars from neighborhood streets. In sum we believe that some balance should be found and that if Evanston decides it wants to accept all who ask to stage their e-.ent here the entire City should share the burden and the cost of that We should also note that of the 9 events which the Council has reached be the limit for these parks. 3 are among the largest held anywhere in the City In sum, again we ;-alieve we have a reasonable goal which is simply to start dispersing new events which are added since 1989. Thank ycu very much. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to give us a sense as to what we've been doing to disperse these events. Mr. Gaynor said this past year he moved two events off the lakefront. A third event, the Rick,1 Byrdsong Race we moved to Sunday and have placed a considerable amount of change in that program. He does not believe there was any inconvenience to the residents this year as opposed to the previous year when there were a number of problems. We have started to limit those kinds of activities putting them in other areas, if they're possi;,'e. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked that some of the starlight concerts are now being held at James Park. Mr. Gayrcr said we have concerts o at Dawes Park at the lagoon and 6 concerts at James Park, a total of 12 concerts. He rrace a mistake a year ago and added a concert to make it 7 and apologized for that one mistake. Relay for Life, which ,.,vas a very significant event at the lakefront was moved to James Park. As a matter of fact it worked out so well the organizers of the event requested to have this at James Park again. They felt it was a much better venue for what they do Mr Domecker added they moved two other events, the Rotary Picnic and the 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk. Mr. Gaynor said they have had discussions with Alderman Newman and members of the committee and indicated they will rotate where the portapouies will go. In his opinion they now do a much better job of controlling the loud speakers, they are not out as loud as they have been in the past. We do bring our rangers out. Some of these walks do occur early in the rn,orning, as indicated, but the balance to that is many are over within a couple of hours and therefore do not create problems for the rest of the area as the area becomes more and more crowded as the day goes on. Also, they did move the bike ride off the lakefront this year and think it went well. Page 11. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired as to the impact the Duck Pluck had on the area. Mr. Gaynor sand mere were less than 200 people, they were done in less in two hours, it was a poor weather day, and two Aldermen and the Mayor attenced Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked haN rt went last year when the weather was good Mr. Gaynor said it was the same thing there were about 200 people who attended. Ms. Reynolds noted it was loud, to which Mr. Gaynor said they do use and amplification for announcing, Trim O'Brien, lives at 210 Davis Street, which in essence overlooks the lagoon. He would like to give three quick perspectives, one what it's like to live in the neighborhood where 75% of your weekend days during the summer contain an event. He thinks the characterization of us in the lakefront trying to keep people out is quite unfair and vrhat the actual effect of this is it keeps other Evanstonians out He uses the lakefront all the tme, the fact that he can't park there doesn't keep him away from it Alderman Feldman wished to comment, he was at that meeting that represented the view of one Alderman and he wanted to clanfi that the A & P W Committee does not at all characterize as that Mr. O'Brien said just in reading the minutes he saw that characterization and wanted to make the point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought it was a criticism and not a general perspective. Mr. O'Brien went on to say in terms of living there he is in the habit of bringing lemonade to the traffic officers, giving them lists of people who may be coming to his house that day so they will let them through to park somewhere near his house if they could possibly find a spot. It is a major inconvenience. He chose to live there and he knows that is part of the deal, but he thinks the issue needs to be managed and Mr. Gaynor and Alderman Newman have been very proactive in working with us, Also, Mr. and Mr, Reynolds have provided a lot of leadership over the years on this issue. The thing that concerns us about the Duck Pluck was not in fact the Duck Pluck, which was a very small event, but the way that it happened. It seemed to go around agreements that had been put in place with people putting a lot of effort behind it, then in an instant to see where we could ail of a sudden be over ridded. His last point was made by Ms. Reynolds and Mr. Gaynor at the September 9" meeting, this puts an awful lot of stress on the park, it is a more environmental stress than the park can handle. Mr. Gaynor wished to make a comment, the fetter or reference made by Ms. Reynolds regarding environment from the previous Parks Director and City Manager obviously occurred before he came to the City. He spent 7 years as a director of a County Park System which was totally an environmental resource management job, 53,000 acres of parkland and he believes he has some expertise when rt comes to looking at environment Although it is difficult for us to maintain the facilities at the lakefront because of the use he is going on record saying it is not stressed out and the current use now is not placing the environmental issues of the lakefront at risk at this point. Mr. O'Brien said he just saw it in the minutes and although he does not have that expertise he sees the grass the next day because he's out there every morning. The last point he would like to make is it impacts directly the people who do live there, but in a way they are kind of the eyes of Evanston. The only other people who are there for every event are Mr. Gaynor and Mr. Dornecker who are down there at 6:00 a.m. setting up the barriers. He thinks preserving the park for all of Evanston is an important virtue and when here are Large events there that crowds a lot of people out who might use the park on a given day. We can do rrcre in terms of criteria, a Duck Pluck to raise funds for the Evanston Environmental Center seems to him should have better priority than maybe something that seems like a good cause like the Breast Walk which is organized by peop!e we don't know and you could set priorities for how you do these things. In some of our previous discussions he feels Evanston is the City that says yes as opposed to many of our neighbors perhaps who are less welcoming to organize having su:h events and we ought to level the playing field a little bit and perhaps make an application process that favors local events. If there are casts imposed by outsiders he thinks you have already dealt wrath that in some ways We need to continue to manage this and if we have an agreement on how many events there are going to be and what the process is fcr approval of new events that we follow it. That's why the Duck Pluck mattered because it is a big event in and of itself. Mr Gaynor wished to make a reference to the minutes that Duck Pluck 2 was not recommended by staff, Beth Steffan, President of the Southeast Evanston Association, commented there have been so many things that have already been said about this issue she can't add very much, but has a few things to say which she will mention. This was brought to her Board's attention in the Spring of 2001, It was a problem for our neighborhood. Most of the ccncems of the Southeast Evanston Association are really to discuss and try to find solutions to problems within our residential neighborhood which is Southeast Evanston. When this issue came to our attention we discussed it and at that tame same members, including herself, decided to set up a meeting with Mr. Gaynor to discuss the increase of the heavy concentration of events that was happening over a period of two and three years. One of the things that we determined at that meeting was that there was no limit to the acceptance of events in Evanston, there was no consideration. 1Nhen Mr. Gaynor was talking about these events and we were looking at the numbers at that time it was 20 o 21 events and we asked if there was any limit and were told there is not limit and the Parks and Recreation does not decide that, it's the Council who determines that We were there to discuss if mere somehow could be a quota or a cap, if that was possible. If it wasn't, then we would have a solution that would be more democratic. She knows how she is about events in her neighborhood, she finds them onerous and cannot tolerate them if they're too long, if they're all day, if its noisy, and starts in the morning. She has very few in her neighborhood and does not know what it would be like if she lived ir: this neighborhood. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Steffan where she lives and was told she lives off Dempster between Judson and Hinman and they have the Y.O.U. event in front of their house. Everybody here should try to put themselves in the place of these residents that have to tolerate 75% of their weekends wih an event in front of their house in the Page 12. morning. If they wanted to have a parry in thetr yard or they were having a family reunion or anything, they would have to put up with this other event On top of the usual events that take place at the takefront there's the boats, windsurfing, swimmers, picnickers, and then mere are these events. She tn.-iks it's a tittle bit too much on the part of the City to ask one neighborhood, a five -Mock area, to have live with the rraprity of these events on the lakefront. The Southeast Evanston Association discussed this matter and tried to come up with solutions rather than just state the problem and the three concerns were of course me environmental trspact nct only the grass and the trees bu' walking through the park and having a silent tranquil walk through the park is aso an ernrronmental issue On a weekend if there is an event every morning you can't do that if thats the only time you can walk a. d rave that tranquil walk Mraugh the park you're not gong to get it in the summer in Evanston, not there in that ;ark. There are so many other parks along the lake their Board feels one of the solutions was there could be a rotation of where teese staged events that are not the residents of Evanston that are sponsoring these events if we could posstaty rotate u e events that are staged that are outside that we say yes to unendingly. For example, there's a park south of Dempster that could be a staging park, that's Barnum Park. There is also the Clark Square and Crown Park where there could to staged events. James Park could probably take more staging events and there is also tore Canal area. If the City is intent on not capping these events then they have to be democrabcatly disbursed throughout the City not just having these five blocks put up with this all summer, that's too much to ask. It is her hope that we can also dispel the impression that the lakefront residents want to remove all the events from the lake and thinks Parks and Recreation could be more crea-,ve in moving it around the City. Jean Esch, Ladd Arboretum member, spoke on behalf of the Duck Pluck event and said apparently the Duck Pluck was the straw that broke the camers track There was a misunderstanding in that the initial event which was held in 2001 was promoted as a one-time affair. She does not believe that the Nature Center ever really thought about it as a one-time affair. Number one, it comes about a month or so after the other major events that go on at the lakefront. Number hvo, it's about two hours on a Sunday afternoon, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. What is interesting about is it that's an Evanston program that is put on for Evanston residents, their children, tre.r grandchildren, and maybe cousins and others. It is not something that is run for people out of town. Her point it that its an event that is probably 100% Evanston residents, many of whom fire here and are taxpayers and its true we don't lire at the lakefront we don't live. She does not think the statement that was made at A & P W that the people at the lakefront wanted to have more control over that is not even something to be considered. They certainly suffer a lot of inconvenience in their private lives YMh what goes on all summer long at the lake. We couldn't put this at another locatron. Staff mad suggested to us that we go to Loveless Park, ana one of the reasons we wouldn't do it at Loveless is because we use about 10 or 12 high school students who have to get in the water and with oars create the current so that the ducks can move around. If you take a look at Loveless Lagoon she does not think that anyone would be delighted to have their h gh school kids walking around in that water. She thinks it can be arranged to happen long enough after the all the summer long events that it srouidnl be an inconvenience. If she lived far away from the lake, 6 blocks or so, she should be able to go down there with her kids and her grandchildren and have the Duck Pluck. Yes it was raising funds, but it raises fun for the kids in Evanston We're talking about something that is run by what is essentially the Evanston Nature Center so it is not an out of town organization and we'd like to continue to do it. Alderman Newman wanted to sum this up from the perspective of where he sits on the committee. First of all just to clear up the Ducat Pluck event once and for all, the Parks and Recreation staff had a meeting with about 15 residents and went over the entire 2001 schedule. They talked about what events should stay at the lakefront, and what events could be moved to other parks. It was represented to that group of people that there was this new event the Duck Pluck, a one time event, and the people at the meeting said alright it's a one time event and its not going to be another annual event. When the event came back the staff was trying to put the event at Loveless as they tried to keep their word and make sure they were honestly representing caps through the community group they were meeting with. It was an unfortunate situation, but he thinks the staff did exactly the right thing and has been very responsive and fair in trying to deal with this issue. When he says fair and reasonable the parks staff is always advocating for usage of parks for these special events so there has been a great deal of compromise. Nobody had an agenda with the puck Pluck, staff was trying to maintain good relations and keep their word and at the time they did the right thing. Although that group was disappointed we ending up Overruling it anyway. One of the things to keep in perspective is not so much the special events but the totality of the circumstances which he can tell you the boat ramp alone has all types of issues The ramp is locked at 9.00 p.m. but Mr. Gaynor said people who purchase a launch permit are given the combination to the lock and come in much later. Alderman Newman said there can be incidents at 1:00 or 2.00 a.m. on a weeknight which is part of life down at the ramp. We make S400,000 a year on the beaches throughout the year and when the beaches are being used its virtually impossible to park in the neighborhood. When you make $400.000 in a three month period from the beaches you have a lot of traffic there and what the neighborhood is trying to do is achieve some balance and rationality. We are trying to educate people who are hearing things such as people are tying to be restrictive. For example, one year during the Ricky Syrdsong event people were not able to get out of their houses at 9:00 a.m. and they had no notice of this. People were toll by the police they could not leave. Alderman Newman asked David Jennings, Director of Public Works, if we could number the walks each year, this was the fifth walk that was coming and there was no idea in terms of managing all the walks. Alderman Newman would like all the groups on this list to be notified that they have to apply to have their special event by application turned in by March 10 . He would also like to see that these events that were originally supposed Page 13. to come to Human Services that have been ga:ig to A & P W mainly because sometimes Human Services :s nc: meeting as the staff needs to get approval, come tzac.k to Hurrlan Services. If everybody is notified that was here las: year that they need to get their application in by Ua;cn 10 at least mayt>ee we would be able to have a meeting where we would approve 6, 7, or 8 of these and the negtuaxs would be abe to make one meeting to came and hear what is go:r.g on and not be surprised during the middle of the surnrner wren ail mese events are taking place The current app4cat'4:;r: is for 90 days prior to the event. Mr. Gaynor asked ,f we are sce`wffcally tacking about lakefront events, to wr.tch :ticFrman Newman responded, anything that needs approval of me Ccuncil but he is mainly talking about the lakefror_ He -.%anted to know if it would be doable to have a (IAc.-_h or April Human Services meeting and bring in everyone and gyre ncowe then we can see what we're doing. Alderman .lean -Baptiste asked if what t� _ is heanng from Alderman Newman is that we need to manage events so we do not over burden lakefront residents. Right now it seerrs tnat we have a process of a conscious effort cn tie part of the Recreation Department to do that. He is not sure whemer rt is a March I" application deadline that aces mat or an identification of a process by which we gc pack to idencfy wrat events are reasonable to have that can only nappen a the lakefront because of the facilities. In 15,59 you talked about an agreement where you could have the frro major arts festivals, starlight concerts and the a of July events. That was your agreement at that time, things have changed but your needs remain and there is currently more pressure on the lakefront The fact that they apply in Mardi, rf you have a group of 20 applicants who apply in Mares its still unreascrabce to have 20 events there. When the application process begins March 1" and everybody in the cornmun.ty comes, and if your committee outvotes it and the event goes or, a ,yway it is still a major burden to the community. He would like to discuss how do we balance the need, there is a need a resource there that people want to utilize You are absolutely right it creates a major inconvenience in your life if 75 of your weekends are occupied by events. Tine question is wtrat is the right thing to do, if we can talk about that then we can implement the process of doing whatever that it is that is reasonable. Alderman Feldman thinks this is a burden that staff cannot handle by themselves. nor should they be asked to do that. We have to set some guidelines regarding the number of events that occur, the nature of those events, and a system to distribute more and more of the events to ne parks. He knows that's a value that has been talked about alreacy snd is disturbed that the idea of an institutional r amory seems to have faded and you are right he did sit on that commMee. Not only did we discuss the number of evens but we also discussed the number of vendors at each event_ One of the concerns at that time was not that the everts were multiplying but the events were getting bigger and bigger. He thought there is a limit on them, to which Mr. Gaynor said they have a limit of the number of food vendors for both festivals, and the number of artist's exhibitors. We ha•ee maintained that number at least the 5 years he has been here. He was disturbed by one of the things you said as it was a very inadvertent remark and would just like clarification, was it that we move them to a neighborhood park if ,ae can. He does not understand that. Mr. Gaynor said first of ail we have 6 concerts, the 4" of July, and two festivals. 19 events at the takefront this year and 9 of them are sort of Cary sponsored so we would be dealing with 10 events if you tried to follow along with Alderman Newman's suggestion by March 1 r. it's not the Parks and Recreation Departmer: that is making the decisions or recommendations. Two years ago the City Manage appointed a Special Events Comrnrxee for the expressed purpose of managing special events. A resght-orriood party might occur that was represented as a block parry and spilled over to a park as it might have grown from JJ people to 150 people. The Police did not know about that and the Fire Department didn't know they couldn't get davit tie street. The City Manager said he would like somebody from every department to serve on the Special Events Cc-.w ;,se so there is a check off. The Health Department is involved if there is food being they can go out and inspect to make sure the food is safe. The Police Department, Fire Department Parks, Public Works are involved in their sanraton as well as their traffic. There are a number of people that sit at the table and review all of the special event activates especially the major events and those that are at the lakefront. For the most part those events come to the common y this year and as Alderman Newman indicated because of the sporadic meetings of this committee moved them tc the A 3 PW Committee because these requests for approval of events were happening fairly quickly and they needeV advanced approval in order to start their advanced publicity for their events. This was whole program that the City Manacar put in place to specifically manage these events and in the last two years there has been a considerable improve.-nent in managing these events. Now everybody in the City departments have to sign off to make sure that tney tare an awareness and that they approve. One of ttte issues they had this year with the Aids Bike Ride was trying to get me folks down the street and across Sheridan in a safe way to the staging area There are other concerns than where vie put portapotties, there's the Police concern about traffic control, there's the Fire Department about what streets can be blocked off, but he does not want to belabor this Alderman Feldman said that did not answer his question, the question is what does it mean when we say you move them to another area if we can. Mr. Gaynor said it depends on traffic, it depends on the event We have an event that starts in Milwaukee and winds up in Chicago, the request comes in that they want come down as straight a line as possiba and that takes it through he lakefront parks they come down Sheridan. Could we take them out to the Canal, maybe. a may be that realty messes up and creates more of a problem for the City than taking them straight down Sheridan_ We look at the total situation of what the request is, then see if its possible to move not because of them not wanting to roie but what's in the best interest of the City or how we can best accommodate them. Alderman Feldman said that s a la_dable Page 14, goal but he can envision 20 applications in addition to what you have now that fit into that category that somehow the logic of the event means that they're on the lakefront. Do we ever say no, Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, we have just about maxed out on those events along the lakefront because we have required the races, or the bike rides to be on Sundays. In addition to that because we are trying to manage the events and spread them out more around the City as new events came in we are sitting and talking with the organizers saying we prefer they do scmething else. Alderman Feldman said what he was trying to figure out is one, whether or not the current situation that rs there now that we had last year is acceptable to the neighborhooC as it stands right now without any increase, and two. whether or net wren somebody comes in we say this the park that we have available for you to come into, you're welcome to do that thank you eery much. If that's not acceptable men go to Wilmette or someplace else. Do we do than Mr. Gaynor said we have, we have given folks an ultimatum. Again, when you have a 3-Day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer they're going to start up in Wisconsin and they come on dawn, d we say can you do this somewhere on the west side of the City you're going to have them in front of the Council. We Know that if we turn somebody down they have the right of appeal, vie w1ii bring it forward to the City Council through whicr►ever committee and say we're not recommending this and these are the reasons why, then its up to the City Council to make the final decision. But we have certain activities that are walks and races that just don't work going around in a particular park. Alderman Feldman said accept that one of the reasons we set a limit was to avoid those kinds of decisions Alderman Newman interjected we did not set a Limit, to which Alderman Feldman said we set a limit many years ago. Alderman Newman said there was no set limit, what we said was events over 100 people would come to this committee. It es open ended and the events come here for approval of anything over 100 people and right now if 75 events come and nobody objects 75 events can be approved. The City events that are designated that have limits on the number of vendors and then any special event over 100 people have to come to this committee. Alderman Feldman said what happens with that kind of a policy is each individual has to be judged. After a certain point, A is judged on its merits and whether or not we have enough events. These all have merit then the question as somebody would say this is a political decision, its no longer a decision of management it's a decision that this one we will accept and the next one we won't for whatever reason. If they have a stronger constituency, if somebody knows somebody. it's kind of sloppy that way. is there an actual limit? Mr. Gaynor said there is no limit, however, we are managing it because we will not let our environment of the park system deteriorate because of overuse. At a certain point it could occur, but it hasn't reached that point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Mr. Gaynor should not be on trial on that issue, that's a policy decision that has to be made by the Council In terms of what's adequate, how do we balance the interest of the community in utilization of that park of the lakefront and the interest of those who live there. Once we have reached that kind of balance through input of the various factors then we implement that. Right now you have reduced the number of vendors at the large events, he noticed it is not as active as it use to be, some of the events are being distributed to other places. The question is what can be done, what's a proper balance. The City sponsored events are events that the community has said okay we're willing to embrace those, if he understands correctly, that is the starlight concerts, the big festival and the 4L of Ju:y and then the 10 other events. What among these events can we move to other parts of the City, can we hold at other parks along the lakefront, those are the issues to elevate the kind of burden that people are expressing that they now suffer and if we can begin to address those things to him then the process follows. Among these we have only 3, 4, 5 spots available, additional spots for Dawes Park, Centennial Park, etc., you apply by March 1a and we consider you, if you have not applied by March 1" then you are not in the running but we know that there is a limitation in terms of the number of additional events we will hold by the lakefront. The question to him is what are these additional events. what can be moved, and those that cannot to moved, why not. We can then begin to really shcct the arrow at the target We should look at this and then come back to process. Alderman Newman very much appreciated what Alderman Jean -Baptiste said and just wanted him to get a sense of the reason he mentions March 1". what has been happening over the past 5 to 7 years is the events for approval over 100 people for the walks, trickle in over a 7 or 8 month period. There is no way to keep track of them nor is there any way for the neighborhood to know. The neighborhood is organized and at one meeting there were 15 people in attendance, 4 of whom are here tonight, that met with Mr. Gaynor. They want to be kept informed and want to have the ability, when we approve an event, to have input as perhaps there are things that we can do to make it better. For example, in running these City events we have probably the most dangerous traffic curve in the City. at Davis Street. right in middle of the event and have to work with the staff to have off duty policemen there. This is the worst possible place to have special events because of the speed, the blind curves, etc. One of the reasons he serves on this committee is because of the lakefront issues and he wants to be able to give this neighborhood a chance to oe present and know what's coming for the summer. The way the system has been set up the past five years is the events tackle in over a six month period and he would like to see if we do this March 1" application, then he can give the neighbors and the Southeast Evanston Association the opportunity to came to the approval meeting to be able to know what is coming this summer and be able to make their suggestions, which he thinks will be very helpful. This is not to say that the staff has not teen working with us because they have been and we appreciate their efforts. We also appreciate the sensitivity of the other members of the Council. He thinks everybody knows it was one member of the Council, but what we wanted to do was educate people about what is going on at the lakefront and really make the point that this is not about limiting and keeping people out, it is about managing and making the neighborhood livable to also be a place where you can have events. He thinks we Page 15. have done that tonight and you will come back and talk to us at some point. The March t'� notice can be handled here and we will have a calendar that can be distributed. The people in the neighbor now do not get notice of when these events take place, sometimes they do but not consistently. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor if he could corne back to this committee's next meeting with the response to issues he raised and also a response to the proposal that we teed to establish and have people apply by March 1 K versus what we had. 90 days prior to the event. and see whether cr not that creates any issues Mr. Gaynor said most of these events are run by volunteers and a lot of times that organizing group doesn't have the lead person who is gong to run it but they can at least send a letter of intent saying they want to run the event and give the dates and times. At a very minimum we might at least get that information. We can take a look and see how that results. Alderman Newman said he very much appreciates that the committee means well and has spent time and knows the neighborhood does too because its just a matter of trying to get it all together. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this will again be on the agenda at the Human Services Committee's next meeting, on December 2n0, and invited those in attendance to comeback and hear the discussions because we will identify the specific events and things of that nature. He also suggested that in looking at the additional events he does not think anybody should have an entitlement to have their events there for the next 100 years because we may want to consider locations if events can be held elsewhere, but you have groups that are open to a one time event by the lake, all options will be considered. IX. ITEMS FOR THE NEXT MEETING AGENDA Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted one of the items for the next agenda will be Affordable Housing. Looking through the minutes those issues, raised at the last meeting, were not even on the table for consideration. He is suggesting that we have some continuity of issues so that when we look at the takefront we address it unfit we come to some kind of results. He does not know what we will be doing with regards of review of the Recreation Boards Goals and Objectives nor does he think we need to return to that issue right now. We still have to work on the Current Branch Library policy. Affordable Housing is something we need to keep going over until we identify where we're going and to what ends it is channeled. Alderman Feldman said he would return to this issue only if we can have substantive things to add to the conversation. He does not want to come here and ask the same questions again. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is why he is suggesting we consider our issues as recurrent issues where we develop a vision and try to put in place a process to recommend f L Alderman Feldman stated that is fine except it turns and changes only on information. Alderman Jean - Baptiste remarked we don't 'lave a disagreement, do we, to which Alderman Feldman responded even the presentation given here was half editorial. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not into an adversarial relationship with members of our staff, he's into trying to see if we can resolve things that we have as obstacles, to which Alderman Feldman agreed but said we need information and he was told the staff was here today to give us information. Alderman Jean -Baptiste stated what he said was since staff is here let them give us some information because he had no discussions with them prior to this meeting. Again, he is responding to the question what do we have on the agenda. So far it is the lakefront special events policy, affordable housing as a recurring theme unfit we figure out where this ought to fit, besides other items for future consideration. This week he is meeting with Donna Stuckert and Mark Franz about the issue of the radio stations for public information, which will probably be on the agenda beside other items. Mr. Terry said he would anticipate the Mental Health Board will be ready to come with their agency funding allocations for the committee's review. Alderman Newman added we also have the follow up on the Next Theater, Also, Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question about the lease at the Arts Center and he suggested having them on the agenda. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought perhaps the Legal Department ought to give a sense as to how long time lease is at the Arts Center. Alderman Newman said it would just be educational to talk about the background of that lease and what they do. Mr. Gaynor is saying we also have to follow up with the Next Theater. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added we should discuss what we give them by the market value of the utilization of that building and how this lease is in operation. Alderman Newman said the exact relationship is that we also maintain the building. Alderman Feldman asked if there is an issue before this committee for the Performing Arts Center as a result of the coalition of the Light Opera Works on Central Street at the Evanston Theater, and was told that issue was before the Economic Development Committee. Alderman Feldman said he received a letter from their chair stating they gave up the project altogether. Mr. Gaynor said he will have a recommendation for the Next Theater for the next human Services Committee meeting. X. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:02 p.m. Respectfully submitt Audrey Trot , Department of ealth and Human Services Page 16. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL. HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, September 30, 2002 Civic Center - Council Chambers 7.00 P.M. SPECIAL MEETING MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman. Jean -Baptiste, Newman. and Rainey STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman. Paula Haynes, Jim Wolinski, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: See Attached Attendance Sheets PRESIDING: Alderman Rainey Alderman Rainey called the meeting to order at 7:12 p.m. She thanked everyone for their attendance and announced this is a meeting of the Human Services Committee, a Standing Committee of the Evanston City Council. We are here this evening to have a public hearing on the matter of Including source of Income as a protected class under the City's Fair Housing Ordinance. The procedure for this evening Is there are two extremely special requests, one from a person to be first on the list and second from Father Oldershaw to be second on the list and everyone else will be called in the order to which they signed up. In view of the large number of people who signed up to speak Alderman Rainey asked that we all be thoughtful in terms of the length of our testimony. Brian Becharas • Mr. Becharas said he was grateful to have an opportunity to speak first as he has West Nile Virus and his doctor told him to stay home in bed for two weeks. This is very important to him and he Is here to discover what is the true nature of this proposal because he is getting two different stories. One from the City when he read the August 8" article in the Evanston Review and another from a recent mailing of the North Shore Associate Realtors. He is a bom and raised Evanslonian and lives and works In Evanston where he owns and operates a small number of rental units in South Evanston. Whde this is a side business for him he takes being a landowner and a property manager very seriously. He works very hard to serve his customers who are his tenants and to exceed every standard set forth by the City. He also thinks it is very timely that we were invited here to address this committee only days after receiving our latest tax bins. He averages an inerease of about 28%, and many others probably have the same story. What is interesting is from this document he is told he can onty raise the rent 2% if he is accepting Section 8 and asked Alderman Rainey If that is a true statement. Alderman Rainey responded if you have a Section 8 tenant, the Housing Authority of Cook County, as nationwide }IUD, place limits on rents. If your rent is too ho then you may not rent to Section 8 housing choice voucher tenants, who happens all the time. Just to clarify what this amendment will do is it will do the same thing the Fair Housing Ordinance does for blacks, Identif3d in the ordinance as race. you may not discriminate against tenants based on their race. Alderman Newman interrupted as a point of order, if we are going to get questions from the audience he does not think questions should be answered by proponents or opponents of this ordinance. They should be answered by the staff. If there are questions from the podium directed to the chair it Is not an opportunity for the chair to make an argument for the ordinance. What he would like to ask is a point of order, if there are questions that are technical in regard to housing or programs that are directed to the committee he would ask that they be directed to the Housing staff, not just the Human Relations staff and that we get answers in writing so that we get the correct answers. He knows Alderman Rainey has a lot of knowledge about Section 8 but he would prefer, for the purposes of having an objective hearing tonight, that we can get the information the speakers ask for in the most objective way possible. Alderman Rainey noted the point made by Alderman Newman and asked him if we should allow our staff to answer questions tonight or do we want all answers in writing. Alderman Newman said he would prefer to get answers in writing because we have so many speakers, but is asking that the answers also come from Jim Wolinski's Department as well as the Human Relations Departments. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed that we should let staff answer questions and not wait to get the answers in writing. !(we do not get the answer we should say we will research the answer and gel back to them. The other issue is that he does not think in the initial response made by Alderman Rainey that she was arguing a position. She made a statement trying to give an example that the ordinance seeks to do something; it seeks to protect a group as it protects other groups. He agrees we should let the staff answer the question, the Lund of objective question in terms of what the ordinance stands for and what it says, so we can clarity for you what It Is that we are talking about. Alderman Rainey asked if anybody on the committee objects if the Legal Department answers the question about what the ordinance says. Hearing no objections, Alderman Rainey called upon Ms. Brenniman to please respond to that question. Ms. Brenrlman said to know to specifically what question she Is responded to, is the question what the ordinance prohibits. Alderman Newman said, no, that is not the question. Alderman Rainey said the gentleman who asked the question will ask the question. Mr. Becharas said he has a number of questions but the biggest one on his mind is he is here to find what the true story is, what is the nature of this proposal and if that could be briefly be addressed everybody here would be better for it Ms. Brenniman responded the purpose of this ordinance is to expand the areas of protection against discrimination. This ordinance is amended simply to include the prohibition of discrimination against anyone in the area for source of Income. Source of income is defined as, the lawful manner by which any individual supports himself or herself and his or her dependents Including the receipt of any rental subsidy. Mr. Becharas said he is also concerned that Page 1. if in fact the agencies govem these situations, for example the Housing Authority of Cook County, is it going to limit him to 20!6 increases annually. He would then asked the City instead of giving him a stick maybe you'll give him a carrot but will you limit his property tax rentals. He is only here to gel information as he does not know enough and is very concerned that we're going to add another layer of b umaucracy or add another agency who is notorious for putting bureaucracy into the situation. He got West Nile Virus painting his binding because in order for him to be able to own and operate property he must do almost everything himself, which is his hobby. The bcCnm line is if he has to forego rents in a timely way it ruins hss cash f„7N and d he did not have a good job here in Evanston he could nct afford to be a land owner and provide quality rental units h'1ish is a valuable service to the community as well. A lot of buildings are condolizing and people who wish for that don't have the opaortun:ry to live in Evanston in a quality rental unit and he wants you to know he will continue to work as hard as possible to compry and provide such a unit until it becomes impossible, then he will have to fgure out something else. Thank you all. Father Oldershaw - Thanked the committee for letting him speak at t1is5 time as he has a young man in his parish who is very ill and he needs to be with him. Chairman and members of the Human Services Committee he is Father Robert Okjershaw, Pastor of St. Kicholas Roman Catholic Church in South Evanston. He has been the Pastor for 14 years and is a native Evanstonian. He appreciated the opportunity to speak and is asking this committee and the entire City Council to amend Evanston's Fair Housing Ordinance to expand the protected class to include source of income, He is simpty asking you to provide individuals such as Section 8 housing choice voucher recipients the opportunity to apply and qualify for housing. Our parish, St_ Nicholas, reflecting Evanston is blessed with a diverse congregation including Latinos, Haitians, Asians, African Americans, as well as people of European heritage, Our parish mission includes outreach through their St. Vincent DePaul Society and other groups that bring them into many apartments and homes in the community. There is a great deal of need especially with the present economy. It is their experience that a significant number of people cannot afford to live In Evanston without Section 8 vouchers to help them pay their rent. These are good folks, good citizens, who ,rare for their families, housing and community but don't have a chance to raise their families here because their source of income includes Section 8 vouchers which should be the very things that would make living here affordable. The problem is that there are landlords who will not accept these vouchers, actually landlords could certainly screen these applicants as they could anyone else cheddrmg credit and previous rental history among other things. He could say our religious convictions call us to share our food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter. Our tradstions speak of providing affordable housing as a matter of social justice that people with fewer financial resources be given the opportunity to live in this community is a matter of social justice, It Is also a matter of protecting and enhancing the very quality that attracts so many people to live in Evanston, our ethnic diversity. The housing boom in Evanston Is a mixed blessing as condominium developments and conversions are increasing our rental stock is decreasing. Evanstonians have been accused sometimes of being limousine liberals practicing drive by diversity. He believes we all need to do everything that we can to make the rental units we have affordable. Otherwise we stand to lose the very quality that has made Evanston such a desirable place to five, our ethnic diversity. Thank. you. Joan Bryson - Ms. Bryson said she lives here in Evanston and is what they call a landlord. She Is here today because the way she read the letter was this amendment that is being proposed says being a landlord she has to accept Section 8. Also, how many units are you looking at to do this, one unit, two unit, or what. Alderman Rainey said it is unfair to allow you to think that is the case, the case is you can't deny a person the right to apply. You may enforce every standard you have for screening tenants. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Brenniman to clarify for Ms. Bryson what the ordinance says about that. Ms. Brenniman said what the ordinance would require or allow landlords to do Is to look at the qualifications for a Section 8 tenants just they would anyone else and if they don't meet the qua0cations then you would not be renting to them. But you cannot disqualify them on the basis of source of income, which is what this provision would provide. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Brenniman if what she just said is what the amendment proposed not what the law is right now. Ms. Brennimtan said that is absolutely correct. Alderman Newman also wanted to clarify if the landlord accepts the application and denies rental Bathe reasons just stated if the rejected person or (amity then complains to the Human Relations Director therm the City will begin to irriestigate that landlord or took to see whether or not there is a basis of a complaint and perhaps then if they find that there is a cornplairrt file some type of City action against that landlord. He just wants to clarify what happens if the rejected Section 8 applicant then commpiains to the City administrator. Ms. Brenniman said she believed there would be the procedure that Human Relations has always used when there is a complaint against any problem with housing they would investigate. Alderman Newman asked what type of hearing takes place after that. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Brenniman if she gets involved in these hearings. Ms. Brenniman responded, not in the early stages, unless there is a legal question that is forwarded to the Low Department but the procedure is handfed by Paula Haynes Department and the Human Relations Commission. The ordinance is very specific and laid out very dearly on how that is to be handled. As to how a person puts a complaint before the Commission, what the investigation entails, what the fire frames are, there are several pages in the ordinance that lay out all the stages of time investigation and then if it is determined that investigation should go forward and presented to the Human Relations Commission there are procedures in the ordinance for that. Alderman Rainey asked it the process will be any different than it is now, for example, d a landlord takes an application from an African American family and finds they don't qualify and rejects them and then that family complains. Ms. Brenniman said this amendment to the ordinance will not In any way change that procedure as to how complaints are handled, as to how they are processed before the Human Relations Commission. The only thing that this amendment does is add another protective class and all the procedures that are appteed to the other classes that are now protected under the ordinance would be applied to the source of income class as defined in the ordinance. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Brenniman, for clarification, to list what the other classes are that you cannot discriminate again st W. Brenniman said the ordinance prohibits discrimination against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, familial status, national origin, or as the amendment would Include source of income. Alderman Jean-Baptlste wanted to see if the Director of Human Relations can help us understand the process her department goes through in order to evaluate whether to go forward with a complaint and when she does go forward is there any discussion with the Page 2. Ift tardiord or opportunity for the landlord initially, before any charges are brought, to answer and try to work out whatever the issues may be. Ms. Haynes responded when a person comes to her office and alleres that they have been a victim of discrimination we obviously s+t down and listen to what they have to say. For us to take a complaint r~,--y have to establish prima fascia evidence at the onset that there is in fact discrimination that occurred. In this instance they would tare to show that they could afford the unit, they had a good job, they met t w landlord's criteria all the way down the line. That tang T * case before we serve them with a notice of a discrimination d.arge we would contact the landlord and see what the situation is and see rf we could get it resolved at that point. If we are unable to do that the ordinance requires her then to issue a charge of discrtrmna-won. If they are unable to resolve it at that level then we will conduct an it mtigation, which is when the investigation takes place. and cased upon the information we derive from the investigation ti-e investigator determines, looking at the standards of our ordinance. wt,e:ner or not this person appears to have been discriminated against. That investigatory report would be prepared by the staff and work Lien come to her, she would read it and review it with them, ask questions if she thinks there is need for further investigation and irs,: it-ts them as to what they need to get and where to go get iL Once that was done if it still appears that discrimination has occurred s7e would issue a charge of discrimination. That charge of discrimination would be issued to the Human Relations Commission and to =he complainant, and they would make a choice at this point wt+ether or not the Commission hears the complaint or the complaint would go into court. The City would be responsible for retaining legal assistance, an attorney for the complainant and there would be sorre sort of hearing, Any time during this process we leave the door open to mediate and conciliate. More often than not we are able to mediate and resolve these complaints before they even get to thhat level. We haven't done a hearing in years because we have been able address the complaints without doing that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Haynes approximately how many such investigations has she conducted in the year 2602, to which Ms. Haynes responded, two or three. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remariced but you have had more complaints, to which Ms. Haynes added Dwy have marry complaints. A lot of times when people come in they feet they have been discriminated against but when you look at the facts it Is not a case of discrimination there Is something else going on. It is amazing how many of these complaints are just simple or people not understanding something so we help faalrate a resolution that way. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked out of the two or three cases how many of them have gone to court, to wtzcm Ms. Haynes responded, none. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Haynes if anybody has ever complained about the way she investigates complaints. Ms. Haynes responded, not that she can recall. Alderman Newman asked if we have tired any lawyers to prosecute any complaints, to which Ms. Haynes responded, no. Alderman Newman asked what the penalties are that people will face it they are prosecuted by the City and would they have to hire their own legal counsel, to which Ms. Haynes responded, no they would not as the ordinance reads the City would pay for the complainant's legal fees. Alderman Newman said he was referring to the defendant, to which Mr. Haynes said, the City would not pay for the landlord's legal fees. Alderman Newman then said the City would have to pay for the investigation and for legal counsel to prosecute the complaints. He asked Ms. Haynes if she is the prosecutor, to which Ms. Haynes responded, no she is noL Alderman Newsman asked if she is the investigator of the complaint, to whirls Ms. Haynes responded, her staff members Investigate complaints. She may conduct and Investigate a complaint occasionally, but 4 is primarily her staff. Alderman Newman asked who is the mediator of the complaints, to which Ms. Haynes responded, whoever is conducting the investigation generally serves as the mediator. Alderman Newman asked what the penalties are for somebody who is found in violation, according to the ordinance what can they be subjected to. Ms. Haynes It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the complaint and the nature of it. Alderman Newman then said the landlords who may be found in violation under this particular new section or anybody whoever violates it might be subject to fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ms. Haynes said it's not just this new section it would be true for all the protected classes, so the answer to your question Is, yes. Alderman Newman said he is just trying to team about this new section and asked how many complaints has the Human Relations office had in the last three or four years from Section 8 tenants about the specific complaint that they have not been able to apply and have their application accepted. Does your office maintain those comp taints and are there records so that members of this committee can look at those retards. Ms. Haynes said she could not give an exact number because they do not track it simply because its not covered by the ordinance. They do routinely get calls from our residents saying landlords would not accept their voucher and all we can tell them is we're sorry because at this point that's the landlord's prerogative. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Haynes. Alderman Rainey asked that we all keep in mind that we are here for a public hearing to hear people and knows we all want Information, but thinks some people want to speak tonight. Akk mman Feldman said he is having a problem with this concept of discrimination and addressed his question to the Legal Department if a landlord, presently, before this ordinance would be passed, chooses not to enroll or participate in the Section 8 housing program is hejshe a perpetrator of discrimination, he was told not now. Alderman Feldman then said they have a right to either enroll or not enroll and are not accused of anything. Ms. Brenniman said under the current ordinance that Is correct, it will change under the proposed ordinance. Alderman Feldman said all he would like in reference to current landlords is that the term discrimination not be used to the current practice because when you say this new ordinance will stop discrimination that implies that somebody is doing something ferrbly wrong, right now. This ordinance is a remedy for something thaVs terribly wrong now and if we can avoid that and say people have a choice and are exercising their choice whatever it is. Alderman Newman wanted to clarify a point on how we are proceeding. He tho�sght one of the things we are doing and one of the reasons we are having this hearing Is so members of the Council and the committee can learn about the issues being raised by this proposed amendment. if the Chair or Alderman Jean -Baptiste would prefer that we not ask questions on points that are raised and you want to give us another opportunity to come back so that people can speak he would be glad to reserve all his questions time rest of the night. What is happening is as a member of the Council does not understand many of the ramifications of this amendment and Is trying to learn about it tonight. He knows there are a lot of people who want to speak and we want to give everybody here a chance to speak and if you want to give us another opportunity he will be glad to reserve all his questions for another night so everybody can speak. How do we want to proceed? Alderman Rainey said this meetingwas set up only as a public hearing we will have another Page 3. Human Services Committee meetincf but it was her understanding at the beginning of the meeting that you wanted to interact and get some questions answered in writing. Maybe we can do a Iitre of bcCZ_ She came here to hear from the public what the problems are, what the complaints are, what the concerns are, what support is out mere for it and why, and move on from them then take all of that information and provide every single person who signed in w..:s an aodress, provide them with a copy of the ordinance with whatever donation that staff sent to us for this meeting and invite —+err+ tack to he meeting where we make some decisions about moving on. Alderman Newman said there are speakers who are rasing c.jestions that members here, at least himself, about what this proposed amendment does and he is just asking the appropna•.e pees -pans. Alderman Rainey said when the speaker asks the question staff will answer it lets try and move on and have his. Bryson cor:.nue. Ms. Bryson did not wish to continue speaking. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste thought that process wise, he agrees that -tie should get some feedback from staff to clarify questions as opposed to wailing for those questions to be answered in wntncg at a later point. inevitably we will be interacting with people and we can all restrain ourselves, which he himself is willing to do. he is not ki a position to determine the process but is as inquisitive as you and wants to ask questions and try to find what is going on, He thinks rve can restrain ourselves and let the speakers get on with their points of view and then engage in some discussions afterwards. His srggestion would be to defer to staff for whatever questions may come and then wait until after all the statements have been rrade. Leroy Turman - He is a landlord here in Evanston and has had Segan 8 for quite some time but as they say we can't Investigate because of certain questions that we ask they run to Human Relations and Human Relations blocks them ouL Certain things we can do and certain things we cannot do. They be us up in and out of ccu4 and there is nothing that we can do but spend money. Ms. Haynes made the statement her office would do the investigating. if the judge and the jury are in the same office we wouldn't get a fair chance. He does not think we should be relying on Human Relations running it and if there is going to be fair housing something like this should be taken from Human Relations because it seems to him they have too much that they can`t handle already. He hopes the City can run it the proper way but he does not think the way to operate is by trying to force it into the landlord's mouth because a lot of stuff was put in that we can't chose and thinks we should go another route. Patrick Hash - The following are several points of concem that Evanston landlords may have with the proposed amendment to the Evanston Fair Housing Ordinance. First, landlords would be required to accept government or HUD determinations of market rents for the area and that in fact could have the effect of depressirg local property values and that In turn would negatively affect tax revenues for the City. Landlords could have their housing assistants payments delayed indefinitely because of failures on the part of tenants to provide accurate or necessary information to the local hous4rg agencies during the rectification process. Landlords would be subjected to annual housing quality standards Inspections in addition to whatever inspections already required by the local government agencies. This would make landlords subject to the judgement of public housing agency inspectors, which could in fact have an impact on the moneys to be collected. Landlords would be required to involuntarily enter into housing assistance payment contracts with public housing agencies. They would be required to take on added overhead and administrative costs for the housing choice voucher program. Recently the Seven Circuit Court of Appeals appeared to disfavor laws such as the one proposed. In the case of Knapp of Eagle Property Management Corporation the court pointed cut Iwo problematic results from a tax law that would encompass the holders of Section 8 vouchers as a part of the protected class. Number one it would essentially make what is now a volumary federal program Into a mandatory program and would shift the landlords the burden of demonstrating that a failure to a holder of a voucher was based on legitimate and genuine business concerns rather than leaving he burden with the tenants to demonstrate some form of discrimination. The City of Chicago has enacted a similar ordinance however judges recently ruled that source of income does not Include Section 8 vouchers and that is currently on appeal, to general, 6 and A Associates welcomes all responsible tenants who can pay their requested rent and has no problem whatsoever with a tenant whose source of income is reliable and independent such as Social Security or Disability payments. A landlord's objection in this situation is that in order to rely on receipt of Section 8 vouchers and money from that the landlord has to become involved in a relationship between the tenant and the public housing authority which we doll currently do. The landlord must also sign a HAP contrao~ The landlord's property must be subject to inspectirrns In addition to those already required by the City of Evanston. The landlord rs at the marcy of the tenant when it comes to the tenant providing the proper docur nentation on re -certification by the housing agency. rather man subjecting landlords to these requirement as an additional cost of doing business in Evanston we might suggest the City have a program for landlords designed to Inform the landlords of how the voucher program works and how the program illustrates the benefits to the landlords. This could result in greater participation of the voucher program by landlords and do so on a completely volunteer basis. it is likely that such volunteerism would have longer lasting benefits. Thank you. Alderman Newman wondered it we could ask the Corporation Counsel office to get us a legal opinion on the issue which Mr. Nash _� raised of whettrer or not the proposed amendment makes a voluntary program a mandatory program, and whether or not the City would be open to any actions attacking the validity of the proposed amendment - Paul Rathburn - Has lived in Evanston for four years and owns a condo in the 800 block on Michigan Street. He lived in Chicago for many years but his wife lived In Evanston for 25 years and insisted they live in Evanston. They love it in Evanston, are members of St. Luke's Church and plan to raise their first chili here. He and his wife support the amendment. One of the main reasons for moving here was that there is diversity In the community. They find if very valuable that Evanston has a rainbow of people from different races, _ creeds and ethnic groups, sexual preferences, everything under the sun. He thinks if you look at the crowd here today you can see that. He is not a demographer but in his observation some other suburbs on the lake in the north shore are not this way which is one reason they want to stay in Evanston. In his thinking, part of diversity is economic diversity as well. He knows from his experience _ as a legal aid lawyer for about is years in Chicago and Cook County. that all sorts of people benefit from the housing choice voucher EE program and from Section 8, seniors, young families, retired people, people with disabilities, white people, black people. Hispanic people, every other group. He has found that almost everyone of the people with the Section 8 program could be good members of - Page 4. the community. In his opinion people should have the right to apply for hmstg mat they can afford no matter where the income comes from. As an attorney he works fcr better housing in Chicago and is partic a.-ty irterested in preservation of rental housing so the people In our community who can't afcrd to buy condos or houses can stay in Evanston where they can have roots and community. he believes the amendment would 1'e4p these people and would provide then:'~ writ a fair chance to apply for the same housing any other renter can apply for. He has also spent about ten years in eviction courts Ln Cook County and represented many hundreds of clients mostly defendants but not always. He disagrees with the last speaker as he has seen a lot of cases and he is very familiar with the eviction process, 90% are private- evictions not Section 8. The reason fCr that is very simple. With Section 8 there is a guarantee of most of the rent every single north. The government pays at least 66% sometimes more. Often the family has no payment because they are so low Income. Once ycu are on the program as a landlord you don't have any reason to put anybody out. (This comment was not well taken by most of Me audience. Alderman Rainey remarked the audience can disapprove and object but asked that everyone please be courteous. We do not have to agree with one anOL-er but we all have an obligation if you are going to sit In this room you're going to be courtecus.) Mr. Rathbun said if a landlord chooses for some other reason, some illegal activity as in the mailing from the Realtor's Asscaation they talked about a filthy apart ywil wim mice and roaches, if you have something like that a Section 8 voucher holder has no more right than anybody else to stay in tre apartment You can still evict, it's certainty allowable and there is no discrimination in that. He and his family supports the amendment as a member of Lawyers Committee for Better Housing and his agency supports the amendment He thinks these are changes U,%at maybe need to be done and the Council should seriously consider it and perhaps this can be worked out. Thank you very much. Gail Schechter - Executive Dire--w of Interfaith Housing of the Northern Suburbs. They are a 30-year-old fair housing agency and Investigate discrimination complaints from Howard Street all the way up to Highland Park and the toll way, 16 communities. She previously submitted testimony to the Aldermen. The interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs strongly supports a proposed amendment to the Evanston Fair Housing Ordinance which would make discrimination against home seekers based on their source of Income Including Section 8 housing voucher status illegal. It also supports increased enforcement the Fair Housing Ordinance for all protected Gasses because without enforcement no ordinance provides protection for victims of any sort of discrimination. The Section 8 program was created in 19741n response to concems about the declining quality of public housing and the concentration of large of numbers of low income households into virtual ghettoes. Tenant based rental certificates and vouchers became the new federal approach to affordable housing and today it makes a lot of sense because the northern suburbs have a lot of jobs. Fora lot of people whose incomes are too low to even afford to live here Section 8, not only for the public housing tenant but for the working poor that can't afford to fire closer to their jobs, Section 8 provides that gap for income funding. In general the Section 8 program works well over 1,400,000 households participate In the program nation wide. In the Chicago metro area there are 41.000 voucher holders, 27,000 In Chicago, 11,000 in suburban Cook County. In the northern suburbs of Cook County the majority of voucher holders are not only in Evanston but also in gnawing numbers in Skokie. Why is this a Fair Housing issue, because for most landlords to rent voucher holders is a Fair Housing Issue because choice for voucher holders is so severely limited with the non voucher holders with the some ability to pay. The interfaith Housing Center is contacted by 8 to 10 voucher holders per month from throughout the region about 4 to 6 of those are from Evanston and the landlord list is extremely short According to the Cook County Housing Authority unused vouchers are returned at the rate of 30%. According to HUD jurisdictions receiving payment development block funds in Evanston is for furthering fair housing to the satisfaction of HUD. This means that local barriers for fair housing choice should be identified and addressed, means barriers or ads omissions or decisions taken which have the effect of restricting available housing choice because of race, color, religion, gender. disability, familiar status or national origin. Interfaith as a qualified fait housing organization has done complaint Intake for almost 30 years believes that the denial of housing to voucher holders by landlords in the northern suburbs and Evanston the largest municipality Is a fair housing hT,pedimenl. You will hear that landlords have said the North Suburban Realtors said that denial of Section 8 torrid be a smoke screen for racial discrimination and familiar status discrimination and those are already protected classes. The Lawyers Committee for Better Housing just released a study, about six months ago, after doing extensive testing in the City of Chicago and found that 'landlords who denied housing to tenants with housing choice vouchers in up 70% of encounters, the landlords were somewhat more likely to discrfrrirate against minority voucher holders Man against white voucher holders.' The study's primary finding is that all voucher holders are at a significant disadvantage in the private rental market regardless of race. In Chicago discrimination is actually Illegal. We feel there is a compelling policy motivation here it this City and feel you can ask yourselves, since you have already embarrassed the individuals right to equal access to housing regardless of factors that have no bearing on ability to pay. By the way, for the $2500 a month, there is a limit to haw much the housing authority will pay and that will automatically disqualify this. If a voucher holder has the abifrty to pay the same rent and is routinely denied effectively limiting their rights and exacerbating racial and economic segregation should the City not extend legal protection based on source of income. She put together a map with a senses tract because an argument was made there is Section 8 In onhj those census tracks that have a lot of rental housing. What they have found Is that of Evanston's census tracts 63% of the voucher holders are in just two tracts, in 8092 where the high school is and 8102 in Southeast Evanxon. In 8096 and 8101 there are 82% of voucher holders and adding two more tracts you will have 95%. One thing they find interesting is that east of Green bay Road and the Gain tracks there is almost nothing. If you look at the number of rental units they are pretty well scattered throughout In tract 8087 there are 530 rental units but only 1 voucher holder. In some of the other tracts are unbelievable. If you really want people to have housing choice you have a law that would prohibit the re - segregation of people simply because of their source of income. They support House Bill 5635 that would provide incentives to landlords in low poverty areas: it would provide a property tax assessment decrease for each unit in which a voucher holder is rented to. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Schechter if she Is an Evanston resident, to which Ms. Schechter answered, no. Alderman Newman said he very much appreciated Ms. Schechtees letter and the amount of time spent looking at this Information but he has a couple of concerns and would like to confxm some of the facts In this letter that he found very interesting. The fact that there are 27,000 vouchers for Section 8 in the City of Chicago and 886 In Evanston, also as stated in the letter out of the 1373 in the northern suburbs of Section 8 vouchers, 886 of those 1373 are already In Evanston. In looking at the membership list of the Center's organizations is it correct that Page 5. the Evanston Human Relations Commission is one of the members, he was told that is correct. Alderman Newman went on to ask if the Evanston Human Relations Commission would be the body that would hear the complaints. Ms. Schechter said they might be, if it's the source of income it would have to be Evanston. Alderman Newman said as he understands under the proposal it's the member organization, the Evanston Human Relations Commission is a member of your organization which is a housing advocacy organization is going to be body that is going to hear these complaints and if Ms. Schechter is not sure of the answer to that he will go on to his next question. His next question is what he got from your letter was your organization was looking at this problem from a regional perspective and you seem to be arguing that there is not enough Section 8 voucher holders in the City of Evanston. What would be your goal if we pass this amendment, do you have a goal as to how many additional Section 8 families you would like to see located in Evanston? Ms. Schechter said she did not think that is what they said, they drd not say anything about increasing or decreasing the number in Evanston. You are correct that they do say it is a regional issue and there should be more across the board in the nonhem suburbs. The point they are trying to make is that the Section 8 voucher holders in Evanston are not distributed. Alderman Newman said by the way, d you took at some of the rental tracts he would also like you to look at what some of the rents are there and whether or not they are within the Section 8 guidelines. One of the possible implications he is drawing from this is that on a regional basis the Interfaith Housing Center would like to increase the number of Section 8 vouchers. His question is if there was an Increase of 300 vouchers in Evanston in part as a result of this ordinance, if that happened which he does not know that it would, would that be something that the Housing Center would rind as an acceptable result of this ordinance being passed. Ms. Schechter responded, sure only if they're in some of these areas that currently have none where people are being shut out. Also, the main point of this ordinance is that an individual has a right to housing that they can afford regardless of where their income is coming from. The secondary point corollary to the first is that all units in all areas are open to them in all geographic areas. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to ask as a follow-up to one of the questions Alderman Newman asked whether the Human Relations Commission is a rnerntw organization of Interfaith Housing Center to which Ms. Schechter answered, yes. It is correct that Deerfield, Skokie, Glencoe, Highland Park, and various other entitles are members of Interfaith Housing Center as well. He asked the Dh%ctor of Human Relations if it Is correct that the Human Rel,4ilons Commission Is empowered by City Council of the City of Evanston, and Is it Correct that it is a committee of the City Council of Evanston and by your membership in the Interfaith Housing Center, that means the City of Evanston endorses that relationship. Alderman Rainey interjected we are getting way off the track, the Interfaith Housing Center is not the subject of this public hearing. Alderman Newman commented there are issues being raised here and he understands that Alderman Jean -Baptiste has an opinion and he respects it and he respects the opinion of the Chair, but one of the issues that is coming out of this amendment is that there Is potentially going to be a hearing body to hear complaints lodged against Evanston citizens. To get to the point of whether or not that hearing body is objective on the issue to him Is very important. On the issue of whether Deerfield, Skokie and whoever else is a member, we don't know and we need to find out whether those same communities have fair housing ordinances, whether those commissions are also hearing complaints that are going to registered and one of the fundamental points about somebody who is charged is they want to know that the hearing body that Is going to hear the complaint against them is impartial. If we are passing an ordinance here you might have your opinion, which he respects, but as part of this hearing process he wants to know whether or not this ordinance is going to have a fair hearing process. Alderman Rainey wanted to know if Alderman Newman understands we currently have the hearing process in place, this amendment is not going to change any of that. Alderman Newman said he understands that but we do not have the hearing process in fact for this point of law and he suspects that we are not at the point of arguing the implications. His expectation is that if fts is passed there are going to be a significant number of potential cases under this point of the law. If the proponents of the ordinance didn't think that there was going to bean enforcement mechanism here they wouldn't be bringing it and the point is that one of the things we're studying here tonight is how this complaint process Is going to work. As a member of the Council he had no knowledge of this tonight, but whim he sees that our Human Relations Commission, which does some very good work, is a member organization of one of the advocacy bodies that is behind the ordinance, it concerns him as to whether or not the amendment is setting up a fair process for complaints to be heard. He thinks that however it has been to investigate these complaints to the past we are changing the law and if we do change the tare we have to look at whether the process in place to evaluate and adjudicate those complaints is fair. Therefore, he thinks it's an appropriate thing for this hearing to get into those issues. He had no idea they were a membership organization and he would appreciate the ability to explore these points here tonight. Alderman Rainey noted, we are doing that, however, one of the things that we have before us is the current ordnance which the Human Relation Commission endorses, it prohibits discrimination against race, creed, sex, sexual preference, families with children, marital status, etc., all of those which are currently on the table to be adjudicated. We're adding one more item to the list, and she knows the Human Relations Commission endorses and supports no one discriminating against families of color. This is not where the uniqueness of the amendment names in. She Can understand people not supporting the amendment, but the amendment in no way changes the process that we currently have. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he did not want to go there either, we really should not attach the Human Relations Commission bemuse when we begin to separate that from ourselves we are the Alderpeople of the City Council, we are the government, we empower committees to go forth and do certain tasks and one of them is to make sure they monitor and encourage the people who live in the C€ty of Evanston not to discriminate on the various basis we have laid out. He does not want to get into attacking the Human Relations Commission because to attack them is to attack ourselves. We all have our opinions and are all trying to team, but if we want to lead the argument to a position whereby we want to say to those who are listening that the Human Relations Commission is already prejudiced against a certain group of people, that would not be fair, he does not think that is where we need to go. We need to listen and if this ordinance is passed and we think that the Human Relations Commission is not fair, the Alderman need to correct it. He does not see why we need to spend any time talking about the neutrality or lack thereof of the Human Relations Commission and he would like to move forward and listen to the other speakers. Page 6. Alderman Feldman said he would appreciate the comments that are being made here in regard to the similarity between this proposed ordinance and what is on the books new. It seems to him if we are going to talk about this issue we should talk about it as It is. It is very dear to him that if somebody denies a person the right to apply or rent an apartment on the basis of sexual orientation, or whether or not the race is not appreciated, the compliance to that places not additional burden on the landlord. None whatsoever, ifs a question of yes or no. In this case its very Clear that once a landlord is involved in the Section 8 program there are significant obligation and responsibilities and a change in relationship that the landlord has that is not the same as the other kinds of protected classes. If we are going to talk about this we have to talk about it in the way in which. it is just not adding another class the same as all the others. It is removing a privilege that members of our community have authorized and sanctioned by the federal government and saying not only do they not have that privilege or opportunity to exert a choice and whether to engage in a federal program but they have to accept additional burdens and responsibilities that have no connection with the present Fair Housing Ordinance, there is not a single protected class that presents these kinds of obligations and burdens. He is not saying that if you hold the value, as been expressed here, that those obligations are overwhelming. Ifs up to the individual to deterrnine that. We can't go on talking as if there is no change, there is a change, there is a burden, there is an obligation, there is a responsibility that's additional and he thinks we have to own up to it. Alderman Newman pointed out he was just told today that the Human Relations Commission supported this ordinance and just heard from Ms. Schechter that she appeared before the Human Relations Commission. Ms. Schechter said one of her staff appeared before the Human Services Committee. Alderman Newman asked if there was a position taken by the Human Relations Commission on this ordinance and were any landlords invited to testify before the committee before that position was taken, he was told they were not. Just for Alderman Jean-Baptiste's information he may not want to go to the fairness of the Human Relations Commission to be able to administer the ordinance but before P & D which handles a number of tenant landlord issues, that question has come up a number of times and here is a question in the community about the fairness of the Human Relations Commission on tenant landlord issues. He thinks that is part of this process and he does not want to get to it after we pass a law. Alderman Rainey remarked to Alderman Newman to look at what we are doing, we're having one of the biggest public hearings. P & D has not had a hearing of this size, to which Alderman Newman interjected. yes they have it was on licensing of landlords. Alderman Rainey said she thought It would be more important to listen to people and thinks our process is fair, it is not the Human Relations Commission who is going to make the ultimate decision on this, which other Aldermen thought that they are. Alderman Feldman had to say that for many years he was an Aldemmanic liaison between the City Council and the Human Relations Commission until the Council was reduced and those liaison offices eliminated. He has a great deal of respect for the Human Relations Commission, as an affective functioning needed body in the City of Evanston. He finds it absolutely impossible to believe that the Human Relations Commission would take a position on anything as complicated, sensitive, significant, emotional, as this issue without holding a public hearing in which all of the people are invited. This is a governmental body very much like the Commission on Aging, authorizing its staff to advocate for its specific position. There would be no legal authorization for any staff member in the City of Evanston to be advocating for the passage of this amendment were it not for the action taken by the Human Relations Commission. Therefore, on the basis of no public hearing, not listening to a single one, two, three, ten, twenty, or a hundred flat owner, the Human Relations Commission has set in motion a process in which many lives are affected without the kind of careful scrutiny and deliberation that he finds very, very difficult to believe. Alderman Rainey wished to clarify how this got here, it was an Aldermanic reference and as you know Aldermen still have that opportunity in this City. Alderman Feldman Interjected that doesn't in any way mitigate the point that he made and he needed that not at all, what he needed was an acknowledgement of the fact that there is a lot of energy In this room that's been organized and orchestrated by a body that took a position without research, without time, without deliberation and it doesn't mean that there is a case to be made for their side, it just means that they haven't made it. Alderman Rainey remarked the heanngs are going to go on and apologized to Mr. Brown. Alexander Brown - He is the Executive Director of Housing Options for the Mentally III; they provide affordable housing to 45 adults with chronic mental illness in Evanstrn. His group is somewhat unique in that they are both a tenant with Section 8 and also a landlord who accepts Section 8 and they certainty do experience the difficulty in trying to rent apartments in Evanston carrying that Section 8 voucher. As a landlord who accepts and welcomes Section 8 he finds the administrative work you have to do to process the Section 8 pretty minimal. Once you have done it a couple of times its really just a matter of filling out a couple of forms. The checks we get that represent Section 8 he knows are going to come in regularly every single month. The inspections by the Housing Authority, he does not look forward to them any more than the City of Evanston's property standards inspector;, he considers a stamp of approval on Housing Options and the things we're required to do by the Housing Authority he considers a good way to ran their agency. They too, support the amendment. Kim Scott - She is one of the 886 voucher holders and is a tenant here in Evanston. Not being discriminated for her source of income at the time when she had first been able to get her apartment over six years ago she is now being discriminated against for having disabTrty. Section 8 is a very good program; it helps people to be able to pay affordable housing and to make their choices If they want to live someptace that they know. If there was something the matter with the apartment or problems with the landlord, if It were a tenant Issue at all he would be able to go to the Human Relations department and be able to speak with them and see about having their rights met. She does believe as Ms. Schechter said, it should be able to be given to other areas as well throughout the City. Source of income should not be a reason for somebody not to be able to be receiving Section 8 because it's known what the source of income is when you go to apply for an apartment. They know one way or another how you make this income and to be discriminated against she finds to be incorrect. It's a privilege to be able to have Section 8 to be able to pay a third of your income. It's a shame for anybody not to pay part of their rent to keep up their apartment and they should not make any damages or problems in their apartment or Page 7. problems with any other tenants or with the landlords. Some landlords therme!ves have come a=ss problems where tenants have taken advantage of it and have not been appreciative of what they get_ She aaareciates being invited to this meeting. Thank you. Penny Miller - See Armchment A for Ms. Miller's comments. Vito Brugliera - Has teen an Evanston resident for 37 years and comes before you as a private citizen who is conflicted about the proposed action. ConAiaed because the intention of the proposed change is well meaning to expand the opportunity for affordable housing for low income crszens. What concerns him is the potential impact cf unintended consequences. As of July 2002, according to Sandra Sharp the D+reCor of Rental Assistance for HCAA, and the perscr: in charge of the Evanston program, Evanston has 993 housing choices for Sec on 8. According to Evanston Crrie staff in July of 2001 there were 886 Section 8 holders in Evanston, that is a 12 percent increase over last year without any restrictions as to source of irCorne. One of the intents is to distribute these tenants more evenly throughout Evanston rather than concentrate them in the 5= and r Wards, which we heard from Ms. Schechter. He personally thinks this concentration is due to factors other than possible discrimination, factors such as cost of rentals, higher rentals mean fewer recipients due to budgets, proximity to transportation and other faotcties, and social variables. There are areas of Evanston that have few rental units. One of his primary concerns involves the impact on schools, especially District 65. We cannot hide from the inescapable fad that many of our students, particularty low income are not acrhiev ng at acceptable levels. We spend over $10,D00 a year per pupil. Studies indicate to bring many of these children to parity at kirv6er9arten requires two to three years of preschool at $3.000 to $5,000 per year_ District 65 is under a severe budget strain as are otrw taxing bodies. Vie have already seen an Increase In low Income population in the schools, will this change increase this population. Where are the resources going to come from? The other concern is the potential for a negative impact on the number of rental units available because of landlord frustration In dealing with the bureaucracy in the Housing Authority. He will not repeat examples you *0 probably hear and have heard; his concern is that negative experience with lThe bureaucracy will drive many more rental units to condominium conversion. The proposed change Is so loosely worded that a Landlord reviewing several applicants, some of them may be Section 8, and not choosing a protected applicant for valid reasons may find themselves open to potential legal entanglements. The proposed ordinance does not adequately define the necessary criteria for disrnmination to have occurred and thus leaves judgement open to staff and eventual legal entanglements. Let us not delude ourselves, the PC police and verigraphs especially from the north share who practice NIMBI will begin testing as soon as possible. Finally a watd about the Housing Authority, there have been orgoing assessments of the Housing Authority by a consulting corporation, these assessments are not very pleasant, They describe a classic bureaucracy that's very inefficient There have been employee terminations such as the former director of management who has been taking legal action claiming he was fired for writing a report critical of his management. He recommends that this proposed change be thoroughly studied as to its potential Impact. as it stands now he has serious misgivings. Aldermen Newman said &it. Brugliera asked an interesting question and asked of all those present this evening how many people oppose the amendment and how many are in favor of rt. Those opposed stood up. then those In favor stood up. Those opposed were greater in number. Shirley Hood - A landlord in Evanston who is just here to say she is 100% against what Evanston is proposing. She does not know if any of you had the opporttsvty to get to know some of these people on Section 8. Fast of all, she must say she is not against Section 8, she thinks it Is a wonderful thing for some people, but she also knows that unfortunately those good people happen to be In the minority. She is not saying they are all bad but is just saying from what she has seen and the people that she knows they can realty rip up your apartment. Same of them don'tseem to care and it isn't the people that actually sign the leases that are bad, they're great, as someone else said, the sons, daughters, grandchildren, all the other people that come with those tenants that bring down the apartment As a landlord she can say she is not against what Section 8 does, it's a wonderful thing. Unfortunately it causes problems; she has seen that In the 514"lard, how it changed because there is so much Section 8 there. As for those of you that said there are - certain areas of Evanston where there is no Section 8, she would like to say she is not on Section 8 and she can't afford to live over there either. A perfect exarrpte is her brother-in-law who wauid rent to Section 6 and get the inspectors coming to inspect the property and do their surprise lnspecr cons. He had this tenant who ail she had to pay was her cooking gas, not her heat. She ended up being five months late paying her tail and the gas was turned off. When Section 8 found out they stopped her brother -in-laws rents which had nothing to do with him. They would not continue paying her rent until her coo", gas was turned back on. Her !rather -in-law had to pay her $500 gas bill Muse he needed his rent money. She does not think that is right nor is it fair. She's responsible for everything else In her building, anything that can happen she"s responsible for, so how dare you say to her she has to take this. If she says she does not want to take Section 8 she should not have to take Section 8 and if this law is mandated she still won't accept Section 8, she just won't rent to anyone. She'll become a homeowner or go condo. She just won't let it happen. Marilyn Gardner - Thinks t 4 wording of this change in this ordinance is too general. This wording lawful source of income makes landlords vulnerable to lawsuits from persons denied tenancy because of lawful W insecure sources of income. She as a landlord should not be required to accept incomes such as temporary employment which is a lawful source of income, jobs in jeopardy because of poor performance by the employee, temporary income due installment of a debt, or iegal income from a line of luck in legal gambring. Acceptance of these lawful sources of income would be mandated under the proposed change as its worded right now. This Is not right. riven if the people of the City of Evanston want to mandate acceptance of housing choice vouchers as a source of income you should not mandate acceptance of all other sources of lawful income. its more and more difficult for an economic middle class family to afford rental housing in Evanston since the taxes that landlords pay, not just property taxes but all taxes on everything they have, keep increasing with a consequence increase in rent. Some money from these taxes is being used to subsidize low income people to occupy the very apartments that middle income people can't afford, and this is not right We should not be forced to keep giving low Income people things that we ourselves cannot afford. The proposed change in the ordinance calls upon the God of diversity, but would_ really create uniformity in rental housing In Evanston by filling most of 0 with persons needing housing subsidies. If Evanston really Page 8. wants diversity in housing they should figure out how to keep middle class renters in the City. When I and other landlords advertise an apartment for rent in Evanston we receive many, many more calls for people asking for Section 8 than for people that can pay their lousing without subsidies. The original intent of Section 8 housing was to mix lower income people with the middle class. By mandating that all landlords accept Section 8 tenants middle people won't be around anymore. The uniformity of this proposed change in the ordinance would eliminate diversity in rental housing, in addition, passing the proposed change in the ordinance would probably result in more apartments being converted to condominiums and decreasing the rental housing choice for all people. She strongly urges you to defeat this proposed change in the ordinance. Thank you. Ra Joy - Lifelong Evanston resident, graduated from District 65 schools. graduated from District 202. One of the things he personalty appreciates about our community is what we've thrown around so loosely tonight which is our diversity. Personally speaking on two fronts he Is very pleased to see the turn out tonight and is glad that folks on both sides of this issue have shown up to express themselves. On the other side of the coin he is embarrassed by a lot of things he heard tonight. He is proud to be from Evanston. To hear folks applaud to a statement about people who are Section 8, that most of them are bad. (Due to the outburst of audience reaction Alderman Rainey interjected, lets leave this meeting disagreeing but saying that we treated each other decently. Let Mr. Re Joy finish.) Mr. Ray Joy continued and said these are his views and his views alone. This is what he heard this evening. There was an affiliation between low income students and the automatic assumption that k7.v income students can't learn. Again, one of the things he appreciated about this community is that in theory It welcomed everybody with open arms, low income, middle income, individuals. If you drive down Chicago Avenue in Evanston there Is a big condo conversion. the folks that housing is available to is upper income individuals. The Intent of this proposed amendment Is simply to allow low income individuals the opportunity to maintain rental units in Evanston. He had a prepared statement that he Is not going read this evening. There are folks who made some statements about the Section 8 program; the Section 8 program is not flawless. For those of you who are landlords who honor Section 8, he personally wants to express his appreciation. The tenants In your buildings are thankful for what do and as for the people of the City of Evanston he thanks you for what you do. On a professional level he works for Congresswoman Jan Shakowsky and he knows he speaks for her when he says that for those of you who have difficulty with the red tape of Section 8 she Is eager to advocate on your behalf. He thinks he speaks on behalf of your Cook County Commissioner and other elective officials that we are simply going to make the system work. Lets think about what we say before we speak and lets not offend a whole group of individuals based off of your own experience. Thank you. Alderman Newman wanted to say to Mr. Re Joy that the people who have come here tonight on both sides to express their opinions are good people and are true Evanstonians, this is just In the spirit of debating this issue and reasonable people can differ. Mr. Ra Joy said the first thing he said was he thanks everybody for coming out on both sides of the issue and thinks we can disagree without being disagreeable. The one thing that bothers him Is when you make statements that most people on Section 8 are bad people. At this point Alderman Rainey Interjected we are not going to do this here, she doesn't want people thinking this group isn't a decent group of people who can't disagree. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said a number of people have spoken out, have made general statements, and argued their position. Mr. Re Joy stood up and argued his position, some of you may want to heckle and some of us up here want to make sure that we protect thane who have spoken with whom they disagree. We should let the process take its course., let people express themselves, and let this thing play itself out Ultimately, if this advances to the City Council, the entire Council will debate It, you wilt have an opportunity to come back and we will deliberate among each other and try to come to some kind of conclusion. This is riot the end of the road, we're trying to let manifest the right that we have, that is the right to speak and be heard and participate in the democratic process. Susan Cooney - She is a resident of Evanston and has been a realtor in Evanston for 27 years. Tonight she is speaking on behalf of an organization she belongs to called the North Shore Barrington Association of Realtors. When she joined it, it was called the Evanston North Shore Board of Realtors and later they did take in the 350 members of Barrington, but at the same time she would like you to know that there are probably about 550 realtors that live and work in Evanston. The Association of Realtors opposes the proposed amendment to the Fair Housing Ordinance, which would add a source of income protection or specifically a protection for Section 8 recipients. The inclusion of Section 8 In the definition of source of income would, in essence, remove the volunteering nature of the federal housing choice voucher program. The program has been a voluntary program since its creation in the mid 1970's. The Federal Fair Housing Act states that the program shall be voluntary. This language would mean that the landlord would no longer have a choice as to whether to participate In the program. This absence of choice would have real consequences for landlords in Evanston. If a housing choice voucher holder selects a unit and qualifies for that unit and the offered rent matches the program's rent schedule, the landlord must rent to that person. That landlord would have no choice. That landlord must sign a contract with the housing authority, make the unit open to the inspection by the housing authority, agree to other provisions such as the use of the authority's lease. Some of these requirements could cause delays in the actual start or execution of the lease, which would mean a loss of income for the landlord. These delays and loss of income would probably not occur with a market non -subsidized tenant Also, the owner must live with the kind of rent increases that the housing authority approves. Irr tead of a new mandate in Evanston there are better approaches to enable voucher holders to find rental units, We believe that more can be done In the areas of landlord outreach in developing policies that expand the stock of affordable rental housing throughout the region. The Association of Realtors in Cook County are committed to working on these kinds of approaches. The North Shore Association of Realtors is willing to conduct workshops at the City to inform and educate landlords about the housing choice voucher program. Also, a property tax exemption for owners who participate In the program resulting in a reduction in their assessed value for that property is something we support. We made our support known by lobbying on behalf of the State Legislature in the Illinois General Assembly earlier this year for that proposal. By the way, it was defeated. There are other steps that can be taken to make the program more attractive to landlords. While there have been some improvements In the program administration more can be done in this area. Inspections can be streamlined and payments to landlords can be more prompt. In conclusion the North Shore Barrington Association of Realtors supports Page 9. the housing choice voucher program and will work promote it to our mernte.ship, however, we are opposed to the removal of the voluntary nature of the program. We thank you for this opportunity to speak here tonight. Elsie Liddell - A native bom Evanstonian who has lived here all her life and ras very little to say other than she must have choice. The choice has to be hers. She lives alone now, her family is all gone, and she is on her own. This is the first time she has tried to rent since her husband's passing. These people have been very kind to her explaining the different issues that are involved. She has never mnled to a Section 8 and after the things she heard tonight she mll nct be likely to do so. She does not operate a slum home and she wants people that she will not be afraid of. She does not know %tio c +ey are and if she does not have choice then her doors will be locked. You're denying her the right. don't take away her choice. She does not care if you're a purple people eater if you can pay your rent on time, and you obey and uphold the laws of sanitation you're az right with her. Do not take away her choice; don't get into her domain. Thank you. Alderman Newman said based on what he has already heard tonight he thinks there are a lot of unanswered questions about this program and also having heard that landlords didn't participate in the Human Reiations review of this he thinks we need to send it back there. Alderman Rainey said we will send it back but we're going to finish the hearing. Anybody in this room who would like to leave is free to leave, nobody is being held here. She, for one, as a member of this committee and an elected member of the City Council would appreciate having the opportunity to hear anybody here who would Ike to speak on either side of this issue. If Alderman Newman would prefer not to continue he does not have to. Alderman Newman said he reafzes Alderman Rainey is the Chair and he found every single speaker here to be of some value to deliberating on this process, We have already had a number of speakers and from this point looking at and hearing the speakers there does not seem to be a significant amount of support for this ordinance at this time. That might be because of questions that are not dear. He is not saying he does not want to hear the people here tonight, he'd be glad to hear them and would like to make a motion. Alderman Rainey said she is not sure that is appropriate in a public hearing, but said Alderman Newman could proceed with his motion. Alderman Newman made a motion to send this proposed amendment back to the Human Relations Commission for them to answer the questions, along with the staff, to the issues raised tonight For them to hear from all interested parties, tenants„ landlords, housing organizations, landlord organizations, and bring back Information related to this ordinance. Considering what we have heard tonight he does not think that is an unreasonable motion. There clearty is not a consensus behind this ordinance. An ordinance like this needs to pass with the consensus of the community behind it, which he does not think is here. We need additional Information developing it pro and con giving everybody the right to participate would put the City Council and our convnidee in a much better position to deal with this. Otherwise we're going to go forward to the City Council or keep this here and spend a lot our own time, when we have all types of issues before us. At this point we have established many questions here tonight. He wants to send it back and asked for a second to his motion. Alderman Rainey did not see that sending it back has anything to do with this hearing. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion for discussion. Alderman Rainey asked for a five-minute discussion in order to get on with the hearing. Alderman Feldman said he'd second the motion. but in no way will he second a motion that Interferes with the desire or need for people to express themselves. He intends to support the motion when it comes to a vote but again he thinks everything Alderman Newman has said is corned and sees what is the lay of the Land and where the support is, There are people who have come here tonight to say what they have to say and believe what they're saying has something to add to the multitude of feelings and opinions that have been expressed tonight He is certainty witting to listen to that He'll support the motion, but again its not to cut off debate. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think that tirnety right now and thinks we should go ahead and listen to people and if we want after hearing as many who want to speak then we can discuss what to do next It obstructs the process and we need to let everybody who has come tonight express themselves. The conclusions that Alderman Newman and Alderman Feldman have reached already about - what the Human Relations Commission has done is not something that is feared, he does not fear it, and right now he cannot operate from that presumption. He has come to hear people's particular perspectives and learn where people are coming from and continue to listen. He would suggest that we table the discussion on this matter until we have heard everybody tonight. Alderman Newman asked If there are people here who want to speak and continue to go on he would be glad to withdraw his motion. But there aria also people who signed up to speak who many of their comments or the spirit of their comments have already been expressed, He would like to hear how many people are still out there who feel that they were cut off and if they feel this would cut them off tonight he would be glad to withdraw his motion. Alderman Rainey said she already Indicated people may leave and when we call their name If they're not here well just move on. Alderman Newman said he did not see anybody raising their hands to continue. At this time people did raise their hands and Alderman Newman said okay there are several and we'll keep on going. Alderman Newman said he would withdraw his motion until everyone has spoken. Alderman Feldman withdrew his second, Michael Hoffman - Has lived in Evanston since 1974, he lived In Chicago before that. He was part of the Chicago public schools growing up; there were 543,000 Chicago public school students, now there are 343.000. Chicago is a smaller city now then when he grew up. There has been flight to the suburbs; there has been flight to the north shore corridor. Glenview was a farm town; Goff didn't exist except as a stop along the train coming into play golf. Chicago has shrunk. Here is the shocker, Evanston has shrunk. There were more people In Evanston when he was In elementary school, secondary school, and went to college then there are today. We are shrinking. Why do you think that Is, let's talk quality of life. You have to walk in someone else's shoes to understand their position. He asks the people on the committee the question asked of us, If you are an Evanston resident and do you own rental property in Evanston, raise your hand. Here's some interesting comments, he can't afford it He couldn't afford to move to Evanston until he was = In his fate 37s. He thinks there is something significant about that. He does not mind the government helping when they do it in a way that is not best served in some other way. The nation has a fewer percentage of people on vouchers than Evanston does, we have Page 10. a greater percentage of people on vouchers than the country does and if you want to start looking at where we can start examining solutions here are two words, fair and just We've heard from numerous people that the rental market In Evanston Is shrinking along with the population. On Central Street three different residences have been torn down and a multi family cooperative condominium development is going up in its place. He thinks we have a far higher percentage of Section 8's than Wilmette, Skokie, he will not even mention Kenitworth, Winnetka, or Glencoe. You would have to go up to Zion or maybe Wadsworth to find a community that says we don't have anybody. He can't go into Starbucks and say by the way HUD will pay $3.50 of his latte. He cant go to NiCor or other places and say he would like a subsidy because frankly it would make him do better. [(we're going to examine where we're all coming from we should look for something that is fair and something that is just You've heard phrases that were measurably accurate and one was a level playing field, not fitted to one or another. If you take the landlord owning property manager/owners out of Evanston which way does the tax base go? It doesn't go up. He has heard nothing since this issue first crossed his attention that says people haven't had bad experiences with Section 8 because of the govemment, despite the government, not with an absence of problems created by the govemment Look around at our high school which once had 5200 students and this years enrollment is 2800, that is 53% of Its all time high. We have a choice and we're at a crossroads, we should be fair to where our tax base is. His has more than quadrupled since the mid 1979s. Many of you have a worse situation than that When he went into AN to get a stove for the first floor he said he'd pay $150 NS go to HUD to get the $350 more that you want. AN asked him if he is crazy. He said we have an ordinance that's going to say he cant afford to make the improvements in the unit He had a plumber in, $27.50 per 15 minutes plus 559.00 to show up and parts that make Home Depot prices look like Jessie James is now operating retail. Some things he won't be able to do, but if he can't rent hell sell the building. His sister just did that, she left Evanston. He does not want to join her. Fair and Just that should be the consideration. What we heard here tonight was it belongs back for serious study because Aldermen are up for elections and them are a lot of voters who have been hit hard in their pocketbook the last three years and we're not going to got relief If we're offering utilities included and N;Cor Gas says guess what October is going to be 9011/. higher than last year. The good news is that's still 20% less than two years ago but we can expect 40% more for this winter. He can overwhelm you with a tot of statistics. They say figures can fie, liars can lie, and figures and liars are statistics, so lets look at where we're coming from and then say where are we going. Final thought, this was voluntary for a reason. We have to ask ourselves change looks good when it affects someone else but when It affects you change is a matter of the heart and if we can't afford to live in this town we wont have too many rentals to rent to others. Thank you. Bart Keljlk - His family has been in Evanston just about 100 years. He is very much not a racist; however, he has a few thoughts he would like to deliver. To deny the role to conduct business in an equal manner to all people by government definition Is called restriction of trade and as such is seriously punishable by law. The tax of our fine nation forbids and punishes the landlord who refuses to rent on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, etc., so long as the renter appears to be of good character and is able to pay the rent. However, to force a landlord to accept a tenant who Is incapable of paying rent without the help of the federal government smacks very much that big brother is running your business and you have nothing to say about it. The City of Evanston has for many years passed laws designed to guide landlords In the course of their Lawful work. Of these laws some are good, some burdensome and unnecessary. They add to our expenses and therefore Increase rentals for the people they are trying to protect. He went onto ate the equality which exists, he had a young woman tenant who was such a nuisance to all her neighbors even to using a carpenters hammer to bang on the floor 0 she head anything from anyone. She even called the police to prevent his janitor from using a snow blower before 8:00 a.m. who was clearing the sidewalks after a heavy snowstorm. She called Property Standards to report her landlord and said there were some roaches in her apartment When an inspector came and tested and tested and tested there were no Insects found. But is shows how Evanston taws are not equal for landlord and tenant, they very much favor the tenants who are transient. The property owners who pay huge taxes are In business in Evanston and are here to stay which makes the property owners vulnerable to the whims of the City. His building was built about 1929 a time when top quality materials were still used. The entrance door to each apartment was a heavy oak wood door, although it was satisfactory for 50 years he was made to unnecessarily replace them at a great expense. Another example, the City decided that any window that was accessible to a stairway or a landing must be covered with a sheet of unbreakable plastic. Even though he already had installed steel bars over these windows, being a cooperative citizen he did as he was told even if he personally did not see the necessity. He is not opposed to Section 8 it serves a useful purpose, but that should be the property owners choice and he Is opposed to this proposal. Please do not consider this new proposition give your full time Evanston citizens a break. Thank you. Richard Girard - He is a parishioner at St Nicholas Church in Evanston and cannot add much to what was said earlier by the Pastor to take up much of the committee's time. An outreach program was mentioned, which perhaps many faith communities have here in Evanston, where there Is contact made with people in the community who have a need. Maybe for help with utilities or food from the food pantry, or prescription drugs that they need. He Is one of the people in the parish who has contact with those people. They meet with them in their apartments and residences in the south Evanston community where St. Nick's is. Almost Invariably they are people of color and need affordable housing, Many have housing choice vouchers and those that are able to use them to maintain their Evanston residence. Some have housing choice vouchers but haven't been able to find a landlord that would accept that source of income. We heard about being fair and just, what happens to those people who have that voucher and haven't been able to get an apartment to use it because the landlord doesn't choose to allow that source of income from a perspective tenant. Some have to double up with other family members as they want to stay in Evanston, maybe their job is here and they're overcrowding he apartment. Some are paying 40 and 50% of their Income to stay in Evanston, is much more than they should be paying, wouldn't we say. Fair and just works both ways. Diversity works both ways, yes diversity for the middle class entrepreneur the property manager, but also for these people who shouldn't be paying that kind of money, 40 to 50% of their income to five in Evanston where they want to be, But until allowed to use time vouchers theyre going to have to do that or move, or get out Sometimes when we don't intend to we still do some subtle way of incomplicity, which we don't mean, but this allows to void people for other reasons, opening the door to possible single Individual racist steps. He certainly Is not judging any landlord, but the pattem is there. the denial of the opportunity to use the housing choice voucher results In adverse impact on people of color and this proposed ordinance would attempt to correct that. It would attempt Page 11. to increase some diversity in the City, diversity that we cherish. It would attempt to increase affordable housing amongst those who are badly in need of it. We respectfully thank the committee for the oppertunity to be here., and speak to you. Gladys Brver - She is a member of the Inter -religious Sustainability Cirde here in Evanston, a group made up of 14 congregations that are working to build a more sustainable environmentally and socially sustainable Evanston. It was good that she followed the previous speaker because she would like to add some information about Section 8. which relates to the issue raised about racial discrimination. We are all aware that when Section 8 was passed in the 70's essentially ce-e of its major purposes was the accumulation of low income housing people all in certain areas particularly in high rise projects. They -xamed to decentralize these people and integrate them into larger communities. What is often not understood here in Chicago is that Ne had a special relationship here in Chicago, that Section 8 was used not only to spread our low income people who were receiving Federal assistance, but in Chicago the program was also used to combat racial discrimination in housing. The history of this came out cf the Civil Rights movement of the Ws. Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) between 1954 and 1967 built 10,300 public housing units. Of those units 63 were not in racially segregated neighborhoods. In 1966 a group called the Business and Professional People for the Public Interest filed a lawsuit against the CHA. They represented a tenant named Catrol, a very well known case; the lawsuit alleged racial discrimination and segregation in the actions of the CHA. In 1969 a federal district court here In Chicago ruled in favor of the plaintiff and prohibited CHA from building in predominately African American neighborhoods unless they built the same number of units in non segregated neighborhoods elsewhere. The ruling was appealed. In 1971 the Appellate Court upheld Lhe krnrer court. They held that HUD, the federal department of housing and urban development, was also liable for CHA's illegal actions because they knew about the discrimination and continued to fund HUD. They ordered HUD to work to remedy the situation. That rurng was also appealed. In 1976 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unanimously In favor of the plaintiff. They ordered HUD to work throughout the entire Chicago metropolitan area to remedy Its past discriminatory behavior. Meanwhile, in 1974 Congress had passed a housing and deveiopment act, which contained Section 8. Since there was very little additional public housing being built in Chicago since the Catrol case, CHA in Chicago entered an agreement with Chicago Leadership Council to distribute Section 8 certrf+cates in accordance with the rulings of the Catrot case. Therefore, what we have in the Chicago area under the Leadership Cour A Administration is Section 8 certificates are used In part to remedy previous racial discrimination by placing low income families in non -racially segregated areas. She mentioned all of this history because in dosing she would like to say as the speaker before her said Evanston is the kind of area where we would want to support this aspect of Section 8. In the Chicago area one its major goats was to reduce racial segregation and discrimination. Thank you. Ashraf Manjl - He has lived In Evanston for 35 years and its been a wonderful place to live In and he has benefited a great deal by living here and wants to acknowledge that Its also an expensive place to We and found out early on as an employee of the public school system he could really not afford to buy a house here. The only way he could do that was by acquiring a house subdivided into four units. That was the beginning of his becoming a so-called landlord in this City. He has tried to be a good Landlord, his lifetime savings have been invested In Evanston and he cares a great deal about what happens to Evanston and Evanstonians. He believes he Is intelligent enough to understand the issues here and Intellectually he knows there should not be any opposition or restriction as a result of the source of income. He understands that every tenant should be treated the same regardless of the source of income. He also believes he has sufficient social conscience to understand the problems of people of color and people of law income. He has generally been supportive of that and has actually rented to a number of Section 6 tenants for a period of almost 10 years. Then to finally discontinue after many years, was a result of the burdens that the bureaucracy placed. In the interest of time Is not going to repeat all the things that do happen as a result of working with the agency which he thinks is one of the key problems here. He is here to tell you he is willing to support this amendment providing provided that tf,e playing field is leveled not just for the tenants but just as much for the property owners. If you would like us to treat this group of people as any other tenants then we have to be able to treat them Just like any other tenants, which means market rents, market eviction procedures, market rent increases, not redundant Inspections certainly not incompetent inspections as his experience has been. That basically is his position on the amendment. He would fike to take a little brit of time to talk about two issues that have been raised here. One deals with diversity the other deals with discrimination. His observations regarding discrimination, again as a person of color and a new immigrant here he certainly values emotional diversity which he knows very well in this regard. He himself chose this as a place to live when could have lived In other communities but the demographic makeup of the City Is very Important in this regard to him. We also need to extend the diversity as an Issue and If this is one of the reasons why this amendment is being proposed he thinks there should be some discussion of this Issue. It seems to him that we are by adopting this amendment engaging in what has been social engineering. We want to somehow change the makeup of this community which may be a good thing but he thinks that discussion should precede the proposal of the amendment. Is this the kind of diversity we want? Is this the kind of group we want? What do we kncrN about this group In general, we already have close to 1000 Section 8 applicants living in our community? How well are we able to meet their needs, what are their needs, at what rate Is this community growing? He was told this group, the Section 8 voucher applicants who live in our community have grown by 12% just from last year to this year. Roughly from 800 something to 900 something, close to 1000. A 12% increase is a significant increase. Of course we do not understand what their needs are, what these people bring to us, what they require from us. If the trend continues at this rate and is likely to accelerate if we open up the entire City as being proposed how well are we gang to meet their needs? How much are they going to grow, 10%, 12% a year, ten years from now where does this place Evanston. Alderman Newman raised a very good question with respect to one of the speakers, what would be considered as sufficient, would 300 more vouchers be sufficient? If that is the case how do we draw the line at that point are the owners going to address that. At a certain point we won't be able to say we have enough diversity and maybe we can look at some other things. He does not see that In the ordinance right now nordoes he see any evidence of any discussion regarding diversity and he thinks they should perceive that. There are a couple of other statistics he would like to mention, as is generally known Evanston has the second highest population of Section 8 applicants or tenants living In our community than any of the suburbs. We're number two only to Harvey. What is our goal, do we want to overtake Harvey? The second thing he would like to raise is has arrybody tried to look at this in a per capita sense. The population of Evanston is about 75.000 and we have roughly 1000 Section 8 vouchers. That says we have one Section 8 person for Page 12. every 75 people. If you look at the City of Chicago there are 27,000 Section 8 tenants living there, the City's population is just under 3,000,000. That tells him there is one Section 8 tenant for every 105 people, we already outdo the City of Chicago in this regard. How rm3ny more do we need, was there ever any discussion of that, where are we going with this. It seems to him a serious discussion of these kinds of issues should precede a proposal of this kind or ordinance because it could have very far-reaching implications. Yearly wee go through these budget cycles and there Is always a shortage of money what happens if this group of people grow as fast as its been growing, he has heard nothing to that effect and would like City Council to give it a little bit of thought. Regarding comments deaTsng with discrimination, he thought Alderman Feldman was very perceptive in this regard early on in picking up that we were already being labeled as discriminatory and racists. by people no less than the Legal staff here and the staff from the Human Relations Departrnent He would have you know that his own observation is that whole department and the Commission is extremely biased against so called landlords. He has heard the Indignation and appreciates that very much but would ask that son eMing be done to reform that because this is not a new thing but something that has been going on for a long time. If you attended the hearing that Alderman Bernstein chaired, over a year ago, a number of these points were made and to the best of his knowledge absolutely nothing has been done about it. He asked that you come up with some action and do something about that. There are a couple of other areas to which he thinks there is a great deal of discrimination. There are two bodies of the City that deal with matters of landlords and tenants. one is the Human Relations Commission and the other is the Housing Commission. To the best of his knowledge there Is not a single income property owner who has served on the Human Relations Commission, he will stand corrected if you can point this out. His suggestion to you is that you do something about it, His second suggestion Is that the Housing Commission, to the best of his knowledge there has only been one person, one income property owner. that on has served on this Comrniss and he thinks something has to be done there also. The write up that deals with the Housing Comrission specifically says that there should be not one, not two, but three tenants on the Housing Commission and it says nothing about how many property owners should be on the Housing Commission. He thinks this is discriminatory, ifs Institutionalized, and Ifs by the government. The very first speaker here commented somewhat jokingly. although he was very serious, that we should not be taxing us so much if we cannot raise the rents by a commensurate amount as dictated by Section 8. He would like to rem€nd you that the very genesis of this country was In the cries of no taxation without representation. The Evanston property owners do not have representation here. Nationally or Internationally you are allowed your right to establish democracies but in his opinion participation in democracy In Evanston is a failure when it comes to dealing with property owners. He would again urge you to do something about that. The third issue Is the landlord tenant ordinance also Is very one sided, very biased against the landlords. That again is an area In which the playing field is not level. if the Commission and the Council is really serious about fixing and leveling field it should be done across the board and for all of us. He understands rights need to be maintained, he was a tenant for a long time before he was a property owner. He ftlened that the bad landlords have to be dealt with and appreciated what you have been able to do In the 8th Ward and commends that. It Is sad when Council has to resort to such lengths as denying us representation; It Is very unfortunate that this is happening. Ka final point Is directed to Alderman Jean -Baptiste, you admonished us and also the Council members and say we should not criticize ourselves and the government. It was noted that Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not make such a comment. Mr. Manji said that was his understanding and would Px to say that again as an irnrnigrant here one of the things he finds very valuable about this society Is that we can in fad question our government. 11 is a valuable privilege that we have and he believes It is a duty that we have. He has enjoyed your comments in the Call of the Wards and appreciates your comments regarding the issues you raise about what might become war in Iraq and your questioning our national the government which he thinks is a very good thing to do and we should all have the right. the privilege and the duty to be able to question our government. Thank you very much. Alderman Rainey encouraged residents to please, please, apply to serve on the Human Relations Commission or the Housing Commission and knows that all the members of the Human Services Committee also encourages residents to do the same. If arrybody here has an application in now to serve on either of those committees or some other committee and you have not heard anything, tell us. Well help you get your name on the list; we're always begging people to serve. We have not rejected anybody and if you want to apply we want you there, regardless if you're a landlord or not and she knows that the committee agrees with that. Afdemman Newman remarked he would like to see if we can gel answers to the last speaker questions, to which Aldennan Rainey added excellent questions. One question he would like to get an answer to from HUD is typically what the average makeup is in terms of school age children and size of a Section 8 voucher holder's family. The number 300 was thrown out and Mr. Manji raised some questions about 12% growth in Section 8 vouchers which means that it could be over a 100 vouchers in the last year. He would like to get comment from District 65 it there were 300 Section 8 new families In Evanston and if here were 300 new children that came to Evanston, whether or not that would necessitate the building of a new school. Alderman Rainey asked how will they know, to which Alderman Newman responded he believes the school that his children attend is somewhere In the size of 300 or400 and thinks one of the impfia6ons unintended of this ordinance is possibly expanding the number of Section 8 tenants in Evanston which people can differ whether that Is a good or bad thing. He thinks we fully have to understand what the potential implications are especially for other taxing bodies for the schools of what we do here and it there is a reasonable possibility that the number of Section 8 certificate holders in Evanston will Increase from the 1000 that is now to 1300 in the next several years in part because of this ordinance we need to understand how many children potentially will come with each new family and we need to know how many children are added to Districts 65 and 202, what that will mean to the resources. He can tell you his understanding, which he will be glad to get corrected by District 65. some of their schools house 300 or 400 children. He just wants to get an Idea and some comments from HUD what the makeup is per family and also from District 65 as how additional children would necessitate a new school, just to try to have that as part of our discussion. He thinks this Is Important information and does not know how long it w€11 take to get but hopes the staff will try to gel this and asked Mr. Terry if he would follow up on this. Page 13. Mamie Smith - When she looks out into the audience there a lot of people that she knows and have shared lengthy conversations with about our community statLs on Section 8 housing and some of the teals and tribulations associated with meeting the acoornrrodabons of our ctzens. Pessonaay she believes that housing is one of cur basic human needs. Some of us are here in support of this ordinance, some of us are here in opposition of this ordinance, and marry of us are here to listen and learn and express our concerns regarding this ordinance. She believes that there is room for all of us to engage in extensive dialogue on this ordinance to find a way for it to accomrnodate tree needs of our landlords and of our citizens r.1ho have Section 8 certificates. First of all she would like to say that obtaining a Section 8 cemfirate is not fly by night. Some people go years trying to obtain a Section 8 certificate, some even go to the extent that they become homeless waiting on certification for Section 8 cert ficates. She is not here to stand before you and say that a mandate should force you into accommodations of a Section a ceftificate and the income from a Section 8 certificate should be considered as you cons4er the income of a perspective tenant comirg to you who is receiving SSI or receiving some other form of Social Secunty as their pmaaie means of income. She thinks we have to share a dual responsibility in what happens with our relationships with Section 8 tenants. We are equally responsible, nine times cut of ten, some us for the outcome. From a historical perspective many landlords searched out Section 8 certificates during our major recession basically because they knew the income was good. Maybe not here but in clear parts of the country she knows that to be true. She also wants to say that housing laws and those that govern Section 8 were basically enacted to protect all people from abusive landlords and from landlords who often In the early days subjected our people, yow people, everybody, to indecent housing situations. We must also recognize that Section 8 like other government programs have !taws. Their programs are created by people that look like us. She can remember, If you go back to Section 236 which was the subsidized housing program back in 1959. her family carried 236. It was nothing to be ashamed of to have a Section 236, she thinks everyone who had 236 their family had to be em;Aoyed. You could not be unemployed and get housing assistance with Section 236. She ado thinks Section 236 started the public housing evolution in American because there were so many people, of all races, who needed decent housing and the local municipalities did not assume it as their responsibility to guarantee decent housing. Defining affordability becomes a uncial concern in this community because we have not yet defined what is considered affordable housing. A studio $748. one bedroom apartment $896. two bedroom apartment 51,069, three bedroom apartment $1,337. four bedroom apartment $1,496. tt takes a lot of earned income to afford that We want to be a diversified corri nunity, but with it comes diversity in economics. We have people who have different income levels. Inspections of housing is something that all minorities advocated for, we asked for it because there was a time when our people, my mother, your mother, your grandfather, had to live in housing that was totally unacceptable and there were no regulations that could go to the slum lord and require that he provide you decent housing. She supports screening of tenants and thinks its very important for us to have a relationship with our tenants and for us to know where they came from and what they like to do. You can acquire this kind of information through very casual conversation. She too is a landlord. It is a dual responsibility of the landlord and the tenant to be honest, straightforward and ensure that repairs are done in a timely manner and to meet the expectations that HUD has defined. She heard several people say they're losing money, we all know that loss in rental property is a tax deduction and it is not part of your earned income, if you donl earn it you can't claim it She is not here to chastise in any way, she just thinks we have to be real and if we want a community that is without laws to help our unfortunate citizens then we have to be true to ourselves. We have an opportunity here as one of the most progressive cities In the United States of American to find a way to create a plan that we can all be happy about. One that meets your needs, one that supports Section 8, and one that works on building relationships with your tenants and accountability for your tenant. She is not sitting here saying tenants should not be auountaable. but we should not sit up here and try to define the ability of a child to learn based on whether or not he is low income. She was born low income and she thinks In a lot of instances low income gives you more drive to do better because we know we don't have a silver spoon waiting for us to pick up. Thank you. Donna Richardson - She is a tenant of Evanston and is also low income. She had a lot of things to say this evening but a lot of misconceptions came up and other people said things she wanted to say. Shen just hit on some issues that pertain to her, one is the issue of education. Alderman Ncmrnan was talking about an increase of 300 people, she wants you to realize that those 300 children, or whatever you're expecting to come into the school district are already here because every time Section 8 vouchers go out 30 to 40% of them are for people that already are residents of Evanston and go back because they can't find suitable housing that would accept Section 8. A very large portion of those children you're talking about are already in our school district. The other thing she wanted to talk about is that a lot of people do not realize that even though we say 30% of income should be paid for rent there are many people here in Evanston paying anywhere from 30% to 70% of their income for a nice place to live, that's their choice, They put their money on a necessity, when rent is due they take their money and put it on that. She is a person that has been in court many times with issues on Section 8 and she has been on both sides of it with the tenants and with the landlords. The problem is not with the people on Section 8. There is a Housing Commission and a Human Relations Commission in Evanston we have seen over and over listed in different publications where theyre asking people to join. If the landlords feel that they are being treated unfair or that things are not going their way her first suggestion would be that they join one of these commissions or committees. Because Evanston is one of the largest recipients of Section 8 vouchers, which seems to be a problem here, then Evanston should request from Section 8 some type of program to work with the landlords and figure out what is happening, what is really needed, why are they getting these complaints. She just wrote down a list of complaints and they are turning people away, this is a human rights issue. You need to go and get those agencies that are not treating you right as landlords and demand that they come in and work it out with them. Don't punish the people that don't have the income and not aD of us are bad. As a matter of fact she thinks 90% of us are good, yet she admits to having some bad ones, but we also have some bad Landlords out there which is why we need to get together on these committees and sit down and work these problems out. A lot of landlords showed up tonight because they are angry that this is something forced on them. If this is something you're very angry about then go out and fight for what you believe In, but right fair, get on a committee make it mean something so everyone's human rights are respected. She also wanted to say even though a lot of people have vouchers there are Page 14. other things they can't afford because they don't have the income. This means we need a Sect on 8 committee here In Evanston making these changes. Thank you. Dan Schermerhorn - He is a member of the North Shore Barrington Association and he is also a real estate manager here in Evanston. He wanted to tnank the commission for having this discussion and rase a point that he thinks worth making which is he does not think any of the speakers this evening have spoke an objection to the Fair Housing Ordinance at all. What they are saying, and was best said by Alderman Feldman, is that this amendment places a burden on complying with the Fair Housing Ordinance that has nMhing to do with fair housing and that Is the strings attached to the Section 8 program. He believes this government has very right to put strings on money that they give out in fad he would expect that. He does not see the government handing out checks and saying do what you like with it, but also they made it dear if you are not willing to accept the strings you have the choice not to accept the money. By mandating the Section 8 acceptance you have taken that choice array a point which some of the other people made very dear. He just wanted to make sure everybody realizes the issue it Is not a matter of fair housing it's a matter of the non fair housing issue that Is associated with the Section 8 program. That is the objection of the landlords in this town. Thank you. Patricia Bronte - Has Wed in Evanston for 15 years and owns property in south Evanston. For a while she was a landlord but then her son got bigger than her and they could no longer share the half of her two flat. She is also a member of the board of directors of the lawyers' Committee for Better Housing. She should make it dear right from the front she does very strongly support this amendment. A lot of people have said a lot of things and she is very impressed with the sincerity and good will of people on both sides who have expressed their opinions. She has a tittle bit of a different take on it because she has already seen this very Issue play out in the city of Chicago and when this first came up in Chicago, just like when the residential Landlord and tenant ordinance was proposed in Chicago and here there was a lot of talk about this going to drive me out of the rental business. I cannot make a living this way, I'm going to lose too much money, the sky is fa&V, and you know what the sky didn't fall and the rental market has still been pretty good. Except that in Chicago the vacancy rate is so k)w that there is virtually no affordable housing anywhere. There are thousands more working poor families in Chicago and in the area, who need affordable housing than there are affordable housing units. With respect in particular to the Section 8 voucher program in some ways rental to a voucher holder is the same as renting to a market tenant who is paying 1110% of that rent. You may disagree with her but in some ways that landlord is better off renting to a voucher holder. She would like to talk about some of the things that have not yet been brought out First of all there are many ways in which they are the same. The landlord has to maintain the apartment. There are housing qua&ty standards that have to be met if you're renting to a voucher holder, there are also standard that have to be met If you're renting to just Joe Blow, or her, or anybody else. There may be some slight variation in the standards but its not big. Secondly, if the landlord faiis to maintain the apartment in a decent inhabitable condition, then under the voucher program the rent win abate. Well guess what, if you're not renting to a voucher holder and renting to any tenant they Can abate the rent too under the residential landlord tenant ordinance. Its not any different, however, if the problem is the fault of the tenant then the landlord has the right to serve a notice on that tenant to fix that problem and if the tenant doesn't listen then the tenant can be evicted. let's face it there are some bad landlords and there are some bad tenants too and they shouldn't be allowed to continue to and muck things up for the rest of us. If you're renting to a voucher holder and you institute eviction proceedings you continue getting the rent from the government while those eviction proceedings are going on, How often do you think that happens with any other tenant, not often. Yes, this is true. With respect to the rental increase she was not able to talk to Sandra Sharp about iL and she does not personalty know, but she did talk to some other people who are familiar with the program and they assured her that there Is no arbitrary percentage cutoff for an increase. There is no arbitrary 2%. She's not an expert in that field but thinks It does deserve some looking into. The second thing about it is the tenant has to agree, that's the same as if she were renting the apartment and her rent goes and she says that's too nxxh of my income I can't afford it. I move and the landlord has to re -rent The ways in whch she thinks the landlord is better off. At one point In time landlords sought out Section 8 tenants which is absolutely true. A couple reasons why they did, number one. If you're renting to a voucher holder and that voucher holder loses their job and suddenly they're not able to pay the rent, the federal government will temporarily pick up that differential and keep paying you. If you're renting to a market tenant that won't happen, you're going to have to Institute eviction proceedings and that person will have to be thrown on the street. Secondly, as she said rent continues during eviction proceedings, furthermore, as a landlord to a voucher holder you have a tremendous stick in your hand because if a voucher holier is evicted, in eviction court, they are lifetime disqualified from the voucher program which people take very seriously. Finally, if Representative Hamos has her way House Bill 5635 will result in the decrease in the equalized assessed valuation by as much as $10,000 per unit rented to a voucher holder. She would just like to say we should pass this amendment because it's the right thing to do. She loves Evanston and wouldn't live anywhere else. We talk about our diversity but if you really get down to it it's a diverse City if you look at a whole thing, but if you look at particular neighborhoods it is not diverse. What we need here I to prevent homelessness and promote diversty in our City and we don't need another proxy for racial discrimination which is exactly what we found when we looked at discrimination against voucher holders in the city of Chicago. It's just another way for landlords to discriminate against minorities and should not be allowed. Thank you very much. Mavis Hanemann - Believes she comes to be the whipping boy or something because she is the Chairman of the Human Relations Commission and we have voted to urge the Council to amend the ordinance as proposed. She would like to tell you about her own background and her own reasons to give you an idea of why they came for what they did. As far as being a part of the interfaith Haising, the Human Relations Commission has been a part of that for along time. It is something that she was in before she even moved to Evanston, well over 35 years ago. interfaith Housing works for the rights of people and she thinks the Human Relations Commission is working for that. About 30 years ago when it started, she happened to be a volunteer with the Mental Health Association here and had a so called client supposedly of neglectful parents who was making from Chicago to Evanston and she paid an awful lot of rent to be in Evanston and have this apartment in Evanston in the area where everything is. She learned about Section 8 and told her client she should apply, the list was very long and the client couldn't wait At that time she became interested in it. Just a few years later Ms. Hagemann went through a report from a Northwestern student who showed what wonderful advantages there were for the children and families who did receive Section 8 vouchers. The study was not about Evanston but some of the other north shore and Page 15. further out suburban areas. !t showed mat the whole family changed and became more middle class because they were around other middle class people. The children did so much better in school. Her daughter works as a teacher in Cabrini Green and she has come to know a lot of the people who Irve there. A lot of the people there get vouchers because Cabrini Green is being ton down. She cannot tell you how many vouchers are returned because the people cannot find a place mat they want to move to. Today she is hearing about some of the south Evanston people and would like to mention what she learned about five years ago when she was talking to someone who had a rraa that showed where all the Sections B Ln Evanston are and where all the apartments that qualified for the amount of rent Here she has lived in the 67 or r Ward the enure time she has lived in Evanston and we have lamented the fact that its not very much diversified at all. We have very little diversity. Ydhen she looked at that list and saw so many apartments that you don't really notice up Crere, but they are there and they qualify, they're the right amount of money, and people could come there. How many people are up there, zero. How many have ever been there, zero. Why are we so white maybe its part of that because as she understands it 11-e tenants can call the landlord and not wanting to go through tine whole bit just ask if they take Section 8 vouchers. The landlord can jumt say, no. so they never ever see the people and some of these people are wonderful people, and believe her she knows that. We have done things like that. She does know what you might think we should do, she does know we don't have a full Human Relations Commission right now. She also knows that the ordinance says that Alderpersons are supposed to get people to be on this Commission but they haven't been coming through very much. She has been working to try to get some members, because without a full Human Relations Commission they do have a problem, they don't have enough people to even meet about the Issues, so we would defzndey lice to do something about that. We've also brought up another element because the Human Relations staff does work with the Housing Commission and they have on their agenda to work with people to teach them if they don't know how to be tenants, the kind of tenant we would want, to really work with them and not just cut them off immediately but work with them even before hand if possible. She does not know what you want her to say, but here she is. Thank you. Alderman Feldman said he hoped his comments did nothing to impugn the integrity or the compassion that he knows exists on the Human Relations Commission. He knows Its there and that people struggle to do good work and we can easily understand why somebody would say on a personal level do you want to Include the Section 8 housing as a protected class, it sounds so right and so just But he must say that being on the Human Relations Commission asks more of you than that and asks him more of himself than that It asks every member of the Council more than that, we can no longer just say what is our personal proclivity, what do we think Is the nice thing to do, what we have to do is measure it in terms of its effect on a multitude of people and the community as a whole. He suggests that kind of criteria was not met, that kind of examination was not met. Did you vote your conscience, absolutely he is not arguing with that but the does not think it did the issue justice. For example, it doesn't help at all to have a statement from the Human Relations Commission supporting it. What he needs to know is why, what you thought about, what the issues are, who you spoke to, what are the considerations, what are the effects on this part of the community, what are the effects on other parts of the community, that's the kinds of things he needs. This is one of the most complicated, significant issues he has ever faced as a member of the City Council and yet It Is amazingy devoid of reading material. We've had nothing, we get no copies of ordinances, we get no legal opinions, we don't even get the actual sample applications or the exact form that is used by HUD. We don't get an explanation of it by HUD. He has teamed what the requirements are here and he is not even certain that is all that there is to it. We haven't received the kind of preparation that is necessary for us to make decisions and the Human Relational Commission has not either. Everybody here deserves that kind of consideration, everybody here on both sides of the issue deserves the kind of consideration like were serious about it, like we mean to solve the problem, like we're going to deliberate and do research, examine, think, struggle, and agonize over this kind of an issue. That is what he expects to happen before he is ready to Gast a vote. Alderman Newman asked it the Human Services Committee could get a copy of ordinance where it refers that Aldermen are supposed to recruit people for the Human Relations Commission, because he has never heard of that He does not know that anybody that he would refer to that Commission would even gel appointed and would like to see the part of the ordinance that specifically puts the responsibility or says that Aldermen are supposed to send in nominations. That is interesting to him because we have an Advise and Consent rule. Thera is also the other issue, which he does not know the answer to it and is sure but haven't several members left the Commission before their terms were over. Ms. Hagemann said their past Chairman moved to Hawaii. Alderman Rainey asked if there are issues on the Human Relations Commission that we need to know about, are there a lot of vacancies. Ms. Haynes responded, one right now, they have had two or three people relocate creating vacancies, to which Alderman Newman added or resigned. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked hearing these observations all of us have different opinions and he thinks the Human Relations Commission has a different purpose than the Human Services Committee. The Hunan Services Committee has taken what has been advanced from the Human Relations Commission and brought it to the table here where we are engaging In this vigorous kind of process of understanding the different perspectives and what the problems are in order to be informed as to how we move forward. His expectation of the Human Relations Commission, before he was on the Council, was that most Human Relations Commissions would be trying to troubleshoot what they perceived to be human rights problems. In his opinion it is within the purview to vote, to deliberate between and among each other and to advance this kind of issue and to take positions. Ultimately they are not the body that implements the policies, they're not the ultimate voting authority on this, there is a process. He would not expect them to take a neutral position and those who participate voluntarily on the Human Relations Commission engage in that process. That is why we all need, as was called for before. to make sure that our voices are heard in the context of these committees. These committees do take position. they do advance proposals and it gives all of us an opportunity to further analyze the problem and see what we will do about il. If In the process they did not do a good enough job In bringing information to us it is legitimate to ask them to go hack and bring more Information. It is precisely their obligation to take positions to rectify problems that they perceive and we do not have to follow like sheep, we need to do further analysts, hear their opinions, and try to make a determination as to what we think Is best for the City. He thinks the Human Relations Commission is doing good work. Page 16. Betty Ester - She is a resident of Evanston, she is not a landlord nor Is she a Section 8 voucher holder, she is an advocate for affordable housing. She works with Section 8 tenants helping them complete the long forms they get from the Housing Authority each year to be re -certified. They get a letter that tells them they have to have this information in to them by a certain date, if you do not do this then they will take your certificate away. They have to get what the landlord is going to charge for their rent when their rent goes up its not always by 2%. Then they have to send a letter to the landlord for him to fill out and say what their rent is going to be, get it back from the landlord and send h on to Section 8. It is not 2% that HUD holds landlords to. There is an inspector that goes out and inspects the housing, he can tell the landlord at that time 2% of 550, anything over that you have to have someone higher to approve. There are Paws in that program and working with tenants we are trying to remedy some of them because some of them are headaches, for both the tenant and landlord. Evanston has 896 Section 8's, somewhere or other, Section 8's are going, You talked about if this law is passed then the real property will go condo. We do not have a source of income protection now in Evanston and Evanston Is in a condo boom. We talked about people being able to afford to stay here. One of the Commission members found out her apartment Is going condo and she cannot afford it. When do we stop and look at and say 4 is a moral issue. The government is not trying to hold your €ncome on your property down. There are certain requirements that you have to fill out, they might be a nuisance, but you have to do it In order to streamline it you need to write to your congressman and to the people at HUD if you have suggestions they will look at thetm if you do nothing but sit and talk about it then are no changes. That ordinance needs to be passed because with the southeast side being converted to condo we are losing people, they are not only young people they are senior citizens. Do you know how many of that 800 plus Section 8 vouchers that we have belong to senior citizens? That is a group of people that need housing, that group of people have worked and made this community what it is. Because their husband passed or they became ill and they wanted to stay here they were fortwmate enough to get the voucher, then should they have to leave, no. Do you have the right to rent to anybody you want to, yes? But there is a job you have to do; you have to screen your tenant. With Section 8 the only thing they look at Is your source of income. The person has to send them their income to let them know whether they qualify for a voucher. They do ask If you're a good tenant, do you jump up and down, do you hammer on the floor, do you have night parties, that is not the Housing Authority's job, that is your job as a landlord. If we do not want the program in any form then let us petition the government and say we need to get rid of this program, but we need to stop and think what we're throwing out. Evanston participates in a program called the CDBG program. There are landlords here that benefited from that program, they had their fences built for security purpose, we paid the money. That money came because the number of low Income people that are here with Section 8. This taw Is not making it any harder for you. You have to screen your other tenants; It Is the same thing. You fear If you do not rent to a Section 8 voucher holder you will have numerous court cases, but that will not be the case because if your rent does not meet the Section 8 voucher is more than the voucher you're not discriminating against that person because they have a voucher. Lets be realistic, lens not work out of fear. When your taxes go up the rent of the person paying the market rent goes up. Your renter is paying your taxes or a part of it because you want a profit Most of you just got your water bill with the new rates for the sewer that will also raise the rent because the renter is using the water. If you did not see the last Council meeting at the Cal of the Wards, you can get a copy from ECTV and listen to Alderman Rainey speak, she says It all. Thank you. Tina Paden - Her parents and family have owned and operated property In Evanston for over 30 years. At the current time she has 20 units that are occupied, 6 of them are Section 8 tenants and 1 disability. She has heard stories that you still get paid if the tenant is still there when they are supposed to move out, she's not getting her money. Right now she has two Section 8 tenants in the same building their apartments are equivalent, they approved $950, she's allowed $1069 for a 2 bedroom. She asked for $950, one of the tenants was approved for the $950 and for the other tenant they said was out of luck because they changed their mind and she does not see how that is fair. She is in one of the 3% and has a Section 8 renter east of Greenbay Road and they are not trying to approve her rent either. She asked for increases, she can't get help from the Section 8, they tell her to call downtown. Downtown tells her to call back 10 Evanston. Who is she supposed to talk to, she even talked to Sandra Sharp, the Director, and she could not believe what she heard. Ms. Paden was told by the representative here in Evanston ,'Put your tenant out, Ms. Paden, forget iL" What kind of help Is that for the tenant, when we're trying to work with the tenant? She's taking a lot less worth to try to save these people their apartrents. She heard some earlier comments that Section 8 tenants are bad, actually her Section 8 tenants are good tenants, they pay on time, she does not have problems with the Section 8 tenants, the problem she has is with the Housing Authority because they're not trying to be reasonable with her. Her gas bill is going up, her gas bill in the year 2000 which they said was going to be equivalent to S2,000 in this building where she has 2 Section 8 people was $1.100 for one month. She's asking for $950 and they said no and she can't do It. Its not about passing this ordinance and trying to force the landlord you need to look at the Housing Authority and the people who work for the Housing Authority. Irs not everybody. The rent was $883 a couple of years ago and she asked for $750 they said they were going to hold back $14 because the tenant chose to buy her own refrigerator. She told Sandra Sharp this person who had been her tenant for over 10 years, if she wants to remain in the same apartment, fine, she sent her paperwork in and the nest thing she knew this tenant's rent was cut off. They didn't pay for September and now its time for October's rent and she still hasn't gotten any information so so will have to evict the tenant. You say you want the people to accept Section 8 but she no longer takes Section 8. She's trying to retain the people she has as long as she gets cooperation from the Housing Authority and she is not getting it. She has another tenant on Emerson and of course you know those rents for a 2 bedroom is $!,500 and higher. She asked for $975 and they said no. Her tenants in the same building pay $1,150 and she's taking less for this tenant and they still tell her no. Nobody is listening to her and the head of Section 8 here In Evanston said to put the tenant out Is she helping the tenants, no? Don't look to the landlords for this ordinance, you need to look to the Housing Authority and whars going on there and who is helping whom. They're not trying to work with the landlord you have to wait a half hour before you even speak to anybody downtown for both tenants and landlords, anybody. We've accepted the Section 8 program for 20 years and why should she go through all this hassle and have wait for hours for inspection. She does not mind inspections because she wants nice properties. She cares about when the Section 8 representative tells her theyll be thereat 8:30 and show up at 10:30 to inspect the toilet seat If you have some better options besides try€ng to force feed us that look at the Housing Authority and what kind of criteria they have she might consider accepting new Section 8 tenants, but at this time she is not going to do it. They told her if her tenant moves to a different unit In one of her other buildings they would give her more money for her to move than for her to stay when she asked for less. What kind of sense is that? She's not in agreement with this ordinance because it Is not helping the landlords nor Is it helping the tenants. She feels bad for the tenants, she Page 17. also has seniors for tenants. Some people say Section 8 are bad people, she has evicted white people, black people, non -Section 8 tenants and Section 8 tenants. It has nothing to do with that as the Housing Authority and what they want to pay her for rent when she's trying to rent quality apartments and give people a fair opportunity but the Housing Authority is not giving her a fair opportunity. Thank you. Alvin Paden - Tina Paden is his daughter and runs the business now. He has been a resident here all his life, 69 years, and has had rental units for over 32 years. The problem is not with the tenant per se it's with the Housing Authority and the reason why he says that is because in his opinion they discriminate. He has had seniors apply for Secaon 8. One particular lady took a program at the high school to seam typing, for six weeks, and then when out and got a job. She had to take a cab to get to the job and he knew she wasn't making that much money they teid her she made too much money. But yet he had youngsters come in, one with one child, able bodied, didn't have a job, Section 8 paid most of her rent. He thinks she paid S8 to start wuh. Then he had another tenant with 2 children, she had a job at the lime, lost her job because she was having another baby, so Section 8 decreased her rent hereto 519. You see it's really not the tenant that's the problem it's the Section 8 administration. We had a meeting with the for -at Section 8 Director and he will tell you this lady is beyond repair. She will not budge no maW what you try to do or what you compromise on. He has known her through the Section 8 program when she ran the office in Chicago, about 24 years ago, she was a tough cookie then and she hasn't changed. He thinks if there's any meeting that has to be it needs to be done with Betty Sanders. Thank you. Robert Taylor - He has been an Evanston resident on and off for about 8 and 1R half years. He moved to Evanston In the early 90's to attend the Kellogg Program. He fell in love with Evanston and though he moved to the California Bay area for 2 and 112 years Is now back He considers Evanston the well -deserved jewel of the north shore. He used to live in the 411 Want but in recent years has resided in the 5" Ward. Like the members of the Paden family he is a working landlord. Since he bought his first building in 1995 he bought 10 small apartment buildings ranging from 2 to 5 flats, he sold 5 building and currentty owns 5. He knows what It Is like to be in the trenches of remodeling dealing with assorted contractors and inspectors and all that goes with that. He has also served on a wide range of committees, and worked on a committee that advised and assisted the City Human Relations Commission on the rewrite of the Evanston Landlord Tenant Ordinance. He thinks he has a pretty good perspective on this City though he has not lived here as many decades as many people have. Aside from the obvious point he does not want to belabor that he hopes has bonged everybody over the head who is sitting up here in a position to vote on this, this is a well -intended, admirably motivated but terribly misguided Initiative. It concems him that it could get this far along without somebody pulling it up by the reins or whatever and it would take this kind of time and effort in response by the community to give you the feedback. He thinks youWe only seen the tip of the iceberg this would just blow up in the City's face if you attempted it. Several very well chosen points were made earlier. The point made by the gentleman about fiscal impact and the burdens to the school system the City of Evanston knows it's a magnet and draws people into Oft community for whatever reasons to become a strain on the resources on the community. The statistics are very dear, we're dealing Inordinately an excessive amount of our fair share. Speaking as a struggling landlord in this community, who has been on the edge of bankruptcy twice. What it takes is a landlord to make these buildings worts. He is concerned that our leadership doesn't understand what's involved. There is something terribly wrong with this picture that maybe he misunderstood but somebody asked how many people on the committee here are landlords and nobody raised thew hand, Mr. Taylor was corrected by the committee on this statement and Mr. Taylor said he stands corrected and went on to say the bigger issues he sees here are with the best of intentions with this sort of initiative, attempting to orchestrate artificially controlled market forces. The big risk is intended consequences. Anytime the government gets involved in forcing landlords to absorb the costs in time and dollars its belabors and bears repeating. Is this the kind of situation where people talk about rent control, leaders on the Council talked about rent control and they don't get it, the don't understand. It seems to him at this point the taxes become so excessive, and the water sewer rates for little guys like us the small property owners who are caught in this crossfire. There's a breaking point and just speaking for hirnself at the point where he wonders Is it worth it. There are people Like him who own buildings that Northwestern University development department would love to gel their hands on. He has been contacted twice by them In the last 7 years and he said no. He knows what Northwestern Is up to and he Is not going to go that route but there are other property owners that will. It's a vicious cycle when you start taking these properties off the tax roles. At this point everybody knows about the lost jobs. The Chicago market is now very soft He heard many landlords saying this is the toughest year that they can remember trying to get their apartments rented. He asked for a show of hands of how many landlords present here have experienced this as their most diffcutt year they can remember renting their apartments. (Although a number of people had left the hearing, from those remaining a number of hands were raised.) Mr. Taylor said this tells something, even the few people that stuck around, we are struggling. He fact that we have people In government working with the best intentions, he does not get a sense that they're sensitive to understanding what's going on and how close a lot of people are to saying the heck with Evanston, love you, wish you well, but I'm out of here. He urges that if things like this come to temper it and recognize what's going on down in the trenches when we're dealing with this highly regulated amendment. He has lived in Evanston long enough to get some perspective on it. Evanston has about 75.000 people, a government the size of which you normally find in a City with a quarter of a million people. What It takes to build a diverse society a lot can be said for going to work and diversifying our economy. That's his opinion, thank you for your consideration. Allan Goldberg - He's not here to talk about the pros and cons of Section 8, which we have already heard enough about tonight. At least two times tonight he heard, stated by fair housing professionals who support this ordinance, stated that one of the goals of this ordinance was to increase the diversity of Section 8 throughout Evanston. He does not know if anybody has done any studies, if that would happen from this ordinance. His opinion is that Section 8 applicants are not going to be renting apartments east of Chicago Avenue or up by Central Street where they're not going to get rents 51400 or $1500 a month from Section 8 to pay for those apartments, We're going to be like a magnet going down to south Evanston in the 51' Wand where they are now. The reason there is such an Inordinate percentage is not because that is where the apartments are because there are plenty of apartments east of Sheridan and Page 18. up by Central, the reason is because the rental market rates are within the Section 8 ordinance. The landlords who are down in his neighborhood are the ones who are going to be bombarded with applicants. We already don't even want to advertise in the Evanston Review because we know you only get Section 8 calls. If that supposedly is the goal of the ordinance it seriously needs to be studied because he does not believe that objective will be met but we will continue to exacerbate an increased segregation in south Evanston and to the other census track that has an inordinate percentage of Secaon 8 housing. There has also been discussion that somehow this is a program to create more affordable housing. This doesn't create more affordable housing, this has nothing to do creating affordable housing. if you wan; to create affordable housing there are other programs to do this. The only way this will create affordable housing is d it depresses the market value in the rental rates of properties. Somenmes he gets a little offended by housing professionals from outside of our community, in these other north shore areas that that do not have hardly any Section 8 low income tenants coming here to Evanston where we do a pretty great job already of renting to all kinds of people. These other north shore communities should be embarrassed when compared to Evanston. We can stand and be proud of the way we do our housing busLiess here in Evanston, it may not be perfect, there are certainly things that can improve, but he does not think this is the ordinance that is going to do it. Thank you. Alderman Rainey welcomed Sandra Sharp to our town and could fell her from what she heard tonight she has never heard of another government program so disliked and hopes she can address some of the claims of such mismanagement. Sandra Sharp - Works for the Housing Authority of County of Cook and guessed she would deal with Alderman Raineyrs last statement first about a government that is so disliked. Basically they had 11.300 vouchers throughout the County of Cook and over 6,700 landlords that are participating in the program. Nationally there are over 300,000 program partidpants and landlords. This is a program that Is very well accepted nationally even though as it has been pointed out many times the program is not without Its flaws. Some of the issues she would like to deal with is from what she understands from our attorney when she read from the ordinance, the ordinance is not required Section 8 is a national program and you are dealing with national HUD regulations. There are some things that the Housing Authority can control and there are other regulations that are actually national in thrust and those are regulations with regard to the requirement of an inspection. All units have to be inspected nationally to determine whether they meet HUD minimum housing quality standards. That Is not an issue that a housing authority can control. There was a strong opinion expressed earlier that the Inspections should not be a requirement that's not something that this housing authority or any housing authority can control. The good thing about this ordinance is it does not require a landlord to accept any kind of a rent that the housing authority imposes. If the landlord does not agree to the rent, as Gail Schechter said earlier, about 30% of the vouchers that aren't used that are distributed under the Section 8 program because landlords have a choice. Even in communities like the City of Chicago that have an ordinance that says you cannot discriminate because a person has a Section 8 voucher. It does not require, under any circumstances, a landlord to agree to a rent to which the landlord does not agree, so there Is nothing that would hake choice out of this program with regard to the landlord's rent. HUD requires housing authority to pay fair market rents, there are reasonable rents, there are payment standards. What HUD requires the housing authority to pay is the reasonable rent for a unit_ You heard Ms. Paden who spoke about what the rent Is for Evanston, that Is the fair market renter, the payment standard for Evanston. Within that payment standard the housing authority has to pay what is called the reasonable rent and that is where these issues that you heard so many times with regard to discussion and negotiation of rent come in. Basically with the Housing Authority of the County of Cook you heard people say that you cannot gel a rent increase that is 2°% or that she said that rent increase cannot be greater than 2%. She would like to make it very, very dear that there Is no mandatory requirement that a rent increase not be greater than 2% or S50. What she actually said at that meeting was that field staff, the inspectors that actually go out and inspect the unit, you have to remember their entire portfolio is over 11,000 rental units, so we cannot allow approximately 30 field inspectors that we have negotiating rents throughout the county and approve Increases that are in excess of 2% or $50. That means the inspector has to get a review from his supervisor when the rent increase is greater than that There are no regulatory limits of that type. She would have to say to the legal department she heard 2 speakers tonight who have a very, very good grasp of the program, they are absolutely accurate, there is no regulatory requirement that rent increases be no more than 2% or $50 that is our administrative requirement so that we can control increases in our portfolio. Your increases that are actually being rejected by field inspectors are 10 and 20% when the average rate of rent increase, that is in the City of Evanston is throughout the 6 county region has been about 3 to 5'% this year. We have landlords that are asking the Section 8 program to pay 10 and 20% rent increases for existing tenants. Just to clarify what the Inspectors are saying, there are two kinds of rents, for tenant that is actually living in your building your rent increase may be 5% for that tenant. A new tenant that is coming in off the street you're going to value that rent at whatever the marker is so you may have one tenant in one unit paying $1,100 rent, another tenant that moved into the unit some time ago the rent may actually be under the market and you may be increasing 5 or 7% in that existing tenant. That's what inspectors are trying to articulate but they are not doing it very accurately or successfully. They are not telling landlords well move her out so you can move someone else in at a greater rent Increase. They are trying to explain the dynamic that goes on the difference between an existing tenant that maybe subject to a smaller rent increase and a new tenant coming off the street that is going to pay the market rate for that unit as soon as the tenant walks Into the street The legal department was correct when it said If a tenant is evicted the Housing Authority will pay rent all the way through until the tenant hits the street. What's going to happen is when the Housing Authority gets a notice that the tenant is being evicted because we don't want to overpay rent, the rent may be stopped temporarily until the landlord gives a key return receipt In other words say the eviction has been successful and the tenant has been evicted, then i00°% of the rent will be paid from the day the eviction notice was served until the tenant hits street and that will not happen anywhere else if your are dealing with a private rental market. In fact It if you're evicting a tenant you actually restore the tenancy when you collect rent from the tenant so that only Section 8 would give you that advantage. Because this is a federal program you know what its like, one size fits all it never does, so the program is not going to be suitable to every single rental unit in the United States of America. It is suitable to many, many rental units throughout the County of Cook and throughout the United States of America. Page 19. There are administrative issues and flaws, she's a new Director with the Housing Authority of Cook County and she has been doing things to accelerate the inspection process to take some of the kinks out, to reduce and streamline paperwork flaw so that the program is user friendlier for both Landlords and tenants because tenants even have paper requirements and we're doing what we can to reduce that on their behalf. You heard Ms. Ester speak about helping tenants complete paperwork and Ms. Sharp assured her we are working to streamline those to be much easier for tenants in the future. We ask for the support of landlords. There have been a couple of speakers who did accurate?y represent the program. The paperwork for landlords is very, very simple so if you heard landlords say there is a lot of paperwork she would certainly like to see what they are filling out When a landlord starts with the Section 8 program there is a form that Is called the Request for Tenancy Approval and that is the leNthiest form which is basically a rrvo sided sheet of paper that would take at a maxirsx;m five minutes to complete. The landlord completes the address of the unit, the number of bedrooms, the square foot, responsible for which utilities, who to contact for inspection. On the backside he indicates whether or not he is related to the tenant, and fills out name, address, etc., and whether or not the unit's sign to lead based certification is attached to it. That form invokes the inspection, after the unit is inspected the landlord has to provide us, if they are brand new with the program for the first time. a completed Federal W9 to designate the Landlord's federal tax identification number, and on the other side is a payment voucher for where you want the checks to be mailed. The final thing the landlord has to do is complete a housing assistance payments agreement, a very simple form which is only the landlord's name, address, and signature, that is the contract between the Housing Authority and the landlord for the Section 8 program. Forever and ever throughout the program the landlord only has a little card to complete annually indicating whether or not the Landlord wants a rent increase and the dollar amount of the increase, so there are not a long list of forms to complete with Cook County's Section 8 program. She did speak to Ms. Paden and the experiences she described she was having with the program are defiMety inconsistent with Ms. Sharp's philosophy and what she wants to see happen with the program. Ms. Paden gave Ms. Sharp 3 client numbers that she was researching and she certainty plans to follow up on all of Ms. Paden's concerns. The program deals a lot of people believing that they are going to be forced to do something that is contrary to their business nature as a landlord. There is r>*hing in this ordinance that she heard that would make a landlord rent to a Section 8 tenant and accept a rent imposed by the Housing Authority if the landlord doesn't agree to the rent We don't require that now and she did not see that required ever in this ordinance. She certainty plans to give you something in writing that responds a little more thoroughly to some of the concerns that have been raised, but would Pike to thank you for allowing her to speak. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Sharp to dear up something that has been communicated to him, that Section 8 for the landlords Is a voluntary program. His sense of this ordinance is you will have to accept applications for the program even if you don't want to participate In the program. He just wants to be Gear if it's a voluntary participation program and a landlord can chose not to participate in it. You're saying a landlord can choose not to set a rent as recommended by you. This ordinance is a bit inconsistent because whether or not somebody has a certain source of income the gist of the ordinance is that landlord, unless he is missing something here, has to accept the application and in his view once you have to accept the application you are seeming to have to participate in program. There might be a landlord who says thank you for having this program and thank you for setting a system where part of a rent can be paid each month, and even though the paperwork Is as simple as you say, for what whatever reason he does not want to fill out the paperwork nor does he want to be subject to any additional Inspection. The statement was made that not every unit is suitable to Section 8, which made him, see not every building might work for Section 8. What he is asking is if Section 8 is truly a voluntary program, in every respect If you don't have to participate then explain to him, so ho can better understand, if it's a voluntary program where you don't have to participate why would you have to accept an application. Ms. Sharp responded she is certainly not a lawyer and your lawyer seems to have done an excellent job tonight but will tell you what she knows from her experience with a similar ordinance in the City of Chicago. We're confusing several things, we talk about a voluntary program and we talk about this ordinance forcing a landlord to participate in Section 8. A similar ordinance in the City of Chicago In no way forces anyone to participate In Chicago's Section 8 program. What it does is it says to a landlord if the applicant comes to you with a Section 8 voucher you are free to deny me because I do not meet your credit criteria or because my landlord references are inadequate. or because I can't move in, or because all those other business decisions that you make. But, If everything else is equal the fact that I am holding a housing choice voucher cannot be the sole reason that you would deny me an apartment. We get over at those hurdles and you take an application from me. When people generally come to make out an application for an apartment, as she has made out many applications for an apartment and managed a portfolio of rental property that was approximately 6,500 housing units, she never asked anyone, before she gave them and application, what is their source of income. If a person saw an apartment and they liked it she look an application from them. After a person passes that hurdle and the person has a housing choice voucher, there are still many reasons that you may not participate in the program. You many not agree to the rent with the housing authority, there is nothing under this ordinance that stops you from not participating in the Section 8 program because you do not agree to the rent. She did not see anything in this ordinance, from her understanding that requires any landlord to participate in the voluntary Section 8 program. Alderman Newman remarked his understanding of the Chicago ordinance is if a landlord is taking applications for an apartment, once you get the application you can look at all the factors, credit history, and everything else to reject the application and you can chose to reject. What he Is hearing, and has not been clarified for him, is if the landlord is told somebody with Section 8 is coming In the landlord says he really does not want his apartment to be inspected anymore and does not want to participate In what you call a voluntary program the landlord has to accept the application. Then he hears the part where they can't reject the application on the basis of the source of Income. He sees that, but what he does not see is does the landlord have to accept the application then potentially somewhere down the line is the landlord going to have go through your Inspections. In what you are saying. he does not see where the landlord can just say he does not want to go through any additional Inspections and he chooses not to want to participate. What he is hearing and he thinks he is hearing Is that you have to take the application, you then have to come up with a reason If you don't want to participate in the program other than the person is a Section 8 applicant. Then, if you have no other reason you are forced to participate and endure those additional inspections. When you say the program Is voluntary is the Chicago ordinance consistent with Page 20. that concept Voluntary means if I don't want those additional inspections 1 don't have to parWpate. What he would like to know, and if you can answer definitively for him. when a landlord says I doni want my property inspected by the federal government, but III accept my inspections from Chicago cc _vanston. Do they have to accept the application if they simply don't want to participate in that inspecton process? Ms. Sharp said she could not say wt-.at would happen with a subsequent investigation with your Human Relations Commission if a landbrd refused to accept an irs�^,,' . Alderman Newman added an application, which means they would later be inspected. Ms. Sharp said she knaves if a landlord takes an application from a person that has a hous+ng choice voucher then the unit is required to be inspected. Alderman Feldman asked if it is cocre(-. that the landlord is not ebiigated to accept a rental amount that has been set by Section 8, and was told that is correct Akienran Feldman went to on say he received a letter from a constituent in his ward that asked him to please read at this hearing. The letter speaks to that specific issue and he will just read a couple of paragraphs from the letter. 'For the last 25 years we have owned a 2 flirt in Evanston, living on the second floor and renting out the first floor and the basement. We are strongly opposed to mandatory acceptance of Section 8 vouchers. The first floor apartment is a large 3 bedroom where tenants over the years tend to stay several because we charge a reasonable rent. We live in the building and are choosy about who we rent to. We have rented to a single mot,w with 3 children, to a black couple with one child, a Section 8 family, and various others over the years, Many Section 8 applicatnZ can when we advertise. We do not want to be obligated to accept rental applications from all who can. We know we could charge mom for our apartments but have chosen not to. If forced to accept, applications from all Section 8 inquiries, Landlords such ourselves will be forced to charge over and above what Is allowed by Section 8 In order to chose our tenants. We do not want to do this. it din: s ushes the stock rather than increases it. Our basement apartment is 2 large rooms, we rent to one person. I do not want to rent to a couple. I do not want to rent to a family, I do not want to gave to show the apartment to all Section 8 people, I do not want to participate in government inspections ' Right now this Landlord is free to take ltrs position, she does not have to do arty of it, by accepting only the people she wants to accept, no matter what the source of income is she doesn't reject, but she doesn't have to accept it. She does not participate in any kind of government supervision or inspections, nor does she participate in any of the kinds of things that we all know In government happens in a bureaucracy. the kind of issues that your raise, the kind of issues that were raised here. She takes her chance on the open market. What he is trying to figure out is wiry we want to change this. Here's a woman who has accepted on a regular basis Section 8 people, she sounds like a very nice landlord who wants to keep her rental units down to a price that people can afford. Why do we want to change that? Ms. Sharp said she could not ans►.vr that question, she can speculate as to some advantages for wanting to change and one of those advantages has already been pointed out here. Basically with any kind of change there is always apprehension, there is always fear of the unknown. But in the City of Chicago they found that change was positive, that d was beneficial, so that you do broaden opportunities for both iandk wds and tenants which could be one reason that you may want to change this. The fact that there are some advantages In the Section 8 program that are not in the regular rental market, for example what is happening lately in our economy In relation. to job loss in all Income groups, the housing authority will pay the rent in spite of the fact that there has been the of loss of job. There are major advantages wi�h the program that may be underlying the reason that this ordinance has been suggested by your commission. Of course, she is Owed and thinks the program is excellent and on a national basis has proven to be beneficial to a lot of people. You have heard a lot of landlords here speak and the program has excellent tenants with all kinds of good reasons for it, but its each person's individual decision. Alderman Feldman agreed 100 percent that the program is exemplary, its motivation is good, and its doing exactly what its supposed to do, but he also respects the fact that its voluntary and he thinks it can be both. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to clarify that Alderman Newman had asked whether acceptance of an application from a Section 8 voucher holdermearts that a tandiord's apartment will be subject to inspection. Alderman Newman interyected, that is not what he was asking. What he was asking about was that he construed the ordinance to mean that all landlords have to accept Section 8 applications and if they do not want an additional inspection, no matter who they want to rent to, under our ordinance they will be compelled to accept fhe application, potentiatty accept the client and be subject to these inspections even when they do not want them. What he thought he heard earlier was this was a vohmtary program and not suited for everybody. He is very clear that if you accept the vouchers you're unit of housing will be subject to an additional inspection above what goes on within the municipality. Those who chose not to get invdved with the vouchers because they do not want an additional inspection, they whtl be subject to the violations of our ordinance. Alderman. Jean -Baptiste said titre wt.o chose not to get involved will not have to be subjected to Section 8 regulations because they would have not have been invoN ed. Alderman Newman said our ordinance on the table says you have to accept the application. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste responded you accept the application but that doesn't translate into your accepting the Section 8 voucher holder, because if your rent is not compatible with Section 8 then you do not have to accept that person if that person's background In terms of credit worthiness and other criteria do not meet with your expectations you can reject that person. What Ms. Sharp was saying is that if all things are equal that person has decent credit. their reference with other landlords checks out, there is nothing else wrong in terms of qualification to rerst the unit., except that person has a Section 8 voucher and you decide to reject that person on that basis and that basis alone, at least in the Chicago experience the landlord would then be found to be In violation of the Fair Housing Ordinance because they would have discriminated on the basis of source of income. Alderman Newman said that is not acknowledging the point he is making which is if you have a good credit history and there are no problems in your background that a screener can find, what this ordinance does is compells the landlord to parfcipate in the program and have to go through the additional inspections and the payment of rent conditions knposed. Under our ordinance the landlord will no longer have the option, assuming the person has good credit and they can't come up with a reason wilt have to participate, which he thinks is basically fundamentally unfair. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they are both saying the same thing, if Alderman Newman is saying all things are equal the landlord should have Page 21. the right to refuse someone solely due to the fact they hold the Section 8 vouchers. Alderman Newman remarked, no, what he is saying is they should be able to say they don't want to participate in a voluntary federal program and they donl want to have their property subjected to additional inspections nor do they want to have their cycle for renting subject to a federal program that Is run out of Washington administered by somebody in the county. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted that we have been talking about the consequence of this ordinance for landlords and have not concentrated much on the motivation for this rice of ordnance. He asked his. Sharp r; he would be correct to say that there are a lot of Section 8 voucher holders who are not able to find suitable housing, to which Ms. Snara responded, that would be correct. Alderman Jean -Baptiste went on to ask how much of a problem that is right now. Ms. Sharp said it is a significant problem right now not only in the City of Evanston but all over the County of Cook, the state of Illinois and the c.7untry in general. The fact that the program is voluntary units of government are passing ordinances that say that Section 8 cannot be the sole reason that a person is turned down for an apartment. Many landlords actually lose the opportunity to find out that they are going to have an excellent tenant who Is going to take good care of the unit, have excellent rJuldren, and the rent is going to come each month like clockwork. They absolutely will not allow themselves that opportunity to find that out because when they find the person is holding a housing choice voucher they won't take an application to give the person an opporamity at all. That's the reason there are many agencies, there are lawyers committee and all kind of groups trying to get legislation on a state wide basis so that people do have the opportunity without discrimination. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said time intent here is not to put landlords through unnecessary changes but to rectify a problem that exists to make suns that those that have Section 8 you &rs are able to find suitable housing and are not subjected to being excluded on the basis that their source of income is Section 8. Ms. Sharp said that exclusion solely based on Section 8 is the reason that there is support on a national basis for legislation that would prevent apartment seekers from being excluded from housing dearly, solely, and only because they are holding a housing choice voucher. Alderman Jean -Baptiste brought up that Ms. Sharp talked about a national trend, to which Ms. Sharp said it is all over, its even outside the city of Chicago, outside of the state of Illinois. The federal government incrementally has passed legislation that makes it easier for people to use housing choice vouchers. While the program is voluntary, she does not know If anyone has heard of the low Income tax credit program units that are developed using tax credits. Two years ago the federal government passed legislation that said tax credit developments cannot drscciminate against a person, anywhere In the United States, solely for the reason that they have a housing choice voucher. That legislation is national, its new, and Is Intended to make it easier for people to fully utilize their voucher in the housing market. Alderman Newman recalled it was brought up earker that are 1300 or 1400 vouchers in northem Cook County and the City of Evanston has between 900 and 1000 of those vouchers. He asked Ms. Sharp if Evanston has been a very high level participant in Section 8 compared to other suburbs. Ms. Sharp responded if you are asking basically, factually what's happening when one looks at participation in Section a on a county wide basis she compares the number of vouchers in the community to the total number of rental units in the community. If you compare the voucher units in the City of Evanston its about 1 %. When you took at vouchers to rental units your level of participation is actually quite low. There are communities that are 3 to 5% participation in Section B. Alderman Newman asked who are those communities, to which Ms. Sharp responded there are several but she does not have that information with her, because they serve 122 municipalities in Cook County. There are many more than Evanston when you compare rental units to vouchers that a higher level of participation. Alderman Newman asked if that information could be sent to him to which Ms. Sharp said she certainly can. Alderman Newman asked how many people are on the waiting Est who have vouchers are looking for housing right raw. Ms. Sharp said on their existing waiting fist they have about 3500. on the waiting itst they just opened and are still processing, there are 48,000. Alderman Newman remarked r&en you talk about making the Section 8 program available you're referring to making it available to all the people who live in Cook County. If when we went from 900 to 1800 in Section 8 certificates in the next year or two, you would consider that a great success based on the percentage of rental units we have. We have 900 out of the 1300, Chicago has 27,000 Section 8 although their population is almost 40 to 50 times greater than ours. he just wanted to clarify, if we were to increase the number of vouchers from 900 to 181i0 and we were to improve that percentage related to our rental housing, would he be correct In saying you would consider that very successful. ?As. Sharp said that is not correct, because her goal as the administrator of the Section E program in the County of Cook is diversity in a community like Evanston that has high concentrations in minorities. In some areas we are looking to the outlying areas to actually use them, She would she say she was very successful if she decreased the number of vouchers in the City of Evanston. Alderman Newman commented the only way you will decrease it is if additional affordable housing Is built in suburbs in other areas in Cook County. hts. Sharp said it you ask her how this ordnance would assist her In meeting her goal. It would assist her because it would broaden housing choice in the City of Evanston and choice is what its all about. If you have voucher holders who actually exercise choice by not renting in Evanston at all, that's great, we would consider that's success from the county level, its about housing choice and not about increasing the number vouchers In Evanston. Alderman Newman remarked we had significant testimony earlier about where the Section 8 voucher holders are located. In some of the City where there are very few we have rents for a 2 bedroom that are around $2000 to $25W a month. Landlords renting for those levels are never going to participate in this program as it exists right now because the rents are way too high. Thera has to be an order for there to be redistribution with this ordinance If that's what some people are getting at Alderman Rainey said she had researched and found about 10 apartments in better locations that meet Section 8 certificate rents, to which Alderman Newman said he would like to see where these apartments are. Alderman Rainey noted they are old now, but there were actually 2 or 3 on Central Street. We can all do this kind of research. Alderman Rainey said it Ms. Sharp's goats could be actualized by landlords In our community this issue would not even be discussed. The reality Isn't living up to the theory that you expound. Ms. Sharp responded, which means that we continue to have a lot of work to do and she is up to the challenge. She fully supports the Section 8 program and thinks its great. She has been here tonight since a quarter to seven but to her this is a labor of love and she is very grateful for the opportunity and is hereto work with you. Thank you. Page 22, missing. The Human Relations Commission has now become an advocate for tenant issues, much different that when it started and he is not sure that the Hurnan Retabons Commission is considering their advocacy role which is much different today than when the ordinance started and thinks that has to studied. From the complaints he gets, from people in his ward with regard to the administration, he does not think that is the body that should be the mediator and the prosecutor of complaints. He is concemed about the figure he heard earlier that it could cast somebody S200.000 to defend a lawsuit brought by the City of Evanston. He is concerned about us suing our own citizens. He wants to see every single complaint that the Commission has dealt with in the last 5 to 6 years and how they were gone through as he does not know what 11Wre doing there. He does not have a problem with a continued discussion nor does he think this continued discussion should be at this committee and he is certainly not going to want to participate when we put this on our agenda without the 150 people Who attended tonight objecting. When we decide Mis issue in the committee he wants every person who was here tonight to get notice of the meeting. At the last meeting he attended the intention was some of us who did not want to go forward were being criticized, some people wanted to vote on it at the last meeting before we had any of these 150 people come through. We heard a lot of people in the housing advocacy community tonight come here to support this from every organization related to housing and he respects those people, they do wonderful work. He does not know they truly understand the implications that are going to be on Evanston, he does not understand them nor is he close to knowing where we are or who is going to gather this infomotion. He does know if this information Is gathered there should be a meeting participated in by both tenants and landlords and people who oppose and people who are in favor of this ordinance. He does not know what you mean by continuing the discussion and he does not know if were going to have to defend a lawsuit because of the fact that this may change a voluntary program to a mandatory program. He has nothing but admiration for the work Ms. Sharp does but she is only one person and he wants to hear somebody get a handle on what it means to the City of Evanston if the number of vouchers go from 900 to 1B00 or 900 to 1400 in some reasonable period of time, what the Impact will be on the Evanston taxpayer and what additional services will have to be expended. This community has a very substantial diverse population today. Let's see about the evidence from somebody that the diversity of our City has been shrinking and that the evidence that our tax base is not adversely going to be affected. Alderman Newman had other concerns, he wants to see all time condominium owners because one of the implications that was not discussed here tonight was we have condominium owners who are renting their units and they are bound by the rules of their associations. One of the unintended impacts of this ordinance might well be that if Section 8 tenants are going to end up in certain condominiums whether those condominiums are going to change their rule not to allow renting and thinks time condominiums in Evanston should be notified that we are considering this. If we can get the right notifications and we can have a discussion of what the actual problem is we are tying to solve so we can then understand some of the implications to our community then well be somewhere Dose to being able to deal with it. There is s substantial amount of opposition to this and the landlord community In this town is very skeptical of what the agenda of the City of Evanston is on tenant landlord issues. We have a substantial amount of work to do in the landlord community to try to educate and hear their concerns about the way we're operating in this City. Until we get to that point he does not know that we are anywhere close to this. To him when you say keep it In committee, If the goal is to keep in committee and then try to have a vote at the next meeting he's not interested in that. If the goal is to try to answer the questions from both sides of the table on what the problems are in the larxilord community, what the problems are with the program, whether we're realty solving a problem with this, then lets keep it around, but lets have a fair study. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Newman why would he hear what she said in that manner, what she said was that she would like to keep the discussion going, she had absolutely no expectation that this matter would come to a vote any time soon, that's exactly what she said. Alderman Newman said they were chastised that they did not want to vote on your proposal at the last meeting. You did not even want to have this public hearing tonight; you wanted us to vote at the last meeting. He's concerned about having a process that is fair down the road, that's what he heard at the East meeting. Aldemnan Rainey remarked we had the public hearing and thinks we have done a great job listening to people and overcame objections to hearing everybody here tonight. While it might have been your idea to have the hearing you evidently changed your mind during the hearing. We heard everybody and there Is this group that is meeting with the Housing Authority of landlords that includes landlords here tonight objections to Section 8, maybe a few are here just to make an appearance, but she got the sense, talking to them, that some of them were very sincere in their reason for being here. While she wasn't able to explain this earlier, the reason she really supports and encourages continued discussion of this amendment, it is not a new ordinance it is an amendment to a current ordinance, is because she feels that there is something basically, terribly wrong when a community such as Evanston tolerates the total rejection of an entire group of people who have a Section 8 certificate. When you call up and say to a landlord I have a Section 8 certificate, you have a 3 bedroom apartment that I can afford, and the landlord is able to hang up on you without any further discussion there Is something basically wrong with that There Is something basically wrong with a community where all of the Section 8 certificate holders are warehoused In certain parts of town, and what she would like to do is have this discussion to find out how we can fix that. If Its not with this amendment then there has to be another way and maybe we can come up with that if we continue this discussion. She heard things tonight that were horrific and she heard them in the meeting we had with Section 8 that makes her wonder why would any landlord in the whole world take Section B. We have landlords in Evanston who have hundreds of Section 8 tenants, literally hundreds, in fact a few must have had a thousand. There has to be a reason why some landlords have Section 8 certificates and some don't, why Reba Place s participating with us in those meetings. It's a little bit of paperwork. but we manage we don't have any serious problems. There are those landlords who have no problems and she would like to further explore why it is that some people can make it with certificates and some people can't. With Ms. Sharp now on board maybe we can resolve some of the problernns and come up with another solution. The reason she thinks its important for us to discuss this is because she thinks its unfair for anybody to be hung w up on someone because they have a Section 8 certificate or housing choice voucher. While that might seem unusual she finds It very discouraging especially in Evanston In the year 2ti02. Page 24, Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to thank everybody who did stay and persevere wrth us whether you were watching cable cr were here at the meeting. Other than the process of getting to results sometimes meanings engaging in this type of discussion are views that put forward questions to raise that need answers. He agrees with Alderman iVe rrnan that we need to probe further and get some answers but obviously there is as problem and as Ms. Sharp stated some Section 8 voucher holders are not able to find suitable housing. The motivation of this proposed amendment to him is important to consider. What it would have rectified is one thing if it creates another problem that's probably lane discussion we have right now. The landleres that have come forward obviously feel more empowered than the Section 8 tenants because there are many more Section 8 tenants wtmo probably have something to say but they did not come here tonight That doesn't mean that we resolve the problem by the rnaprtf of voice opposed to the ordinance. We heard their voice, we should respect and appreciate it but there are still a lot of questions and we need to probe further to try to resolve that kind of problem that exists in the commurvty. His suggestion is that we take it back to committee and discuss the process of gaining a deeper understanding. Also, same of time questions raised the implication of doubting the number of Section 8 tenants, if there is an issue with District 65 we need to discover that_ We also need to answer the question as to whether or not the increase was an increase of new Evanstonians with Section 8 vouchers or old Evanstonians with new Section 8 vouchers. A lot of people stood up tonight and had a real problem with the process and the fact that we are digging Into an issue that they fool is offensive to them. They fight for choice but they still have to appreciate what the substance of this is about, it is about choice. Ultimately we have to find a balance in regards to the Human Relations Commission. its funny because he had the opposite report from a number of people who approached him about the Human Relations Commission. A number of people have said they do not go far enough when complaints come forward around discrimination and other such related issues, that they're not getting the kind of musde to push forward that is needed to rectify their problem. We all need to take a look at what we do at the Human Relations Commissions level, those who think it has gone too far, those who think it has not gone far enough, we need to come together to and try to find some kind of balance. He does know that the majority of people on the Commission are people who volunteer and have the best interest of the City at heart From the last Human Relations minutes that he read some of them expressed they feel Intimidated by the politics of the Council. Their question Is are we motivated by the politics, are we motivated by effort to rectify what they perceive to be problems in terms of human relations in Evanston. He is up for the discussion. he is up for further analysis to see how we cw rectify this particular Commission, but thinks the committee ought to go through our process and hopefully we can get consensus on that and try to close the meeting. Alderman Newman said what we have heard at P & D Is that the people on the Human Relations Commission have wanted muscle on behaff of tenants to enforce some of the Tenant landlord Ordinance. He has very specft complaints from the community and has one complaint with him regarding how a condo association was mistreated in one of these complaints and thought they were being Intimidated by the staff, which he has in writing. From his own experiences of being on the Council for ten years, landlords of coach houses have called him and written him letters showing some of the correspondence they got from the Human Relations staff which are conoems he would like to address. If you want to address concerns if there is criticisms of the Human Relations staff, Director or members or someone that's fair game. We can't say we want to look at a problem and say if somebody is delving into it that Ir5 an attack on the Director or on the Commission, If we think there Is a problem we want to kook at and remember in this ordinance we have been discussing all night that this is just amending an ordinance in place. He has senous concerns about how this ordinance has been administered by the body administering it and he would like get into some of those concerns. One other problem he has is with what was said that there Is a problem in the community and accepting what Ms. Sharp said in terms of Section 8 holders not being able to rent. What community are we talking about? Ms. Sharp represents Cook County, they look at problems on a Cook County basis, its up to us to see whether there is a problem in Evanston. He is not interested in Evanston solving the problems of Cook County on Section 8 vouchers. He knows the irtforrnation tonight showed that In the northern suburbs out of 1300 or 1400 vouchers Evanston has 900 of them. It sounds to him that we are overwhelmingly successful considering we are only 73,000 people. Over the years we have built multi family housing where other communities are not even building. Another example is providing services for people in need In Cook County, we have the only homeless shelter that goes 25 miles north and 25 miles northwest. Nobody else has stepped up to the plate. We have done more than virtually any other community dealing with the needs of people with mental health issues in providing housing. He Is very glad he has mulupte low income and senior housing in hLs wand. At 319 Dempster, in his ward, he strongly supported a low income housing single unit. Evanston is stepping up to the plate but what he is concerned about is two things, one that Evanston not solve all time problems for the entire northern suburban community. We already have homeless sent here because other communities are not stepping up and are not diversifying, building, or encouraging multi fatuity housing in the rental area. He is not sure where the problem lies, is it the Evanston community itself or is it the overall Cook County community where voucher holders have problems. He wants a process that is fair and goes after some of these questions and he would love to know the answer to whether or not as a result of this amendment we will end up with 1800 vouchers. He also wants to see what exactly and whether or not the problem is with Evanston. His last point is he is everybody has a right to free speech, but he lives in a great community and he underlines the word great. He does not like Evanston being trashed anymore and although we can improve greatly he is hearing too much trashing around this ordinance. We have a landlord community here that is not perfect, he himself is tough as anybody on the bad landlords, but we have a lot of good landlords who are here tonight and he Is a little tired of hearing and drawing an implication that a lot of good landlords are somehow dscrirrinating. They're In Evanston because they want to be here and not because somebody does not want to participate In the Section 8 program and what goes along with it that they can be put in the category of discriminating. That's the issue we seem to have a disagreement on. If you want to have a meeting to set up a process in which we are going to look at all the questions that would be tine. Alderman Feldman stated he does not like time characterization of landlords as the rule of thumb hanging up on people. He is sure that happens but not all the time. There's a difference between saying I'm going to take someone and I'm not going to participate In a program, I'm not going to participate in a program for a tot of good reasons. The people that want landlords to participate have to come up with good reasons why they should, and he is not saying they are not there. They have to come up with good reasons why somebody would say I used to think I did not want to be In this program and now I'm willing to consider it. We have to do that, if we can't do that and we can't say the reason we have to do it is the impediments are not there. We can't say the reason you have to do Page 25. Charley Morand - He is 34 years old was bom and raised in Evanston and has a twin brother Mike. This past April Mike and he bought a 2 flat on Central Street. They have been learning as they go along and have made some mistakes. Coming here tonight was an eye opener to hear the different sides of the arguments. A bg eye opener was getting their tax bill today. it hurt. He is a future tax base of Evanston especialty hearing all these complanms from people about % -.at City government wants to do to them, take away their right to chose. That's what yoe're doing talking about choice. what about our G+xace. Lets talk about wing free in America it just doesn't happen that much anyrnore. After getting their tax bii today, hearing what's gorlg on in the City to the people. the property owners who pay taxes, he and his broTer realty don't want to live in this Gy anymore. After this meeting we're seriously considering moving out. if that's what you want your tax base to do move out trunk hard about that He knows a lot about Connections for the Homeless and the good work they do and has been to Youth Job Sernce benefits. that's where all that help should come from not from us, not an our back. Thank you. Brian White - He is the Otrector for Community Relations for the Leadership Council, An earlier speaker testified a little bit to the history of the Council and Ltieir rote in administrating a variety of programs it cWing fair housing enforcement and relocation of Section 8 families Including families into Evanston. He had prepared testimony to submit in writing but would like to make a couple of comments. We administered the Gautreaux for more than 20 years and place 7100 families throughout the Cook County and metropolitan area. We did extensive screening, counseling, and follow up of our families. The Gautreaux program model Is a successful mobility program that works. The reason it works is because there is screening, working with the landlords, working with the tenants there is follow up and there is follow through. if those factors are missing In the program being administered here that's a place to took to Improve the program. The testimony that has been given speaks to many of the specifics about that. He would simply say if you wanted to have people from Leadership Council come out and talk about that we'd be happy to do so. There is also a book that has been written by some scholars at Northwestern that studied the families and the impact this program had on their lives it's a significant improvement. He wanted to briefly speak to a lot of the testimony tonight and thinks a lot of the questions have focused on the very narrow relatively extreme cases where this law might Borne into play. As he sees these laws implemented around the country, first of all it's not a mandatory requirement. He has heard repeated questions about the application, when you get to turn somebody away, the Inspection process, the whole situation. Not to disrespect that viewpoint, it's a valid question and a valid viewpoint it does bring us to the point where we say well we've reached the end of the rope here, now what happens. You say we've never been to that point before because he does not think there has been a case in the country that s been brought under source of income discrimination that Involves the scenario you're talking about nor does he think it is going to get to that point. What the source of income protection is generally designed to do is prevent landlords from arbitrarily answering a phone and saying I don't take Section B. putting the phone down and that's the end of d. That's the kind of disuvrnination we're trying to address the restriction of housing choice for families that can't past the phone call. We're placing families right now, people are constantly saying they can't find an apartment or unit because they won't take Section 8 and that's the end of A. These are families that are coming to our program, quality families that have been screened, that have support, they're prepared and ready to go and they simply can't find a landlord. He would suggest, as away of getting through this, to not focus an the extreme example, not buy the notion that this is somehow being forced down landlords throats, because this simply is not true. The ordinance does not say landlords must accept Section B voucher holders it says they cannot refuse somebody solely on the basis of that In the practice of this its that arbitrary first response, no I don't lake Section B. The other thing is he thinks from hearing this he should say he grew up in Evanston and went to school with some of the people in the audience here tonight. He feels bad he's taming dawn on the wrong side of the fence in this issue because what is coming out of this is a lack of Information as well a poor administration perhaps or behalf of the agencies responsible. It sound like its being worked through. He should also say that his mother worked for 10 years as an Inspector for the Housing Authority of Cook County and if she came across any of you and slighted you he apologizes on her behalf. Her frustrations with the agency were as deeply rooted as many of the landlords but in the same time when she came from work and complained about her bosses she also complained about many landlords and tenants. It sounds to him that this community still needs to have a very constructive conversation about race because when he grew up in Evanston it was very isolated in terms of race and is still isolated in terms of race. He thinks there are economic and cultural factors involved and there is racism in Evanston and it would be useful outside of this conversation to get at some of those issues in a constructive fashion and start talking about that sort of thing. Thank you. Alderman; Rainey announced since there are no more speakers, she would really encourage the committee to take this back to the committee and make the decision there what to do. Maybe send it back to Human Relations, maybe meet with Human Relations, maybe have Leadership Council and the Lawyers' Committee speak. or have Ms. Sharp come and speak. She strongly encourages the committee not to table this. she thinks there is hope. There is a group of landkxds meeting with the Housing Authority and Atdemm Jean -Baptiste, Alderman Bernstein, and Alderman Kent have asked to meet with them the next time they meet. She thinks this is a working process and would hope that we can continue to look at it. She has no expectations that this is going to become an amendment to the Fair Housing Ordinance anytime soon but asks for the privilege of continuing to discuss this. Alderman Newman thinks its the wrong time to be having this discussion because we have gone through this for five hours now and it is a much longer discussion. He hears there are people that want to have a hearing on this and want to continue the discussion which is fine. At the last meeting some of us were criticized because we did not want to vote that night. What we found out tonight was, except for the housing advocates and a few tenants, there is an overwhelming opposition to pursuing this approach. There is so much information that Is not on the table in terms of unintended impacts on District E5. on the services that will have to be provided, he still does not know what the goal of the housing advocates are for the City of Evanston. He heard Ms. Sharp say that we would want to reduce the number of vouchers here and some people are concerned about the phone being hung up on them. He does not know what we are actually trying to remedy with this ordinance and would like certain information to understand what the potentiat ramifications are for the expansion of certificates. He does not know if that is what the people supporting this are trying to accomplish, if instead of 900 vouchers in Evanston they want thereto be IB00 in a couple of years. He does not know If the advocates want additional people moving into Evanston who are part of this program, or have they even thought of the implications on the schools. There is so much Page 23. It is that they don't make any difference, the reason you want to be in the program is because its nght. the reason you want 1to do it is because of the things whiW maybe will help somebody and its not going to be anything off of my back and i+s not going to Inhibit my choice. If we want to approach that way he is willing to do that and if that's what we're looking for a way in v(uch the problem is solved and if the problem is that people can't get into the kind of housing they need maybe that is the way we have to focus it. If its housing accessibility maybe that's what we have to talk about. Maybe %e have to talk about that and forget about Sermon B. Maybe we have to talk about a City initiative that finds housing for people, he does not know whether that's the way, but maybe we have to look at it in that way. He refuses to keep characterizing everything these people are doing when they say I'm subs=tang by a law passed by the United States government. The law says I have a choice. The minute I exercise it, the minute I exercise a legal option in this country I'm called discriminating and all kinds of names. If there are a lot of people in one area that's all 0 means. it doesn't mean that they're warehoused. It just means there are a lot of people in a certain area. The sooner wo gel away from this kind of inflammatory, button pushing labels the better we will be able to deal with this kind of program and the issue itself. Alderman Feldman recalled when we passed the Fair Housing Ordinance; it took almost nine months to do it The Human Relations Commission studied, worked months and months and months, did research, had hearings, and presented us wish a document that was well researched. They came to the Human Services Committee. over, and over, and over again discussing it arguing it talking about IL finding out how the committee fell giving us one piece of evidence after another. That is the standard we should be looking for. He talked to people on the Human Relations Commission and they said they did not have anything to do on the Commission. A person told him the reason they cant keep anybody is there is nothing that they do. They get reports, this is what they do. He remembers when There was meaningful, significant, tough issues for the group to handle and they handled them. They were holding meetings at all the schools and in community centers, and did many, many things. Not only that but they served as a quayside judicial body. Alderman Feldman asked if the Human Relations Commission does that now, and was told that they do, Alderman Feldman asked how they meet, to which Ms. Haynes responded when there is a complaint that has been substantiated they risen serve as the judicial body to determine that Alderman Feldman said he remembers there was a time when they would be nvefirg every week. Alderman Rainey interjected, because discrimination was much more rampant. Alderman Feldman remarked, we don't know that and In literature that we received It indicates that the City of Evanston has done nothing at all in the past 5, 6. 7 years as to whether or not there is discrimination going on. We haven't done that or spent money on that. When you talk about a standard of acceptance he understands what you're saying but that's a standard you're familiar with. He's familiar with a much higher standard, a much higher effective organization deeply embedded and involved in the community which he has not seen, and he certainly has not seen it on this issue. He can't think of a more pertinent, significant issue for that kind of commitment or exploration, the very kind of thing that you're talking about Let's study this, examine iL dialogue and talk to a lot of people to realty find out what all of these consequences might be. That's the kind of thing that should have gone into this, not an opinion. Everybody here has an opinion. Based on what is your opinion, you had an opinion last week or two weeks ago and your opinion will change five times before this Issue Is decided and his opinion will change too. But for somebody to raise their hand and say I'm in favor of it what is that, that means nothing, that's not taking a stand. When he suggested he wanted a higher standard for our boards and commissions, that's exactly right, because if any of these boards and commissions are supposed to be the eyes and ears of this Council and give us the kind of perspective and information that we need then they have to do right and you're the first persons he knows that would demand that. Again, he's willing to do this he just doesn't want it dragged on and on. Alderman Rainey said if we could just go back and develop a process when ifs not 12:30 in the morning we'd be much more able to do that. Alderman Newman said he'd like the process for the committee to consider, he considers the Human Relations Commission and its staff to be in the tenant advocate business today. They answer a lot phone calls and pursue a lot of the phone calls on behalf of the tenants but he's not sure whether or not they are still the right group to be hearing the complaint related to landlords on this particular issue and would like to be able to talk about that. Alderman Rainey added at our next meeting we can talk about all those bits and pieces of the process. Alderman Rainey thanked everyone for their attendance and called for a motion to adjourn. The meeting was unarurnously adjourned at 12*35 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 26. 1 �y7 e4 1'r., Penny A. Miller 1310 Hinman Evanston IL 60201 Phone & Fax (847) 869-2392 September 30, 2002 To: the members of the Human Services Committee, other Aldermen, and Mayor Morton Re: Amendment to the Fair Housing Ordinance adding "source of income" as a protected class My name is Penny Miller; I Live at 1310 Huunan Avenue; I am a small -tune landlord here in Evanston; and I used to participate in the Section 8 program. The bureaucracy, which resulted in lost monies, burdensome paperwork, unreasonable inspections by HACC, and major headaches, eventually drove me away from the program I was one of the landlords who attended a landlord meeting with the HACC that Ann Rainey was kind enough to arrange in order to attempt to solve the bureaucratic issues that landlords have with the HACC; and if those bureaucratic issues ever get resolved, I would participate in the Section 8 program again. The prospect of more meetings with the HACC is promising, and I thank Alderman Rainey for taking the initiative with this issue. Also, I served on the Evanston Housing Commission for 5 years and am a firm proponent of affordable housing and a diverse population in Evanston However, all that being said, I also firmly believe that no landlord or property owner should be forced by law to participate in the Section 8 program; HUD says that the Section 8 program is voluntary for landlords, and that's the way it should stay in order for the program to work for Evanston. I don't want to see the City embroiled in costly lawsuits, or the school district forced to use scarce money and resources to service more hard -to -reach students, and I don`t want to see the rental market go condo because landlords can't function under the burden of the HACC. Philosophically, I agree that everyone should have the right to fill out an application for a rental unit. Everyone should have a fair shot at a rental unit if their credit, background checks, etc. are satisfactory. But if we really want to level the playing field, then we have to do it in ALL aspects of the rental business, not just in the application process. The Section 8 applicant and tenant should be treated the same as the market rate applicant and tenant in all aspects. However, the way the Section 8 program functions puts the subsidized tenant at a disadvantage and causes the landlord to lose money. I want to relate a sampling of problems and personal experiences with the Section 8 program that show how the HACC rules and bureaucracy preclude a Section 8 voucher holder from being on the same level playing field as a market rate tenant. INSPECTIONS If we really want to treat all people equally, the HACC inspection has to be eliminated for two reasons. One is that currently the HACC inspection has to be in an empty apartment. That means that the Section 8 tenant cannot move in at the beginning of the lease, as a market rate tenant would; and that I don't get paid until the apartment is inspected and any required repairs are completed, whereas a market rate tenant pays from the beginning of the lease and repairs are done with the tenant living there. I lose money by participating in the Section 8 program. The second reason HACC inspections should be eliminated is that, currently, the HACC requires a landlord to do work that would not be necessary for a market rate tenant and that is not required by the City of Evanston building code. The City of Evarston already inspects all rental units and that should be sufficient for the HACC. After the HACC inspects for a prospective or an existing tenant, the HACC requirements sometimes conflict with Evanston housing inspections, resulting in hassles not experienced with non -section 8 tenants. One example (out of many) of a burdensome inq=Wn incident: We agreed to rent a unit to a Section 8 tenant in a building with 5 garages in back facing the alley. The HACC made us re -paint the outside garage doors, which weren't peeling. The tenant wasn't renting a garage; nor was there a small child living with her that would be affected by lead -based paint. The rent was withheld until re -inspection, which was a few months later. I can't afford to have the rent payments held up for several months. Needless to say, I would not have had to rz-paint the garage doors for a market rate tenant. You can see why a small-time landlord cannot economically afford to get involved with Section 8 until the HACC inspection is eliminated. SCREENING Until the Housing Authority does a better job of screening the applicants, it doesn't matter if a Section 8 applicant has good coedit; a landlord can still lose a lot of money renting to Section 8. For example, I once lost at least 6 months rent on a Section 8 tenant who had good credit and in every other way was a good and responsible tenant Maybe a large rental agency can afford to lose 6 months rent, but a small mom-and-pop landlord like myself cannot. The tenant was a single mom with one child; she had good credit and work history; and she was in every way a good and responsible tenant. However, when the Housing Authority found out she lied and understated her income level (a fact I did not know), they cut off her rent mid -month. And because they were already 2 months late in paying (a chronic condition with the HA), I also lost those past 2 months rent. Of course, legally and morally I could not evict her overnight or for another month; she tried valiantly to pay the entire rent for the rest of her lease, but it was a losing battle. I carried her until she found another place to live. I eventually lost at least 6 months rent on that unit. MOVE -OUT DELAYS There's the problem of tenants who don't move out at the end of the lease. If they're not section 8, I show them the holdover remedy in the Landlord/Tenant Ordinance; once they realize that they are responsible for 2 months rent and my attorney's fees, they ll} move out on time. However, I have had several Section 8 tenants who haven't moved out at the end of their lease either because the HACC has not inspected their new place yet or because there's no penalty for them One example of how I lost money: The Section 8 tenant's lease was up on April 30; she finally moved out 3 %s months later in the middle of August, after she was served with eviction papers. Meanwhile, I had tented the apartment to a new tenant for May 1 and she couldn't move in Fortunately, the new tenant didn't sue to recover the damages that she was entitled to under the Evanston Landlord/Tenant Ordinance; instead we paid the penalty for her that she had to pay her old landlord while she stayed on in her old place. I did eventually get the extra 3 'h months rent from the HACC, and after a court order, I used the tenant's Security Deposit for the portion of the rent that she owed plus my attorney's fees. On advice from my lawyer, I didn't even try for the holdover remedy of 2 months rent provided for in the Landlord/Tenant Ordinance because the tenant had no money and the lawyer said that the HACC wouldn't pay. For a non -section 8 tenant I would have gone after the holdover penalty. There was 2 no money left in the Security Deposit for the willful damages (she wasn't happy about moving out) or for the penalty we had to pay the new tenant, so I lost money. RE-IMBURSEMENT FOR DAMAGES: Once a Section 8 tenant's teenage sort trashed the place upon move -out, and the damages exceeded the Security Deposit. Even with photos and then a personal inspection of the damages by the HA, I could not collect money for the damages from the HA. The HACC said I should collect from the tenant, but how? The tenant had no money; so I couldn't take her to court, as I would have a market rate tenant. MARKET RATES: The HACC lowers the rents on new tenants after the base has been signed and then subsequently lowers the yearly increases that the landlord sets. For example, I sent a lease renewal out on July 1 for a September 1 renewal, and in August the HA lowered the rent by $40. 1 sent the HA copies of my rent rolls for comparison, but to no avail. At that point it was too late to cancel the lease and rent to someone else for September 1. Of course, I could have cancelled the lease and let the apartment sit empty for a few months. Either way, I lose money. I recently learned that the Housing Authority's current policy is to allow yearly rental increases of no more than 2% or $50. This rate is unrealistically low in Evanston. A market rate tenant has a choice -- pay the increase or move; the Section 8 tenant has no choice but has to move. Once again, this is not treating all tenants equally. In conclusion, there's been a lot of talk that this amendment will put a Section 8 voucher holder on the same level playing field as other protected classes, such as minorities, women, gays, and single parents. But it won't, and it won't simply because the Housing Authority is involved. I can and do rent to minorities, women, gays, and single parents without being forced to deal with a government agency that loses me money. When I rent to protected classes who are not Section 8, I don't have to have additional inspections; I don't have to fight for a fair market rent; I don't have my yearly rental increases dented; I don't have additional burdensome paperwork; I don't have to worry about not getting re-imbursed for damages; I don't have to lose money because tenants don't move out on time; and I don't have a third party involved in paying the rent who can cut me off for violations over which I have no control. The notice that publicized this Public Hearing stated that the proposed amendment "is not intended to force landlords/property owners to rent to individuals who are not otherwise qualified." I think one of the qualifications that a landlord should be entitled to look for in a tenant is whether or not the tenant will force the landlord to participate in a program that entails excessive paperwork, loses money for the landlord, forces her into an unreasonable inspection process, and causes major hassles that renting to a market rate tenant does not. 1, along with the vast majority of landlords in Evanston, am not a slum landlord; I am a businesswoman, one who offers a valuable service and commodity. I simply cannot afford to be forced to participate in the voluntary Section 8 program. 3 GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on ay - Septem, er , �Wd ?:00 P.M. PLEASE P ANT /ll SVcplet% P �`t`7- 32yk9 ame. ddress/4r anizati,on: hs 14YO I'tQR U AJ 6—[ q l rtr} Ifliq Mi1 ,.Jt.cj )l Lp-w I r j 1120 0 a )<7,-o n P, C, W. ialao 114,2 % SEW4�Q 5T J �u_j iA C-Lrc}CLS e t q c ID Ll -? 4� �• � :J cv H l -i: c a� 3 arrif'A4 c >/ L�A�=�51ti�? Caur.+c►L Ill r t.A, RIVr/,'tzuU�f 7/ Co0/C Name: GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - September 30, 2002 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: .- h oeZ S �l z � �� G/Cl/1 A/ /%7,,7ie y S G iY ;P r Cam/'` o? d 1 �-� .4 R ,-� P c7 Co c' Z QZ—_ I NA DA n54 f.I &'([ it/ -719 Aoq--,,�j —PeKW L 1fi.r -7 oZ- R)�L- GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on ay September 30, ?:00 P.M. Name: t - -4)16 er'l r,1t kc PLEASE PRINT Addle ss / Organization: 2 37 &q�w 4 Nt I�-rS3uA a t O was ,v "Co U ISat'aiso I 5 4-04 kf on/ 2aC . /' IZCL CGEVEL./��,� 5Tr O Z. y Y/, Lp � fir. �e r�; pr fir.- �► �= Go . G✓tk �l �1�; ry A✓, x Wa i kJ 6 l U12 ����nr►/� GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on ay - September 7:00 P.M. Na e: ��s .�G R;S cower fAvL RA-nN6 VZO S �kLjo e,- Kerb# K\ - PLEASE PRINT Address/Or anization: r NPoz 97351 x1 K,'•n b.gGL --�CC Lad76 -2a �'e iz 3044 Fr ^v zjz-4L-�` 26 K+cLi_SAn 2- E V It 121 w . W Lf���s. f s r]7,-'7 t= f.A7Z73A GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on Name: Q 7-t c 1�!a nl Q r-t l y - tseptemder 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT t Address/ Organization; 3ii Iz- i I Mc„ oo b [- V ZL— r 1?sti CARplN �V =4. 07 � 5r biirrSoJ 14P lif TU� 670( r'¢r, U �-(rrtitfft�,,tp +� GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on ay - September 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Name: 3,� dress/ 0an�zat an: �OIto� 1�, �.,. kv 1322, 5 A-0 r` 779 tr��'tJFt"% /3 z 7� L �Q t?Nt?7 g-' ! )'1 11 17-M PY1 f-17 _1 �L,rm1_ �Gu �- !q I l err► } �7nlr�/f� iG h2C tCG� 4g4rg4 AvL�s r .#ADWALj 7' W�l /2 /fps -9 4k�ec a S-r 2—twA "-rdl� IY2-9 dAJ gi/h . f n f A M L' LFo rZ h s l -*AO,;, DAi F= ��r3'i`IiUtIMAk �U� G-b2 0a _ Co azo�- �,c�zoz (toad a- r 2a.� Sf (ofiZtlZ SPEAKER I SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - September 30, 2002 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Name: Address/ Organization: �RIA-f-J M 60t q o A-k.ta o S-r, - G P,W icj[ /f45 A& A 4S5aGrkT�-S P4vL Ra7-j16+1,Cnj 516 doIA'7 V �c.rw•Irrl C41w�er.,�4tf A 1 X/�P G �1 �C•1( 14�i1 f'Th-ti h r t w� C✓ •F'i-�� �i �"i`i.a r� 1'� LJ J 1 Ti EjvANSTjv J! .14 t7pl, 7/t7 -\�C) MhRIcyNl gARDMEZ Aoisoti r CA%nza I cjrr A? (a Cm� n fto�pr� P• ! 4y (�y, j fOz6 GS��ett PI•, �a�,c��....�; �t 6��, 6s 6 YS� 00, SN�2p-`] Zw7E C 1� w�tv� l� jvr 15v $' �c�e� � Co o L J � g Lf/�,�/ 7/ f ,,�„rin--,rl 200(p tf*PWsoN Sr &WsT tr, Z 0, ZO 2�3� Ca2os5 a,.�,� �o2a t J //0 7 20'L.?( cam. SPEAKER SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 onuay - beptemaer 3v, 7:00 P.M. Name: r 4 5 YfW { Fl f•] �? Pn s •— �itDr--Lr�o Sc�i{ P�J lfi%rzrc �-nta�rs PLEASE PRINT rY Address / Organization: Li L/� - 9-c��z*Jr� S -t- 4) r atlu ZE4v;v-e, iJ• s • f -fc1tw 4 (pep . jam,, 5Z-kalk-ow1� l9L a -:7 c;,r -SntlQ k. _ e _ ,l..t.t_ 1►n.l.�. _ I31'-o A4MPV, C - 6 D7-�;7 t It A)t f4V br Ai!%6 ft � SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - eptern er 30, 2002 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: to,�� . �rra!• L,COH �r�A�Y S/�oNRTt/.� �f/r7l�sTonflKa.f'it lJv//�c� a VIA rt itlow �5%nic S��►�dr�-Psl L04 Q Cam[ S {ter'- [!1,'V r Y1a r ,,�., Z L � irk // �`1(l�(M A'V'� Oc C1 U i Hel r✓r, ' ,I y 4e9 2 17 I *t?-t" a,, avi AuzvSAll' si. Robef"A P �> 6e 6 Ysr a'Y , Haar. JgAf,,r Veif ?� ct 11 � �W�N� 7 (0.2LZ3 j ScJ � `?t Bi Pe &O;Lo/ Eklj S ro-,.� '/. 200(, (fAMSON S-r. etMsrcej► � zz 2 �� L� 2aS5 a .� �� ✓ (o 20 1 4107 ::20,0?( C40.-,fA 5(-.aqwA T1. of.2d L Z. �i co br an x � SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - September 30, 2002 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address / Organization: 1. A VAS. .►. . iou- V- JnM-4- L cRJ19-� -&WAy ! NN4nVA rt Jew or�pte� �%i�ivr.S r � d /CPSI A �P%r%A 9 v1 �r�C jflr Ivl��vr s � r� Cin r+ f1l1 fQA(,4111(,?ZZ r),�(9P MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, August 5, 2002 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey Frank Kaminski, Paula Haynes, Doug Gaynor, Carta Bush. Kathleen Brenniman, Harvey Saver, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Sylvester Hilliard, (Evanston Township General Assistance)., Jane Grover, Susan Cantor Lonnie Wiebe, Gil Krulee, (Mental Health Board); Gladys Bryer, Mardi Kievs, Gwen Burton Poole, Judy Freeman (Environment Board); See Attendance Sheet Alderman Rainey The meeting was called to order by Alderman Rainey at 7.05 p.m. IL APPROVAL OF THE: MINUTES OF MEETING OF June 2, 2002 The minutes of the June 2.2002. meeting were unanimously aooroved f4-0I, III. CONSIDERATION OF THE JUNE AND JULY 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS The June and July Township Monthly Bills were called. Alderman Feldman moved for aoaroval. seconded bv. Alderman Jean -Baptiste, Alderman Rainey questioned the two S500 payments made to the Housing Authority to which Mr. Hilliard responded those payments were made to pay the rent for two people living in Housing Authority buildings. Alderman Rainey remarked that it sounded strange to her and asked if these people were Section 8 tenants and if we are making payments for subsidizing the subsidy for subsidized tenants. Mr. Hilliard said for those who have eviction notices he would say yes. Alderman Rainey noted that is good to know. Alderman Rainey also commented that we should make an effort not to misspelt words on public documents. She referred to the checks written to Jewel for food vouchers where Jewel was spelled "Jewies". She knows some people cat; it JeMes, but its not. Alderman Feldman had a question regarding the Ward Servicing Report and asked what this Ward Servicing is for, he was informed it is for Emergency Assistance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question regarding the S500 payment to the Evanston Bond Mortgage Company to which Mr. Hilliard said it was for a tenant's property. Alderman Rainey had some concems regarding the Housing Authorrry payments and asked Mr. Terry if payments were made to the Housing Authonty when the City was overseeing Emergency Assistance. Mr. Terry said in a rare instance if there were some extenuating circumstances. Depending upon the circumstances we did not engage in an across the board eviction prevention policy if non-payment of rent was the only reason people were facing eviction. Alderman Rainey was having difficulty understanding why the check was made out to the Housing Authority if the tenant had a Section 8 voucher and was behind on their portion of their rent. She trusts we are not making payments on behalf of the Housing Authority unless this was a senior citizen building, Mr. Hilliard said he did not recall why this occurred other than there was a 10-day notice for eviction. Alderman Rainey requested the details regarding this, as she was very curious about this payment Alderman Newman asked if there is a list of criteria for making Emergency Assistance payments. Mr. Hilliard responded, yes, there are three different categories that they actually use, for food, utilities, and rental subsidy. Alderman Newman questioned whether there is a written policy to which Mr. Hilliard said there are rules and regulations that they have in collaboration with Mr. Terry's office who had the program prior to it taming to the Township. Alderman Newman wanted Rage 1. to know if the Township is using the Cirf s rules and regulations to which Mr. Hilliard said, yes, that was part of the agreement between the City and they constantly have conversations with Ms. Alisa Dean who the City has assigned to work with the Township on the project. Alderman Newman then said, ultimately it is still the City's program being administered by the Township, the City still has authority over what payments are made. Mr. Terry said he met with Ms. Dean this afternoon because the City gets an itemized per client listing and it would appear the Township has adopted some rules which he does not know whether they are Public Aid Standards or some other criteria that are not consistent with the way the City used to administer the program The City is meeting with the Township this week to try to clarify exactly which criteria would be followed. Mderman Newman thought those are policy issues and whatever standard or criteria is being used it is time to review them and all come to an agreement as to what the basis is for making an Emergency Assistance award is going to be and the issue of whether or not we're going to pay rent for an eviction. Alderman Rainey said we always did that, which she has known for ten years, but she has never known us to pay money to the Cook County Housing Authority. Alderman Newman said whatever the eligibility categories are going to be we need to review them here. If there is a case where a Section 8 tenant who is getting a 75 or 80% subsidy to pay their share and we are picking up that share it seems to be a bit extreme. You say it would depend on the circumstances, does that mean if somebody was injured or ill or something to that affect. Alderman Rainey said if we were doing what Alderman Newman is saying what we have done in the past, we wouldn't be making the checks out to the Housing Authority we would be making the check out to the tenant or to the landlord which is why she is asking if this is a Housing Authority building such as Noyes Court One of the things Emergency Housing does is pay for housing costs up to a certain amount of money, twice S500. Alderman Newman remarked $500 would be almost two months rent if we were talking about Noyes Court or 1900 Sherman, therefore. this is more than a month's rent, to which Alderman Rainey added that is why she is very curious about this payment. Alderman Newman said we need to find out what happened here. but in general we need to revisit what the standards are. Alderman Feldman questioned who Mr. Alvin Paden is and was told he is a landlord. He asked Mr. Hilliard what are the standards for Emergency Assistance and Mr Hilliard said the standards they currently use for Emergency Assistance are those for individuals who are unemployed, who have no other source of income, and who are Evanston residents living in Evanston. Alderman Feldman said if they can't be all that, what if they are unemployed and have significant resources, to which Mr. Hilliard responded when someone comes to their office for Emergency Assistance they go through a process of their finances, how much money they have and what their bills are, all of which they do before decisions are made. Alderman Feldman said then if those are all part of your decisions, are there published standards, can somebody have certain resources, is there a ratio between debt and resources, as he is not sure what they are. Mr. Hilliard said each individual case is dealt with differently we have rules and regulations that we follow. Some extenuating circumstances we have taken into consideration and a lot of this is in collaboration with some of your agencies, Connections for the Homeless, YMCA, Neighbors at Work, Family Focus, all of us working together with families depending what the circumstances are. Alderman Feldman said he is very supportive of this program but is not certain he understands how somebody is awarded money. Mr. Hilliard said no money is given to any individual, vouchers are made out to a store, rent is made out to a landlord, no individual gets a check from them. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a way he could get some guidelines as to how eligibility determination is made. Alderman Rainey remarked, knowing no one is here from the Assessor's office, in the Year -to -Date information, she is still a little concerned about the one item on the June 30"' report, which also applies to the Township reports. Alderman Rainey asked how many months of the year the June 30" report covers. Mr. Hilliard said two months, in most cases just one month. Alderman Rainey said what she would like to know and what Mr. Hilliard could take back and Mr. 'Ferry could follow-up on, is in the Year -to -Date for the Assessor's Assistant. She knows it is not under Mr. Hilliard's purview but he works under the same roof in the same building with this office and perhaps he can relate an inquiry was made about this at the meeting he attended. The current actual payment to the Assessor's Assistant is 55,448, the Year -to -Date is S13,943, the annual budget is 547,000, that means if this is a one month current actual payment of 55,448.84 this is in the vicinity of $65,376 a year for this individual. What she is trying to get a handle on is how much actually is this person's salary. Alderman Rainey had a question regarding the money paid to Park University Enterprises by the Township. One of the entries was on June 24" and another entry on June 5"'. Alderman Rainey said she did not want to know all the details she just wanted to know what kind of firm this is She also asked Mr. Hilliard if he knew who Ralph Baxter is to which Mr. Hilliard responded he is the janitor for the program. Alderman Rainey asked if the $800 paid to him was his salary to which Mr. Hilliard responded with some overtime probably for the extra cleaning of he floors and things he did. Mr. Hilliard did not know who Park University Enterprises is and said they get thousands of bills coming to them all the time, to which Alderman Rainey said, no you don't have thousands of bills and thinks because we can't get written responses from the Township it would be very helpful if Mr. Hilliard, as the Director, would just look over the bills before we meet and then when she asks who someone is, i.e., Park University Enterprises, Mr. Hilliard would know who they are. Alderman Rainey recalled the motion to anorove the June 2002 and July 2002 Townshlo monthly bills. motion =_ unanimously aaoroved. (4-O). Page 2. IV. REVIEW OF THE DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFCERS Alderman Rainey noted this review is in addition to all the nice letters received by the police department There are three cases before the committee for review, C.R. No. 02-02, C.R. No. 02-03, and C R No. 02-04. The first complaint initiated November 2001. dealt with excessive force and was Not Sustained/Unresolved. Alderman Feldman moved for acceptance of C.R. No. 02-02, was seconded by Alderman Newman and unanimously approved (4-01. Alderman Rainey called C.R. No 02-03, initiated February 2002, and said this complaint was Not Sustained. Alderman Feldman moved for acceptance of C.R. No. 02-03, was seconded by Alderman Newman, and unanimously approved (4-0). Alderman Newman moved acceptance of C.R. No. 02-04, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked it seemed to him that the entry into these people's apartment was done without much consideration of question or inquiry to determine whether or not the suspect was in fact in the home of these people. Chief Kaminski said this summary was difficult to write because of all the things that were going on. At the time these officers were on the scene, two gentlemen ran from the scene after the officers approached. There were a number of people in the area along the way who pointed at that direction saying the man had a gun and was going towards that house with people yelling it was there, there, there. They were all getting muted messages and the officer went through the yard and walked up the stairs. he was on the platform and saw the gentleman inside there and asked him to come out, which he did. If at one point when the other officer had come up, he did step into the person's property, he does not think the officer had any intent to an illegal entry or search. The gentleman cooperated, he came along and went down to the station, he was not identified and was released. The officer apologized, he thanks they were trying to do good police work seeing the information they had at the time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they handcuffed the man they wrongly identified as the suspect. Chief Kaminski said that's correct, the initial officer went on the preliminary description that was given and he did match it, but at time time the officers tried to do a one on one identification they were not able to identify him. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what happens at a scene such as this when an officer goes into somebody's home and its a mistaken identity and that person is arrested, at least for moment, handcuffed, and then you find out that was not the right person. Is there some response by the department that says to th:s individual we apologize for this mistaken Identity, these are the circumstances. Chief Kaminski said the supervisor did explain everything to both the gentleman and to the parents, he explained everything several times not only initially at the scene but then later at the station. This does happen and sometimes because the heat of the moment and the pursuit you have a lot of things going on and people are stopped and questioned. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Chief Kaminski will be investigating this case to which Chief Kaminski responded. no, he sent the mother a letter and he does know the family and asked the mother if she felt there are any other problems he would be glad to talk with her. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the letter is Included in the case file, to which Chief Kaminski said, no, they do not include the letters. He sends a letter regarding every investigation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the letter was basically saying that you found that your complaint was unfounded and asked if in situations such this could the letter be attached to be able to understand what occurred. Chief Kaminski said that could be done and he would white out the names and other such information. Alderman Feldman thought people can accept these kind of events that might occur, a good policeman doing good work, it might not be the kind of thing that we want to happen, but does happen. People understand that even the victims will understand. He agrees with Alderman Jean -Baptiste that an articulation of regret and an apology is something that should be part of what we do as well, because most of us feel that way and regret that had to happen. He would be very pleased to see that Alderman Newman agreed tota4 with the spirit and Intent of apologizing but said you don't always want to apologize until you've talked to your lawyer because an apology is an admission and you want to be careful with what you do with admissions. Let's say the police are acting on the identification of somebody on the street and they saw the person, the identification was wrong but the policeman acting on wrong identification went and got the person and handcuffed himlher. Whose fault that is is subject to debate, its good police work but it happens to be an error and we should see what the circumstances were in whatever we send out and consult with the lawyers. He does not think there is any way you can have an aggressive police department and not make mistakes because the people we're relying on, the witnesses make mistakes. We have had people one step away from the electric chair on wrong identifications. He does not know that it was the police officer's fault, if the officer had the wrong identification and went into that house and started emptying Page 3. the drawers and destroying the property going way beyond what they should have been doing, that's a whole different story and falls more on the shoulders of the police officer. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this report is public record and in it the statement is made the officers went in there and it was the wrong person, although they handcuffed the person they released him because they were pursuing the wrong individual. That admission that it was the wrong person is already in the report and he is suggesting that maybe, not under every circumstance is it clearly an error on the part of the police department. For the person we may look at it from the standpoint of the police department and they're doing good police work and you need an aggressive police force. but for the individual whose home has been invaded and you have been physically taken away and handcuffed and initially accused and who knows what else happens, because aggressive policing. a lot of times, means force in the encounter with the individuals. That particular person has been shaken and he thinks the police department has to find a way to connect with that person and extend an apology so that we understand that it has been countered to a certain extent. If there is a legal action pending. even in this kind of report, we would to be careful as to what we put into it. In terms of a situation that seems to be dosed where there is no apparent physical injury but there has been some type of psychological trauma at that point he does not think we're being consistent, you're saying be careful how we communicate and hovr you say we're sorry. Alderman Newman said how you say I'm sorry he would say, I'm sorry we regret that we acted on false information, had we had the correct information we would have never done what we did, we're sorry the information was wrong and you were wrongly arrested. He would not just say we're sorry and accept all the blame because that person might be contemplating a suit against the City to begin with. Alderman Rainey said if you read the report it doesn't say we got the wrong person it says that the person they had could not positively be identified. There was some reference to the person changing their clothes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought what made this a problem was they went into somebody's home and snatched that person out and put him in handcuffs. There was no warrant to go into that person's home. It is important that the police force does what 0 has to do, but also that those human beings are not impacted wrongly until we know for sure. Alderman Rainey said maybe we have to be in the shoes of people chasing a man with a gun and where people are screaming, "a man with a gun, a man with a gun." There is a certain amount of tension and stress and aggressiveness that she hopes our police department takes into account when theyre chasing a man or a woman with a gun. If they think there's an axe murderer in there and somebody told the police he who did it is inside, in that circumstance they're not going back to a judge to get a warrant, they're going right in to get that person because they have exigent circumstances. That is where its difficult, they're relying on information other than that being supplied by just police officers. if the information supplied by the police officer was incorrect and they went inside. he would agree with you totally, but if they're acting on a citizen complaint and the citizen is there. If they don't go in or go after the person people will say what's wrong with the police department. You can't win. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said once thats done and we're wrong we have to find a way to address that situation. If he is in a situation where somebody comes in and they have him in handcuffs accusing him, once that's over he wants to make sure he's getting something to help him get over that. He understands if that person was chasing him with a gun then he is standing in a different pair of shoes but what we're discussing is if someone was handcuffed and the police went into his home and he turned out to be the wrong person. Alderman Rainey asked if Alderman Jean -Baptiste is suggesting that Chief Kaminski do more than the Chief said, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the Chief said he made contact and that he wrote a letter and everything else, he would like to see that letter because it is important when we talk to that person, who in this case has been victimized, that we know what for. Alderman Rainey agreed with Alderman Jean - Baptiste. Alderman Ralnev recalled the motion for aooroval of C.R. No. 02-04. motion unanimously aonroved 14-0). V. CONSIDERATION OF THE STATUS OF THE NEXT THEATER LEASE Mr. Gaynor commented in March of 20D2, the Human Services Committee received a status report from Next Theatre and he was directed to go back and work with Next Theatre to see what we could do as a City to help a group that over the years had demonstrated a very positive activity in the community and who is a very positive force within the Noyes Cultural Arts Center. As indicated in Mr. Gaynor's memo they have reorganized, have almost a completely new board, and hired a new Artistic Director. We are very much in support of ail of their efforts, however, they are still just under $32,000 in arrears. Their recommendation was to pay off half that debt over the next two years and in addition stay current with the current charges both for the theater and their office space. In addition they want the City to forgive 50% of their debt. We do not support that recommendation and feel that the Cultural Arts Center has a long-standing obligation to make and at least cover the hard cost of that facility. We have no other artists or tenants in the building that are delinquent and this is the first time, to his knowledge, that the Next Theatre has not been able to pay their debt off. Alderman Rainey said her recollection was when several of this committee were concemed with their delinquency we were told that's the way it happens at the end the term of every lease year they pay. Mr. Gaynor said that is correct and several Page 4 years ago the Arts Council, x-thout the knowledge of the City Council, took it upon themselves to go into an agreement with Next Theatre, and only Next Theatre, to permit them to pay off their rental obligations at the end of their theatre season, the end of May or June Eacn year for the last twenty years they have met that obligation, however, this last twelve months they have reamed that mere were an great deal of debts. more than S200,000 had been accumulated, of which many of the Board members were not aware of and they have made great strides to try and pay off the debt We asked them to provide us wtm financial statements, a budget and a proposa! which they have given us and which you received in your packet. Alderman Rainey asked if Next Theatre would comment on their current situation and maybe their reaction to the staffs proposal. Judy Kemp, new Next Theatre President, said the last couple of years have teen financially disappointing for them and they made efforts when they did have income to remain current in their rent There were a lot financial difficulties, there was significant reduction in revenues and the Board was saddled with debt from previous Boards that they did not know about when they came on board We have made an absolute goal that they are going to get themselves in financial physical responsible shape. They have reduced staff and are doing an enormous amount of the work themselves rather than using staff time, they have a new Artistic Director who brings a lot of vision and excitement to what they are going to be doing They have recently been a,rvarded a grant from Chicago Commumu,y Trust specifically to do fundraising. That grant was given to them for development and to hire a fundraiser so they would be able to meet their obligations. Two years ago they only did two shows in hopes that with the reduced expenses of two shows they would be able to get themselves in shape. They did reduce some of their debt, but not enough, and in the first time ever they ended up being in arrears with the City over a calendar fiscal year. She does not like that and does not want to be in that situation. We are working very hard to put together a plan which is what we spoke of with Mr. Gaynor and we asked for a plan where we would remain current this year and pay off in monthly increments a third piece of the debt over the next two years. We are also launching a new campaign to raise funds for the year and if it is successful, as we want it to be, we will be able to meet all of our demands, if it is better than we want it to be we will be able to go to even farther than that We were hoping the City would be able to participate with us as we begin to launch that program. We've also put together, in the material that you received, a plan for increasing our community service and putting the time and energy into doing a lot of work around the production of In the Blood which we've been given the privitege of being able to do as a Laurie Parks work for the first time in Chicago. That will give us an opportunity to do more community service, more outreach, and more educational programming, which we are very excited about Now we need to raise the money to be able to do that and have put together what we thought was the best plan we could at this time in order to get ourselves back where we need to be, Alderman Feldman was interested in the increased community service and asked if there is an additional monetary value to their allotment as a result of additional community service. Mr. Gaynor responded, no, there is a minimum requirement and anything beyond that is up to the artists and artistic group. His understanding is there are a lot of things they were going to do classes, and that type of thing that would generate additional revenue. Ms. Kemp said there are some lasses that would not generate revenue where we would work with schools. If we can do some of that the Next community's program that would not be generating revenue. Alderman Feldman then asked the reason for doing additional community service. Ms. Kemp said it is a double sided thing, besides the fact that she thinks it's a good thing to be contributing to the community not only by providing excellent art that is socially provocative and artistically challenging but also because its being a good community citizen giving back to the community. The other thing is that as an active social servant in the theatre that gives back to the community, that is involved in the community, that also opens them up to get more grants which they have to look at as income producing. They can then say to funding organizations and foundations they are not only producing good art but also producing the opportunity for the community to be involved in that art which is one of the wonderful things about socially theatrical groups they are able to invo;ve themselves with the community and give back to the community. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Kemp for her comments on the staff recommendations. Ms. Kemp said what she understands from her conversations with them they did not have much choice cf what recommendations to make. They are being responsible saying that everybody has to do what they are supposed to do and they haven't that discretion, only the discretion to allow the City to forgive a third of our debt at the end if we have been responsible through the fourth fiscal year and to be a contributor psychologically as well as financially to our campaign. Her hope is that the City will see how important they are as an artistic organization that makes a difference to the social conscious and social fabric of this community as it will help us to get through what she thinks is a very difficult time, yet she sees a great future. She would not put the amount of time and energy that she is putting into this organization or the contributions that she is putting out of her own pocket into the organization if she did not see a light at the end of the tunnel. They have been here for 21 years through various ups and downs. She sees this as a down moment with a dear light and thinks they are going to succeed as she has incredible confidence in the spirit with which this new Board is working and their new Artistic Director will not end up in debt in the future. She hopes the City can work together with them to see them through this. Alderman Feldman agreed with everything said about the characterization of Next Theatre and thinks it is an amazing plus for the City of Evanston to have this theatre and is even more of a plus for those people that go to see their play - Page 5. These plays are comparable to anything in the City of Chicago, as he attends theatres with the highest reputations. From his point of view marry times Next has exceeded what he has seen in other places. Having said that and with the idea of wanting you to succeed it is very difficult for him to sit in a budget session and to vote for reduction in funding for social service organizations helping people directly in this community and forcing people and agencies to go through agonizing reappraisals of their program cutting staff, perhaps even some people losing their jobs as a result of our budget issues and then within months after to say for as a good a purpose as this is and he wants to emphasize that if he has difficulty exceeding to your request a has nothing to do with whether or not you deserve or need our support, it has to do with our ability to do it. It has nothing to with the quality or even our estimation of what you mean to the community, and he is only speaking for himself He would hope we would find a way and he is going to offer something that we take the staffs recommendation and Next Theatre do what you have to do to fulfill the recommendation and we revisit this issue at the end of the three or four years to see whether or not you're in better shape to pay the additional 50%, S14,000. Alderman Feldman asked what about Next Theatre committing to an additional S7,000 and leaving S7,000 open until the end of 2004 and then come back to us From this Alderman's position he is not saying tnat we will commit to anything like that, he's saying what he would hope we would allow Next Theatre to give us a chance to see what kind of progress you're going to make and maybe by then the City might be in better financial condition. He realty does not think that at this point it would be fair to exceed to this kind of approval considering all that we've gone through, all the people that have suffered as a result of this, all the agencies that have had to tighten their belts dramatically as he wants to anything he can do either personalty or as a member of the City Council to help. it's important that we keep you here, its more important that you succeed. What he would suggest is the possibility instead of asking us for S14,000 forgiveness, just say that in addition to the commitment that you're making over that same period of time you're going to pay back an additional $7,000 which is half of what you have asked for and then come back at that time for us to see what condition the City is in. Alderman Rainey said she did not want to support that but has another idea and that is not to forgive any of the $14,000 but to reconfigure the payback plan so that in this first year while you're making these very well intentioned promises and she knows if it had anything to do with you you would live up to it, but let's reconfigure the number with no forgiveness but give you an easier time in 2002 and 2003 and then start adding on. This would be time to regenerate instead of blasting you in the first couple of years and give you a little bit of break making it more of a sliding scale, maybe even at the end of the two years see if you are able to make some kind of lump sum payment so you can then spread out the remaining debt. She just cannot support forgiving $14,000 or S7,000 at this point in time, while we have faith and all the best wishes in the world and great respect for the new regime. Alderman Feldman said it was never his purpose to forgive that amount Alderman Rainey said she was suggesting making it easier the first year and you come back and maybe negotiate another number because she is concerned it is going to be overwhelming. Alderman Newman just wanted to comment, because he has a lot to say on this, that he shares all the complimentary things and anything good we can say about Next Theatre. He can say they are a great addition to the community, but he does not find Next Theatre to be any greater contribution than many of the tenants at Noyes Center because we have a number of great tenants there. He does not think Next is higher than Piven, or Actors' Dream besides others he can argue, he thinks you are all important. What is missing here in the way this proposal was brought about is its basically almost totally from your perspective without having a great amount of sensitivity for the financial responsibilities that the City has in owning and operating the building. We have 20 or 25 tenants and in order for the building to operate they all have to pay on time each month. If all 25 decided they were in financial trouble or they were going to pay off somebody else before us we would have no building. in order to maintain and run that building and provide the service that we have to provide the most fundamental principle is everybody has to pay the rent. The next principle is all the tenants have to be treated equally, to say one doesn't have to pay for an extensive period of time what is to stop 20 other tenants from not paying the rent, we would then have a real calamity on our hands. To go a step further how do we maintain the building utilities and repairs, which is why he has a bit of a problem with this. Also, when you took at the rent structure that structure is already, in his view, an extremely reduced rent structure the purpose of which is to help the performing arts organizations exist in the community. In his view we're not charging them dollar for dollar what we put into the building. It is therefore troubling to him to even consider the $14.000. If the S14,000 was a grant we were funding and the rent was paid up on time and there was an issue of Next Theatre needing S14,000 he would not mind that because he could then say we were giving a grant, but when you look at the number of months that haven't been paid for both the studio space and the offices we're stuck with this because you people chose not to pay us. However, according to your information other people have been paid because the debt has gone down from S200,000 to S70,000 over the last couple of years without the City being paid up. The other issue he is not sure what to do about is how much gets paid back and at what rate. He just wants to go over this to make it clear, the space does have value, other people have wanted the space and we get inquires regarding the space. As a matter of fact, during this time we had other use for this space. At one point we were thinking of putting some of Fleetwood Jourdain's Theater in there when one of the members of your Board actually came to the Council and argued against that happening while none of the Council actually knew the rent was not being paid, perhaps the staff knew. There are other uses for the space and by not paying two thing are happening, one the City is giving an interest free loan, two is we are looking the other way for income that could be brought into the City, which he considers to be a serious matter. As wonderful as Next Theatre is he needs a lot more Page 6. to get into forgiving S14,000 and he also thinks we need a tot more information as to who has been paid back and what the prospects are before we get into a payment plan. Alderman Rainey did not think anybody here was suggesting we forgive. 514,000 and Alderman Feldman added he said no forgiveness but we revisit the issue, to which Alderman Rainey also added she thought he might have been giving some false hopes Alderman Newman sa,a he construed Alderman Feldman's comments as they would repay 57,000 and then we would look at the issue at the end of whether or not we would actually forgive the remaining $7,000. Alderman Rainey supported that we cannot do that and thinks there is another factor here that maybe others know about and asked if there is some fraud issue of any kind here There was 5200,000 in expenses that nobody knew about to which Ms. Kemp said those were several years back. When we became a Board we found that there were past debts that we didn't know about, there's nothing (shy here. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what has changed from the time Next Theatre was unable to pay to now. He understands there is a change of regime, but does that mean the regime is bringing money to the table or is there something else going on, he knows you have a lot of ideas but weren't you fundraising before. Ms. Kemp said there was not sufficient fundraising before with the previous Board There was also insufficient grant money coming in. Already this coming year we have this development grant and we have the promise of another grant, which would hopefully help, pay for production costs of the show. We are already promised more grant money than we received last year. Last year grant money was down and contributions were down and we're now working to increase and build those numbers. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if they have resumed rent payments, to which Ms. Kemp said they will start with September rent. They are hoping to get subscription money in now, which will go right to rent_ Alderman Rainey asked if the $31,000 includes August's rent. Mr. Gaynor said the numbers in the report given to the committee are through the end of July, Alderman Feldman remarked the Noyes Cultural Arts Center tenants are artists of meaning, individuals or groups that add to the community. The only way in which they are similar is they are tenants and they are artists and someway or another they add to the community. To indicate that the Light Opera Works, or Piven, or the Next Theatre has the same impact, meaning, or significance of power to affect the community that a single artist who might write sonnets or paint, etc., who has a much more private approach to art, is inaccurate. There are ways of expression that clearly affect a great many people, many more people than others which seems to him has to be taken into account. He thought to himself what would happen if one of the artists that shall remain unnamed would come to Mr. Gaynor and say he's having trouble and could he figure out a payment plan for him to catchup He does not think anybody at the City or this committee would say no. Alderman Newman said he would disagree with that, to which Alderman Feldman said that's the way he thinks we would approach it If over a long period of time they continue to fail and those promises were not met we have to reconsider that but he cannot believe that lust on the basis of that without giving people a chance to redeem the kind of debt that they want, we wouldn't accept that Alderman Rainey did not think the committee should get into a discussion of who is better, who is worth more, or who is of greater value. This is a very individual situation that we have to resolve and she thinks our staff should resolve it. We need to give direction regarding how much leeway they have in terms of the 514,000, which she thinks there should be none. She thinks the committee is in agreement on that and would like to clarify what she is suggesting. she was ony suggesting, maybe a lesser amount than staffs proposal for the first year as those twelve months will be more different than any other twelve months because you have to pay rent every single month on time and in the full amount that is determined in the lease. She thinks the agreement should cover all the years but at the end of that year we have to have a very, very thorough report on the status of the payments and how things are going. If people stop paying in three months that is something we immediately need to know. Alderman Newman thought if Alderman Feldman is saying if there was another artist who wasn't among the well-known artists and that artist was fourteen months behind in rent, to which Alderman Rainey added they would have been long gone. Alderman Newman said the number of months they are actually behind here shows an extraordinary amount of support already by the City. He is concemed about the message we send out to all the other tenants about whether or not we should be taken seriously as a collector of rent when we have a building to manage and bills to pay. Therefore, he does not think it is responsible for us when we have that kind of space to hand the entire bill over to the taxpayer which we have already done in part He wants to help the Next Theatre but wants to do it in the context of having a management policy in the building that can sustain the building in a fair way to the taxpayers. He is not sure that staff waiting fourteen months to collect on rent is a great situation to begin with, nor does he think the Arts Council had the right whenever they did this to say the rent is paid at the end of the season. Alderman Ramey added, that's the problem, that was the policy and it is absolutely opposite of any rental policy any owner/lessor has in the whole world, to collect the rent at the end of the term instead of the beginning of the terra. it is partially our fault for allowing that to go on, it should never have happened. It is much to the detriment of the organization because then it allows this huge debt burden to build up. She thinks we are going to cut it off now and not do that kind of rent collection any more and see if we can fix this, and give them a year to fix it if they pay their rent on time for the amount agreed on. if nothing goes wrong in one year we can then go on to the next year. Page 7. Mr. Gaynor said they would like to bring back something in September with a payment schedule and provide you with progress reports. Alderman Rainey said Mr. Gaynor should just stay on top of this, if they continue to pay there is no problem. Alderman Newman noted some of us had an opportunity to actually meet with Next and before the next meeting he would like to get a history of what is actually is going on here to create the financial problems. He would also like further explanation as to how they feel they are overcoming these problems so we can have as much belief in their payment plan whether we accept it at the meeting. He's not trying to be difficult he's just trying to be responsible and its not a matter of personally respecting the theatre as he personally respects and thinks the work they're going to do is great. He believes we have to be realistic to see what happens here. Maybe this was the fault of tembie management, but on the other hand it has to be looked at from at least some of our individual perspectives. In recent years Next Theatre had been asking to be somewhat of an anchor of the performing arts center we were going to build. Alderman Feldman asked Next Theatre how they were able to pay down their debt from $200,000 to S70,000 and in what period of time. Ms. Kemp said in four to five years, in the last year they were not doing anything but each year made a conscious effort Alderman Newman said in the last two years $30,000 was added which means you went from $200,000 to $40,000 and added on $30,000 to get to $70,000. Ms. Kemp responded, yes, you could say that. Alderman Newman wondered who got paid and why the City did not. Artistic Director Jason Loewith explained what Ms. Kemp was trying to say is there was no debt owed to the City at the time when they were already down to $70,000, two years ago. He and Ms. Kemp came on board in July. Alderman Rainey asked when was the last time the rent was completely paid for the year. Mr. Gaynor said they met their obligation last year. March 2001 is when they started to accrue debt to which Alderman Rainey said that is year and a half. Mr. Gaynor said they occupy both the studio for an office as well as the theater. Alderman Newman noted the first year they owed S36,000 plus $84,000 and they owed $44,000 and paid part of this. Ms. Kemp said they paid S14,000 In June of 2001 and then in fiscal 2002 until March they paid monthly. Alderman Newman pointed out whatever was paid at the end of 2001 still shows that the large amount was unpaid in March, April and May. Maybe you made a partial payment for the prior months but you did not pay those three months. He would like the committee to have the explanation of how the debt was paid because it would be disconcerting for the debt to have been reduced while the City was owed $30,000. Alderman Rainey added staff will also come back with a plan, another option. Her point would be that it does no good to set up a plan that somebody can't live with, she would rather see this succeed than fail yet still pay us the $14,000. Mr. Loewith, said along with Ms. Kemp would like to thank the committee very much for their time and addressing Alderman Newman said invited him or any member of the City Council to explain where they have been and how they are moving forward beginning July 1*'. Mr. Loewith distributed subscription pamphlets to the committee for next year's subscriptions and said 40,000 pamphlets have been donated by connections of his own. This is the first hard snowball they expect to keep rolling so that the City is paid what it deserves and needs. Alderman Rainey thanked everyone from Next Theatre for their attendance. VL RESOLUTION 59-R-02 AUTHORIZING CITY MANAGER TO SIGN THE LEASE WITH GRAHAM HARLES FOR NOYES STUDIO #109 This is a six-month lease that will coincide with all the other leases. Alderman Newman moved to recommend approval for Resolution 59-R-02 authorizina the City Manager to sign the lease with Graham Harles for Noves Studio 9109. motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously approved f4-0t. VII. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 79-0-02 AMENDING THE RETAIL TOBACCO ORDINANCE Mr. Terry explained this section of the ordinance is to not have self-service for tobacco products. This tends to happen where cigar products, pipe tobacco, and occasionally chewing tobaccos are sold. Everything is to be put behind the counter. The other section of the amendment is if somebody wants to hand out free cigarettes, in bars, gathering places, or at public events. We don't require control of premises where you are distributing tobacco products you have control of that property and we are recommending that be an addition to our license so we know whoever is selling or distributing tobacco it is in fact their place to be doing such an act, be it a store, a restaurant, or something of that nature. Alderman Rainey asked what is it about the law that makes it necessary for the cigarette companies to come to the City to get a license to go into one of the restaurants/bars to hand out cigarettes. Mr. Terry said everybody who distributes in Evanston must have a license. if they would do it without checking with the City they would be in violation of the ordinance. Page 8. Ms. Brenniman said as the author of this ordinance she would just like to reiterate this type of license is if the person is in control of the premises. We felt it was necessary to do that to prevent these kinds of situations where people would come and ask for a license and/or ordinance that specifically precluded that. This now requires them to be the owner or in control of the establishment. Alderman Rainey asked how would this amendment prevent a tobacco manufacturer from coming to the City of Evanston to a local es=lishment, making an agreement with the establishment, who already has a cigarette license. who has this basket of c.garettes to give away to make a deal with them to give them away. Ms. Brenniman said with this agreement they caukdn't do that because it specifically says the licensee is the person or entity that has legal control over the area and it would preclude those agreements. Alderman Feldman asked if it would preclude any kind of a subcontract berr+een that license holder and the manufacturer. Ms. Brenniman said it specifically says the individual who holds the license to distribute or sell the product must be in legal control of the premises. Alderman Rainey used as an example. she is a club owner who has a license to sell cigarettes. A salesman say from Phillip Morris comes to the club and says he wants to boost their sales and here is a pile of cigarettes he would like me to give free to help people come into my establishment so he can get his cigarettes out to the juvenile public who comes in the establishment Ms. Brenniman said the actual act of the distribution would have to be done by the licensee. Alderman Rainey said, right, and the licensee would be club owner. Ms. Brenniman said that is correct and they could do that. Alderman Newman moved approval for consideration of ordinance 79-"2 amendina the retail tobacco ordinance, motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously approved f4-01. Mr. Terry noted for the committee's information he thought they might be interested in knowing, and something to keep an eye on, is the Village of Skokie will soon be considering a "California" type ban on all smoking in all public places. If in fact it is a successful venture one would expect that question would be put before us at some point. Smoking in all public places is prohibited in Califomia, bars. restaurants, bowling alleys, anything of that nature. Vill. CONSIDERATON OF ORDINANCE 80-0-02 WHICH WOULD ADD SOURCE OF INCOME AS A NOW DISCRIMINATION CATEGORY IN THE FAIR HOUSING ORDINANCE Alderman Rainey said she proposed this amendment to the Fair Housing Ordinance to disallow discrimination against Section 8 voucher holders. Alderman Rainey moved approval for Ordinance 80-"2, seconded by Alderman Jean - Baptiste. Alderman Feldman asked if the City if Chicago has such an ordinance in effect and was told they do. Ms. Haynes said Skokie also has this ordinance. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Haynes if she has looked at the census information of Evanston on this. One of the things she is pretty confident about is the majority of our Section 8 certificate holders in Evanston are minorities as opposed to maybe nationwide they are not. Ms. Haynes noted in our town they are females and women of color. Alderman Rainey said she heard some discussion earlier about what this would mean and in terms of her thinking this would mean that people would be allowed to fill out applications and then be treated like any other tenant in temps of credit check and tenant investigation. Whereas now you can call a landlord, which she has always thought is a bad approach, and tenants with Section 8 certificates or vouchers usually ask. "do you take Section 8", and the landlord can say, no, and hang up the phone. After that there is no discussion, there is no opportunity to apply, there is no opportunity to go through the tenant check. This could be the best tenant in the world, and based on the information she garnered from the census it makes no sense that some wards that have rental housing have an enormous percentage of minorities and other wards that have rental housing have virtually no minorities. If we assume that most Section 8 certificate holders are minorities it is the last remaining legal way in terms of rental housing to racially discriminate in our community, with no effect on the purchase of homes. But on rental housing it is the last way to keep black's out of your building, Alderman Feldman said he is a little confused about something. If you have a building and the apartments are very expensive, is that within the range of anybody who takes Section 8, if the rent is $2,000 a month. Alderman Rainey added if you have two children, there is noway Section 8 could rent that apartment because the voucher doesn't allow it. If you have one child and your job pays S22,000 a year and you have a voucher to subsidize your rent you are not in line for a $2,000 or even S1,800 a month apartment because Section 8 says with one child you can have a two bedroom apartment, but they have a limit. That discrimination would have to do with the cost of the unit as opposed to the source of your income. Therefore, no one would be forced to rent to that person. Ms. Haynes remarked there have been instances where Section 8 has exceeded their status limit to assist families. Alderman Rainey added that usually is the case with three or four bedrooms when there is only one available unit. It would not deal with luxury units. Alderman Newman was not sure the statement made about why there are a significant number of rental units in some wards and a significantly low number of African Americans is consistent with the idea that there is necessarily Page 9. discrimination because you are admitting that is the rental structure. Taking for example the r Ward where two bedroom apartments are quite expensive and maybe beyond the range of a Section 8 voucher. Without having any hard data in front of us the more prorattle explanation is that the reason that the census numbers are as different as they are is because there is a much higher rental structure in some pans of the City tnan others How or why that happened is subject to a lot of debate = he is not sure if we could press a button and say there would absolutely be no discrimination in the 6"', 7"', or 1 a Waro :n terms of who was rented to in terms of source of income that would change a lot of the units that are rental that would nct be affordable. Alderman Rainey said she :s only looking at the V, 4'"', and 1" Wards as opposed to the 6" and 7" Wards where there are some real questions. kderman Newman said when you throw out the wards if you to look at the 3" Ward in terms of what the rents are in many cases beyond what Section 8 certificates can qualify for. Alderman Rainey noted in some cases its that way in the 87' Ward too, but tenants aren't trying to rent those units One would be surprised how high rents are. Alderman Feldman asked d the Human Relations Commission has ever conducted any kind of survey to fired out what rental units are in various pars of the City in terms of costs. He is talking about a clean, reasonably kept building because that would very clearly tell us if people are paying almost the same amount of money in the e, 9", 5'", Wards and the reason they may not be getting to the 3" Ward or wherever because people do what this ordinance is trying to correct. He does not know whether that's happening or not Alderman Rainey asked why that should matter when a tenant looks in the paper usually the amount of the rent is there to ward off people who cannot afford certain apartments. That's not the problem, the problem we're having is tenants are calling the numbers for the rent they can afford and they are told, 'we don't accept Section 8'. That is perfectly legal. Why should that be the case, why should a person not be given an opportunity to fill out an applicaton and prove their credit, social and ethical worthiness and every other kind of worthiness. If the tenant has a dog and a building doesn't accept dogs, fine, whether you have a certificate or not you're not welcomed there. If the tenant has ten children for one bedroom, they're not allowed to rent there, Most of the time tenants know the price of the unit when they call. Its such a drag looking for an apartment why should tenants who have a certificate for a three bedroom that goes up to about 51,700 a month bother calling a $4.500 a month three bedroom, three bath unit. They're not going to do that, their time is limited the same as all of us. All she is asking is that people are able to fill out that application and subject themselves to the same scrutiny as every other tenant without a certificate is subjected to. Alderman Newman said that is exactly what we're not discussing right now. He understands what is being asked but he originally was taking issue with the statement made that this practice was the explanation for why there were different figures, that's an opinion that he would like to see some factual support for. Alderman Feldman's suggestion was that maybe the Human Relations Commission take a look at costs of rental units in various parts of the City. It would be interesting to find out how often the case you are talking about is actually happening. Alderman Rainey said she would like Alderman Newman to meet some people who have Section 8 vouchers and every one will tell him it takes a voucher holder longer to find a unit than anybody else. Alderman Newman said he is not saying it doesn't happen but he is not sure that situation is the explanation for the difference in the number of minontes in certain wards. Alderman Rainey said she Is saying it is one of the effects, to which Alderman Newman responded, it could be but it would be interesting to actually find out. As an example, lets say we have a $1,000 a month two bedroom apartment with very affordable rent, it would be interesting to take a survey of the $1,000 a month apartments in the various wards and see what the racial diversity was of those apartments ward by ward which would give us a better idea of this. Alderman Rainey thought the real information would be haw many of those units are filled with Cook County Housing Authority people. Alderman Feldman said he would like to know whether or not there are affordable units all over the City of Evanston that do not have Section 8 as a result of some landlords saying they do not take Section S. He would think there probably are a lot of buildings like that Ms Haynes said her office receives calls all the time and they do not track them because there is nothing they can do about 4. it is not a protected class. They get these calls routinely from people saying they saw an apartment, they called, or they went and were told they don't accept Section 8 and they had the authority from the Housing Authority for that amount of money for the apartment. Ms. Haynes said she has had realtors call her, one right on Greenbay, about property managers and owners who refuse to rent to Section 8 even though they have the means to pay the rent Alderman Newman asked Ms. Haynes if she has kept track of those calls, and was told she did not. Alderman Newman said from the time the idea of an ordinance came up it would be interesting and important to keep track of how many of these complaints there actually are. Are we talking about hundreds or are we talking about three or four a year. Both Alderman Rainey and Ms. Haynes responded, hundreds. Ms. Haynes said that is almost virtually impossible to do because people don't know to call them if they're told that a landlord doesn't accept Section 8. Some people tali us and ask if there is something we can do to help, but many people say okay the landlords don't have to take it and just shrug their shculders and trot off to the next place. There is no way they could keep track of those calls. Alderman Rainey said she has given numerous reasons why we should have a source of income protected and she would like to hear what some of the objections are or what some of the negative consequences are. It is difficult to deaf with this if she does not know what some of that is. Alderman Rainey wanted to Page 10. know what the commrttee thinks some of the negatives are Alderman Feldman said he did not know except he would feel more comfortable in addressing a need and he has almost every confidence that need is there That there are people that are being denied the ability to apply for apartments in places all over the City of Evanston where rentals can be afforded by these people. Alderman Rainey remarked what we are talk.no about is where renta`•s can't be afforded, that should not even be in this equation tecause we're not talking about making landlords rent to people wt o can't afford their unit. Alderman Feldman said all he Aants to know is whether or not there are people who arm cr manage buildings with the kind of rental that people can afford who say they don't want to rent to Section 8 Alderman Newman would like to know and have on record based on tre information he has seen in the past, that he thinks we have a higher percentage of Section 8 certificates per capita than other community in the County of Cook. Some of the comments imply somehow that Section 8 certificates are not being accepted as much as they should be in Evanston we're probably accepting them statistically more than other communities. That' s a pcsitNe and he would just like to be working actually with the facts and what the actual problem is He can't say that he's opposed to this at all, he also can't say he understands other than the ideology of it, that there hasn't been presented to us any factual basis this problem existed and to what extent. Maybe we have that soon, but then we would be accused of creating hoops so we wouldn't have to do it Alderman Rainey said she is trying to figure out what can be done to take care of his objections. Ms Haynes said recently she received a copy of a letter from a woman who has a child, has a Section 8 certificate, has lived in Evanston for many years, has not had any problems. paid her rent, and has a pretty good relationship with all parties involved. This management company who manages many, many buildings in our community sent her a letter and told her they had decided that they were no longer going to accept Section 8 certificates in the apartment housing and the lease would not be renewed in September. If she needed an extra couple of months they would afford her that but she had to go because they decided, across the board a blanket decision, not to accept any Section 8 certificates. Alderman Newman thought we should get comments as to what the actual situation is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought this is a simple proposition which is landlords ought not be able to discriminate against a potential rental on the basis of the source of income. If landlords are not actually doing that then the landlord community should not have to worry but if they are doing that then it creates a problem for potential renters and these potential renters will have greater choice wherever the housing is to be able to go there and offer their rental voucher and get the unit and pay what the landlord is asking for. He understands the issue of maybe trying to get landlords to come forward to talk about it and also have Section 8 tenants come talk about it, maybe some will be at the next Council meeting to address this issue. What he is suggesting is we are trying to address a problem that in this town landlords can choose to deny a tenant who is qualified, in terms of the ability to pay, they have denied that tenant access on the basis of the source of income. He supports the ordinance modificabon that Alderman Rainey has put forth and if one comes and says it creates another problem we should consider that but we need to talk about what problem is created by our attempt to prevent discrimination on the basis of sources of income. Alderman Newman wanted to give an example of that problem, you have a Section 8 certificate holder for a family of seven with three teenagers. The three teenagers have all been involved in graffiti Incidents. thus they have had a history of creating graffiti in the building and driveway where they previously lived. What he has a problem with is when they're rejected they go to our staff and say we were rejected because were Section 8. Then the landlord will have to hire a lawyer to defend himself in a potential claim of discrimination to show there was other reason. He does not think it's as simple as saying everybody can agree that everybody should be allowed to apply. Why would any landlord who wants to be paid hisfher rent not want to accept a good Section 8 tenant. Alderman Rainey said because its a policy not to accept Section 8 without knowing whether or not this is a good tenant. Alderman Newman said he would agree but one of the implications would be good landlords will have to defend themselves against perhaps false claims that the reason they did not rent was strictly because the tenant was Section 8. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added and good tenants will find protection under our ordinance when a bad landlord discriminates against them. He would air on the side of giving people as many opportunities as possible to get access to rental housing and if you have a slew of landlords standing in the way because there's a slew of tenants who are doing graffiti and things of that nature then we need to take a look a that, but he doubts that would be the case. Alderman Rainey asked what would prevent an African American family who had no certificate from applying for the apartment whose children had done the same thing from saying the reason they were not renting to them was because they are black. Nothing It would interest you to know that the last four juvenile offenders arrested in her ward for doing the kind of thing you described were all white children of homeowners. Her point being its not necessarily that the kids are going to have a criminal background, those are exactly the people she does not want living in her ward, if they do have a criminal background and their kids are damaging and destroying public and private property. Nobody wants them in their ward. One of the problems we have is landlords in our community don't scrutinize their tenant applicants enough, if you have the money, move in. She thinks they should scrutinize more and we would all be doing better. To struggle to think of reasons why this can't work, all she is asking is that people be allowed the opportunity to complete that application. The way the voucher program works, it makes rent affordable. We have virtually no affordable housing in this community except for the senior buildings. The only way any rental housing we have left in our community is made affordable is with the voucher program. She is merely asking that we open up opportunities in other neighborhoods in the City of Evanston other than the 5" and the 8'" wards because in a lot of cases in the 8t' ward more and more ren tat buildings are being converted People are going to start Page 11. losing their certificates if they cannot find Landlords who will allow them to complete an application. That's her whole argument. Alderman Newman said basica'.ty Alderman Rainey has an argument wrthout facts to support rt. That is one of the things this ordinance implies, that Evanston is discriminating on account of that and where it doesn't give Evanston credit is for some reason or another we tare more Seruan 8 certificates than anyoody else This means on a comparison level to all other communities we're long better, On a per capita basis we have more people with certificates coming to Evanston than virtually any other place rn the county Alderman Rainey said a lC, of them are already here. This has to do with the fact that we have or did have a lot of rental housing and this is a great place to live People want their kids to go to school in Evanston so Madly they're faking addresses living in Chicago and sending them to school here, This is the place People want to Irve. Alderman Rainey remarked, you say I have no proof. Do you think I just lay in bed at night or sit around thinking up these things. They come from experiences she has had as an Alderman. She has a lot of tenants with Section 8 vouchers in her ward. She gets numerous calls to call different Aldermen to help them rent apartments. She has even told landlords they do not have to accept Secbon 8, because ifs a fact that they don't gets get it on a level playing field where affordable housing can be found in all wards. That's all she's saying. Alderman Feldman said there is an apartment building in the 9'ward that was occupied primarily by Section 8 tenants. The building was purchased and turned into condominiums. All the people were given an opportunity to purchase but of course most if not all could not afford that and some had children in the schools. They had a difficult time finding comparable housing in the City and were placed with the prospect of having to move away, having their children go to another school, losing friends, etc., it was a dramatic trauma for them and indicated there is not a cluster of available decent Section 8 housing in the City of Evanston. Alderman Rainey challenged anyone to talk to those voucher holders and ask them how many times they were told by a landlord that they don't accept Section 8 or they are experienced enough to look in a newspaper to see there are very few ads that say they take Section 8. Its unique looking in the Evanston Review where they actually say, we accept Section 8. Unless you are totally desperate you don't even bother to call the other ones because you know they don't, as its humiliating being hung up on. Michele Rodregues, staff housing coordinator for Interfaith Housing Center of Northern Suburbs, said Evanston Is actually part of their service area. The person who manages the Fair Housing Program attested to what Alderman Rainey had said earlier as far as landlords telling these potential tenants immediately. we don't accept Section B. She just wanted to say she has been receiving those calls on a regular basis. She has been at Interfaith Housing since April 8", and gets those calls on a regular basis from residents of Evanston in the hopes that they hear that the City of Chicago has a source of income as a protective class and ask if there is a protective class here as well. Unfortunately since its not it's very limited as to what we or Ms. Haynes with the Evanston Human Relations Commission can do. She just wanted to testify that those phone calls do exist and she has been keeping track of them Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Rodregues how many calls she has on record to which Ms. Rodregues responded she dKd not want to give an inaccurate figure but she can say she gets them routinely every month, Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Rodreques if she could tally her figures and let the committee know what they are. Mr. Rodregues said unfortunately she can only give specific figures since she started in April but she can go back a little farther. Alderman Newman said he would like to support this ordinance but prior to voting on this he would like to be able to hear from the landlords that are not accepting Section 8, what the reasoning has been for them not to routinely take the applications. He thinks we should give a copy of this ordinance to the property owners to give them the opportunity to comment on this as they were not notified that this was on the agenda tonight We have not had this ordinance for a hundred years and we should wail another meeting or two and gather some information. He does not see any harm in giving them a notice to let them comment. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Haynes when was the last time we amended the ordinance and what was the amendment. Ms. Haynes said she believed the last time we amended the ordinance was in 1997 when the definition of sexual orientation was to include transgender individuals. Alderman Rainey asked if, when this took place, we had a public hearing for landlords, to which Ms. Haynes responded, we did not. Alderman Rainey asked if we had a public hearing for tenants when amending the ordinance on security deposits, to which Mr. Haynes responded, no. Alderman Rainey said she would like to make certain we notify all the tenants we can contact for this hearing so everybody gets an equal chance. Alderman Newman thought that would be great but he wanted to correct something just said, we had extensive opportunity for various groups to comment on the security deposit because we did not just get it at one meeting and pass it We sent it back to the Housing Commission, we let the Human Relabons Commission comment on it, there were articles in the newspaper, where all types of people had the opportunity to comment before action was taken at Planning and Development Alderman Rainey asked if any information was received such as how many complaints the City received from tenants who had never got their security deposit back or who had never received interest payments even under the previous places. Alderman Newman said that wasn't the issue, the issue was what was a fair rate and we have Page 12. not yet completed work on that Muse it is stilt going to go to the Council. The issue was what was a fair rate of interest. we looked at other City's ordinances, which we have not done here, we heard that Chicago has iL Alderman Rainey said we looked at Chicago for the interest rates and to see what's good enough for Chicago. We'll go as far as it takes to get this because this is the right thing to do and its an important thing to do for our community. We'll have as many public hearings as you want to call. she thinks since this mostly affects tenants because they're the ones being denied, that should be the primary focus of hearings Landlords certainly can come and tell us why they don't want these tenants but she thinks it's important to hear what the need is On one hand we have a commodity of rental housing that is being denied to a large group in the population. Alderman Rainey said this wilt be held for another meeting and is astonished that all the people in our community that have been pounding on the City Council to the point that she felt some personal humiliation and offense are not out supporting this ordinance. This ordinance is really addressing the issue of affordable housing. Alderman Newman said nobody knows about this ordinance, to which Alderman Rainey added, they will now. Alderman Newman noted there will now be an opportunity to have some further discussion. IX. FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF A PROPOSAL TO CONSOLIDATE COMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES OF FUNDING UNDER THE EVANSTON MENTAL HEALTH BOARD Alderman Rainey remarked she appreciated Ms. Grover's memo and all the work Mr. Saver has done on this, this information has been very helpful and asked if there were any comments from the committee. Alderman Rainey called for a motion of approval. Alderman Feldman moved to accent the reoort and consolidate the Human Services Purchased Services budqet items to the Evanston Mental Health Board. motion seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Rainey asked if there were any new developments or reactions from the community purchased services agencies. Jane Grover, Mental Health Board Chair, said at the July meeting, the meeting Alderman Rainey attended, when the Board voted to consolidate the funded that followed their two monthly meetings of April and May in which they Invited the public to hearings and asked those who would be affected by hypothetical consolidation to tell us how that affected their agency. They heard from thirteen agencies who receive funding plus two other groups that had an Interest in speaking for one of the funded agencies. The interesting thing was of the six agencies the Human Services Committee funds, but the Mental Health Board does not yet know, five of those six came and spoke to us at the hearings and she believes all five were in support of consolidation. Alderman Rainey's concern that was expressed at their last meeting was we needed to hear from those agencies that don't know the Mental Health Board from Adam and would be most directly affected by consolidation. We have not heard from anyone else. The one agency that chose not address the Mental Health Board at its meetings she believed was the Youth Job Center to which Mr. Terry added they submitted a written statement. Ms. Grover said it was Y.O.U. that did not send a statement or speak to the Board. Something came up and the Director could not come to the meeting. Ms. Grover introduced Mental Health Board members, Gil Krulee, Sue Cantor, and Lonnie Wiebe, immediate past Mental Health Board Chair and Harvey Saver who everyone knows. Alderman Newman asked if the committee can receive an annual report on the Board's recommendations by the end of November to have an idea of what has been done over the course of the year. He would fully support this committee getting out of the business of going over the agency proposals but they will still have the ultimate opportunity at budget time. Mr. Terry said the committee will know the Board's recommendations and allocations before adopting the City budget. Alderman Feldman said in looking at the parameters for consolidations they are very reasonable and ones he would certainly support. He wanted to know whether or not in Mr. Terry's and Mr. Saver's discussions with the Mental Health Board legal questions were raised, questions of prerogative, powers, any compromise at all or addition to, other than the opportunity to make these kinds of decisions. To him these are very much like the decisions being made all along lust in terms of different agencies with the same kind of values and using the process that he has witnessed has served as well over a long period of time. Ms. Grover said she thought the changes that might happen structurally might be more over the long term when the Board decides to tinker with its by laws, procedures and policies to accommodate this larger scope that goes from the narrow mental health services to a larger human services scope. Right now their by laws need to be reviewed annually and naturally they will be looking at them again finding ways to accommodate this bigger scope into what our structure is. Alderman Feldman was also interested in the proposition that the Mental Health Board might want additional members to deal with the additional workload they now have and wanted to know if the Board has come to that conclusion already_ Alderman Rainey added, and the different perspective on the new agencies. Page 13. Ms. Wiebe said they do have a liaison system whereby their Board members form a liaison relationship with all the agencies they fund. This will. of course, put an addibonal load on each liaison that may lead to affecting their survival. Alderman Feldman said it would also give you an opportunity at that time to request Board members with additional expertise or additional perspectives that might accommodate your new role to be included. Alderman Feldman asked if the Board has any idea of what additional number you are talking about. Ms. Grover said right now they number nine and thinks it only makes sense to work it out to an odd number again for voting purpose, to eleven. Now for practical purposes the Board has decided if there were a consolidation they will roll the additional agencies into their funding process for this year and see now it works out. If they decide that the workload is too much for this volunteer Board, that the funding process becomes inoperable, and they need more personnel to handle reviewing proposals or do funding hearings or for the important liaison relationships, then they want the Human Services Committee and the City Council to be generally open to the possibility of increasing their membership. We may decide after this fall's funding process that we don't need additional members. Alderman Feldman said he personally does not have absolutely any objection to an increase in membership of the Board and he certainly would be willing to support it if you feel the size of eleven either too many or an opportunity for any other kind of negative, he does not know. If you want it and think its necessary he would be very happy to support it. Ms. Grover commented on the question of this Board's professional expertise just looking at the Board members present this evening, one member. Ms. Wiebe, we could call a mental health professional, Ms. Cantor is a speech, language and pathologist, and Mr. Krulee a professor at Northwestern, so we ourselves don't necessarily even have a mental health background. Alderman Feldman said that is why when he looked at the negatives on the Board's memo and thought to himself this is not a group of mental health specialists and your perspective is determined by information that you get and the kind of attention you want to pay to it not as a result of a given background. Ms. Wiebe said we are citizens' board. Alderman Rainey added, also you already met with and talked to seven of the agencies. Ms. Grover said for those seven agencies consolidation would simplify their reporting to which Alderman Rainey said for that she is sure they are grateful, but she is concerned for the other six agencies. Alderman Feldman suggested that this committee pass this proposal and in the legislation that might come before the Council itself there be an explanation of all of this that has gone on, the kind of reasoning that the Mental Health Board has gone through and an explanation of how they feel about it. Alderman Rainey said she thought the summary of the discussions and the pros and cons was excellent and would like to see everyone receive this information. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Terry if he had any comments, to which Mr. Terry said he thought this is a good thing to do. Alderman Ralnev recalled the motion for approval to recommend this very Interestina chance for the Mental Health Board, motion unanimously avaroved (4-0). Alderman Rainey thanked the representatives of the Mental Health Board for their attendance this evening and their excellent work. X. EVANSTON ENVIRONMENT BOARD STATUS REPORT Gladys Bryer, Chairman of the Board, and members Judy Freeman, Mardi Klevs, and Gwen Burton Poole introduced themselves to the committee. Ms. Bryer said a year ago they talked to this committee about their strategic plan that to a great extent covered a lot of environmental areas In this past year they are proud of their accomplishments and just did a second strategic plan with the same gentleman from the Institute for Cultural Affairs who Is helping them to prioritize their goals and focus. Their current focus is the one listed as their major goal to try to get a systemic change on the environmental Issue here in Evanston, one of energy conservation, particularly in the building code. It sounds easy but making a systemic change is more difficult than some of the current accomplishments, we have held forums and educated people, we've run courses and attempted to convince people and work with various developers on all of those individual efforts. There is nothing in the code, which commits Evanston to energy conservation in the building code. Here are all sorts of requirements but in the years since our building code there have been many, many more changes in the conservation area and currents codes, codes which Evanston does not have. These codes are being accepted by other communities in Illinois. We have educational and commitment issues in front of us that is our current major focus. They switch off as other issues arise. We look to this committee for some suggestions, as we have not found the key to doing this. We have been in the educational mode in public education, and invited you and other City officials to some of our events, but we're still unable to make changes. Alderman Newman thought this is an issue for Planning and Development not the Human Services Committee. The education part you mention in terms of what other communities have done, including Chicago, specifically the issue of conservation, he thinks we need to talk more about what those communities are doing and how that fits here in Evanston. He would be glad to have that discussion. Page 14. Alderman Feldman remarked the Environment Board is concerned with green architect and wanted to know if that is part of the issue now being discussed on code revisions Ms. Klevs said the energy conservation code is kind of a no brainer part of the green building code because its one that will save money. The cost of the payback is much shorter, we figure its much easier to come for people at first and then once people have their foot in the door people will trust us more and make use of some of the other ideas. In ;en^hs of the green building codes she has a grant out right now to the City of Chicago, they're developing guidelines on —,�= new building codes which she has a feeling that their City Council will adopt eventually and as part of that grant. one rec::irement is that they are supposed to meet with other municipalities and share the information they have gathered. Once mey finished developing the guidelines which will be within a couple months they will have a document of what they dz. they researched what's working and whats not working and are coming up with their own guidelines for the City. They nave a very large staff of a hundreo people and her concerns are how to get this information out. Alderman Rainey asked if there is a model green building code that this committee could look at, to which Alderman Feldman said we could kook at a model green building. Alderman Feldman said he went to the Pharmacia Building before he was interested ,n codes or anything like that You see the building and talk to people that work in it, what the people went though to build it, and the executives who fought against it who are now delighted with it. This building just opens up a new wor'4, it's a new way of thinking about building. Alderman Rainey asked if this committee was invited to tour that building and was told yes they were. Ms. Klevs said if anyone is interested they can arrange for another tour. If they can't go to mat building the City of Chicago has a green building on Sacramento and Lake and you have an opportunity to talk to some of the City staff who were engaged in the building. Alderman Rainey asked if there is a model green building of some area. Ms. Klevs said the U.S. green building council has a rating system that developers actually put up a large amount of money to gel rated, as there are different ratings. There are cities like Austin that have developed guidelines and she is not sure that they have actual ordinances yet as there are guidelines that different cities have. One of the things the City of Chicago did, as part of the grant was to go out and research what other cities did. Alderman Newman said this might be an interesting grant project for us. Ms. Bryer brought up that it was mentioned going to the Planning and Development Committee, twice they had put proposals before that committee and each time they went before that committee as a communication so they were never discussed. There is a way to get it before the committee to actually be discussed. Our proposal would have some additions to the mandatory guidelines that were presented by the Planning Commission for the Site Plan Committee. We have some environmental items actually one of them made its way because the Planning Commission actually had something on light groups. We had four other energy conservation cost efficient items beneficial to Evanston. Alderman Rainey said the way to do this probably would be to bring this to the Planning Commission. Alderman Newman thought the Environment Board should sit down with the chair of this committee. As a member of that committee he has no problem discussing any of these issues as we need to find a way, when we have one of those open meetings when there is not a pressing agenda, to get an opportunity to go over this in detail. He would like to see pictures of the tour of the Pharmacia Building to get an idea of what you are talking about. Ms. Bryer said several people from the City and from this committee came on the tour, as there was great interest in the building. What surprises everybody is that the up front costs which look large in the beginning, the pay back is much more rapid than they anticipated. Ms. Klevs said everyone is really busy and they need some kind of intervention so that people would at least open up their ears and listen to what we're talking about We have gotten to a certain point with the Building Department to start talking about the 2003 version of the code which is a real step forward. Its very difficult, there are a lot issues in the City, people are really busy and what we need advise on is how do you get our issues into the fifteen minutes of fame before you move on to all these other pressing issues that you discussed tonight mat were more important issues. Alderman Rainey thought we should think of a way to have a member of the Environment Board sit on the Planning Commission for the reason that we're not used to an Environment Board that does a lot of work and it looks to her like this is a very creative, active, aggressive board which she really welcomes. It seems to her that a lot of your issues have to do with the Planning Commission and she thinks that would be an excellent vehicle for you and the best way to communicate as we have interlocking members on many boards, Zoning, Planning. CD, etc. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think the Council would be opposed to going forward with the issues being discussed it's just a question of framing it. If we are talking about building codes as some pointed out the Legal Department would have to get involved. Alderman Newman said the difference is the Planning Commission actively participates in the development of the Zoning Ordinance. Changes to the codes, building codes, fire codes, etccome directly from the professional staff so you really need to interact extensively with the staff of the Fire Department the Building Department, etc. Alderman Rainey added, they are also national codes. Alderman Newman said to get a code change to our committee the issue is whether or not the staff really manages and recommends as they are the experts and sufficient opportunity should be given to this board to make their suggestions and least give us some choices at Planning and Development which is where there seems to be a problem. He would be willing, at Planning and Development, to have a meeting with them to at least help develop this. Alderman Rainey said thats a good idea and another idea would be, they mention Site Plan and Appearance Review constantly, on site from that Appearance Review the police department has their crime prevention man talk about why you can't have bushes or fences here or there, because they can't see the bad guys, it would seem to her it would be perfectly reasonable to have a member of the Environment Board who has a Page 15, particular segment of issues that concern them in design and building, etc Alderman Newman said that's a huge assignment for a volunteer. Alderman Rainey said if it's a huge assignment for a volunteer she thinks you have been attempting to attend those meetings weekly. Alderman Newman asked if their member is there weekly, to which Ms. Bryer responded, she was, to which Alderman Rainey added she knows that she has seen her there. Also, the architect is there every week on a voluntary bans Alderman Feldman said what he thinks is needed is some kind of a Council approval an energy behind them that indicates a kind of authority they don't have right now. What has to happen is the Council itself, in addition to the Planning Commission and to other agencies including our staff, has to become aware of the benefits of this kind of thinking The people that solve these problems solve them from a global atmosphere all kinds of things that go into a building that are thought about in a totally different way. It's the attitude or the willingness to look at that kind of an approach that we're trying to get at. One of the things he keeps thinking about is over a period time this City actually builds buildings. We just finished one for several million dollars, he loves that building and is very proud of that building but it was also done without that kind of perspective for the reason that at this point in time its not a value in this Council or in this building or any place else. In order to get it there you have to do a lot of educating of staff and this Council has to say it's important for them to hear that. Alderman Newman added, if they're willing to listen to it. Alderman Rainey said they are a step above everybody else because they are a City appointed board. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the Council has heard a lot of these reports, a lot of the public comment and many of us through indirect experience have come in contact with the whole notion of energy conservation. Many of us have seen different buildings where lights don't have to be on all the time, etc., etc., you see and hear about that all the time, its not a new idea. If we find a way to propose some sort of proposed action on the part of the Council, the amendments to the codes, whether it could come in the form of some ordinance that empowers this board to be given weight at the Site Plan Review process that could make a difference. For the code we need to approach this not just the for knowledge, because he thinks we have the knowledge, but from the standpoint if you want a code fled that ought to be either through private developers or our own buildings. It has to be explained that way and put before us who can settle it so the discussion can go on and experts can come and testify. At the end of the day we would have voted for, and would have gotten something we can implement that can guide wtat we do because he thinks we have the information. Alderman Feldman said Alderman Jean-Bapbste may have that but he does not have it. He didn't have that until he went to the building even though he knew all the things about saving on heating and lighting and everything else, yet he did not understand that people lust to get into that building to work there. Not just because they're saving energy, not just because time heat and lights go on at the right time, but because of the solutions of the building, it is a pleasure to be in, in a way that other places are not That is what you have to latch onto and understand. He does not know what the components of that are, he knows its a philosophy and it's a way of solving problems and if you listen to the men that built it you would see the manner in which they approach these issues. it's that kind of ethic, that kind of value, that we have to instill. Alderman Newman remarked A & PW hired the architect to build the levy Center. Before we get involved going to contract on City projects we should get some input from the Environmental Control Board so we can possibly incorporate tt into the bid process. Mr. Bryer said someone was at the Pharmacia tour with the City, an employee working in the Building Department, and right at that time he said that they were building a fire station and they were not doing any of these things in here. It was too Late already because the plans were already in the process. Alderman Feldman said he described this visit to a prominent member of staff and the first thing he said was we can't afford it. Alderman Newman asked that the Environmental Board put this on their agenda at A&PW and thinks what should be done with P & D is have you work with the chair and get some of these issues discussed- If you want a member on Site Plan and Review that's fine with him. Ms. Bryer said they have the proposal that was given to you as a communication but not only to have a member of the board on the committee but also to have the committee look at this as part of what they look at. Alderman Newman asked when this was given to them as a communication to which Ms. Bryer said a number of months ago, in December. Alderman Newman then said why don't we resurrect it and get the specific requests for a Site Plan member or Plan Commission member again and then the Environmental Board will come, he will be there and note you tried to get this discussed once and we will then take some action on that and also try to get this discussion of the green issues going. He just wanted to make it clear he's not promising any agreement after we have these discussions but at least you'll have the opportunity to discuss this and educate us to the errs of our ways, or whatever they are. Alderman Rainey said or how we can approve. Alderman Newman added some of these are tricky he knows your committee has some positions on transportation issues that we can debate for a long time. Ms. Klevs said she has been involved with some of these discussions with architects and the way it works is, think of this as a tool box, as there are a lot of different approaches you can take in building a building. An architect might chose to do one thing and from six tools in the toolbox they might reject five of them but one of them maybe they'll try as a test. Maybe he/she had no experience with that before but they're willing to try it and if it works for them they might apply it. Nobody can force a developer or architect in Evanston to do something they don't want to do. However, she will say they have been trying this voluntary approach and are not getting too far. Alderman Rainey said but some Plan and Appearance Review is a voluntary approach, which seems to be working when the developers come to that setting. Some of what has just been said, some of the ideas presented by the professional members of the committee to developers are sometimes embraced vigorously, they love the ideas that they have never thought of and maybe that is Page 16. something you could bring to them. Alderman Newman said ultimately they would need the staff to be supporting that Site Plan in order to get some of these things incorporated otherwise they will be talking to themselves. Mr. Terry commented in defense of staff a syr,^.bc.-c obstacle is the fart that we work here every day in probably the most energy inefficient building in the Ciri Alderman Newman responded that's a good comment and if we could get the employee force of the City to tape a collectrre S2 COD D0o pay cut and take that 52,000.000 a year and apply it to the debt service necessary to have the most energy effigy; new building possible, that comment would never be made again and if somebody could find him that safery secur.;r oox that has all the money to do all the things that people think are necessary that would be fine Ms Bryer said they are now in coordination w.th we Energy Commission and coordinated with them on an Energy Policy. Several of their people are involved but one of tre solutions to this problem, particularly wrath this building, would be having this new contract being negotiated with CamEd, at some point in the near future, do what they've done for Chicago in respect to a number of the City buildings as par, of the ComEd contract. That could be a demand that the City wants. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Bryer if she is avrare of the favored nation clause in all of the suburban franchise agreements. Ms. Bryer responded, yes, on the tuner hand there are ways to get around that clause to which Alderman Rainey responded she was on that negotiating team and knows there are ways to get around but we're looking at some very interesting issues. Alderman Rainey wanted to move the discussion on to the recycling and wanted to encourage the Environmental Board to come to the A & PW committee and talk to them about recycling because she is about to go off on her own about recycling. She thinks your committee has done 46e on recycling except talk, talk, talk. We have an ordinance requiring recycling in residential properties. We have a huge percentage of our population not recycling, very little movement over the last five years increasing recycling, and we have numerous condominiums that have never been picked up on the recycling routes. Shame on us, its a real shame that we're not recycling. You tell her that the Task Force generated a preliminary report, where is it? Ms. Freeman said n came out right after the time that the money came back from the State purchase of the Bartlett bailfill and said there would be a return for increase in recycling rates that could support additional money being put into the program to increase recycling rates, there was a payback on that because the cost of land filling was so high. Alderman Rainey asked if there was any report on the number of people recycling or the amount being recycled and was informed that was in the report and the related cost for that and increased participation also payback participation. They would like to send a copy of that report again and look forward to working with you on that. Alderman Rainey called attention to the Urban Forestry Teacher Certification Courses and remarked that is very interesting. What she would love to see happen and encourages our Parks and Forestry Department to do is hold workshops for residents in the community so they can identify their trees becoming diseased as she does not think there is any reason why a person looking out the window seeing Dutch Elm disease attacking a tree cannot call the City and ask them to come out cut it out or cut it down before it infects all the other trees. One of the arguments being made in the community right now is that it takes our staff too long to find some of the diseases. Ms. Burton Poole said this is part of their agenda, to educate teachers to in turn educate the youth to get more people from that perspective involved. Alderman Rainey said that is a good idea and wahin the past few weeks she has talked to more people who said if they knew that was Dutch Elm they would have caGed the City immediately as they thought it was just a dead branch and did not even know d was an elm tree. Therefore, she thinks it is very important for us to educate the community and she will have the Parks/Forestry Department tali the Enrnonmental Board. She would like to see people have a one to two hour workshop so they can identify the problems with their trees. A certificate for this course would not be needed, they just need to help our department do their job better. There supposedly is this enormous vicinity for elm trees and if we have a work shop and nobody comes then she herself will lose interest in this issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Environmental Board what their thoughts were regarding the canal. He sees you have had some discussion with Dick Lanyon. Is something being done with the canal because nght now his understanding is that is very unlimited because the water itself is not polluted but there is not enough oxygen and maybe it is not the time to open the door for this discussion but maybe we can in the future. Ms. Kevs said one thing Dick Lanyon discussed was there is a an analysis being done that involves the Illinois E.P.A. in conjunction with the U. of C. P.A. to look at problems the university can use because the standards are based on the use. There will be an opportunity for municipalities on Chicago water river waterways to join in that discossion and they have not yet gotten around to setting up that group. They talked about this at one of their meetings that if the City wants to be involved in those discussions she thinks they can self offer that opportunity to vote and she does think its going to happen this fiscal year starting in October. Alderman Rainey thanked everyone for their attendance and said they need to get in touch with the chairman of P & D and we will facilitate that. Alderman Newman thought they should facilitate at A & PW when we deal with contracts on buildings but he will be glad to facilitate on the codes issue to get a discussion going on that and added all the Aldermen on this committee will facilitate that. Page 17. Xl. SAMHSA GRANT AWARD The SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrabon) grant award is 51,200,000 over a three-year period. The committee aldermen all thought that is an awesome and fabulous grant. Alderman Rainey thought a debt of gratitude is owed to Metropolitan Family Services for finding this grant The committee unanimously accepted the SAMHSA grant award. XIi. WEST NILE VIRUS Alderman Rainey brought up an item not on tie agenda the West Nile Virus issue that she has been discussing with Mr. Terry and the Health Department. This is an issue of an extraordinary number of dead crows and the finding of evidence that there is West Nile disease mosquitoes who here infected the crows in our community. For the benefit of those who were not involved in this discussion this is kind of a push pull on the part of some of us versus staff that we are telling the enormous number of crows that are dying, we have no idea of how many numbers are being collected, however, we're saying that there are not as many as in Skok;e but we're not counting them Her argument has been that we have a serious problem because she believes if we have hundreds of crows being killed by this disease, which she believes is the case, because she does not think we have ever seen this number of birds dying before. Today alone there must have been twenty to thirty crows found dead, if there are that many mosquitoes infecting that many crows that those mosquitoes could just as easily be biting our frail elderly She does not think we are acknowledging the number of dead crows. Mr. Terry said he would be more than happy to acknowledge the number of dead crows and is willing to acknowledge the number is in the hundreds. Unfortunately having that knowledge doesn't necessarily advance us in terms of public health. The process whereby the United States determines the presence of West Nile Virus is in fact through bird testing and is a virus which introduced itself on the least Coast about three years ago and has progressively moved westward. The first cases of West Nile Virus in birds in Illinois showed up early last fall and there was some bird testing done. Evanston did not have a positive crow, crows being the number one species in which we tested for West Nile last year. Testing began early this year, again, and the third crow sent in by the City of Evanston was positive for West Nile. There are crows that die of natural causes for reasons other than West Nile because we did not have a positive crow until our third crow. The State of Illinois is only interested in knowing if West Nile Virus is present in a county or in the case of Cook County in an individual community. Once a oositve crow has been identified in a county or a community, they're not interested in getting any more, the assumption is that risks for the disease is present within all of that county. Alderman Rainey asked if there are stages of that risk, to which Mr. Terry responded, not necessarily. To qualify that, human beings do not get this from the birds, the method of transmission to human beings is mosquitoes. Once you know you have a presence in the community your prionty becomes mosquito control, getting rid of standing water, advising people not to go out at dusk, perhaps using deed_ The other question, of course, is whether you spray adult mosquitoes. That is the responsibility of the North Shore Mosquito Abatement District. The criteria that they are using is they have mosquito traps throughout the north shore including at locations in Evanston, did a community have a positive dead crow, we met that criteria, number of Cullex mosquitoes, because the Cullex mosquitoes transmits the virus, and positive mosquitoes because mosquitoes can also be tested for West Nile Virus. The Mosquito Abatement District has sprayed in Northbrook, he believes as of tonight they are going to spray in Lincolnwood. His guess is at some point this week Evanston may in fact be sprayed. Evanston has not been sprayed for a number of years and historically as a community we have been divided over the issue of spraying There are number of residents in Evanston who must be notified 24- hours prior to spraying by the Mosquito Abatement District. and they are also to notify Mr. Terry, as they have his pager number. To his knowledge they have not yet made that decision, nonetheless, it is his educated guess that some point in the very near future Evanston will get sprayed. We have any number of residents who are disposing of crows on their own. The City is not the only collection point for the crows. Collecting them all implies that you are going to test them, which is a resource question in terms of dollars and manpower that we just do not have. Animal Control at the police department is behind because this has become a major focus of what they are doing right now. The extent of this is unknown in the public health community. There is also crow �_ to crow transmission, which means it is not a one to one ratio for every dead crow, that means there is an infected -_ mosquito. Crow to crow transmission is possible the extent of which is unknown. This should not in anyway deter us from mosquito control being our sole focus at this point. Alderman Rainey said she just read, this afternoon, a release from the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta that communities should be counting their dead crows, testing them, and spraying adult mosquitoes because the hazards posed by spraying adult mosquitoes are far less than the hazard presented by the infected mosquitoes. Mr. Terry said he just checked his computer and did receive something from Alderman Rainey, which is the release she is referring to. He would read this as only applying to the first cases and can say without any hesitancy the Illinois Department of Public Health wants no more dead crows. Alderman Rainey said she is not saying they want you to send them anyplace. Mr. Terry said we don't have the ability to locally do crow testing, we have to send them out and spend thousands of dollars at the rate we have dead crows. The threshold question is do you begin to spray, which he suspects is going to happen. Adult mosquito killing is least effective it only gets those mosquitoes it comes in contact contact with and is only good for a limited period of bme More effective is tarvaciding on the standing water in the Page 18. drainage canals and things such as that. Nonetheless, he suspects we are going to have spraying in this community within the next five to seven days. Alderman Feldman asked if it is the policy of this City to encourage spraying or just wait to see whether or not d happens. Mr. Terry said we have taken no policy because historically as a community we have been divided on it, there are a number of chemically sensitive residents in our community that have expressed objection to it in the past and they have expressed it directly to the Mosquito Abatement District so the City has not necessarily been asked by the Mosquito Abatement District nor have we offered a policy one way or another. Judy Fiske, said the reason she wanted to attend this meeting tonight was not only to hear the Environment Board but she has been doing a lot of research on this issue over the past week. The Center for Disease Control dated the last report that they refer everyone to is April 2001, actually updated in June 2001, where they have suggested guidelines for a phased response to West Nile Virus. Other communities, Wilmette and Winnetka, have determined that we're at Category 3, of the CDC Risk Category that is on a scale of 7, and we are actually Level 5 which is called Risk Category 3, yet the probability of human outbreak is moderate. Alderman Rainey asked what this is based on, to which Ms. Fiske replied, what they say is the definition of moderate is, "spring, summer, or fall, areas with initial confirmations of West Nile Virus in a force and/or a human, or moderate West Nile Virus activity in birds." As of today we have well over 300 birds, there were 200 last week and 25 to 30 birds today, she personally buried 3 birds, some have buried a lot more than that. Just to let you know she knows a lot about crows. She likes crows, she admires crows, she has parrots of her own and has followed a family of crows in Evanston for probably 20 years and knows a lot about their behavior. Crows are not everybody's favorite birds but she thinks we are all very fortunate that they are actually the sentinel birds in this case. There is West Nile Virus out there and the die off rate for these crows is a very high rate, it's the highest rate in Illinois. For those of you that wonder about crows gathering in downtown Evanston, crows congregate twice a day, they're very social birds. These birds have a flight radius of five miles, so they fly in at night at go to buildings downtown and then they fly and they die at home. The Skokie birds, the Wilmette birds, the Winnetka birds, the Northfield birds, are all birds that congregate together they don't know where City boundaries end. She was concerned that she lost her family of birds but that is her personal issue, her larger concern was that we have a very serious problem here. She sells real estate when she goes down the streets and alleys she finds dead birds everywhere. Just this week she was showing a house and down The alley just west of Orrington there were 3 dead birds. These birds die very quickly, so the crows aren't carrying the disease and as Mr. Terry said again there are sentinel birds, which always is the problem there. What the CDC says we should be doing is larval control in the spring, public education, mosquito trapping, and there are some questions about whether it is just killing mosquitoes or they are testing them to find whether there are other carriers. She has never heard of crow to crow transmission, but will look it up to see if she can find it. We should be spraying and she is one of those citizens that if we ever have spraying would be in here saying do we really need spraying. She has never been a proponent for spraying but thinks in this case what we're waiting is for the next category, the high category in moderate and high categories what you're waiting for is this human victim. She is afraid that we're in the time of the year where we're headed for. The other thing she wanted to let you know is there are also pet animals that this can infect, a dog or cat can be infected. Ms. Fiske had a list of all the birds that carry West Nile, dated June 25, 2002, of species found positive for West Nile in surveillance area. There were 75 different birds on the list. Mosquitoes bite birds and the pets and domestics species that have tested positive already are cat, kitten, cockatoo, dog, French goose, horse, Mc Caw, parakeet, peacock, domestic rabbit, domestic turkey. She does not want to react in a hysterical way she thinks what research has shown is what showed up in New York City in 1999, its still in New York City today, its moving west, what she would like to see us do is consider following these guidelines certainly in carrying it on into next year as this is going to be a situation that is going to be present with us. Each year, in the spring, we are going to have to look at before the first case comes out we will have to do some larval spraying and go on and spray for adult mosquitoes if the situation warrants it later on. She would like us, as a City, to pay very close attention to this before we have this turn into something larger. Alderman Newman said he would like to see us put this on our agenda for our next meeting and have a report which incorporates looking into the Center for Disease Control information and also educating us on what exactly is going on with the Mosquito Abatement District. He would specifically like to know if they don't spray within the next 5 to 7 days, if a resolution at the City Council would be a factor in whether they decided to spray Evanston. If the answer to that is yes, that we haven't been sprayed by that time, then we should consider the pros and cons of recommending to the Council whether or not we should request the spraying and whatever other options we have to deal with this including if we wanted to do additional testing of additional crows what it would cost us and whether or not we want to go that route or what benefit that would have. He would just like to have a complete report with some options and also the spraying option of whether we ask for it. At least then we will have the opportunity on behalf of our constituents if we think it's prudent to have to ask, if we don't think its prudent, we won't ask. Alderman Rainey asked if Lincolnwood communicates with the Mosquito Abatement District and if we are communicating with anybody about all the crows we're finding dead. Mr. Terry said yes, absolutely, the North Shore Abatement District knows what our experience is. Alderman Newman thought maybe we could ask them in a letter whether or not a Page 19. resolution to the Council would influence their decision to spray in Evanston Alderman Feldman said if it's a lack of a resolution in preventing them from spraying. he is sure they dpd not get a resolution from Lincolnwood. Alderman Rainey remarked that Lincolnwood might have told them to come in there and spray Mr. Terry said he would like to know who in Lincolnwood, Winnetka, or Wilmette declared it a Level 3. He would take issue with Ms. Fiske's highest die off rate in the state. as there are dead crows all over the state of Illinois. Ms. Fiske said she looked at a map of the state by county and how many reported die offs there were. Mr. Terry referred to the entire group of species and for the sake of some level of community reassurance while that's true the number of each one of those is nationally actually very, very small There are not hundreds of dogs dying of West Nile Virus and he does not want that impression to be left What we are going through on a community reaction level is what New York went through 3 years ago. Whenever the disease first shows up in a community there is this kind of a reaction and yes it's a risk, yes its particularly the elderly, the immune compromised persons who are HIV positive we need to be especially concerned about and need to take the precautions, but it is the public community nationally despite what CDC may or may not say. He has been present at national conferences were heated discussions on pros and cons versus spraying versus the risk of West Nile Virus Alderman Rainey added this is no longer theoretical we actually have this tremendous number of birds dying and she does not think its wrong to react to it. Ms. Fiske said the only animals that have died from this virus are blue jays, crows, and horses. The other animals and other birds are carriers. They don't know yet if outer birds died from it because crows are so obvious and so many of them are dying so quickly they are not sure, there is a lot that is not known about this. She would not want to give anyone the impression that his or her pet dog is going to die. In the summertime her parrots go outside on her deck and she had no idea about this any of this until the crows started dying. Now her birds do not go out on the deck anymore. The point she is trying to make is there is so much we do not know both as a country and as a community, this is the first year, and she certainly does not want anyone to be hysterical about it but we just need to be very, very, careful. Alderman Newman said part of public health education is getting the facts out and what he would like to do is begin to get the facts out at least for the Council to the extent that they should be further disseminated. Alderman Feldman said you might have a lot of people screaming to have the spraying. Mr. Terry said he understands the limitations but the minute we had a positive crow we did put it out on the web, it was on the City's website. This year the only human fatalities have been in Louisiana. X11. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Alderman Rainey remarked in reading through Rules Committee old minutes one of the big discussions that took place was about the Human Relations Director's report, we have never yet seen that report. Alderman Newman said we didn't have a report on why the report was discontinued we received some of the reports but after this was discussed the reports were discontinued. Alderman Rainey said at that point we asked for information as to where their future reports were and why they were discontinued and if it was still ongoing. Alderman Feldman noted he had that scheduled as an agenda item but it was listed as an item for future consideration. Alderman Rainey requested that the review of activities of the Human Relations Commission become an agenda item. Alderman Jean -Baptiste brought up that the radio program for public information is an item we have talked about before. Alderman Newman requested the agenda to include the status report on Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Theater and Evanston's Children's Theater. He also requested review of Branch Library issues to be discussed together with some of the service issues at the Children's and Main Library, and would like to discuss with the library the big kitty of money they have from selling their artwork. Alderman Rainey announced items from the future consideration list of the Human Services agenda that will be on the Human Services Committee agenda are: Item 1, Status Report on Fleetwood-Jourdian Community Theater and Evanston's Children's Theater Item 2, Review of Brand Library Issues Item 3, Discussion of Customer Service Issues at the Children's Library Some form of item 7, Review of the Activities of the Human Relations Commission Item a, Use of Radio Stations for Public Information will be raised to now be item 1 on the list. X111. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:25 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trots ' Department 'Health and Human Services Page 20. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on+day - august o, 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Name: Address/Organization: Al I f`1y-7, i 1 qB �,vt I-c s ��:� �� .f��i y f ,. Ems!; :� ..• ,,.�:rT` %--tom , tt j` ��'�� �'��'��' �--ll• 11 �, i [_ � L �• �11 c, � t C rtL' ��4'•� June 29, 2001 Fleeting Evanston Civic Center —Room 2402 INIEETING NOTES L INTRODUCTIONS Nancy Flowers opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and asked that the attendees introduce themselves. 11. ANNOUNCEtiIENTS Evanston Commission on Aging will loan window fans to seniors. For additional information, call 866-2919. Evanston Health Denartment will provide immunizations for flu and pneumonia at the Civic Center, Levy Center, Primm Towers, and the Perlman and Walchirk Apartments, beginning October 2001. For additional information, call 866-2948. Evanston/Skokie V211CY Senior Services has a job opening for a Caregiver Specialist. Contact Alexander Brown, 864-3721, for additional information. The Fourth Annual Aging Well: Choices and hlvths Conference Planning Committee will hold its first meeting Tuesday, September 11, 2001, from 9-10:30 a.m. at the Civic Center. For additional information, contact Jackie Grossmann at 501-5732 or Nan Anderson at 864-7274. Heartland Home Health Care and Hospice announced that it has developed a palliative care program, including pain management. The agency's boundaries are north to Wisconsin. south to Kankakee, west to Elgin and east to the lake. For additional information, call 918-2990. The Human Services Committee of the Citv Council will discuss the Subsidized Taxicab Program at the Jule 2, 2001 meeting, 6:30 p.m., Council Chambers in the Civic Center. The Levy Center bus will provide transportation to/from the meeting for seniors who live at Primm Tower, the Perlman and Walchirk Apartments, Mather Gardens, the Georgian, the North Shore Hotel and the Presbyterian Homes. For additional information, call 866-2963. Illinois Department on Aging's Lone -Term Care Ombudsman Program is sponsoring A Vision for the Future: Pioneer Approaches to Long Term Care --How Do I Really Implement Change h ,tily Lang Term Care Facility, July 24, 2001, from 9-4:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn City Center, Chicago. For additional information contact Nancy Flowers at 866-2963. Metropolitan Family Services has an opening for an Elder Abuse worker. For additional information, contact Carla Frisch at 425-7401. Palliative Care Center Sharon McCarthy will present Communicating With a Dying Patient at the inpatient hospice unit of the Palliative Care Center and Hospice of the North Shore on July 12, 2001, from 8:00-9:00 a.m. The inpatient unit is located at 9701 Knox Avenue in Skokie, 933-3888. Seniors Action Set -vice. Inc. Nan Anderson announced that the agency's Excellence in Eldercare Education and Employment (EXCEL) Project would begin training Fall 2001. Ms. Anderson reported that SASI has received United Way funding to provide respite services at the cost of S48 for four hours of care. She also announced that she is seeking a manager for the Caring Home Aid Program. For additional information, call 864-7274. 111111. PRESENTATIONS A. Barb Sutton, Palliative Care Center and Hospice of the North Shore Medical Home Visits, 556-17I7 The Medical Horne Visit program of the Palliative Care Center and Hospice of the North Shore provides primary care to homebound patients. Program staff began to see patients in April 2001. Each person referred to the program is matched with a physician and a nurse practitioner. The program's staff of three nurses and four physicians are able to see patients within twenty-four hours of referral. Nurse practitioners are available for urgent care. Patients receive a complete physical examination, which will include lab work if the patient has not been hospitalized recently or has not had lab work within the past year. Physicians are on staff at Evanston Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, Rush North Shore and Swedish Covenant, among others. Program staff are available to see patients Monday through Friday. Program boundaries are south to Irving, north to Winnetka, west to Harlem and cast to the lake, although program staff will accept patients outside of these boundaries on a case by case basis. If program staff identify that the services of a home health agency are indicated, they will assist with referrals to the agency of the patient's choice. If hospitalization is indicated, the patient will be transferred to the hospital of the patient's choice. Although anyone referred to the program is required to give up their previous primary physician, 1v1s. Sutton noted that it is possible for an office -based physician to share a patient with one of the program physicians. She noted that physicians of patients who are unable to leave their homes have referred these patients to program physicians. The program does not currently have a psychiatrist or psychologist on staff but hopes to secure these services in the future. Program physicians are willing to complete the CCP 211 as a part of the guardianship process. The program will bill Medicare, but no other insurance at this time. The patient is responsible for the co -pay amount. B. Michele Rodriguez, North Shore Senior Center Peer Counseling (784-6079), Geriatric Care Management (784-6072), Money Management(784-6044) Ms. Rodriguez described three of the programs sponsored by NSSC and Evanston/Skokie Valley Senior Services. All programs are available in Evanston. Peer Counseling Linda Walker, the coordinator of the Peer Counseling Program, is seeking volunteers to participate in an eight week training, beginning in October. Trained volunteers will be matched with one client and will receive monthly supervision. Volunteers will establish goals for the counseling sessions with the client. Appropriate referrals include seniors who are experiencing depression or grief, are isolated, or experiencing life or health changes. For additional information, contact Linda Walker at 784-6079. Geriatric Care Management Geriatric Care Managers are specialists who assist older adults and their families with long-term care arrangements and ongoing monitoring of client care. At NSSC, care managers have a minimum of a bachelor's degree and training in gerontology, social work, nursing or counseling. The program is available on a twenty-four hour, seven day a week basis. Care managers provide families with a written assessment, recommendations for care and information about available community and long-term care resources. Care managers will provide information about elder care to out-of-town family members and can assist with relocating an older person or with hospital admissions and discharges. All services are billed to the client or responsible party. Costs to the client include $195 for the initial assessment and S70lhour for monitoring and ongoing case management services. For additional information contact Kim Hand at 784-6072. Money Management This program assists seniors who are on limited incomes and require assistance with bill payment. Eligible clients are currently receiving CCP services and agree to accept assistance with bill paying and financial monitoring from a volunteer. Additional program requirements include client willingness to set and adhere to a monthly budget and to open a designated account with less than $3,500 in it at any given time. Clients will have an annual income of 519,150 or less and an asset level of 530,000 or less. Bill payers assist with budgeting, check writing, advocacy and paper work. Clients who are their own payee make their own decisions about bill payment and sign all checks. Volunteers are interviewed and receive an orientation to their role. References are checked on all volunteers. Volunteers receive ongoing training and monitoring by program staff. Program staff report no incidents of theft by volunteers in the recent past. For additional information about this program, contact Paul Luzwick at 784-6044. Other programs described briefly were the House of Welcome Adult Day Services (441-7775) and support groups including the Hearing Programs (784-6013), Parkinson's Support Group (784-6073). Early Stage Memory Loss (441-7775) and Alzheimer's Family Support Group (441- 7775). 1V. ADJOURNMENT The next meeting will be held on September 14, 2001, 9:00 a.m. at the Evanston Civic Center. Aging Well IV Conference Planning Meesting Tuesday, September 11, 2001 9:00 am. • 10:30 a.m. Agenda Welcome to planners of the past (and highly successful) Aging Well Conferences and to new planners who want to share their creativity and skills with us in our venture for 2002! We will again be meeting on the second floor of the Evanston Civic Center from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.. If you wish to be on the planning committee, but are unable to attend this first meeting - please call Jacqueline Grossmann at (847) 5015732 or Nan Anderson at (847) $64 7274. Proposed Agenda: Confirm agency responsibilities for Conference Planning Tasks Discuss whether planners want to expand the Aging Well theme during the month of May into the Evanston Community ie. Film Fest at Evanston Library (Tetra Nova) etc. How can we be sensitive to the ways men and members of other ethnic/economic groups experience age? (From our 2001 evaluations) Create a timelinc for planning for 2002 Date Sponsorship Forms are due? Date we mail Request for Presentations? When are Presentation Proposals due? When do we select Proposals and Presenters? Date for brochure completion? When should brochures be mailed? Conference date? Sponsorship Forms Suggestions for Keynote Speaker Mayoral Proclamation Additional Items of concern to the group Looking forward to seeing you and working with you to create again a "four -star" Aging Well Conference! Jackie and Nan VV. ay. .VVA ►Li. VV. aw ii.& w uuzeuut Volunteer Opportunity —PEER COUVSELL1C The month Shore Senior C: r c. is seeking senior volunteers to work as peer counselors in the EvarstnrvSkokie area. Peer counselors provide support to othcr seniors experiencing the loss ara loved one. illnes,. or firmly problems. Peer counselors receive cxtewivc training and on -going assistance from the Canter's praressional counselors and social workers. A typical peer counseling session would boc held wcckly, in a client's home, and would last for one hour. ICinterested in volur:teeririg. please contact Linda Walk---, Peer Counseling Coordinator, at 847-784-6079. Training sessions will begin ir. October. Cw, (' nICi 21;VidzeMcnue if Y City of Evanston ,3, .• "100 TDI � ia'128-W80 TO: Members of the Evanston Senior Providers' Exchange Interested social service providers FROM: Nancy Flowers, Evanston Commission on Aging RE: Evanston Senior Services Guide 2002 DATE: August 29, 2001 To assist in the revision of the Evanston Senior Services Guide, I have enclosed a form for you to use to describe your agency or program(s). Please return the completed form to the address at the bottom of the form by October 31, 200) . This fall, program staff and interns will begin to compile the information for the directory. If you have any questions about the directory, please call me at 847/866-2963. EVANSTON SENIOR SERVICES GUIDE 2002 Agency Name Program name Address City Phone Number Email Address Contact Names) Hours of Service Description of Services Eligibility Criteria Fee Policy Intake Process Zip Code Fax Number TDD/I'I`Y Please return to Nancy FIowers, Evanston Commission on Aging, 2100 Ridge Ave., Evanston, Illinois 60201, 847/866-2963 DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CfTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, June 3, 2002 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Rainey STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Alisa Dean, Maureen Barry, Paula Haynes, Jim Wolinski, Bill Stafford, Barb Zdanowi=_ Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Kent; Dr. Steven Hahn; Martha Biondi, Dr. Reverend Iva Carruthers; Sennett Johnson; Reverend Mark Adams; Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township): Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin, Assessor's Office; Claire McCarthy Peterson (See Attached List of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Rainey _ 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Rainey called the meeting to order at 8:15 p.m. ll. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE MAY 13, 2002 MEETING The minutes of the May 13, 2002 were called_ Hearina no comments or corrections the minutes were unanimously mmroved I4-0L Ill. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 45-0-02 WHEREBY THE EVANSTON CITY COUNCIL WOULD ENDORSE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A FEDERAL COMMISSION TO STUDY REPARATION PROPOSALS FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS Alderman Rainey announced that this resolution was brought to the committee by Alderman Jean -Baptiste and is a recommendation to support House Resolution 40. Alderman Rainev called for a motion to recommend avaroval. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved for approval seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented that he along with several other members of the community have been discussing this matter over a long period of time. As we know there is a national and maybe international groundswell to address the Issue of reparation for Africans internationally, African Americans in particular in this country. The history in this area is that both members of the Evanston community and students and faculty on the Northwestern campus have been meaning to address this issue and find a way to have our elected officials, our government, participate in trying to push forward the process of encouraging the national government to try to put the necessary attention and necessary resources to this matter so that we can try to repair this society that over such a long period of time has suffered from the long tragic period of enslavement in America from 1619 to 1865. Today what we are seeking to do is engage in some discussion so that members of the committee, members of the community, and members of the press can be informed and we want to do that in a way that is the facility that builds unity. In his opinion the discussion, the dialogue, the struggle of opposites of differences move this society or any society forward. This is not about accusations: it is about objective fact and objective truth and what we do with that. It is in that spirit that we want to be able to hear everybody as in the dialogue we get suggestions and different ideas that help facilitate the process of the motion forward. If this country is going to do anything about this particular issue it is going to be a collective process, it is going to be black, white, and all Americans standing together to try to advance and move forward. He would ask that everyone be courteous and attentive to each other no matter what their views and that we do not discourage what anyone might say because they don't agree with whatever the popular belief is at this point. Today we had asked for some experts to lead the way and originally it was indicated that there would be two speakers however, one person is here who came from a long distance who we did not have access to before and we would like to have her participate as well. He asked that Dr. Hahn from Northwestern. Dr. Biondi from Northwestern, and Dr. Iva Carruthers to please speak to this issue. Page 1. Dr. Steven Hahn, Professor of History at Northwestern University for the past twenty years has studied, taught and written about America's experience with slavery and w.th slavery's many phases of legacies. He is also, as a resident of Evanston, Wxcularty pleased that the City Council is considering Resolution HR 40. and is very grateful to have the opportunity to speak before you The issue of reparation for slavery raises many complex questions and provides no easy answers, but a =ngressional inquiry such as the ore proposed by HR 40 would stimulate a national discussion of immense impo!-.ance and place our historical debt to slaves and their descendants in proper prospective. There are numerous ways to thinking about the nature of that deft and about the collective responsibility that we as a society have even more than a century removed from emancipation to see that debt acknowledged Since his time Leis evening is very short he would like to mention two of the ways The first has to do with the role of the govemment of me Unrted States; the collective will of me people as it is understood, in providing for the security, vitality, and expansion of the institution of slavery. From the tame of our republic founding until almost the moment of abolition slavery was embedded at the heart of our system of govemment. The resources and authority of that govemment allowed this nation to give rise to the largest slave society in the nineteenth century world The constitution recognized the legality of slavery, 4 rewarded slaveholders with more representation and therefore more power than any other group of Americans and rt required that slave property be protected throughout the country. Eight of the first twelve Presidents of the United States were slave holding planters and played the decisive role in expanding the territorial boundaries of the nation with the full expectation that slavery would expand along with it. The Supreme Court dominated during this period by southern slave holders simultaneously granted slave owners with their slaves access to all federal territories and at the same time denied African Americans, wheel er or not they were slave or free, any claims to citizenship or any rights that rights were bound to respect. When the question of emancipation ultimately presented itself segregate authorities warned about suitable compensation, compensation for slave owners who would lose their property rather than for slaves who has suffered and been exploited for more than two centuries Indeed it is crucial to note that compensation for slave owners was central to the emancipation process throughout the Western Hemisphere including the northern states of the Untied States where slavery had been legal and where it was abolished between the 1780's and the 1840's Even in the mkW of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln still held on to the wisdom of this idea of compensation first in supporting compensation to slave owners in the Distnct of Columbia where the federal government abolished slavery in the spring of 1862 and compensated slave owners. In fact holding a promise of compensation to slave owners who remained loyal to the Union in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September of 1862. Dr. Hahn said he had this document wrth him which he would be happy to share. Even in the most radical of moments in this era when William P. Sherman and Thaddeus Stevens moved to confiscate the land of rebels and redistribute it to free people, moves that were tumed bath or defeated. The justification was one of punishment for those who had committed treason against the United States and not of reparation or compensation for those who had endured the afflictions of slavery. That therefore is in part a measure of our collective and public responssbility for the oppressions and evils of slavery owing to the central role that our national govemment played in supporting the institution, in looking out for the interests of slave owners, and in denying slaves any standing in the arenas of civil and political life. His second point is the debt is also about the great and generally unacknowledged contributions that slaves made to much of what we value and from which they and their heirs have largely been excluded, our economic prosperity and our traditions of civil and political rights The unremunerated labor of several million slaves in the agricultural fields of the south not only enriched their owners who were as a consequence the richest Americans at the time but also helped drive the economic growth of the entire nation during its crucial early years. By the time of the Civil War slave growing cotton accounted for sixty percent of the value of all American exports and it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a major industrial power by the end of the nineteenth century were it not for the many stimulants provided by the backbreaking work of slaves. Nor ironically is it likely that the United States would have emerged as the beacon for freedom and opportunity for oppressed people the world over. During our early history slaves played a central role in challenging the institution of slavery and challenging the conscience of free people through petitions, law suites, flight, and rebellion. Former slaves and revolutionaries in early national America advanced many of the ideas later embraced by white abolitionists and communities of former slaves in the free states helped sustain the work of fledgling abolitionist societies. The act of runaway slaves made political leaders like Abraham Lincoln recognize the impossibility of maintaining a house divided, a national half slave and half free and the acts and courage of slaves during the Civil War when nearly a hundred and fifty thousand served in the Union Army ensured that the nation would simultaneously survive and witness a new birth of freedom. The debt we owe to the slaves and their descendants is difficult to quantity and repay because in MrM d is incalculable. Opening a serious public investigation into the matter of reparation would at least begin the process of making amends. It would promote a national reckoning with the past that could prove educational rather than divisive and stimulate a sense of collective responsibility rather than individual guilt. In short there would be rewards in this for all of us. Thank you. Dr. Martha Biome, Assistant Professor in the African American Studies and History Departments at Northwestern University, was here tonight to talk about why this Resolution is before the Evanston City Council. This Resolution reflects a rapidly growing movement for reparation. Just a few years ago the ideas making reparation to African Americans for the untold losses inflicted during slavery and segregation was not widely considered. Today it is one of Page 2. the leading human rights and racial justice campaigns in the Uri,,--d States and around the world. Reparation is not a new concept or demand, civil rights leaders embraced the idea In 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that the United States owed social and economic compensations to Black Ar-enca for the wrongs of slavery and segregation and he vowed to make this the next goat of the black freedom struggles Tonight she wants to stress two reasons for the nse of reparation today. One is the growing sense that civil rights rernedies have failed to create an equal playing field in the United States. Vast racial disparities and wealth, education and health care persists and in some instances have gotten worse since the civil rights movement. In addition the criminal justice system is incarcerating and disfranchising Afncan Americans at alarming and starkly disproportionate rates A na: onal reparation commission can get at the roots of these disparities and explain to the American people that resources and opportunities were intentionally and systematically denied to African Americans for generations After the Civil War former slaveholders, men who had committed treason, got much of their land back while the former slaves got nothing According to economists slaves performed $40,000,000 worth of unpaid labor from 1790 to 1860, a sum worth 1.4 trin cn dollars today. This pattern continued in the era of legal segregation. To get out of the Great Depression the United States government began to subsidize home ownership lending the basis for the huge expansion of the middle Gass, the fabled American dream, but the federal government used a practice called red lining that explicitly labels black or mixed neighborhoods as bad risks and made them ineligible for loans. These practices were also adopted by banks creating a powerful obstacle to black access to home ownership. In the United States owning a home is the most important root of acquiring wealth and transmitting it to the next generation. Racial preferences, white preferences, in government subsidies gave whites a big head start in accumulating and passing down assets to their children. Today the net worth of white families is ten times higher than the net worth of black families, a disparity that has increased since the civil rights movement. The pension system that was created in the depression also intentionally and unfairly deprived African Americans of benefits that whites received. Social Security initially excluded the occupations of agricultural workers and domestic servants precisely because these were the occupations that most African Americans held. Until 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture had an almost zero rate of granting black farmers loans. A reparation comm:ssion would disseminate facts in order to help Americans understand the rational for reparation. A second reason that the reparation movement is growing is the rising number of precedents and similar initiatives both nationally and internationally. For example, in 1988 Congress granted an apology and 1.2 billion dollars to the survivors and relatives of Japanese Americans imprisoned in concentration camps during World War It. In 1994 the state of Florida agreed to pay reparation to the survivors of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre. The state of Oklahoma is currently considering reparation to the survivors of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. 1n 1993 Congress formally apologized for the U.S. conquest of Hawaii and the depravation of sovereignty. The German government and private corporations have paid 65.2 billion dollars to holocaust survivors and forced laborers and Germany has also made reparation payments to the Slate of Israel. In an extremely significant development, just last September, the United Nations World Conference Against Racism declared slavery and the Trans -Atlantic slave trade cnmes against humanity and urged the responsible nations to implement reparation. In addition, in recent years we have so many countries ranging from Argentina to South Africa establish commissions to investigate the injury and harms afflicted during Apartheid or periods of military dictatorship. This makes our own inaction all the more glaring and all the more urgent. The United States has never authorized an examination of our national participation in the enslavement of Africans and the systematic subordination segregation and labor exploitation of their descendants. There is no national slavery museum, nor a memorial to the millions who perished in the Trans -Atlantic slave trade. All the major civil rights organizations have urged passage of HR 40, the congressional bill calling for a national commission to study the impact of slavery and segregation on the nation. The NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rainbow Push Coalition, and the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights have all endorsed a National Reparation Commission. In conclusion, reparation has become one of the most important Truman rights initiatives in the United States, one that scares of American cities and municipalities have already endorsed. Thank you. Dr. Reverend Iva Carruthers, currently the President of Urban Outreach Foundation, a national foundation which reaches about fifty-two percent of the African American faith community. Additionally, she is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University where she taught Sociology and Sociology of Racism for the last thirty years. She was a delegate to the United Nations meeting in Durban and the document produced on reparation, which she would submit for public review, is a document that was published and distributed in four languages by her denomination, which is the United Church of Christ and became very instrumental in that denominational's attempt to successfully pass the reparation resolution. At very other level she is an Evanstonian, has been here, lived here, and is home grown. That experience puts her at a personal level of experience relative to the kinds of issues we are talking about. She began her early education in the segregated Foster School. Because she was exceedingly bright it turned out that they moved her to Haven School as a reward so she could go to school with white children, one of the first to be able to do that. She was valedictorian for her class and in attempting to rehearse for that she had heart palpitations. The school nurse announced she was on drugs and her mother and father essentially had to get her removed from the Evanston Public School System. She led the boycott at Evanston Township High School when the four young girls were killed in Birmingham because it was a morning in which when we went to school people wanted to pretend as if nothing had happened, they wanted to Page 3. have blinders on which she could not tolerate. She speaks to you as an academician and as a woman of faith, and comes to you on a very personal level having been here and is here despite not because. And with that context what she would share is to commend and support what her colleagues have said, that we need to be very clear about the grounding of this word reparation and its full meaning. Reparation is a process to remember, to restore, to repair, to make amends, to reconcile and very fundamentally it is never just about money. Reparations are grounded in the concept of justice both in a legal and a moral sense. The other piece we should reiterate is that reparation is not a new movement in the United States. African Amencans have been arguing for reparation since Vie beginning. As an issue of legal justice there are a couple of assumptions we s:-,ould be clear about. Number one is that the mass kidnap and enslavement of Africans was the most heinous set of comes against humanity. Number two is that no compensation has ever been paid, and number three is that consequences continue as evidenced by the enrichment of the descendants of the perpetrators and impoverishment of the descendants of Africa. That becomes very important because the legal principle for reparation is this legal principle called unjust enrichment. in terms of the intemational conventions it essentially says, "if one party becomes enriched as a result of a wrong done to another the law compels the beneficiaries to make adjustments to the harmed party." It is within that context that in the Nuremberg Tribunal there were a couple of things that have become very important One is the recognition of events as a crime against humanity and she may begin to explain to you why this country was so adamant in attempting to block the United National acceptance of slavery as "a crime against humanity". That is further defined by the Nuremberg Trial as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts. It is also defined as ill treatment or deportation to stave labor. BY all definitions African Americans and Africans of the Diaspora qualify. The second i§ about the charter of Nuremberg Tribunal talks about genocide as defined as killing members of the group causing seriously bodily or mental harm andfor inflicting on group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. Again, we can certainly see that, the African experience of the Diaspora speaks to that The legal maxim is where there is a right there is a remedy, in other works reparation and restitution. If you can prove the fact that there has been harm done the issue does not become how do we remedy, the issue is you decide and you will figure out how to make a remedy. The remedy and the goal of that remedy is to write out consequences of the illegal act First of all because it is a crime against humanity in international courts that means there is no limitation of time to make a claim. Secondly. international law and justice and the quest for effecting the claim is a dynamic process, that is d is a moving target and one which comes out of the kind of collaboration that Alderman Jean -Baptiste spoke to. Thirdly, there will be compensation for specific losses and those compensations can be both interstate reparations, for example Iraq to Kuate and also intrastate reparations, for example the United States to the Japanese Americans and descendants have the right to the remedy. It is in that context in terms of those legal arguments that you can begin to see why the United States foreign policy was as it was relative to the United Nations meeting. The steps for reparation are very simple. The first one is acknowledgement of injustice. The second one is apology, and as you may know President Bush has said he would absolutely not offer an apology. You may also know that President Clinton came very close to it and he recanted. The third one is restitution in monetary and non -monetary ways and the fourth one is commitment of non -repetition. Dr. Reverend Carruthers wanted to end her comments partly by offering a remembrance that she was one who sat across the table as a young child with her father with Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr_ who said that no amount of gold could provide adequate compensation for our exploitation but a price could be placed on unpaid wages. As you probably know there is an international and a national team of attorneys who are dealing with the reparation issue. In terms of this country economists have calculated some 24 trillion dollars owed just from labor alone and another 1.6 trillion from the employment advantages that whites have had over African Americans as a result of that. For example, in 1874 African slaves who were free in that generation had on deposit 57 million U. S. dollars, 1874 dollars, at the time that the Freedman's Bank was closed. There are a couple of myths and answers that she could conclude with, one myth that she hears all the time is there has been too long a period to make a just claim now. She thinks she has spoken to that, crimes against humanity " essentially has no statute of limitations in international courts". Reparation is unprecedented in its potential magnitude and therefore the claim is just too big for us to manage. The very crime against African people was also too big in magnitude to actually ever, ever have been one that one could have survived except by the deep faith and by the grace of God. Reparation, however, can never be reduced to money because of what African people suffered and that is African people all over the world. We must be this issue of reparation to the African Americans to the issue of debt relief in Africa because we need to understand that the foreign policy of the United States is one that supports the debt that Africans and African nations are being charged with as a result of these crimes as well. We must see that this also should argue for the cancellation of what she would label illegal debt. The other myth is why should we who have nothing to do with slavery pay anything. Historically it is essentially financial payment from taxes or a general fund whose contributors did not necessarily commit the injustice. As a result of that whatever monies have come out of the U.S. have come from African American taxpayers as well. Page 4. There is another myth that says foreign aid to Africa and welfare to Afncan Amencan remedies already result and have resulted in reparation. She would like to underscore that welfare and policies of government such as desegregation and affirmative acwn are policies in the context of a particular point in tirne and they serve the interest and political expediency of those in power. It has nothing to do with the claim for justice There is another myth that says since some Africans participated in the slave trades white institutions and people should not be held accountable. What she would like to have you understand about that is there were some individual Africans who were rnvorred in the slave trade, however, the systematic intentional trafficking of human cargo as we have spoken about is the trafficking that was condoned by government and time church including the United States and the church which she represents Thank you for your time. Alderman Rainey and the committee members thanked Dr. Hahn, Dr. Biondi, and Dr. Reverend Carruthers for their excellent presentation. Reverend Mark Adams, Senior pastor at Hillside Free Methodist Church in Evanston, is also a resident of Evanston. Reverend Adams said he was speaking on behalf of himsetf. his church, and as a member of the Evanston Ecumenical Action Council and the Racial Reconciliation Committee. He believes Americans, especially those of us who are white, must recognize that many of the problems that we face as a nation are the result of our national transgressions. Black rage, whde guilt, resentment, and misinformation, raise the peak in frustration by black and white Americans alike and will continue as long as our nation seeks to bridge racial gaps through focus groups, dialogues and TV specials. For hundreds of years African Americans have felt the sense of dread and inferiority, the result abuse of heaped upon abuse. Today it is not uncommon for white children to feel self -lonely. A whre friend related a story to him about his sixteen -year - old son whom after watching a TV documentary on slavery told his dad he hated being white. It we keep doing the same things of course we will be getting the same results. Twelve thousand sociologists from New Zealand wrote about a similar national devise between European New Zealanders and the Orient New Zealanders, they used inhabitants who were also enslaved. When an eagle has been wounded and the yoke lifted when the circumstances finally change the emancipation of the soul is not immediate. The first generation, those who are free but who carry the memory of hurt, are too numb to be angry. We call them survivors. They are shell shocked by life and quietly struggling to build some foundation of normalcy. The task is literally unspeakable and like veterans who have seen the horrors of war they are reluctant to talk about it Their goal is to shield their children from what has hurt them and to put the task as far behind them as possble. They want security, comfort and a future for their children. This means that the second generation the children of survivors and their grandchildren are often relatively ignorant of the suffering that overshadowed the past. It is often the third and forth generations that stumbles across the awful truth. In this search for understanding of our identity the unspeakable is spoken and anger and bitterness surface into the public domain. This also means that the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the oppressors face great hostility and rejection from elements from an offended group of people leaving them bewildered and struggling for an appropriate response. The past is not behind us our nation Is in a position to examine right now what it has done and find real ways to bring about healing. Equal access to opportunities remains certainly elusive Some laws have changed and some hearts have changed and he rejoices in this but it is certainty not enough. He speaks as a person of faith for communities of faith and so he quotes from the prophet Ezekiel. 'I say to the wicked man you will surety die but if he then turns away from sin and does what is just and right, if he gives back what he took in pledge and returns what he has sto�en as follows these decrees that give life and does no evil he will surety live and not die. He knows the sins he has committed will be remembered against him, he has done what is just and right". Ezekiel tells us very simply that in a land starved by oppression the oppressors must make restitution. We must give back what is stolen. it is not hard to understand as our speakers have pointed out the application of the principle is more difficult but none the less the morality of the principle is clear. Many will not understand the need for reparation in our own country they didn't in Ezekiet's day either. The verse following the text he read said " As your country men might say the way of the Lord is not just but it is their way that is not just." It will take moral courage to buck the trend of apathy, fear, guilt. and anger and move toward a unity that can really establish healing in our nation. He is glad to be in a community where there is moral courage and where this Resolution is on the table. He does not have any illusions to say Evanston is a position to change the country nor does he have any illusions to believe that a single Rake of snow can bend a branch or break it But when enough flakes of snow land on that branch eventually it breaks and change happens. He will be proud to believe that we're part of a community where maybe that one flake of snow turns the tide. Thank you. Bennett Johnson, President of the Evanston North Shore Branch NAACP, said he has been here a long time and thinks we need to realize that Evanston has been a citadel of racism just as much today as we call any other racial community. He did not know what a Jew was until he got to Roosevelt College, which seemed rather odd. We can count the Jewish people that live in Evanston, we marched to break racial segregation and had a more open community with Jews which started the whole political thing that changed this City to what it is today. There was a time when blacks had to sit in the balcony in Evanston and there were various injustices perpetrated by the Evanston community. In the 1940's, even before CORE was founded, at a place called Cooley's Cupboard where they wouldn't serve blacks whites and blacks Page 5. sat together and we changed segregation in Cooley's Cupboard, Robin's Sam, and other places around the community that he could name, to see what they did back then. What he is saying is reparation is a matter of justice and law established primarily oy the Nuremberg Tribunal. At the Nuremberg Tribunal it was the first time that this country went on record saying we owe a group a new world, we owe that group of people something from genocide, murder and the tragedies in Germany We supported that principle, we have supported it as a nation as a national policy not only with reparation for Jews tut also fcr our support today of the Israeli government This today, Evanston 2002 is supposed to be a community of arversiry, enfightenment, and progress, it seems to be a minor thing it does not take a profile of courage, it does not take an (thing but just plain bonding to see if we are a diverse community, if we are Evanston, if we are the Athens of the west, then we certainly can take leadership by endorsing this very mild, and very limited resolution. He certainly hopes the AJdermen will take that into consideration and will be able to support Alderman Jean -Baptiste in that process. Thank you. Alderman Rained thanked Reverend Adams and Mr_ Johnson for their comments and asked if anyone else in the audience wished to speak regarding this Resolution. There being no other speakers Alderman Rainey thanked everyone in the audience for their attendance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted that Alderman Feldman had earlier proposed some amendments to the Resolution 45-R- 02, which Alderman Jean -Baptiste accepted. One amendment was to the 4tl1 Whereas, Alderman Feldman suggested we state this as follows: "WHEREAS, the use of uncompensated slave labor is one of the major causes for the rise of the U.S. as the strongest and wealthiest nation in the world: " as opposed to'the major cause". Another amendment that was proposed was an addition of the last two paragraphs of the Whereas; "WHEREAS, there has have been efforts since emancipation to address the need to repair the harms and inequities resulting from slavery in the United States, which the call for reparation is a part of, but not the eszd of; and WHEREAS, the extend and nature of the injuries and inequities resulting from slavery and segregation are so deeply rooted and wide-ranging that reparations ought to take many forms, including but not limited to efforts to insure African Americans access to jobs. health care, education and overall economic development". In Section 3 of the Act of Resolutions. Alderman Feldman suggested Section 3 be stated as follows: "Section 3: That the Evanston City Council calls on Northwester University and other institutions of higher teaming throughout the United States to establish avenues for researching the legacies of slavery and the slave trade in order to promote a greater understanding of these realities of American society," Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to recognize Sibyl Offets, in the audience. who many are familiar with her name. For the past four or five years she has been writing to elected officials whether local, state, or national representatives to ask their support for reparation. Ms. Offets called his office and wanted to know if he would be willing to sponsor a resolution for City Council and he agreed which is the part of the motion before us today. Alderman Rainey called for a vote recommendina Resolution 43-R-02 to the Evanston City Council. The Human Services Committee voted unanimously for recommendation of Resolution 43-R-02, (4-0). CONSIDERATION OF MAY 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Rainey called for anv discussion renardina the Township May 2002 monthly bills. Not hearina any comments Alderman Rainey called for a motion for approval of the May 2002 Townshio monthly bills. Motion, for approval unanimous (4-0). IV. CONSIDERATiON OF ORDINANCE 60-"2 ENACTING THE ANNUAL BUDGET OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR FISCAL YEAR 2003 Alderman Feldman moved aooroval of the Fiscal Year 2003 Evanston Townahln Annual Budget. seconded by Alderman Jean•Baotiste. Alderman Rainey called for any discussion renardina the budget. Eugene Sabfcr, property owner at 2720 Noyes, said he is concerned that there is some talk about eliminating the Assessor's office. His assessed value cost his taxes to go from S800 to over $6,000 per year in a matter of 20 years. w= He has to pay an additional S200 a month in taxes. He hired a lawyer who reduced his assessed value by 8%. He then_ went to another lawyer and finally went to the Assessor's office and hoped to gets immediate relief from that office. We do need that Assessor's office very much in Evanston especially during these times when all the building is going on which Page 6. he would expect would mean he'd pay less taxes, but he is paying a lot more. As a result he has to give up some medication, he can't buy this or that and at home he has people he has to take care of. It is very important to keep the Assessor to give people like him a chance to contest the assessed values. Thank you Richard Lundeed, property owner at 1501 Forest, said he bought his house in 1972 at which time his taxes were $1,680, today his taxes are over S18.000 He did not know there was anything he could do to appeal his taxes until 1998 when he got an appraisal of his house in connection with a line of credit from his bank. which he incidentally was taking out to pay his property taxes When the appraisal came in he compared it with 199E torus annual and found his improved property was significantly overvalued. He went to an attorney and they did a uniformity complaint. He won a nominal reduction of 5% of which half of the first year went to the attorney. When the tri-annual was done in 2001 he got his 30% bump in valuation like everybody else, he decided he'd go back to the attorney to say uniformity isn't his problem. His Improved property is tremendously over assessed and showed him an appraisal he had done three years ago. Basically he did not get much satisfaction from the attorney because they don't want to mess win that its too much work. Uniformity complaints are simple and this was going to be a lot more difficult. They suggested he see the local Assessors office He did not realize the Township Assessor office was in effect a taxpayer's advocate. They were extremely cooperative and gave him all the help he needed, showed him how to eliminate an attorney and do this by himself. They went for another uniformity appeal and he won another nominal reduction. However, he left that wasn't enough and conveyed that to them and they told him when he gets word on his uniformity appeal there is an addrbonal appeal process called the Board of Review Hearing. When that came back they assisted him in filing that Board of Review Hearing where he went without an attorney, presented a rather long document, used the 1998 appraisal and won a 20% reduction in his overall taxes, substantially more than that from his improved property. He is currently before PTAB again with the assistance of the Assessor's office and he is going after half again of what he got. From a tax base of $18,000 these folks helped him with about a $3,700 reduction and hopefully, approximately another $1,300 4 he hears favorably from PTAB. There is no way he could have done it without these folks, they worked very hard for him. He thinks any attempt to reduce that budget would be a travesty to the Evanston Township homeowner and taxpayer. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Lundeed if he thinks this is money worth spending to which Mr. Lundeed replied whatever you're spending he'd bump up 10%, Alderman Rainey asked if anyone else wished to speak to raising their taxes and thanked Mr. Mr. Babicz and Mr. Lundeed for their comments. Hearina no further comments on the Fiscal Year 2003 Township Budget Alderman Ralnev tailed for a vote recommending oassaae of this budget. The committee unanimously recommendation passage of Ordinance 60-04112, f4-01. V. CONSIDERATION OF RESULTION 43-R-02 AUTHORIZING AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF EVANSTON AND EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE PROVISION OF EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE Alderman Rainev called for a motion to consider Resolution 43-R-02 Authorizing an Intergovernmental Aareement between the City of Evanston and Evanston Townshlo for the Provision of Ememencv Assistance. Alderman Feldman moved for approval. seconded by Alderman Joan -Baptiste. Alderman Rainey called for any discussion regarding this resolution. Alderman Feldman asked if this agreement was negotiated over a period of time with Evanston City staff. He is aware it is already in effect but would like to know how it is working. Ms. Vance said it is working okay, they have a few bumps but they are working it out as they have only been doing this for a lithe less a month Alderman Feldman asked if the clients seem to feel good about this. Ms. Vance said they haven't had any big issues and if there is something they can't help with they try to make referrals to someone else who can help. Alderman Rainey asked if the Township got any inquiries from the fire in the 8� Ward. Ms. Vance said they got some inquiries in terms of the shelter part but that part of the program remained with the City. There may be a possibility if they need rental assistance they would then be referred to them for assistance. Alderman Rainey said just in case there are any questions regarding the recent fire, she was in the building and found it to be very nasty not so much burned but there was horrible smoke damage. Ms. Vance said they also make some referrals to some other agencies in terms of trying to help put the people up. Alderman Rainey remarked something she knows that is totally off the subject but has to happen in this town, concerns this whole business of tenant insurance. It is the cheapest form of insurance that money can buy. She has been to so many fires in the south end of town where the landlord is not responsible which is devastating because people are left Page 7. with nothing. At one fire one tenant had insurance; the moving truck came, took the things out, cleaned it and got her a new apartment It was wonderful to just see what a hundred and some dollars a year can do to help these people because they nad insurance. There has to be a way to protect people against this happening Ms Vance said one of the things they fund out, which Mr. Terry is aware of, is (n one of the fires that occurred there is a problem where people are not listed arrrwhere on the lease and are trying to get services iJir Terry said they actually had two recent fires where the number of indrriduals seeking assistance was much larger than the actual list of tenants. Alderman Feldman called attention to the last paragraph of Mr Terms memo, "As the Township financial condition improves, it is antr;�pated the need for total City reimbursernent cf emergency assistance will gradually diminish in future fiscal years. Tc►vnship officials have expressed a desire to manage and fund the program, entirely, as soon as their revenue allows nem to do so." He thinks that is wonderful thing the Township is doing and congratulates them on accepting that kind of responsibility. Also, he thinks it is important that this be included in the minutes as he knovrs when this was originally thought of this additional benefit was not totally in their minds. Alderman Rainev recalled the motion to consider Resolution 43-R-02 Avthorizina an Intergovernmental Agreement between the City of Evanston and Evanston Township for the Provision of Emeroencv Assistance to be voted on. Motion unanimously accepted for recommendation to Cltv Council (4-OL Yp. CONSIDERATION OF THE 2002 CONTINUUM OF CARE FOR THE HOMELESS Alderman Rainey called for a motion to recommend to consideration of the 2002 Continuum of Care for the. Homeless to the City Council. Alderman Feldman moved approved. seconded by Alderman .Jean- Baptiste. Alderman Rainey C=ght ii was important to have included in the minutes that Claire McCarthy Peterson be given all the credit for this document and she can say after reading through it, it is an incredible document. She also thinks what the people of the City of Evanston do is quite amazing and it is awesome that HUD recommends the reading of our document as an example to other communities to what they want to see, we are golden to them, Ms. McCarthy Peterson Said our agencies do wonderful things to which Alderman Rainey added Ms. McCarthy Peterson describes this so that HUD understands it. Alderman Rainey thanked Ms. McCarthy Peterson and asked if she had any comments, Ms. McCarthy Peterson said she thought the reason we have been successful is because the agencies do such wonderful _ work and because we have a very unusual community in the sense that most of the agencies work very hard to cooperate with each other and to work with the City. The City works very closely with everybody, which is the reason it is successful The document reflects all the work done by the City and by the agencies. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. McCarthy Peterson if she could speak bneffy about the unfunded mandate for the Homeless Management Data 13ank Ms. McCarthy Peterson said it is something that Congress has mandated and is not coming through HUD. Connect)ons for the Homeless has agreed in their application, which is the second application ranked in the proposal, to be the lead agency working on this to take S20,000 from what they are asking for the service and put that S20,000 toward a Homeless Management Information System. We are hoping that HUD wilt approve that and at least give us the $20,000. it is something we are trying to figure out how to do in a way that wilt meet HUD's requirements and will give Evanston what Evanston wants, a lot of confidentiality and a lot of protection and potentially then coordinate with some of the other areas around us A lot of our agencies also serve people in Cook County, which means that they also have to be part of the Cook County Continuum. If they also serve people in Chicago or in Lake County they have to do that reporting and each one of these jurisdictions is using a different homeless management information system —s Potentially we could use the same kind of system Cook County is using Chicago has not yet even determined what they are going to do. take County is using a different system. Alderman Rainey said then the Federal Government is not dictating the system to be used, they are just dictating what information they want. Ms. McCarthy Peterson said HUD has _ not yet established their standards but hopes to do that and the state nary has a single reporting system. The real impact on our agencies is that whatever we come up with our agencies will have to report data that way. If Cook County has a different system they will also have to report it that way. They already have to report to their state funding forces so it is adding a whole other layer of the way to do intake, the way you do assessments, the way you keep your numbers, the way you report it, and she thinks to the extent that what Congress is really interested in is this kind of system Wit provide information so you can realty see whether outcomes are being met, whether the whole strategy you have works. That is what we all want, thars a great thing. Part of that seems to be literally tracking a person through the whole system so that once you're there you have an identifier and then we know whether you get substance abuse treatment, mental health__ treatment, or whatever other kind of service you get. We have to be very careful that somehow we can build a system that will meet the requirements that as a community we have for confidentiality. Page 8. Alderman Rainey remarked having said all that, which is all very important, one thing that was very upsetting to her, was here they impose this reGc::rement, you ask them how you should pay for it and they say apply for CD funds. Ms McCarthy Peterson said trey haven't figured out how they are going to find the money for this. There are counties where CDBG can give another 525,000. Alderman Rainey said everyoody is being required to do this. Mr, Terry add•.d there is the one school of thougm that this is such an incredible mandate that there are now only four or five communities in the entire country that may nave made even partial attempts and at some point Congress will say forget it, this is an unrealistic expectation Hcwever, how do you take that chance and do nothing and then if the mandate does stay in place our entire funding is at risk a couple of years down the road Trial is the position we find ourselves in right now. Alderman Rainey wished tie Homeless Task Force good luck and thanked Ms. McCarthy Peterson for all her wonderful work. Alderman Rainey asked,f asryone in the audience wished to speak regarding the Continuum of Care. Having no speakers come forward Alderman Rainey recalled the motion to recommend the 2002 Continuum of Care to the City Council, motion unanimously passed (4-0). VIII. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED ORDINANCE 12-"2 AMENDING VARIOUS SECTIONS OF CHAPTERS 9,10, AND 11, OF THE EVANSTON CiTY CODE PERTAINING TO THE ENFORCEMENT OF CiTY PARK REGULATIONS Alderman Newman asked rf rt known how many permits a year are issued for Merrick Park (Municipal Rose Garden). Mr. Gaynor said he did not know off hand but would guess maybe twenty. Alderman Newman then said the total amount of money that park would bring in, if we raise the permit fee to S100, from the people who use that park for events, primarily weddings, would be $2,000 He would like to raise the permit fee to S200 for the reason that CIP is putting $40,000 into this park and he would IiCe to get back the $40,000 debt service from the people who are the beneficiaries of that park. He does not think S200 would be an outrageous amount The permit fee is currently S50 and the proposed ordinance is to increase the fee to S100, but Alderman Newman said he would like to have this fee raised to 5200 because somebody who wants to use that site for a wedding would not find that this amount affects their decision of using this park in view of the high cost of making a wedding. Mr. Gaynor said the Rose Garden was not primarily for individuals to rent out for weddings it just happens to be a park that has been here for a while and has become important to the community. Alderman Feldman said if you make if more difficult to obtain people will flock to it. Alderman Rainey called for a motion to support increasing the Merrick Park (Municlaal Rose Garden) permit fee to $200. motion unanimously accepted f4-01. Alderman Newman remarked he has been seeing a lot of roller bladers, people playing soccer and other type of things going on on the tennis courts and wanted to know if the Park Rangers are the enforcement people there. Mr. Gaynor said in many cases it would be Park Rangers, it could also be one of their managers or staff. At the Crown and Fleetwood tennis courts it could be a variety of different individuals but probably it would be a Park Ranger who would enforce this if another staff person was not successful. Alderman Newman said he is assuming that the reason this is not wanted is because it does damage to the courts. Alderman Newman thought something should be in the signage to the extent that we put in a skate park which has been very successful for these roller bladers because of all the people damaging the property down town. This, however, is another instance of that and he does not know what kind of sign to put up but thinks there should be some type of appeal to people not to damage the surfaces and he hopes this is able to be enforced. Alderman Newman said another thing that continues to concern and bother him are dog owners on beaches, other than the dog beach, with their dogs. This is not right considering the size of the dog beach that we have and he just reminding people and hoping people will continue to crackdown on that and run them off the beaches He does not know if this is because people don't want to go down to the dog beach, whether they don't want to pay the permit fee or whatever but certainly is not fair. It's a shame that we go to the trouble of setting up a dog beach and dog parks but it looks like it's not working. Mr. Gaynor said Alderman Newman is absolutely correct that happens in parks throughout the City. Our greatest challenge is having the staff available to enforce the ordinance we don't want to be in the business of citations we want to go up to somebody and indicate that there is an ordinance, the dog should be on a leash and make it a public relations effort. The second time, if they don't put the pet on a leash then we will issue the citation. Our Park Rangers don't start unbl late afternoon. This is not a high priority for the Police Department in view of the budget issues we've had they do their best and there is no criticism aimed at the Police Department. One of the things we want to do is tighten this up and do a better job so we may be bringing in Park Rangers at seven in the morning, which is six or seven hours before they actually start, and have them go to Hyde Park and Loveless Park and tell folks they have to put their pets on a leash. A couple of years ago we did have an issue at Talmadge Park where there was a huge reaction with Page 9. neighborhood infighting, and the police and Animal Warden were involved. This is definitely an enforceable issue but we need people out there to do the work. Alderman Newman thought there is a need for enforong this ordinance on weekends during the part of year the beaches are not open because he has seen a number of dogs on the beaches, not the dog beach, just a few weeks ago and this took place dunng the middle of the day. Alderman Feldman said Ridgeville has had an agreement with a dog club in that area, even though it's against the City of Evanston, to allow dogs there. Alderman Rainey said Ridgeville denies tnis and told her the Board members said there is no agreement as she asked if there really is an agreement Alderman Feldman said he is aware that they deny that but residents insist that there is an agreement it is not written but everybody he has talked to said that and what he decided to do was wait until the dog park is built and then let them know its over. He told them that before and did not know it was still going on but that usually occurs early in the morning and they swear they cleanup. This is a dog club notjust an individual owner and he is going to continue to look to this. Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Gaynor if the word mooning, on page 3, means that is where one ties their boat up and wanted to know if mooring has been added to the ordinance. Mr. Gaynor said what is occurring is the boaters come in close to the beach area and the occupants leave the boat to go swimming. They are outside the swim cnb the City has established and go back and forth to the boat. This is not very safe and is occurring at all beaches and creating an issue for our staff who are not sure whether or not they come from the boat and outside the crib. - Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired regarding enforcement of non -permitted use of parks. About a year ago there were a number of discussions whether or not we should discourage use of parks. He wanted to know what extent that is of the problems. Mr. Gaynor said as far as he is concerned that is not a problem unequivocally we do not discourage the use of the parks, of ball fields, sports parks, or soccer fields. We established new policies, one for little league baseball and soccer, they must come and get a permit for use. We then have another policy for drop ins, any group of citizens who want to go out and use a park, ball field, or soccer field, they could do it Where we have had some issues, which Alderman Jean -Baptiste may be referring to, is when a group not such as lCl , league baseball want to come out several weeks in a row. Our policy is they pay a S10.00 fee to get a permit from us and we then schedule them in at a field or fields the purpose of which is to better manage the maintenance of the use of those fields. If we put everybody on the same field befcre long the turf on that field wears out and is out of business for quite a while. It's a matter of rotating folks around. If a group came in and said they play soccer in Bollingbrook and would like to practice in this area because a member of the group comes from this area, we'd say okay, For 510.00 we would issue them three permits for use but we may let them use Talmadge Park one day another park the second day and a different park the third day, there's no problem we don't discourage that. Anybody that wants to get a pick up game in the neighborhood, something that Alderman Rainey raised an issue about a year ago and he had a meeting with her about this. We discourage folks that will be on fields whether organized or non -organized groups if the fields are overly saturated. Team Evanston, a travel soccer team, has been our biggest violator. They do not care whether or not the field is wet or whatever they get on the field. There are two issues with this; one if they damage the field to the point where it cannot be used three, four or five weeks that is a big liability. Also, if the field is that wet somebody can slip and fall. We try to move people off if the fields are too wet because they are not in the right condition. An example he can recall right off hand is Foster Field, last year football season was quite wet and that field got trashed through use. We did not put anybody out there and had to spend a lot time repairing that field. It's a matter of trying to rotate around on the fields and keeping any eye on who is using what and where, so we can spread the use of those fields out and get the maximum use out of them. Alderman Newman asked if there are new signs on the breakwaters to which Mr. Gaynor responded we have signs there now, new signs have been ordered. Alderman Newman asked if pictures of those signs could be obtained as it sounds as though these new signs have been on order for a long time. Mr. Gaynor said they had some and they were ripped off to which Alderman Newman asked if they are going to be in a place this year and if they are going to be big signs to which Mr. Gaynor said if he remembers correctly they will be 30 inches by 30 inches or 2 feet by 2 feet. They will say, Caution, Extreme Danger and something else, they will be reflective to be seen at night Unfortunately we have signs up now but if you get a night when it 89 or 90 degrees at nine o'clock at night we like to have a staff person out there when people are in the water. Last weekend, he himself came to the beach at six in the morning and all dunng the day and in the evening as there are no other resources right now and this is not a lobbying effort on his part. At all three beaches in the summer there are people swimming all along 30 yards past the cribs. On one hand he feels an obligation to say to these people, "get out of the water the beaches are not open yet". On the other hand our litigation attorney said when we are not open, it is a lakefront and we do not have a responsibility for those people. Yet he feels this responsibility because something may occur that is not controlled by the individual, they can get a cramp or something. Alderman Rainey asked about windsurfing and sailing and asked if that is now allowed to which Mr. Gaynor said, yes, we did open up the ramp. Page 10. Charles Marshall, said he is President of the Dewey Community Caucus, but he is not as that. The two items he looked at on the agenda dealt with the homeless and with the parks. It is getting to be warm again and the trend they have in his neighborhood is the transients use the park as the place of their accommodations for the evening. He suggests forming a car- commission department to be interested in their village to kind of move them on. People in the neighborhood are concerned about them. Many of them are harmless but sometimes in the middle of the night unexpectedly when peon=e are walking their dogs, there may be a dog that gets scared and jumps at that person or whatever. He is concerned about it as he walks his dog, and being close to the park sees a lot of the activities beginning to start for people lacking for their camp sites. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if the Entry Point people go out to these other parks, to which Mr. Terry responded, absolutely they have Citywide coverage. Alderman Newman suggested giving Mr. Marshall the phone number and information on Entry Pant He asked Mr. Gaynor if they call Entry Point, to which Mr. Gaynor responded they do not call them as they go out with their Park Rangers. Alderman Newman said it might be a good idea to call them if a homeless person is sleeping in the park as the Entry Point people have expertise in dealing with this and try to get people into the homeless shelter. Mr. Gaynor said they will do that, their process is the Park Ranger makes an identification when there is a homeless person or whatever, they call the Police department who then will hook up with that situation. The Park Hanger is mostly known not as a sworn officer but sort of triage person. he does not carry a gun. If he sees a group of people drinking and feels he can walk in say alcoholic beverages are not allowed in the park and get rid of it, he will. If he feels there is the slightest bit of a threat he has a police radio and calls the police. If there is a homeless person he may not want that confrontation. Alderman Rainey asked why can't he cant' a card with Entry Point's number, and just makes that call on his cell phone without even confronting the person, to which Mr. Gaynor said he totally agrees with that Alderman Rainey said if a homeless person is asleep on a bench she is sure that the police need not be called but if Entry Point comes out, and she seen them come out on several occasions, if that person is belligerent or if they know that person to be of a criminal nature they will call the police. Alderman Newman thought our response to people complaining in parks should include asking them to call Entry Point Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired what Entry Point does, to which Alderman Rainey responded it is a 24-hour service where they ride around in a van and can be there to help in a minute. M►. Marshall said they have a list they put together of parks in their district and did a lot of work with the staff about some of the apparatuses and furniture as to how they accommodated these people. They asked them to put in furniture that would make it most uncomfortable for them to steep. For instance put another arm in the middle of the bench. Then there were some platforms that turned into double bunks and other human activities began to take place. Mr. Gaynor said another consolation is the camps are starting along the lakefront and there are some great housing opportunities on the east side of the rocks. Alderman Rainey called for any further comments regarding the City Code Amendments. Hearina none recalled the motion to recommend to the Pr000sed Ordinance 12-0-02 Amendina ChaDtem 9.10. and 11 of the Evanston Cltv Code Pertainina to the Enforcement of City Park Reaulations. motion unanimously oassed 14-0). UL ADJOURNMENT There being no further business. Alderman Rainey called for an adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 9:45 p.m. Respectfully Submitted, Audrey Trots Department of Health and Human Services Page 11. i= GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET I' HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE c c;enter - Koom Monday, June 3, 2002 7:30 P.M. Name: /�,FOR r 1`�eAf/A7 � ati`10F os C�„,, cc .n V v• �e C" .�:�Cibs .� Liu-- [ ci Ci A'la ton &rec l pttV. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: �� ��,� vi�r� u�ti ✓�rsn� if Ah-Z±k uR sf-CA IA- p14 AAA P.U. tA\1 A i 1 E CA\, G V �1AVA 'PlE cvlw rcl'\ �f �l- '6 fru H : l zb -IrA SPGW Vrc "I ()eV4. a+ W54a iVdri c . u"u, SEA C GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COIVIMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday, June 3, 2002 7:30 P.M. PLEASE PRINT' Name: Address/ grganization: ✓QIs`Eon faC r I-fLCr La t��4001 � 1 QQT i rh-w- Ave. 6VVT-rop)Lc 2A (tea '4 Ce P-,i 11 . ('024 Z72o 410 015-S l k-11. 6 azbl 330 DekrroO 4a � ,l �44w.'p SPEAKER SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center -Room 2402 onaay - j une, 7:30 P.M. PLEASE PRINT -iffame: Address/Organization: � hJf i ^ca 1/�-d O 9 g &-A r 1 &AJS�rn °J .A ►� _ Awl rL- - .��Lam . �g, f5 "om.... Tl— tov sC - u`- i MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, May 13, 2002 Noyes Cultural Arts Center 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman. Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and.Rainey Frank Kaminski, Dennis Nilsson, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township). Jane Grover (Mental Health Board); Harmon Greenb:att, Sally Parsons, Virginia Roeder, Pamela Blevins. Elizabeth Passman Alderman Rainey Alderman Rainey called the meeting to order at T08 p.m. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE APRIL 1, MEETING Alderman Newman commented that there has been much paraphrasing of these minutes and for the record wanted to make it dear the statements made by him on page 7. paragraph 3, " He would like to clarify this is a very fine study and he appreciated all the work that was done but his expectation when came here tonight was that this was going to be a center to deal with some of the recreations needs of the down trodden part of our population and there were needs in that particular community to get kids off the street and to provide some place for people to go at night..." that although that portion has been depicted in may ways, and as a matter of record he would like to say he thought the intention of the center was to give a place for children and teenagers who were disadvantaged. In no way was he referring to that part of the town as down trodden. Many members of the Council have used terms for disadvantaged kids much worse than down trodden which he will not go into. Th►s was not an attack on South Evanston as it was portrayed after and between the next meeting on the Council for whatever purpose that might have been done. Hearina no further comments. Alderman Rainev called for acoroval of the April 1. 2002 minutes. The minutes were anaroved (4-0). Ill. CONSIDERATION OF THE APRIL 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS AND REPORTS A) CLIENT INFORMATION REPORT Alderman Ralnev called for a motion to accent the report and so was moved by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Newman inquired as to when the Township budget has to be approved. Mr. Terry said by June 30Q1, it will be introduced at the first meeting in June and sent for adoption to the second June meeting. Alderman Newman asked if it will have to be introduced without discussion by the committee, to which Mr. Terry responded, no, it will be discussed at the next Human Services Committee meeting on June V . Alderman Newman asked if there is any explanation for the reduction of the people receiving General Assistance as the numbers went from 87 down to 71. Mr. Hilliard said at least half of the clients had their Unemployment Compensation extended and came off General Assistance, others got jobs Alderman Newman asked if the people found jobs on their own or through the efforts of General Assistance. Mr. Hilliard said they have a Job Club Center and every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday clients come for job training and computer resumes. They also have counselors came to speak to their clients and help them find work. Alderman Newman wanted it recorded that he thinks the Township is doing a terrific job as obviously those numbers are very good taming down to 71 especiaRy when unemployment figures are going the other way. Alderman Newman said he would like it communicated to Pat Vance that there is a suggestion on the Budget Committee agenda that we abolish the Township and would like to have the Township comment on that and the number of employees necessary to administer the programs of the Township He lust wanted the Township to be aware of that as he himself Page 1. does not take it that seriously but feels the Tr7x—,sh+p is entitled to know about this. Mr. Hilliard asked if it has been thought about putting this on a referendum ana senoing it before City Council. Alderman Newman said no, there is an Alderman on the Budget Committee who has proposed this as a way of saving money Alderman Rainev called for the motion to accept the Client Information Report, motion for acceptance unanimous f4-01. Bj MONTHLY BILLS. MEDICAL. AND VENDOR SUMMARY REPORT Alderman Feldman moved for acceptance to approve the April 2002 Township monthly bills. motion unanimousty approved 4-0. Alderman Rainey had a question regarding tt,e Assessors Office pertaining to the Year to Date in Current Actual. There s a part-time aide hired to be the Deputy, her scary is $4.295 which works out to an annual salary of S51,540 when there is only $34,900 budgeted. She wonders if this committee could at least get some explanation to that before the budget is discussed. Alderman Rainey commented rf you want to be in government get into Township government Alderman Newman said he was not sure what that was supposed to mean to which Alderman Rainey said the Township has some extraordinary expenses which she is sure everyone has read in these reports, with absolutely no explanation which is a big concern to her. Alderman Newman said Asderrran Rainey should ask these questions to which Alderman Rainey responded there is no point in asking any quest ors regarding Township bias because you can't do anything about it The Township is a totally autonomous group and there is nothing that can be done, however, taxpayers should know that there is some extraordinary spending going on. IV. REVIEW OF THE DISPOSITION OF CnUEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Rainev called for a motion to accept Complaint 01-08. initiated November 30. 2001. completed Mav 9, 2002. status Exonerated/Traininq. Alderman Feldman moved acceptance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to know if what precipitated this encounter was that someone spit on the ground and was then put under arrest_ Chief Kaminski said it started off in a situation where the officers were directed to do foot patrols in front of some residences because they received some complaints from an alderman about citizens on that block. As the officers walked by there was an attempt by the people that were there to spit at the officers as they walked by. The officers cited them for City ordinance violation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Chief Kaminski if he said in the report or any of the questions that there was an attempt to spit at the officer. Chief Kaminski said, no, what went down was as the officers passed and were walking down the street tney heard individuals coughing up fiem and as the officers passed the spitting occurred, the officers turned around and saw the actual spit go down onto the sidewalk and a whole series of events then occurred. The officers went to confront them and that is when the individuals were cited for a City ordinance violation, subsequently they resisted and a whole senes of events ensued as indicated in the report. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked why is there no indication in the wntten report that there was an attempt to spit at the officers. Chief Kaminski said because it didn't hit the officers it was aimed in the direction of the officers, to which Alderman Jean - Baptiste said, that was not in the report either. Commander Nilsson said the officers were about five feet away from these young men when this happened. In the interv�ew one officer reports as he turned the spit landed right by his foot and some of it did actually hit his shoe. These gent;emen were stopped for spitting, not for aggravated battery or battering a police officer which becomes battery. Spitting at someone that immediately close to them is a disgusting thing to do. The officers were there because this is the type of :nUrnidation the aldermen and citizens have been telling us has been going on in that neighborhood for quite a while am is why the officers were there in the first place. The area has a lot of drug activity and a lot of drug sales. From September until the end of December there were approximately 25 calls. Some of the calls were, a large group at a traffic stop, group breaking down cars for recovered stolen autos. group on street selling drugs, several drug related activities. several disorderly groups. two subjects in car injury, disorderly groups, subjects drinking alcohol, car with window shot out fights and disturbances in the streets, etc That is why these officers were there. As you know police officers are asked to deal with civilized society's least cherished chores. These young men decided they wanted to spit in the presence of the officers, the officers enforced an ordinance that is on the books that you cannot spit on the public sidewalk. The cfficers went to stop these young men and the young men did not fulfill their end of the social contract They are under the social contract that they will not resist when an officer tells them they are being cited or being placed under arrest The officers did not violate any laws they were perfectly within their legal justification enforcing the ordinances of this City and these young men decided that they were not going to comply with the officers' request Chief Kaminski said we can't say that there wasn't a direct contact then we could be charging them with something else and then subsequent battery would result from contact afterward. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if there was some background context in which this kind of interaction takes place so he could better understand it as opposed to waiting to come in the meeting to hear what is the basis of the officers' presence Page 2. that the officers felt that spitting was aimed at them. This escalated to an extent that he thought perhaps consistent with our philosophy of community policing through some interaction and discussion it could have been al eviated. What he read in this report was that person spit and he was placed under arrest. His understanding is in a k;t of interactions what you promote for the most part is that there be some dialogue or interaction to try to resolve some of those situa'aons as opposed to escalating them to such an extent. Chief Kaminski said as Me officers walked by they cro make favorable comments and everybody else in the area greeted them there was no response from these inary cuals as the officers passed. The officers were in the area walking trying to be a possrve presence at the time this a=a'`i o=rred and these individuals decided to do what they did We try to make it clear and usually put it together so we're not slanting these anything, just getting the facts from the individuals. We spent a lot of time on this investigation in fa= rt took longer than we usually take because we sent it back twice, the supervisors wanted additional information. we event hack and re. interviewed people to make sure that everything we did was right We probably took longer on trus as we interviewed a lot of people, we did neighborhood canvases to make sure if there was anything else that was not done A lot of erne was spent with the supervisors to make our final decision. Alderman Feldman commented that according to the report the police officers were exonerated and in addition were to receive additional training, he asked why was that Chief Kaminski said they would talk if you get into srtuations like this it is important our officers are trained how to de-escalate a situation which we think we are able to do. These were two newer officers and you always want to prepare on the side of the positive that there is some other training out there that we can send them through so that in the future they might be able to think of something different He does not know that you can, but certainly he would rather assign them to do something positive than just totally exonerate them. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a specific course for de-escalation and was told yes, it is what they call verbal judo. a course that some of our officers go to. Alderman Rainey asked if the committee could be given an example of what verbal judo is. Commander Nilsson said his understanding is this teaches officers how to de-escalate instead of escalating and how to disengage. Chief Kaminski said it is a series of things you might do to the individual that you confronted to show different responses, verbal and non verbal communication that go on betA en people and the messages sent Alderman Rainey asked if it is known for a fact that these were two newer officers. Chief Kaminski responded, yes, to which Alderman Rainey asked why would we use two newer officers in an extremely problematic area. Chief Kaminski said we have a lot of new officers. to which Alderman Rainey asked can't they be paired off with a veteran officer. Chief Kaminski said we try but there is shift preference by seniority and what happens is more seasoned people are on the day shifts. We're a younger department having hired about 90 people within the last 4 years, we now have a younger police force. Commander Nilsson said these were two young, hard working officers were well trained, they understand the philosophy of the police department and they believe in it, they exercise it on a daily basis. He thinks the gentlemen they went off against that day, Alderman Rainey interjected those were not gentlemen and she thinks it is a misnomer to refer to these thugs as gentlemen. She does not think the behavior described here can be defended in any way, shape, or form and she did not think the police ignited any of this. This is behavior that is very appalling and she sees n frequently for no reason whatsoever_ She found it unbelievable that citizens would try and open a police car door vt►ere people under arrest are sitting and try to drag them out of the police car. How do you justify that and how do you refer to that kind of beheviot as gentlemanly or anyway other than with negative terms She thinks the community needs to get hold of itself and does not know whether or not there is a block club in this neighborhood It they want zero tolerance because of this kind behavior she can certainty understand that because it is really objectionable and you have to have our police there trying to deal with it in a gentle way, which she does not think is possible_ Alderman Newman said we are not referring to everybody on the 1900 block of Jackson as thugs, to which Alderman Rainey interjected she is referring to the complainants here and she would like it on the record that she did that because that's the behavior they exhibited. She is not calling the entire community down trodden, to which f+lderman Newman interjected nobody else did that either. Alderman Rainey said it is hard to defend this to which Alderman Newman said it hard to defend her most recent charges to which Alderman Rainey said lets try to stick to this subject Alderman Newman said he is going to because the point is, which he thought Alderman Jean -Baptiste was getting to, this was an over reaction by our police department and he would like to explain why. He knows this is a very difficult situation and knows the block they were on and respects the fact that the police were there. First of all there is no rule that when police officers go walking down the block everybody has to say hello to them, that's the preferable way to greet police and treat them with respect and dignity. It doesn't do anything for people in this community to be charged with spitting on the sidewalk, it's a waste of everybody's time. To him it was a misjudgment and he sees the reason for the department's training, that's not to say the officers were not trying to do well but he thinks they overreacted to somebody who was being disrespectful and obnoxious but part of being a police officer is that some of the people out there are going to be obnoxious and disrespectful to them. This was an overreaction in terms of the person being charged for spitting on the sidewalk orwhatever he did and he thinks in that neighborhood you want to get the bad guy for big and significant things. If there was a theft or damage to property something that at least has misdemeanor status where he had a year in jail, he would support totally or even a disorderly conduct to the point where it is more than just a police officer being Page 3. disruptive. in reading this there was in his mind a misjudgment he thinks the way it was handled was totally appropriate because they were newer and needed additional training and they are going to get that training. It's hard to say that when somebody does something that's purposeful to get somebody's dander up while they're doing their lob that the police officers weren't provoked. To him this is subject to question and the right thing was done by sending these officers to training. He wants to make that Gear and is not trying to be critical but is saying he would not encourage his officers to write tickets for spitting on the sidewalk When you pick someone up far jaywalking people get mad at you because people are jaywalking a million times a day and finally you arrest somebody for just because you can doesn't mean you do it. Alderman Rainey asked Ms Brenneman if we have a law that says its illegal to spit on the sidewalk. Ms Brenniman said yes we do, to which Alderman Rainey asked why we have that taw and Ms. Brenniman said it is something from the i BDCrs and we have just never taken it off. Alderman Rainey said if we are going to object to our police officers ticketing people for that she thinks we should remove it from the books and asked if Ms. Brenniman could get whatever is needed to amend a City Code to allow for people to cough up flem and spew it all over our City sidewalks and thinks we should get on with a and do it otherwise its ridiculous to have this on the books and then criticize our police officers for arresting people. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked when he was on the Civil Service Commission interviewing police officers they tried to set exactly these types of scenarios so that people understand that policing is not about maximizing the exercise of your power whenever you felt like it. They also set up scenarios and talked about going into a community where there is some known gang -bangers or whatever, do you then try to take advantage of every opportunity to escalate the situation so you could run them in. He thought they had unanimity in terms of steering the officers to understand that d is not about escalating every situation. The response to send the officers to training is a recognition that there was an error here. He takes exception to the position that characterizes people as being thugs in an absolute sense. If someone has committed a crime and has done certain things we should charge them, take them in and enforce the law. But to characterize a group of people and say you know what kind of a neighborhood you are in and there are a group of thugs there and they deserve that kind of treatment, you should know there are certain neighborhoods that would not tolerate that kind of conclusion about any members of the community unless they have done something to seriously disturb the peace. Therefore, we need to be careful about what we communicate and to meet a response of the community when they hear this is that they will be more hostile towards the police. The kind of process we are talking about is the kind of process that builds relationships between the extremes of thugs and police officers in terms of co -existence. Whether someone has been declared a thug or whether this is the first time they are violating the law the approach should be the same. Spitting on the sidewalk can result in teeth being knocked out, pepper spraying people and justifying it by saying that we were In a den of thugs to him is not the right approach and is not what he understood to be the policy or the philosophy of the Evanston Police Department. That is his positron on this. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he read this to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is precisely why he is raising the issues that he raising, because he read it. Alderman Rainey said she thinks that people standing on the front porch yelling profanities at the police attempting to drag people that had been arrested out of police cars lends itself to judgmental statements Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if that is a point of departure, the point of departure was that somebody stood on the sidewalk and they got put under arrest and then things escalated. He is suggesting that the = consequences that resulted from that was an over reaction. Was the community justified in what they did in response to that later, no. Alderman Rainey asked what community, we're talking about four people here, we're not talking about any community. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if she counted the number of people shouting obscenities, to which Alderman Rainey responded yes, there were four complainants. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Rainey if she said there were people shouting obscenities, to which Alderman Rainey said it says complainant One and Two. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said you use a different issue to make your point, to which Alderman Rainey said don't expand what was said to make it the community, she is talking about the people involved in this outrageous behavior that is not justified by an arrest_ Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Rainey what specifically is she saying that the compla,nants did that - - justifies this, to which Alderman Rainey responded they attempted to pull people that had been placed under arrest out of a police car, that they stood shouting profanities at the police. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is what he is tacking about the kind over reaction engenders that kind of response, is it justified, no, but that's not what he is talking about Alderman Rainey asked Alderman -Jean -Baptiste if he is saying if he was arrested for spitting on the sidewalk he would start yelling profanities at the police. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is not the issue, Alderman Rainey focuses in on one set of issues because she wants to say that whatever the police did was fine and he is suggesting that there is a different approach to resolving this, that does not mean that he justifies the responses of these individuals to the police action. He is suggesting that there is a different approach. Alderman Rainey could come to her conclusion from her philosophy but he is not from that approach which is what he is talking about and is why Chief Kaminski sent these officers to training. Alderman Rainey said she also thought the outcome of this was extremely appropriate. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked Alderman Rainey why she thought that to which Alderman Rainey said because she thinks an example could be a very good training for all police not just these two officers because she does not know the police are handling these kind of outrageous uproars all the time, she does not see it happening all the time, so its probably a good =— Page 4. experience to use for trairong Alderman Jean -Baptiste said because Alderman Rainey does not see over reaction from a man under arrest, to wt-cn ALerman Rainey said she is not in those situations a lot so how would she see it Alderman Newman thcug`t the reason we get these complaints is that this type of an incident is something that somebody could calf an over reacnon ano the statement he is joining Alderman Rainey in making is that although we want a presence on streets like 1900 Jackson we're not looking for our officers to get involved in perhaps over reactions that are going to scintillate something It'Ke what happened here and he thinks that's the point that policy makers need to make. We're backing the Chief in sapng -we're supporting his decision to send them to training. He is assuming they were sent there for training because itwas felt that handling a situation such as this might of warranted a different initial response to the comment. Chief Kaminski said he wanted the officers to have as many options as possible available to them to learn from whatever they can to deal with these situations in the future. Frorn to facts of the case as stated the officers were within the scope of the law but officers can always learn to handle all things better they can always learn handling difficulties and since the review thought the training would help these two officers. Alderman Newman asked if in a situation where people in a community, lets say they were purposely trying to provoke the officers, which he thinks is what may have happened here. tt,e question is what are the options going to be and what is someone going to do because on the other hand if you're the part of a community who may feel that people are being singled out or being picked on that you have to balance your reaction in certain situations which is why this particular instance is getting so much discussion. Commander Nilsson thought the officers handled this within their authority and the justification was there for them to handle this. Could it have been handled in a better way, I think yes. Alderman Feldman did not know whether Alderman Rainey was serious or not about having that ordinance brought up for possible elimination because that may or may not be enforced but if it was a serious reference there are probably at least ten to twenty other ordinances in this City including stop signs on side streets and speeding on certain streets that the City is either unwilling or unable to enforce. Along with our ordinance regarding bicycles, dogs, people not cleaning up after their dogs, etc., so we have a lot of work to do if we are going to do that. While he sympathizes and fully understands the whole question of having laws on the books that are not enforced he does not think the fact that they are not enforced is a reason to automatically remove them, what they do express is a community value. Its very clear they express a community value and we have recently passed ordinances having to do with just that and noise of the leaf bl wers, etc, that are hardly ever the object of police attention or time which is rightly so because the police have other important things to do but we knew that when we passed that law. What we did was to make a statement not a statement that placed the police department in an incumbency to run around looking for leaf blowers, but the fad that this represents the values of the community and a kind of a call to people to try to take that into consideration. Alderman Rainey said she trusts Alderman Feldman is not in any way putting not stopping at stop signs, dogs off leash, not cleaning up after your dog's excrement, on the same page as spitting on the sidewalk. Alderman Feldman said he is ptadng it in the same category as taws not being enforced as that was the argument Alderman Rainey made when she made the reference if we are not going to be enforcing these taws. Alderman Rainey said we are enforcing not stopping at stop signs and we are enforcing speeding. Alderman Feldman said there is no question that we are not enforcing that because that is the reason that are 30.000 speed bumps in the City of Evanston as we are not incapable of enforcing it and the only time we do enforce it is wtien an Alderman asks the Police Chief to put a cop at a given stop sign on a side street Talk to the residents of tries community and ask them if we're enforcing stop signs on the side streets, its ridiculous to even comment on that. Alderman Rainey thought we should stop commenting on that and move on, but she would still Like to see that as we come across items in our municipal code, to which Alderman Feldman interjected you have his reference as well, if one of those go down they all go down. Alderman Rainey commented that we are really getting off the subject now and asked if this could be dealt with at some other time. Alderman Newman asked if as part of that inquiry about taking it off the books, how many spitting on the sidewalk complaints were taken to an issue in the year 2001 to get an idea of how many times this actually has happened. He would guess it would probably be less than ten but if its above ten he will be educated. Alderman Rainey added along with that they would like all the incidents where people have been given tickets for speeding in this town and going through stop signs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we are getting way off base, the bottom line is Alderman Feldman stated that some of the laws we have in the books may not be enforceable or are being enforced but they reflect community values. To him if you're going to put a big period after that, that's it we do not have to go as far tying to have a domino effect on knocking down a lot of statutes etc., etc. The bottom line is you made reference about the spitting, you look at that and we do not have to look at everything under the sun those things need to be there because they reflect community values. Alderman Ralnev called for the motion to accept the outcome for Citizen Complaint #01-08, motion unanimously accented (4-0). Page 5. Alderman Rainev called for a motion to accept Comolaint 02-01. initiated ;lanuary 9. 2002. completed March 22, 2002, status outcome Unfounded. Alderman Newman moved acceptance. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion. Not hearing anv discussion on this complaint. Alderman Rainev called for motion to accept this finding, motion unanimously accented f4-01., V. 2002 FARMER'S MARKET Alderman Rainey noted the committee received a communicatcr, from Judith Aiello on the Farmer's Market regarding expanding some of the options to include meat and the possibility cf being a French Market going to private management Mr. Terry said he talked with Ms. Aiello about this a couple times and learned this is done in other markets both in other suburbs and Chicago. As the memo states Ms. Aiello is proposing a pilot Currently the Health Department screens the vendors at the start of the season and checks what they sell, but rf we are going to sell meat every week and expand the types of products we would propose that there be a health inspector on sight at the Farmer's Market every Saturday morning not only to check the meat but all the products being sold and he has had discussions regarding this with Ms. Aiello. Alderman Feldman said that sounds like a good idea but asked if it is the meat that might be sold that precipitated this or is it everything. Everything is a lot more than meat and rf Mat's the case and you find it necessary why didn't we do it before. Mr. Terry said because there have been other processed products that we had been in conversations with the Farmer's Market management, Ms. Aiello, and the other staff about that don't technically fall within the guidelines and then the guidelines were expanded last year to add bread. Meal takes it to another level in terms of risk and in terms of temperature is a case where if we would have to be there every week to check the meat we might as well walk around the entire market and see that everything is okay. Alderman Rainey asked why we would want to sell meat Mr. Terry said his understanding is that is prime cuts of beef, he is not recommending selling meat Alderman Feldman wondered why in a Farmer's Market we suddenly have to become all things to all people and provide everything. Mr. Terry said it would be best to have those quesVons answered by Ms. Aiello Alderman Newman thought that the idea of privatizing the operation of the market he would like to hear a lot more about because once you take that step you are going to change the nature of the market which right now is very popular and he just hears positives about our Farmer's Market that it is one of the best He would have been more interested in this memo hearing feedback about the expansion of the bread because we had some controversy about allowing two kcal bread vendors to come in and sell their bread. He does not see moving to a private unless there is some type of overwhelming cost scenario. Also, he does not see the need to make this a grocery store, it is not a grocery store it's a paw to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and other forms of produce on a Saturday morning and we are not looking to take over the grocery business. By private he means privatizing, the French contract would manage the market instead of the City. He would have to hear about what it is costing us and thinks this is the time for Ms. Aiello to get into these issues. He is assuming there is not going to be any change in the market this year, but we need to start that discussion in September or October and also share with the vendors, who attend the market, that we're having a discussion about the market to help educate us. Alderman Feldman said one of the clear requests in this memo has to do with the farmers selling produce that they do not grow and the request of staff for some comment on what our position is. While the staff tries to keep on top of the situation it is very difficult That was the original philosophy behind the Farmer's Market and then it clearly changed. The question is what are we going to do about it, if anything. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a list of what is sold that is not grown by the farmers. Alderman Rainey said they are not allowed to sell anything that they don't grow but they do sometimes, they violate that standard. Alderman Feldman remarked they buy the food someplace else and then sell it at the market Alderman Rainey said in terms of the produce we do have a rule that they can't sell what they don't grow but she does not think it has hindered our market at all. Alderman Feldman said he did not think that either and the question whether or not we have to worry about adhering to that and asked if there is any reason why we should. Alderman Rainey said no, but Ms. Aiello gets pressure from the farmers to change that Mr. Terry said Ms. Aiello gets a few complaints from other farmers who say for example, someone is selling perfect cucumbers where do they come from. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we are now being asked for advisory opinion, our sentiment is no. Alderman Rainey said that will be communicated to Ms Aiello and the Farmer's Market committee. A DISCUSSION WITH THE ARTS COUNCIL Alderman Rainey remarked she found the information received very educational and very helpful. Mr. Gaynor said Michelle Brodsky the current chair has been very aggressive in bringing the subcommittees and Arts Council up to the number of positions, fifteen, filled and getting everybody going. There was the desire by the previous Human Services chair to meet with Arts Council members and is why this meeting was scheduled here at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center. Ms. Brodsky called late this afternoon that she was ill and could not be here but in the package received by the committee there Is the draft analysis of the plan. There are two primary focuses for this evening one is to have the cultural funds approved so it ran be taken to Council as an annual in the event the Arts Council subcommittee goes through and Page 6. requests Arts to apply for the cultural funds program The information on the process they go through rs in the packet sent to the committee. We have an outstanding panel who did an outstanding job on this with staff and is recommending the Arts Council for approval of that grant on the program The other focus is the Noyes Study, Salty Parsons has been drafted as chair of that, and that information is also contained in the packet received by the committee Mr. Gaynor said that has been ongoing at least five years, since the time that he was here. what is Noyes and wha: is the mission. This has happened several times over in a twenty-year penod and to his knowledge there hasn't teen a definitive recommendation adopted by the Crry Council as to what the Noyes mission will be. Ms. Parsons has taken over the chairmanship of this committee that is meeting simultaneously with this meeting. If the committee has any questions or we can provide any information we would be happy to do so. At the end of this meeting there is a tour of the center planned with some of the resident artists. Alderman Rainey asked if the committee could get an update on the status of the Task Force. Ms. Parsons said they are grappling with several new questions and the Task Force is trying to get a bigger picture of organizational structure, the history, the involvement of the resident artists and how they work with the Arts Council, what is the status of the existing different stages here, what that means and they are trying to get a handle on the budget. We keep revisiting some questions and are talking about whether there should be an incubator program here. We are fortunate to have on the Task Force the Director of Chicago Arts Bridge which does support the business end of arts organizations in the City and she says handling and selling depends on what an incubator is and what it is not and that was helpful We invited the resident adists to appear this evening and to engage with the Task Force. There was quite a dialogue with that report in terms of reviews on both sides of the importance of how resident artists are competing in the function of this building, The Task Force had several questions for them. There is a third meeting scheduled for June 10v and we wtit try and bring it together for certain bottom line questions, we would like recommendations from them for the short term and then any thoughts they have for what we should be doing in the long term. They're still keeping an open mind and haven't settled on anything. We will see what comes out of the next meeting. Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Parsons for the good work and the kind of work that has not been done and needs to be done. He would be very much interested in understanding what the dialogue is rather than what your conclusions are and it is very important that he gets that He would have been very happy to have been at that meeting to hear what some of the resident artists were saying and some of the back and forth dialogue as he wants to understand what the options and parameters are. He asked if it is possible to get minutes from that meeting and he would like to get regular minutes of your deliberations and the testimony you get because he could then understand it much better than if you just present us with a recommendation as he can understand the sole of the recommendation if he knows what all the background is. Alderman Newman said he would have been interested in hearing that discussion on what the artists and the Arts Council are talking about in terms of the school, but he has his own concerns and thinks we need to nail down what our policy is in terms of what this building is supposed to be and what we're trying to accomplish here. Also, what is the City's responsibility to the building and what the responsibility of everybody else is going to be? The reason he says that is important is that it seems to him that there was this idea of the incubator and whenever you have an incubator it implies that you're going to grow businesses and they're going to leave. to terms of space in this building he is not that interested in getting good things to come here and then having them leave, he wants to keep the good things in the budding. What he is most interested in as a member of the Council is he wants to get as many people from the cammunfty into this building using this building for a variety of different reasons whether it be art classes, dance, voice lessons, drama, pottery, whatever it may be but believes this building belongs to the community and that's a major cntena to him in terms of trying to promote this building and making this building be worth while. The more people that come into this building and take advantage of the artists we have in Evanston from a learning point of view is we all benefit He is interested in things that get people into the building and that is not to say its not the sort of thing that the arts community shouldn't have a place here either he is just saying in terms of new space, open spaces and things such as that. Another point we have to get to is he would like to hear from the Arts Council on how you deal with the diversity and size of the organoabons and their need for growth. He thinks we all need to understand what are the responsibilities of the City for support and what those responsibilities should be. We need to have a dialogue to understand once and for all the purpose of tnis building and what our expectations are for tenants, what our expectations are from the City to maintain this building which is very expensive to maintain. Ubmatety no matter what the view of the Arts Council people are and what the view of the artists are, at some point in time the people who pay a significant amount of money through their elected officials have to be able to weigh in and say this is what the policy is for the building and this is what our commitment is going to be financially. We have to have elected officials involved otherwise the community is not part of the process. It is more than just the staff or the volunteers or the appointees of the Arts Council and more than just the artists. He also wanted the committee to get educated on how these different buildings that the City has relationships with relate to the arts, what our relationship is and is that the right relationship and to get educated on this as you present your role. He is interested in some subcategories, i.e. how many people are going in and out, what types of classes are being offered, how you are being perceived by the community, how many people are coming into the parking lot visiting various people in the center, etc. There are all types of issues that he is interested in your sharing with us. Page 7. Ms. Parsons noted the Task Force is not the Arts Council, it will be making recommendations to the Arts Council. She is on the Arts Council and head of the Task Force, of which Ms. Brodsky is a member, people from the Oak Park Arts Council, Chicago Arts Bridge, and various other community organizations in the Chicago area make up the Task Force, Alderman Newman asked if they are going to report to the Arts Council to which Ms. Parsons answered, yes. Virginia Roeder, Evanston Arts Council member, said she also attended the earner Task Force meeting and took some notes that would answer some of the questions brought up earlier. One of the significant points that Tony Adler brought up was he felt an incubator idea should be thought about very seriously because there are a lot of artists that start businesses that need more than two or three years to really get going. A lot of times when people are forced out in the community when they're just barely beginning they fail This was a good point Mr. Adler brought up and she is bringing it up because the City needs to think in terms of bringing organizations that have had more than just two or three years to their credit into the real stabilization stage for three to eight to ten years. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Roeder if Mr. Adler means an incubator should be within this facility to which Ms. Roeder said he is saying it should not be, it has been more middle aged groups of artists, not generically as far as the actual age, but if you have been in business for three, four, five or eight years those are the organizations that need the major support because we are coming across real financial issues and coming from a very small beginning to actually making it work. Mr. Adler said if he had that after W or three years The Actors Gymnasium would not have existed. Alderman Feldman said that sounds very sensible as the first question he had was how do you justify that in the light of the fact that the space is limited and the more people that stay a longer time the less space there is available for new people to come in. Alderman Rainey said it is interesting that the information the committee received shows that the last = new tenant was in 1996. Elizabeth Passman, a tenant in the building who has represented the tenants at the Arts Council for many years, said two tenants came in on an incubator program which was for three years. At the end of three years both of them continued to stay longer and they are both now here. The incubator program did not work and one of the other things that happened recently is there have been spaces available and tenants have expanded so as a result the Piven's got another space and nobody from the outside came in which has happened a few other times. Ms. Roeder wanted to make another point, she worked with Ms. Brodsky two years ago when a surrey was sent to the residents here and compiled the information from the surveys. They only got back eighteen out of twenty some that are here, there was still a significant number to make suggestions. Of those eighteen two-thirds of them teach in this facility and when you asked how many people come in and out it would be very straightforward to contact those people and ask them for a list of how many students they have to give you a rough idea of two thirds of the organizations here. Another interesting point, it is pretty evenly split between individuals and organizations, its split down the middle by nine so that nine surveys we got back were from individuals and there were nine from organizations, they listed about twenty-four different things that they do Mr. Gaynor said all the information and the number of issues that have been raised were part of the study. It has all to be brought in to try to sort out and categorize so that the right questions can be asked. Although there was a meeting this evening and a number of the artists that were there reside here in the building, as Alderman Newman mentioned there still has a to be a public forum for people whether they are artists that are not here but in the community, and whether it is explained to the general community to have an opportunity to also convey their views and questions. These are the things the committee is going to be doing over the next couple of months. Tonight was an opportunity to let the Human Services Committee know about what is going on and for you to provide additional questions for information that you would like and as Alderman Feldman indicated he would like to receive the minutes. Alderman Rainey asked Ms. Parsons if she sees as part of the Task Force role holding public input sessions, to which Ms. Parsons said, yes, they are going to with the next session and there will be a notice in the newspaper advising the public to come. Ms. Roeder wanted to make one more point that people are encouraged to go on from here and the City needs to think in terms of having other space available that artists can rent within the City. Alderman Newman said he did not think the purpose of this building is to grow arts companies, the purpose of this building is to serve the community. He is very glad that Kids Can lance stayed here five years ago because it has a very wide following. He does not know where the whole idea of the incubator came from as he has been on the Council for ten years and nobody ever asked him what his opinion was even though he is one of the nine members who on behalf of the community was asked to foot the bills and thinks we have had a little bit of a disconnect that he is hoping has passed. He had no idea where the concept of incubator came from because he atways thought this was a cultural arts center to serve the community and the fact that we have these resources he thinks is a tremendous gift to the community, It Is Page 8. fabulous that everybody is here in this budding but he is not necessany locking to grow arts organizations here if we had some extra space that is great and he would like to talk about the concept of the incubator because if you have something good that reaches out to the xmmunrty he thinks you would want to keep r He also thinks there needs to be clarification of what the expectatons are of the City and the artists in terms of who is going to be responsible for what because of the things that has gone on over the years it is the expectation that the City is supposed to do everything here and he is not so sure the City is prepared to do everything here that needs to be cone even though vie have been doing a lot. Everybody needs to be on the same plane of what we're going to be able to do and that includes the artists in all parts of the City, the staff. the Cry Council, and the Arts Councl. As far as the City providing other space for the artists in his view he does not know that the City has the responsibility to do more than what we are doing now as we are doing a lot compared to other cities. it is not that he would not want to do it. it is that just there is not an endless flow that the City can subsidize space for arts organizations, he wishes we could. We have to do the best we can to make it work here in a way that we can all be proud of Has he misconstrued this or are people from allover the place going to tell us what we should be doing with this building. Ms. Parsons said there are experts on the Board to which Alderman Rainey said there is a list in the April 29" memo. Alderman Feldman said n sounds as though we have our work cut out for us because to him it is very complicated to see such competing values What he sees has happened to this building is it has become a supported residence for a group of very fine artists for a long period of time. The question of how it interfaces with the community is 5ti11 kind of a puzzle to him. He knows 9 interfaces. as was indicated, on individual artists to their specific public so if an artist teaches portraiture they have a certain number of students that come, maybe a lot or maybe only a few. The questions he has is how as an institution it interfaces with the community. What does anybody in the City know about this place, how does this building affect their rives, how does it as a community of artists go out into the community and affect it Again he is not talking about community service, he read the community service applications and while it cannot be denied they're all community service there are some that seem to him to be of peripheral to the needs of the community, some he would hope would be directed toward the more focused, more planned, and more organizational kind of approach. As an example, a day at a Junior High School, ten, fifteen artists go there, for some kind of an event or bring the Junior High here to spend a day interfacing with the artists. That would be more than once a year, with some support from the City but certainly with the cooperation of the artists. It is that kind of presentation, that deep involvement, that interaction, that mutual interdependency. that he does not see. He does not mean to demean the artists, if somebody can afford to pay for art classes fine, he has gone to some himself and they are very nice. He's talking about something more than the small number of people that are in this building each day. Ms. Roeder said some of the artists do go into the community into the schools, we can send you a list of community outreach. Alderman Rainey said one of the good things about the Task Force, which Ms. Parsons is facilitating, is that a lot of these issues are probably being discussed and the best stepping off point for us to have this critiqued will be when we get this report She had no idea until she got her packet that the Task Force was, unfortunately, meeting tonight. Alderman Feldman agreed with Alderman Rainey and just wanted his concerns to be part of the discussion and if they already are he knows he is not unique to those feelings. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste said hopefully the mission has been hammered out and will be subject to some discussion by this committee. In his opinion, from the mission, they will be able to take a look at the various things that they will try to do and out of that if we can agree on a mission that serves the interests of the community and at the same time assists artists in doing that better then most of the other issues that come up. We will then be able to work them out and find a way to make them happen The key thing he would like to hear about is the discussion about the mission and he shares Alderman Feldman's request to get a copy of the minutes to know what people are saying about the mission, what it ought to be which is the important thing Alderman Rainey moved on to the Cultural Arts Grant Award and called for a motion to recommend anaroval by the Council. Alderman Feldman moved approval for recommendation by Council for the Cultural Arta Grant Award seconded by Alderman Newman Alderman Rainey called for any discussion and said she had one question She asked Mr. Gaynor how many of the applicants are tenants to vilnich Mr. Gaynor said to look at the last page of mat report, Recommendations for the Cultural Fund, in the first column there are none. in the Organizational Projects column you will see Piven, Art Encounter, and Kids Can Dance. In the Organizabonal Stability Grant column there is only Actors Gymnasium. Alderman Rainey said then there is a good opportunity for others and she is sure you get bombarded from the arts community with information about requests. Alderman Rainey asked if these were the only applications received, and was told no, to which Alderman Rainey said it looks to her that this is all the applicants because some people on the list did not get a grant Mr. Greenblatt said those are all the applicants that made it though the actual panel there were more applicants that for one reason or another did not get this far, i.e., their application was incomplete and was sent back to them, or the applicant was not an Evanston organization. They send applications out in the mail to everyone who calls for them and for one reason or another the completed applications are not sent back to them. Page 9. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked when the applications or advertisements are sent Mr. Greenblatt said they have a stack in the library and also distribute them in various other places. They have a mailing list of all the arts organizations and individual artists within the City of Evanston that they marl them to, besides all the phone calls that get individual applications sent out as well. The application can also be downloaded from the web. Alderman Feldman wanted to compliment the Arts Council on the people selected to be on the panel judging these applications as they sound highly professional, very capable people. It is interesting that they come from all over the metropolitan area. Alderman Rainey asked if these people are paid and was told they are paid a stipend, a hundred dollars per person. They spend a minimum of four hours here, which does not include travel time and not including the time they take away from here preparing for this. Alderman Rainey called for any further discussion, hearing none, called for the motion of recommendlna the Cultural Arts Grant Fundinq Awards approval. Motion unanimousiy approved (4-0). Alderman Newman thought before the Task Force makes recommendations they need to meet with this committee mid way through and share w+th us some of their thinking and hear some of our thinking in terms of how we view this building, what our budget intentions are, and our budget concerns in general. Mr. Greenblatt asked if it is possible that on June le they could have some representation at their next Task Force meeting to which Alderman Newman asked why this can't be done at the next Human Services Committee meeting. Ms. Gaynor said this was mentioned and after they had an opportunity to put everything together they will be ready to meet and have a dialogue with you. Alderman Rainey said a date agreeable to everyone will be figured out when this can be done. VII. BIOTERRORISM GRANT Alderman Rainey noted the City will be receiving 520,000 from the Illinois Department of Public Health and called for any discussion regarding this communication from Mr. Terry. There being no discussion, this communication was accepted by the committee. Vlp. ADJOURNMENT Before calling for adjournment Alderman Jean -Baptiste proposed a resolution for Council adoption through this oommittee and Inquired what the process is for that Alderman Rainey said this resolution should be brought to the committee to get it on the agenda. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would want it to get on the agenda for the next meeting. The resolution Is in support of the study for reparations. Alderman Rainey called for adjournment at 8:40 p.m. and announced the committee would be going on a tour of the Noyes Cultural Arts Center. Respectfully submitted, Y",Y�Audrey Trotsk , Department of Health & Human Services Page 10. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, April 1, 2002 Civic Center - Council Chamber 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Newman, and Rainey MEMBER ABSENT: Alderman Jean -Baptiste STAFF PRESENT: Doug Gaynor, Bill Stafford. Bob Domecker, Alisa Dean, Maureen Barry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard, Diane Benjamin, (Evanston Township); Jane Grover (Mental Health Board); Sharon Eckersall (Township Assessor); Ann Carra, Don Walton (Evanston Recreation Board): Betty Ester, Consultants, Chris Dunlavey. Kim Martin, Hans Hess (Brailsford and Dunlavey); Janet Jordan (Moody, Nolan, Inc.); Robert Sit (Site Design Group) PRESIDING: Alderman Feldman I. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Feldman called the meeting to order at 7:18 p.m. and announced some interesting and significant items will be an tonight's agenda which he would like to deal with thoroughly and efficiently. IL APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE MARCH 4, 2002 MEETING The minutes of the March 4.2002 meeting were called and unanimously approved f3-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF THE MARCH 2O01 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman called for any questions or discussion regarding the March 2001 monthly Township bills. Hearing none he called for a motion to approve. Alderman Newman moved for acceptance to approve the March 2002 Township bills, motion unanimously approved (3-0). IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE PROPOSED BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE 2002-03 FISCAL YEAR Alderman Feldman called upon Township Supervisor, Pat Vance for any comments she might have related to the budget to which Ms. Vance said she did not have any comments but would be happy to answer any of the committee's questions. Alderman Newman commented on something he noticed in the budget that could cause a bit of a problem. The Township budget is based on an average figure of 80 General Assistance clients per month and the monthly report lists the number as 87. his concern is going into next the year using the number 80. He appreciates the fact that is not a padded number but in terms of projections you have a reasonable number to meet your expectations. Looking at a twelve month period of 87 clients a month, knowing we are moving into a down economy and part of those last months were In an up economy is the reason he feels using the number 80 is not the right number. He understands you have a twelve- month average but would suggest some number above 87.90 to him would be a difficult number to meet considering the way the economy is going. He is just throwing this out to as food for thought and giving you his main concern looking at your budget figures, Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Vance if that immediately presents a problem other than unbalancing the budget. Ms. Vance responded it does present a problem especially on the revenue side as it decreases General Assistance Revenue. She did consult with her staff and together they looked at each person getting the maximum amount of the grant, $150.00 for the grant, plus the allowed personal allowance, which is not the case for all the clients. Alderman Newman asked how many of the 87 clients get $334.00 a month and was told about 78 or 79 clients, to which Alderman Newman said that is still pretty close for comfort. He understands why you used that number and is not being critical but is concerned as to whether or not you're going to balance at the end of the year. You cannot totally control that number because people walk in your door and if they are eligible you fund them. He is merely asking that you really take a look at that number Page 1. since we have a few months before approval of this budget. Ms. Vance said she would go back and again look at the figures. Alderman Newman said Ms. Vance could tell the committee what she would do if it remains at 80 and it comes out to an average of 87 or 90. His concern is how will it be paid for at the end of the year, would the Township be in a situation where you might have to lay off staff or something of that nature. Alderman Newman asked when this budget has to be approved and was told the end of ,tune. Alderman Feldman said the Township budget will be put on the agenda again for the May Human Services Committee meeting in the hope that it will be settled by then. Alderman Newman inquired regarding the transtbon with the Emergency Assistance Program to which Ms. Vance said the program will start April 2901. Alderman Newman also inquired regarding whether the Township is subletting any of their space on Main Street other than to the Township Assessor and asked how many square feet of space there is in that office. He was told they are not subletting any space other than to the Assessor as they use all their office space. Mr. Stafford commented that one of the transactions that will be taking place when the Emergency Assistance contract is completed with the Township is we will be paying them for those services. There is still loan money that the Township owes the City and staff has suggested that instead of going through the entire issue of the City paying them we should just take part of loan that they accumulate from what we owe them and forgive the loan without having an extra transaction. For example, they owe the City $50,000 and over the course of the next six months the City will be paying them $100,000 plus. To avoid a few checks we would suggest one way to possibly do this is forgive those loans with the amount accumulated. Alderman Newman asked how much the loan was and how much has been paid back. Mr. Stafford responded it was S150,000, they have paid down $100,000 by paying once a quarter. Alderman Newman said if the Township does not have a problem with this he would support it. He would like to comment that they are doing a great job paying back that loan and appreciates the fact of how seriously they are taking that loan. The Township deserves credit for that considering some of the difficulties the Township has had in the past. Alderman Feldman asked if that would be an official write down and if that money would be attributed to their repayment. Mr. Stafford said yes, but he did not want to do that without the permission of the committee. Alderman Rainey did not have any problem with that but said she was curious if the committee would be receiving production reports regarding Emergency Assistance. Ms. Vance said, as a part of their contractual agreement they are currently working on reports that will be given on a monthly basis. Alderman Feldman said the committee would like copies of that report. Alderman Rainey did not quite understand if the loan money was to be used for the assistance payments. Mr. Stafford responded, no, it would be used in payment for the contract to do the Emergency Assistance Program. They still owe the City $50,000 and the City will be paying them $100,000. Alderman Rainey said we are not realty paying them $100,000 theyre going to have our money to provide assistance to others. Mr. Stafford said what we would do is set up a quarterly contract with them for $25,000 a quarter, to which Alterman Rainey said then we are pretty sure that in six months that $50,000 will be used for assistance. Of course, we would not know that because under the current circumstances we never get reports like that from our Emergency Assistance which is why she is asking because she has no idea how long it would take to give away 550,000. Ms. Vance said according to the contract they will be taming in monthly reimbursement amounts as well as the listing of clients served. Alderman Rainey asked who will be doing that to which Ms. Vance responded according to the contract the Township has to submit that information to Alisa ` Dean of Human Services. Alderman Rainey asked who in the Township office will be providing the assistance, and was told initially Charles Combs the Township Program Manager plus other staff. If Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Vance and the other Township members in attendance and said they took forward to seeing them at the next Human Services Committee meeting. M V. PRESENTATION ON GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM Alisa Dean, Committee Intervention Coordinator, noted committee members received a memo regarding this and gave a short overview of the program. The United States Hispanic Leadership Institute has been around for about fifteen years and served hundreds of different communities around Chicago and in Indiana. Basically the key word here is bilateral - education. We are asking for the committee's support in joining a couple of presentations for this group. There will be a nine -week class starting this Thursday with a tour of the working of the Civic Center. Alderman Newman asked who is being shown this, to which Ms. Dean responded a group of twenty Hispanic families living In Evanston were selected who are very anxious to meet you. Alderman Newman thought this is a fine program and moved for approval. Alterman Feldman asked how the committee and Council could help. Ms. Dean said they would like you to let them know what you do and how City government works. Alderman Feldman asked when will the committee see them to which Ms. Dean said a fist of dates will be e-mailed to committee members for their approval of meetings that will take place here at the Civic— Center. Mayor Morton and Alderman Bernstein will be doing the first meeting. Alderman Feldman suggested having the people came and witness at least a part of the Human Services Committee meeting next month which would be a way -- in which they would see what the Council does and how they deal with given issues. Ms. Dean said that is a very good = Page 2. idea and she will definitely recommend that Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Dean to have Mr. Terry put this on the HSC agenda. Alderman Rainey wanted to know why Araoey Conchola, Outreach Specialist, was not in attendance at this meeting, to which Ms. Dean responded Ms. Conchola is auending school tonight. Alderman Rainey asked when this big community meeting took place where R was decided to nc4 this program. Ms. Dean said about two weeks ago a meeting of interest took place and fifteen or twenty families were invited. Alderman Rainey said then the participants were hand picked, it wasn't something that the Hispanic community was able to avail themselves of. Ms. Dean said they looked at families that have been here fifteen plus years and asked about getting involved in the government through their church. A lot of the families are those who were interested Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Dean. V. CONSIDERATION OF THE SOUTHEAST EVANSTON RECREATION BUILDING ASSESSMENT AND SITE ANALYSIS STUDY Mr. Gaynor said as early as the 1990's there has been significant interest in developing some type of a community recreation center in Southeast Evanston and this evening they would like to present the study that has been conducted. A number of studies have occurred over the cast ten years and about eighteen months ago through Representative Julie Hamos they were fortunate to receive a grant through the State of Illinois for $250.000 to do what they would consider a Needs Assessment. We will be going through the Needs Assessment which incorporated a number of components, market analysis, programming, site analysis. etc. This evening we have with us the consulting firm, recommended by staff and approved by City Council, that was awarded the contract in early 2001. Chris Dunlavey the President of Brailsford and Dunlavey located in Washington, D. C. will open the presentation and introduce the team who worked on this study and who will present the methodology as well the results of this study. Mr. Dunlavey introduced himself and noted, as there is a lot of data to sift through they will try to deliver it to this committee as concisely as they can. In the interest of moving quickly through the material they will hold their own time available at the end to answer any questions you may have. After a brief introduction they will march the committee through the major sections of the study which include market analysis. architectural programming, the definition of the facilities that they consider demand to be demonstrated for, site analysis and determination of a financial analysis of the potential operation of the facility, any questions, answers and comments from you and then they will identify what the next steps in the process are. By way of introduction Brailsford and Dunlavey is a facility planning firm that focuses on quality of life facilities such as recreation and sports facalrues. They provide services ranging from market and financial feasibility assessment to programming and master planning and have worked on more than twenty community recreation projects throughout the country. Mr. Dunlavey is joined today by his Project Manager, Kim Martin, and Analysis Contact, Hans Hess. Partners from two other firms are Janet Jordon from Moody, Nolan, Inc., a sports and recreational architectural and planning firm and Robert Sit from Site Design Group a landscape architecture and planning firm. Each of us will speak to one aspect or another of our analysis Through the data you will consistently hear some key things that we'll come back to throughout the discussion. Our focus was is it demonstrable that Southeast Evanston is under served for recreational and community services and if so what is the right program to provide to remedy to meet the needs there in the community. What we kept hearing, that we were most clearly focused on, was a community building, creating opportunities for the community to come together to address intergeneration needs and personal wellness, fitness, and development needs. Those things in tum drove the site selection recommendations that we developed because they impacted the building size and configuration that we ended up recommending, they affected mgeography of the selection of the site and affected the ability of the facility to serve the diverse constituents that our market analysis indicates are important to serve to meet the community's needs. That having been said the planning area that was Identified for us as Southeast Evanston is twenty-one blocks in the Southeast comer of the City bounded by Oakton Street, Howard Street, Ridge Avenue, and Chicago Avenue and as such is hard against the southern border of Evanston and the northern border of Chicago. Within that planning area we conducted a range of market analysis, which Ms. Martin will briefly walk you through our findings in that area. Ms. Martin said she was going to highlight the key findings for their market analysis. They have been working on this study since November when they kicked the project off. The many groups and organizations they met with were also invited to public meetings and focus groups that were held. In addition they covered a range of residents that included over 300 residents that were interviewed and included the elementary and middle school students as well. A few of the goals they heard as they conducted these inter&-ws and focus groups, was first of all to insure that Southeast Evanston has equitable access to community recreation facftes and programs and to improve the quality of life in Evanston. These are goals that the residents hope that a community recreation facility and programs could accomplish in addition to providing youth programs andfor preschool flex child care in the Southeast Evanston neighborhood and also meet the intergenerational needs, providing programs and facility spaces for all ages, in general we heard from residents that they would like a facility and programs to help them build the community. to addition we studied trends and looked at what else is going on in the community recreation centers, the Evanston McGaw YMCA, and other municipality recreation centers such as Skokie. Oak Park and Morton Grove. We teamed from our tours and interviews about existing Page 3. conditions, there are no indoor aquatic opportunities at the City managed recreation centers, they are available at the YMCA, the YWCA, and the High School. In addition all the facilities we k>oked at including the Evanston Community Recreation Centers and those in the other regional communities, had a focus on providing youth prcgram space and/or chddcare, and preschool space. Two of the non Evanston facilities looked at, Skokie and Morton Grove have annual user fees such as membership fees to use their facilities, they charge these fees for their residents and even higher fees for non residents. Alderman Newman asked if this just pertains to some of the Skokie and Morton Grove buildings or does it pertain to all of their buildings. Are we talking about Skokie's Weber Center or the Oakton and Devonshire Centers? He is not referring to pools but recreation buudings. Those facilities that have pools have had user fees forever and anybody who has a pool charges a user fee. Fee example, they don't charge at the Devonshire center which is a recreation building across from the pool. Everybody knows they charge for the Weber Center and charge for the pools, but that is not the equivalent to the building we have other than the Levy Center where we don't charge a fee to belong. Ms. Martin said that is because your facilities don't have pools. Alderman Newman wanted to know if you don't have a pool what do you call an annual user fee. Ms. Martin said the Morton Grove and Skokie faxslties that do have the pools charge an annual base membership fee, the Oak PaA facilities don't have indoor pools and do not charge a base membership fee. Alderman Feldman had a comment regarding the statement in the analysis "limited indoor aquatic indoor walkingfjogging opportunities In Evanston facildes,' that would be a need for the entire community not just one location. Ms. Martin said that is in regards to Evanston's community recreation centers managed by the City of Evanston all over the entire City of Evanston. For example, take a fitness center in Morton Grove with an indoor runningriogging track, this contemporary fitness center and indoor jogging track does not exist at any of the Evanston community recreation centers. Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Martin if she is saying that this would be a facility that would meet the needs of those areas and the entire City. Ms. Martin said a community recreation center developed in Southeast Evanston would be open to the entire City of Evanston. If there was a pool built in a new community recreation center in Southeast Evanston rt would be open to all the other residents in Evanston. Alderman Feldman said he wanted to make it dear that need is probably present in every single community as we don't have aquatic and indoor walkingfjogging opportunities in any community and therefore is not a particular need in Southeast Evanston as opposed to having it satisfied in other areas_ Ms. Martin said however, there are opportunities in the YMCA, the YWCA, and the Evanston High School for that to which Alderman Feldman added there are also significant charges to use those facilities and it the YMCA was located on Howard Street this community would still need a pubric facility because so many people could not afford to use it. Ms. Martin agreed that would depend on their user fee structure. Ms. Martin moved on to the written surrey mailed out in both English and Spanish to every household in the planning area. They received a 10% return rate, 216 surveys from households were returned. The survey had a 6.67% margin of error at a 95% confidence level which means if you did this survey 100 times, 95 times it would come within a plus or minus 6.67% margin of error of the results. Alderman Rainey wanted to clarify the comparing of all recreational opportunities at City of Evanston sites with other communities. You are not just saying these are shortcomings of recreation opportunities in South Evanston. Ms. Martin said they are also demonstrating a trend in community recreation centers in this region that the Evanston Community Recreation Centers, i.e., Crown, Fleetwood Jourdain, and Chandler do offer youth programs and preschool so the other paints do apply to all the recreation renters. Alderman Newman questioned that the majority of non Evanston municipalities charge base annual user fees and said he is not asking this question in any way to infer a shortcoming but his reason is it was implied that somehow it was routine to charge a user fee and were they going to charge a user fee for this building. He did not read anywhere in revenues where they had pool revenues at this facility and asked if there is a plan for a pool at this facility. Ms. Martin said yes then: is a pool component included in two of the sites they have proposed. Alderman Newman asked where are == the pool revenues in the projected operating expenses to which Ms. Martin said it is under Other Speculative Revenue Receipts. Ms. Martin said you will see in our programming our methodology of getting to an ideal program for a recreation center does include indoor water space. Alderman Rainey added on the various sites you also have, as in site A, annual swim revenues $144,000 so swim revenues is "itemized. Ms. Martin said that is capturing 10% of that population for swim passes, on page 4, tab 8 of the document, under Financial Analysis, also on page 9, tab 4. Alderman Feldman said there is also Revenue for Annual Fitness Membership, which would be revenues just to the fitness center. Ms. Martin noted Other Speculative Revenue also inch des 25% of the fitness and swim passes awarded as scholarships. Alderman = Newman asked if in the Other Speculative Revenue listing there was a pool component why did you call it Speculative Revenue, why wouldn't that be revenue of the building? Mr. Dunlavey said the term speculative is just to refer to day to day drop in fee use or tees that tend to vary month by month rather than being stable through the year which is a category we distinguish from annual memberships and by speculative it can be seasonally variable rather than a single foxed annual cost Alderman Newman asked how much is an annual swim membership, and was told $20,00 a month, $240.00 a year. He also asked how much it would cost to come in on a daily basis and was told that would be a fee of $3.00 a day. Page 4. Ms. Martin continued about the written surveys and explained the margin of error with a confidence bubble and the 10°% in the written surveys they got back from residents. There were 500 residents in the 216 households that were surveyed. Another important point that surprised them was that 40% of those households responded they currently belong to a recreation/sports club and are averaging spending S40 00 a month for those fees. Alderman Feldman thought that was remarkable. Ms. Martin said she could spend an entire presentation talking about survey results but all the straight frequencies are listed in tab 4 of the document as well as additional survey analysis which shows the strong demand of that diverse population. Alderman Feldman said one could say it shows a strong market for it but it also shows those people are getting it now. Ms. Martin said taken from the same survey they asked households to indicate how interested they would be in a list of instructional classes and in a ranking of those chose 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 through 5, 1 being not interested, 5 being very interested. The weclness lasses were way at the top of the chart, there were additional yoga fitness classes and healthy cooking. 64% of the households were very interested in that type of instructional class. Next was art classes, enrichment programs for career services, adult education, language classes, etc. Swimming was number 4 and general sports was number 5. Another chart derived from the survey responses was they tested support for various sites of locating a new community recreation center in Southeast Evanston. On the survey they tested six sites, outdoor park space, air space, renovated existing retail space on Howard, renovated existing residential space, remove existing retail space on Howard, and remove existing residential. The most support received from 48% of the households was for placing a new community recreation facility in existing residential removing and replacing, and existing retail. The least amount of support was for outdoor park space. Another item tested on the survey was size and scope for a facility. Three different facilities were tested options, different building components from a smaller building to a larger building. The largest building had all of these areas, multi activity rooms, childcare center, computer center, meeting moats, lounge, spa, fitness center, gym, jogging track, etc. Also with that facility came fees, access to fitness center $20.00 a month, swimming pass S20.00 a month. open basketball $2.00 a visit. Alderman Newman asked what the fees were at other communities for a comparable center, for example Oakton which has a pool, what do they charge per month. Ms. Martin believed the Oakton Center offered an annual pass at $150,00 a year for a resident for the entire building. Alderman Newman asked if they have gym space there or is it just the pool in the summer. He also asked d the Weber Center has a pool and what their fee is, to which Ms. Martin responded their fee is $245.00 for a year. Ms. Martin went on to say they tested small, medium and large facility sizes for different fees with the results being 70% of the survey respondents instigated an interest in the most comprehensive facifity. That was the largest that was connected through fees of S20.00 for the fitness, $20.00 for swimming, and S3.00 for open basketball. Those fees are structured off of not any pools existing in Evanston recreation centers but fitness centers and also their open basketball pass rate. Alderman Newman wanted to understand if Ms. Martin is saying in the survey if there is no pool there is no interest because it looks to him that Option 2 got 17% and they indicate an interest, but when you take out the pool in Option 3 you have no interest. Ms. Martin said they actually asked them to chose one response only, the one they were most interested in. Alderman Newman asked if any part of the survey was done if there was any interest if the pool is out of the facility because you have options with and without a pool. Mr. Dunlavey said the section they are about to move on to, demand based programming, where they stratify peoples' in every different kind of sub facility including a pool relative to other demand components you will be able to see how important the pool ranks to other elements. Hans Hess said he will be explaining program methodology. Mr. Hess said the most important question they ask on the survey is what they call their demand -based program question. in this question each activity„is listed on the survey and they ask people to answer questions about frequency of use and duration. That data is analyzed in two significant ways for depth and for breath. Depth of demand is the kind of demand we see where that activity is integral to the person's life style, breath of demand is the kind of demand where somebody does it once in a while or maybe irregularly and are still interested in it but do not do it very deeply or as part of their weekly routine. When the depth and breath analysis is put together they end up ranking all the questions and organize them into first priority activities, second, third and forth priority activities. Each of those activities is accommodated at a certain level, in other words a first priority activity is accommodated at li0 to 90% of a peak demand. second priority activities get accommodated at 60 to 70%, third priority activities get accommodated at 50 to 60%, etc. The results of the Southeast Evanston survey show first priority activities were fitness or cardio vascular machines, second free weights, third weight machines, forth jogging and walking tracks, and fifth group exercise. All these things reflect the need for personal and individual improvement and personal wellness. Alderman Newman asked whether everything in this survey with the exception of the indoor jogging is at the Levy Center. Mt Gaynor said they do not have the indoor jogging but do have the ability to do walking inside, nor do they have the ability to do free weights. Alderman Newman asked it there is the ability to add free weights in the room. He asked 9 any of the respondents to the survey knew there was going to be a new Levy Center and these types of services. Mr. Hess said they did not ask that question and are doubtful that anybody would have known the exact program elements in the levy Center. Alderman Newman asked why wouldn't they ask that question because he thinks it so basic to what we're doing. If people are possibly going to have that service In the immediate area, although not the exact same area, Page 5. within the next three months they would have had a different response to what they would want in programming. It seems to him that doing this survey without informing the people being surveyed there is going to be a new building located here, not within the immediate area but at least two miles closer to this area than say his house is. It would have fit somewhere into the survey to let people know before replying to their need in their immediate neighborhood what is going to be in their more expansive neighborhood. Mr. Hess said this question is for a center in their immediate neighborhood they're not asking a question for a broader context than that. Alderman Newman said in one sense you talk about the people paying money at the Evanston Athletic Club or the YWCA which was very valuable to you. Obviously people were willing to go and use recreation outside their immediate neighborhood and pay a fee which was important information for you because that helped establish they would be willing to pay a fee for this building. It seems to him in terms of the results of the survey the people in that area would have benefited from knowing they would be able to get this service at Mulford and Dodge as of May 1, 2002. two streets they readily recognize. Mr. Ounlavey said they very much appreciate that point and he thinks its well worth keeping in mind as we interpret the survey data together with you. The explanation of why that question specifically was not included In the survey is simply we are working within a very limited range of questions we can ask to even get people to respond to this survey effectively. The best questions we can ask are factually based about people, that is what would you like to use and what do you actually use. It is very hard to deal with are you aware that there is something coming down the pike and what is your perception of how you will use that facility. Our questions are going to be directed very much to how would you like to use the facility in your community and stay within the planning area. That being said we do appreciate your point and think that is important to apply it to the thinking as they interpret the survey. You will also note as Mr. Hess moves on translating this to square feet of demand we think there is a tremendous amount of demand that goes far beyond what the Levy Center is able to provide on a square foot basis. Alderman Newman said now he is having trouble because you are not just proposing a recreation center for those blocks you're going outside of that area and that presumes that people wits go outside their area for recreation. One of the things you said in your report was revenue generators for this building would be people from North Chicago and that presumes that people are willing to go outside that limited area for recreation. To him it was very important to this particular survey for Evanstonians to know what and where certain recreational services were going to be offered within their neighborhood. He does not define their neighborhood as just the physical boundaries of your survey area. He thinks you may have gotten different results to these specific questions of what people needed if they knew at Dodge and Mulford they were going to have at least three or four of those items, maybe not the jogging track although there is a walking track there, for a good part of the year, that we paid for. He is raising that question because he's trying to understand what these responses mean. Alderman Rainey noted one of the pages in the document, the 4" or b°i page not a number page, in tab 4, is a very specific listing of the percentage of where everybody who responded to the survey now goes. There is a category called Other Outdoor Facility, but for the most part it lists exactly where those people are telling us they now go. in fact 3.3% do go to the Levy Center. The information is there and it is interesting to know where they are going. Alderman Feldman commented that he is hearing people in the community want a certain recreational facility and you have described what is included. It is even discussed whether or not we should have it replacing private, residential, or commercial property, etc. A lot of this also has to do with what activities they want to see in their community. What he is trying to figure out is why would we not think that anybody, not just in Southeast Evanston, faced with a chance of = getting a public facility with the kind of opportunities for activities that you are describing would say no, and that Is even with 40% of the people presently finding recreational activities in other places. For some reason he thought the study was to determine not whether it was wanted because he can't image an area of the City of Evanston that you would propose this kind of building that people would respond much differently. What he thought this study was going to do was to indicato the dramatic significant difference in this area as to why a facility should be and must be there rather than five or eight blocks away or enhancing some facility we have now. All of this is fine and very interesting but what goes on in the building as to whether they have weight machines or free weights is much less important to him than whether or not it should be there at all. He's wondering if there is data within the documents that address that particular issue. To --- expand on that he is getting the feeling this is like an enterprise that the City of Evanston would go through to find out whether we have customers, people that would go there, what they want to do, what it would cost us to provide it and how much money we might make as a result of it and what shortfall there would be which is what he is getting at. Mr. Dunlavey said an honest answer is that is essentially the exercise they are working through. Alderman Feldman said that doesn't help him as a member of the City Council to vote or to support this issue. It doesn't help it all because he would like that two blocks away from his house and he does not think anybody here wouldn't like that five or six blocks away from their house, that is a given. The question then is if that is the case and we then find out that a significant number of people are traveling all over to get to places if we say the people that aren't traveling are the only ones remaining to be served then that reduces the population that we are actually serving out of need, not out of preference. It was always expressed to him that people in that area couldn't or wouldn't go out of that area. He notices in at least in one of the sites you are slightly closer to Howard Street than you are to Main Street. Right on a Main Street we have a facility that he believes a lot of the people in the If Ward and the Southeast community are going to now. He thinks from the Council's point of view the idea of a recreational center fulfilling its need in any community is something if we don't know as a result of your Page &. study we know instinctively as a result of knowing our constituents. Certainly the idea of a pool has been tossed around in this community for a long time, lap swimming absolutely, jogging track absolutely. When we were thinking of building the Levy Center one the things we were thinking of was that we had to reduce our aspirations dramatically but we knew it was something the community wants and he is beginning to sense what you've put together here is a very good diagram of a recreational center that this community. the City of Evanston, might use when it could afford it Then the quest of placement is another issue, he is not suggesting it es not needed in Southeast Evanston but there are people that can make an excellent case for it to be in any other place. Mr. Dunlavey saiu he very much takes Alderman Feldman's point but the contrast to be drawn is whether you're asking the question is there demand at a given area to support a facility or whether you're asking the question is there so much disparity between the services provided in this community and provided in other parts of the community that that should be remedied. He agrees that our focus is more on answering the first question rather than the second but he does think we have the data to understand that disparity issue it was not the focus we looked and we do think there are some important things to be understood. The question asked was is there demand and economic capacity to participate in and support a facility in this Southeast Evanston community and we believe it is an important question to answer and our answer to that is yes. The second half of the question to which we have not been able to speak yet, but is equally an area of focus is, is there a place in Southeast Evanston where that can be made to work. Those are the issues we focused on and he does not know whether they answer all the decislon making needs of the Council but to the degree we have data in the surveys there are a lot of ways we can tabulate information that was gleaned from them. We are certainly willing to take a look at that and see If the response is what you are looking for in there. Alderman Rainey said one of the things that did come about in the past six years is the community greatly supported the need for a community recreation center. However, there have been such significant changes taking place in South Evanston in the last few years that we began hearing some objections to the site of a community center in South Evanston and it seemed frivolous to pursue that goal if there was not support for it One of the things she discussed with Representative Hamos several years ago was the s4e, each time they would see a site that appeared possible there were at least twenty reasons why that site was impossible. What Representative Hamos finally decided was the best way to make this determination would be for an outside neutral source with no connections to the community come in and survey the population, make a determination of whether or not there was a desire for a recreation center, whether it could be sustained, and just as important where could it be sited. In that sense the consultants did their job which is what we are hearing. Some of the demographics and informabon gleaned from the statistics are very, very interesting. Alderman Rainey said she was somewhat surprised about some of it and she is there all the time. Alderman Newman said he understands the informabon but there was a change in what was talked about five or six years ago and is not sure why that did not come back to the Council before it was decided to change the scope of this. The original argument for this center was that there was such a need the recreation purpose wasn't to compete with the Evanston Athletic Club it was because there was no place for kids to go to. We had to get kids off the street and needed a specific center. He recalls one person said to him there is something that is needed here and if that couldn't sell what was originally contemplated and we completely changed the scope and the demographics who the intended users were supposed to be he thinks there should have been some prior discussion with the Council. He would like to clarify this a very fine study and he appreciates all the work that was done but his expectation when he came here tonight was that this was going to be a center to deal with some of the recreation needs of a very down trodden part of our population and there were needs in that particular community to get kids off the street and to provide some place for people to go at night but this is completely different and he is a little surprised about how the scope and mission changed. He knows you have had your meetings and invitations have gone out but he does not see where this is anything like what was talked about at the Council or what has been mentioned to the Council years ago. This is a great building but it can be built anywhere in Evanston, it does not have to be built in Southeast Evanston, Mr. Gaynor said he was not here six or seven years ago, but his understanding was it has been identified as far as deficiencies in Southeast Evanston for not only open space but for indoor recreational opportunities. There is no place to conduct indoor recreation activities in Southeast Evanston. Alderman Feldman asked what about Southwest Evanston to which Mr. Gaynor said he is only speaking for Southeast Evanston and he would expect there will be an impact after the Levy Center opens but he cannot tell what that impact will be until we have at least a year of activity under our belt to see what that impact will be when the Levy Center is available to the general public In the evenings and cn weekends outside the specifically targeted senior citizen hour;. Another comment is 40% of the people surveyed were mobile and went someplace for recreation activity that leaves 60% of the people that are not going anywhere and possibly their needs are not being met. Maybe we do need to have our consultants look a little closer as Mr. Dunlavey ind:. ated and look at some of the data to answer some of the questions. He is not too sure the scope has changed from what was proposed and was put before the City Council several months ago as far as the study Is concerned and what was eventually awarded to the consultant. Alderman Newman said there was one person who was deeply involved in this who at one point told him the people of Southeast Evanston just need a building that could even be something like the building we have at James Park. He is Page 7. referring to the field house. the small building there as it was descnbad to him as focused on the specific population and the needs of that circle. The reason that circle was created was that circle needed certain recreational services available in the neighborhood so kids would have a place to go instead of congregating in parks or places on Howard Street and we needed to get this done for social service purposes which is the type of thinking he supports. What is so different about this is this building you are proposing can be built anywhere in town, The answers you are getting to these questions, which Alderman Feldman pointed out, you would get in any neighborhood. Of course people in this neighborhood don t to pay 540.00 a month at the Evanston Athletic Club or S 1.000.00 to get into Northwestern, they would rather walk to a City facility for $20.00. it seems to him this project is no longer specific to Southeast Evanston especially with the Levy Center coming. His next question is let's say you take out the first priority, what does first priority mean there? Does it mean that is the most important reason to built the building? Does that mean that is what the most people want? Does that mean you don't build the building unless you need the top part? What does first priority activity mean? Mr. Dunlavey said the best way to answer that is to say that's the highest demand activity expressed in the survey. Alderman Newman then said lets say that you took that out and the highest demand you got was everything that is In second priority. In your opinion would it be a need for the building or would that be the community expressing yes I want the building when the highest response you can get would be 29% for the pool. If all the first priority parts are all zeros, nobody is interested in fitness machines, free weights. weight machines, indoor jogging, and group exercise, the highest response you get is the 29.7% which is a second priority activity. Does that response tell you that the building is not really needed or will not generate a lot of interest. Mr. Dunlavey said he is concerned that we are honing in here on what we intended to illuminate as part of the study and is being focused in as this characterizes what the building has. We haven't gotten to the part showing all the elements of the building and what their relative square footages are. Mr. Gaynor said the next portion of the presentation will show a relationship to the percentages to the square footage and the aquatic piece which is a very large portion of the overall building even though it shows 29°% rt is 8,000 square feet of a 37,000 square foot building. He would like to make one comment, our Crown Center is a community center which is very similar to Chandler or Fleetwood but that has the ice rink and makes it a Citywide facility. If a facility such as this was to built whether it is Southeast Evanston or Northwest Evanston or wherever. the swimming pool part of it would be unique and similar to the ice rink so that it is a Citywide facility. Possibly the mutt purpose rooms where there would be some type of an art or painting class could be done at Crown. Fleetwood, or Chandler. A number of the components within the total center are what was the original community center which Alderman Newman Indicated could be the size of the building in James Park, the field house, but the total components makes up the whole. The next part of the presentation will make more sense. Alderman Newman said he knows he is not an expert nor was he at the meetings but he is trying to understand the data. He respects all the work that has been done, you have all done a fabulous job, as this is a very impressive study you have put together. He hopes when he is asking these questions you are not thinking that he does not respect your work as he does and wants to understand your work and what your charts and graphs mean and is asking if this survey Indicates what people wanted in the building. What it indicates to him is what people wanted most in the building was the fitness machines, the free weights, the weight machines, the indoor jogging, and group exercise and we established that they did not know that a lot of that would be at the Levy Center when they filled out the surrey. What he wants to know is if the people didn't have the fitness rooms and everything else in there and you got a response that their interest in depth was 29.7 % and all the responses you got were without the fitness, would there be any significance other than there was a desire to have the facility there or the need for the facility there. Mr. Dunlavey said the reason he is having trouble answering that question is you are posing it in a wary that does not reflect what the data is supposed to mean. We don't set a threshold that says if we get 50% depth or more then its worth building a space. This is a relative ranking of priorities that takes all the elements that people say they want, what is most important and what is least important because reality is there is enough demand in every one of the surveys they have done that there is more demand expressed than anybody can afford to build. You can't build what everybody would like to have in every community so you need some relative ranking of them, what is most important to the most people. Alderman Newman asked if there is enough demand to say we need this type of building in this particular location, to which Mr. Dunlavey responded, yes. Mr. Duniavey wanted to _ make another point because he was not sure if it is being said or he is just hearing it this way, but he thought he heard it suggested that if what people are saying they want there are the kinds of things we could view as high end fitness and wellness clubs then somehow that is not property responding to the needs of what we would call a down trodden population and we would expect those needs to be something different. In their view the best thing they can do is ask people what it is they want to have without applying their perception of whether that Is an appropriate thing to be demanded. Alderman Newman said what he is saying is that some of what you have asked for here was never intended to be a center in Southeast Evanston providing the comprehensive services that an Evanston Athletic Club builds, if somebody wants to correct him on this please do so. This was represented as there being a need and he is not saying people who are down trodden don't have the same recreation needs, but part of the problem as it was being described to us was that people can't afford to pay so they needed to have services offered without a charge. That was his OPP— understanding of the services. He knows basketball, childcare, and some of the other things were on the list and in this day and age he would say the fitness would be included. The type of facility that is described here does not have anything to do with the original discussions that took place or were shared with members of the Council, they are in no way Page 8. connected. Just speaking as one member of the Council we have something totally new here which is why d is frustrating to him because at some point in time if there was a change Ln direction it should have or could have gotten back to us as a Cound a little earlier. This has nothing to do with the consultants as you have all done the best job you could do but the scope changed and he is trying to Find out when. He is here for a completely different project and has just discovered this. Mr_ Dunlavey said to be fair he thinks if the dire=on changed it changed because of what they found as the expression of demand out there and we were given a charger to determine what kinds of facilities there were a demand for in that community. He does want to beg your indulgence as he would like to get to the point where they can show you r* entire facility program as you are going to see some connections to what you are initially talking about Before we do that, he would like to underline, they have based all of this very much on direct input from that community through all the market analysis mechanisms they know. This survey has been much more, here were dynamic interactive sessions, personal face to face meetings, extensive interviews with people who work with the community, all of which comes together with the numbers they're focusing on a bit to be a facility that they think is a response to what that community has expressed a demand for. If it is true that ends up being a facility that any community would like to have then in our view it is not necessarily a criticism of the program and may well be a worth while thing anyway. Alderman Newman said definetely every neighborhood in the City would like to have this as would every neighborhood in the City like to have a branch library. This is a great building you are proposing and he would like to have it somewhere, the issue is whether or not it should be in that particular area and if it Fits in with the mission that he thought originally was being contemplated there. Also, does it fit into where we are in 2002 when have the new levy Center opening up which basically has the first priority list and if we don't have the free weights we cuuki probably put them in. Alderman Rainey wanted to speak to the whole issue of change. Over the years many people, including herself, have erroneousty spoken on behalf of a community that has finally gotten a chance to speak for itself. It shouldn't surprise any of us that the community that lives in the planning area is just lake everybody else, they might in some cases be blacker, they might in some cases be poorer, but they have the same wants and needs and desires as other people and she certainly has tried to speak for them in the past with absolutely no basis for doing that other than a desire to help. In this case we actually did the right thing, we went to people not only through the survey but also through focus groups conducted with hundreds of children. We did not just ask the parents or the grandparents, we asked the children, we asked the adults, we sent out 2.000 surveys. She thinks what we got back was a reflection of what people want, what their desires are and just because they're the same desires other people have she does not think it is a reason to categorically reject the concept of providing a facility if we can find the money to do so. It's very revealing, a community of this size cannot utilize a facility of one room at the Levy Center because it's going to have new equipment She would encourage us to listen to the presentation and see where it goes. Alderman Newman wanted to respond to Alderman Rainey's comments and said he thinks what this neighborhood came back with Is exactly what one would expect and he respects that neighborhood. Certainly if we are going to build a building of this magnitude every single neighborhood in the City should have had the right to compete and participate in the same survey. The reason that there was a survey done in Southeast Evanston, done the way it was done, was for an entire different purpose, for an entire different reason, and what is happening here is that other wards were completely shut out of the process of possibly having this type of budding because they certainly are not going to have a $250.000 grant to put together this kind of a survey. If we were going to build this kind of a building and this is the kind of building that we wanted, other wards of the City should have had the opportunity to say we would like to see if there is a better location than along Howard Street Howard Street is a great location for this particular ward but if we were going to go in that direction this building should have been in other wards of the City. He is sorry but it isnot fair to the other wards and other needs of the City that we start a process for one purpose, change it in the middle of it without any members of the Council really knowing it and we say, now we have a building designed and this is the neighborhood that had the only opportunity to have that building. The process that has been set up here is so different than what we originated from. This is a great survey from that particular neighborhood but the statement Alderman Feldman made that every neighborhood in the City would like to have a building like that and would have answered it like that In terms of fairness ttus just collapses to the other members of the Council and to the rest of the City because we so changed the scope of what we were originally talking about here and he is not talking about the Recreation Board, he understands they would like to have a building like this anywhere. If other neighborhoods of the City would have known this is the building that is going to be built there are a lot of neighborhoods that would like to have a chance to be selected as the site for this building. The other neighborhoods of the City were basically excluded and he wants to emphasize excluded, as they never had a chance. As a matter of fact we were hearing from other neighborhoods of the City it shouldn't go there. To him this was completely unfair. He wants included in the minutes, to him it is incredibly unfair to the other wards in the City to the extent that we changed direction here. Mr. Hess continued with the depth and breath analysis they use as a method for square footage requirements based on the amount of breath and depth. Based on their range of percentages of peak use the swimming component for the amount of demand shown there is a substantial amount of aquatic component in the program. Because of site constraints and all sorts of reasons obviously some of the components are dropped out. He did not show the third and forth priorities but showed the programs the priorities show a significant amount of space. The third and forth priorities are things like Page 9. rock climbing and bowling which are listed in the book programs. The actual square footage requirements they recommend for this program gets to about 37,500 square feet. The presentation now focused on site analysis and how they determine that. Outdoor park space came up immediately as the kweest desired place to see a new facility and obviously there are limits as to what is available. The next category is the retail space and looking at pros and cons of this space especially along Howard the list of cons was fMrty large for putting something on Howard. Demolition costs, acquisition costs. an issue of access, issues of perceptions of how that neighborhood is and what it is like. It is not central to the planning area so we did not go any further with that. Robert Sit, from Site Design Group, Janet Jordan from Moody Nolan, Inc. and Kim Martin were to speak to the details of air space and residential options. Ms. Martin said they were first charged with if demand exists for a community recreation building in Southeast Evanston. Presenting that demand and demonstrating that we were then charged with identifying and recommending three sites and extensive site analysis on what type of building and the reasons for choosing those sites. Robert Sit briefly described the sites The first site they looked at, Site A is the air space over the CTA Skokie Swift Line. From Custer it looks down towards the Skokie Swift Bridge just north of the Clyde Brummel Park. What they would be doing is trying to situate the recreation center over the tracks to take as little of the park space away as possible and looking toward the diagonal comer of the park is where they would want to put the entrance. They would also like to utilize the parking space at that Southeast comer of Clyde and Brummel and incorporate that into part of this plan. Janet Jordan said from that information they took the list of spaces that ended up being about 37,000 square feet as the architects did a space study. There is a double gymnasium that is a little over 11,000 square feet. Fitting a double gymnasium into any of the sites became one of the biggest challenges. With this site the main entrance is basically at the comer of Brummel and Clyde. You would walk In and have the double gymnasium spanning the bridge and would go over the tracks. Interestingly on this site this is the existing municipal parking lot at that intersection. Where they have k)cated the pool, the aquatic element of this, on this plan breaks up very easily in case that should happen to be determined to be a phase part of a project. This plan is basically a one floor plan with a mezzanine above, which is a track that runs around the gyms and then intersects into the main entry part of the facility. Most of the fitness is divided between the mezzanine floor and the floor below it This represents about 37,000 square feet of program most of which is the gymnasium, the multi purpose rooms, the aquatics area and the fitness area as well as offices to support all of this. Ms. Martin said it would be important to note when we talk about multi purpose space this is space that could be programming, it could be child care, it could be scheduled to its maximum potential throughout the day seven days of the week. Also multi purpose space can be group fitness and meeting space. The 37,000 square foot facility that was just described in this site which is partially over the air space is about 30% larger than the Fleetwood Jourdain Center. This is the most expensive option looked at. The hard cost for actually building the facility is $13,000,000. That is construction costs that include the structure and parking. Soft costs are a little over $2,000,000 which includes architectural and engineering fees and other testing fees. This comes to a total estimate of about $15,000,000. This includes underground parking, and a few surface parking spots, the structural support needed for a site at this location. This being one of the greatest opportunities as we feel in addition a walkway can be developed that connects the north and south part of this neighborhood together which is a great opportunity for this building. Of course this is dependent upon approval of using the air space from the CTA. This also utilizes a portion of the parking lot, which is owned by the City of Evanston at the Clyde Avenue Brummel Street intersection. Site B. Mr. Sit said is the parking lot behind St, Francis Hospital at the Comer of Sherman 41d Austin. This site would entail the acquisition of three residents in this area. Ms. Jordan said again they have the same program square feet in this facility which is a lot a more efficient. Alderman Newman asked ft any of the home owners you have suggested that you acquire their property know about that, to which Mr. Jordan responded, she did not believe so. Alderman Newman asked if anyone thought they might be interested in hearing about a plan to acquire their homes. How would you acquire those homes or are you suggesting by eminent domain? Mr. Dunlavey said they are not making any such suggestion he characterizes it more that they are testing the potential of fitting the facility on this parking lot site and recognizes it as one of the cons of doing that that there are three residential properties that would need to be affected. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Dunlavey if he means to be affected or does mean to be acquired. Mr. Dunlavey said he means to be acquired. Alderman Newman asked if this is considered to be a serious site to which Mr. Dunlavey responded he supposed it is for you to decide and not them. Alderman Newman said he could not possibly decide unless the three people were being told we are going to acquire their homes. If he were doing this that site would be immediately removed and no public meeting at all should take place where potentially those address were even spoken of because the fact that somebody gets the idea that the City of Evanston was in any way involved in contemplating acquiring people's homes to build a recreation center. He thought what should have occurred was those three people should have been notified and asked whether they would have any intention of selling their properties and if they all said yes then make it a site. If only one of them said no what we are talking about here makes no sense whatever to him. Ms. Jordan continued her presentation and said this site represents the same 37,000 square feet. What there is here that is a little different Is you loose the efficiency of having two gyms right next to each other but it may also play out as other opportunities to maximize the programming for activities and services in the area. This also has the building built over some of the parking. It is a two - Page 10. story building with the mezzanine on what would be almost like the third floor. Part of the fitness is both on the second and on the mezzanine floor. The aquatics are in the comer although after further looking into this we thought perhaps if in fact this did become a site that warranted any further consideration it might be reasonable to flip this pool over to the main intersection comer because it becomes a beacon to the entire facility. Ms. Martin said the hard costs for the facility at this site is S10,800,000, soft costs are at nearly 52.OD0,000 which brings the total project cost to $12,700,000. Again this is 37,000 square feet of a community recreation center the same size a mentioned in Site A This included surface parking spaces but no underground spaces. We recognize the fact that there is adjacent parking that is owned and managed by St Francis Hospital and we think there is opportunity there to partner to acquire additional parking spaces while people are using the facility. Of course what is crucial here is site acquisition. Neither of these properties, while there are actually four properties in question, are owned by the City of Evanston. Half of it is owned by Resurrection Health Care which owns the facility to St Francis Hospital. There has been preliminary discussion with them that they have more than enough parking and they are willing to sell that property. There is no funding for a building here therefore we have not approached private resident owners about buying their property, this is contingent on acquisition of the properties from these privately owned residences. Alderman Newman asked d the acquisition casts of those properties is within the $10,000.000 figure. Ms. Martin responded, yes, we estimated them at fair market value. Site C, Mr. Sit said is back at the Ctyde Brummel area but is focusing on using the City parking lot Of course with this site it will be a tit more contained so there will be less facilities. Ms. Jordan said what they lose in this site is the ability to have any of the aquatic facilities so this building is more on par with the size of Fleetwood Jourdain. This building is about 29,000 square feet and again does depend upon having some underground parking because they want to make sure they replace the parking they are taking away with the parking lot. When entering off the corner there will be all the community spaces and then you would go up a level to the spaces where there might be fees charged for different programs and activities. This could also be done with the programs on the k„nrer level but this would also be the meeting rooms and multi purpose rooms that would be there for community use that we heard a lot of need for, Again this is the same concept where there would be a mezzanine where the fitness and the track would be and you would be able to look into the two -court gym. Ms. Martin said the cost for this facility totals $9,900.000, hard construction costs at $8,00,000 does not include any acquisition costs because the parking tit is owned by the City of Evanston. Costs do include building seventy underground parking spaces which more than replaces the parking lot that is now there. In summary the three sites looked at if you recall from our survey results, the most heavily supported sites were replacing residential or replacing retail for a new community recreation center. We understand that the people who supported replacing residential probably were not thinking of their own residential being replaced but we thought it was important for us to test a building on that site based on the survey responses and to support the community. The reason this site was chosen was because we felt it displaced the least amount of residences possible by having an adjacent parking lot next to it. For their last section Financial Analysis, they put together the operating expenses and revenues of each facility based on the program spaces and based the operating expenses on existing costs at current Evanston community recreation centers. As earlier mentioned as far as revenues go they included 25% of the fee programs, the Other Speculative Revenues in the swim and fitness passes in the buildings that have swim and just the fitness in the buildings that just have fitness at 25% being awarded full scholarships for those programs. Based on those assumptions the buildings have the potential to recover a significant portion of their annual operating costs, however, it is important to note that City contributions, grants, or fundraising would be necessary to cover the capital costs. They concluded their presentation with a diagram of the three sites showing five and ten minute walking distance from each of the sites. Mr. Dunlavey said they would now be happy to answer any further questions or comments from the committee. Alderman Newman made a motion to recommend to the City Council that we not no forward with this orofect and asked for a second so he could speak to this motion. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion., Alderman Newman thought having heard the presentation and having looked at some of the material, not all, that this project has dramatically changed from the original conversations he heard about this project This is now a project that has a lot of Citywide appeal which he appreciates and has produced very valuable materials in terms of information for the City of Evanston. Part of what he heard here is this survey did not include the Levy Center, which is going to provide for some of these needs in the immediate neighborhood. He thinks that motion underscores how difficult a financial time the City of Evanston is in and it would seem almost impossible to him at this particular time considering we just built the Levy Center and do not know what the use is going to be there. Considering we now have a survey of Crown trying to see whether or not that building is structurally sound as somebody on the Council wanted to look into fixing up that budding but during the budget process we were told we did not have the money for that It seems to him that the cost of each of these options is so cost prohibitive in light of the fact that we just had to raise Real Estate Taxes 7%. Some of the motions and some of the positions stated by members of the Council during the budget process on the budget that it was a bad budget Taxes were raised it would seem to him almost impossible to go forward with the project at this particular time. That is not to say that five years from now, if we have a better budget position, that we should not come back and revisit Page 11. and have these three sites be on a list of sites where we might build this building with a pool and all the other elements, If we decided we were so flush in cash that we could build a building like this he thinks the other neighborhoods of the City deserve the opportunity to be able to compete for this building. At this point he thinks we should admit we do not have enough money and should thank everybody for the study and time put in. This room is not filled tonight with supporters of this building, What we should do is put this on the drawing board and maybe we will build this building if somebody gives us a 310,000,000 grant for a recreation building this would be one of the sites we would consider using. The work that has been done is excellent and very useful. In good faith he does not know how the site with the three homes got chosen but he thinks that would be a very difficult thing to do in Evanston as he would hate to have his house be one of the houses being talked about at a public meeting without knowing about it. For those reasons he thinks enough staff time has been spent on this particular type of project and lets see if there is support on the City Council. If he's wrong about this fet's see if the City Council at the April 91' meeting will say we need to go forward with this and these prices at this point in time. He would like to give the entire City Council a chance to see what type of support has been built for this project which is why he makes this motion. Alderman Rainey said she was going to try not to do what Alderman Newman has just done, she is going to try to speak solely to the issue of this study. The reason there aren't neighborhood people here tonight is because she is sure you know and have read that tomorrow night is a very large neighborhood meeting at Oaklon School so that the survey results and the focus group results that the neighbors participated in could be presented. It seemed unimportant that people come here tonight when they are going to get a report of the survey tomorrow night. Also it was obvious to her that now everybody thoroughly analyzed the study. She is exaggerating a bit when making that comment because what she really means is it appeared as though people had not read the study through one time from front to back. She thinks it is very unimportant that we proceed with a motion to the Council to recommend that this be defeated and shelved for five years or simply not dealt with at this time. Nobody expects the City of Evanston to issue bonds in the amount of $15,000,000 to build a recreation center here. What the community would like is the opportunity to work with our legislators, to work with foundations, to maybe use some of our staff time. The people in South Evanston also pay taxes to seek grants. She thinks a recreation center In South Evanston has a far greater opportunity to generate foundation money and other public money as it is in a Community Development Block Grant Area, than perhaps a recreation center in some other community that is not in a target neighborhood. To rush to judgement to defeat this and put an end to the discussion which is exactly what your motion will do if you are able to convince the rest of the Council, which she really hopes you're not able to do, she would not even like to have to go to that point. There is absolutely no reason why the Council has to take any action on this at this time. The ink isn't even dry on these pages and it seems almost selfish for Alderman Newman to disallow any further Councilor any community discussion of this whatsoever. Any community or Council discussion other than a pointed discussion on whether or not we should defeat this and not allow further discussion she would hope Aldermen Feldman does not support and we can simply set this aside for the time being and let the community discuss it and see if there are any options. At this time she certainly does not support a bond issue to finance this with government obligation bonds, absolutely not, we can't afford it at this time. But she does think we can afford a discussion and community input and further searching for financial opportunities to see what we can come up with, To put a stop to that seems to her to put a stranglehold on a community and she does not see any need for that. The community doesn't need to hear that there is absolutely no support on the Evanston City Council for a recreation center in South Evanston. That is demoralizing and unnecessary and she would ask the maker of the motion to simply withdraw his motion and just sit on it fora while and let people discuss it Give the Council a chance to read it as she knows you did not have much time for that, and we will bring it back at some other time when there is more information available. r Alderman Newman wished to respond as a point of personal privilege, and said it is interesting that the word selfish was used and what is also Interesting to him was the term that it would be demoralizing to the community to hear that other members of the Council weren't kept informed. He would like say he thinks it was the responsibility of the a Ward Alderman if this project was changing and wanted to generate the support on the Council for this particular project to communicate personally with the other eight members of the Council and educate us exactly as to what was going on, what staff time was being spent, and what the expectations were and everything else, but that was not done. It seems like what was done here was we were going to invest a lot of staff time, have a lot of community meetings with no mandate, no support, no initial goal of the Council because a lot of other wards would have liked the opportunity to have that amount of staff time to have the opportunity to go out and ask for grants. At this time he would like to clear something up, he will withdraw his motion if the City of Evanston is not going to have to go out for grants. Has anybody indicated a specific amount of money, or what portion of the $15,000,000 would be available. Alderman Rainey interjected, absolutely not she would hope there is a grant sitting out there that we haven't discovered but we had no basis on which to go, Alderman Newman said then there is no grant sitting out there. He would just like to clarify if the City of Evanston is not going to have to put one dollar either of CD dollars or of general obligation money into the hard cost of this building he would be glad to withdraw his motion, but to have our staff diverted and spend the amount of time they have been spending on a project we are not going to fund in terms of the bond cost it does not seem fair to the rest of the community. Our staff should be spending time on projects that we know are going to happen instead of the amount of time that they're spending. He would also like to dear up K anybody else is going to pay for the operating money on this building, because Page 12. there is also the operational money which looks to him to be quite significant. He will withdraw his motion if we are also going to take out the operating money. Alderman Rainey remarked to Alderman Newman when every other community center in Evanston and the Noyes Cultural Arts Center becomes self sustaining and not requiring any City money or any staff tirr.e she will agree to all of his limitations. What she is simply saying is this is taken very seriously and there could conceivably be enough money out there to finance the construction of this building. if the City were to be able to generate it, yes maybe some staff time would be used to help with that. Alderman Feldman commented what he is disturbed about is the idea that its eitner off the table or its on the table in the three sites we have talked about He thinks the argument can made that the sites chosen by this firm and by our study were in the perimeters of this Southeast Evanston area which he does not know why it is called that as it is not all of Southeast Evanston. To him a case has not been made yet and there is no reason in the world to constrict the conceivability of a recreational facility of this magnitude to that area. As far as he is concerned the only thing that is driving that is this study and the fact that it was paid for by grant money, there is no other reason why we're thinking this is the only place. What about Crown Center and adding all the elements discussed and putting them in a rebuilt Crown Center right smack in the park. What about other places, the idea that other neighborhoods have not been considered for this was driven by one issue that there was a geographical bounded area that was so unique and its needs were so compelling that we had to have some kind of facility that would meet those needs. This is a facility for the ages that would certainly without question meet those needs but as described they are very much like the needs of all of the people in the City. Once that happens it takes a strong case at least for him to figure out why it has to be there and it might be there. How could we not say to people in the 1 ", 2"0. V, 0, 5m, 6", 7", 9", Ward maybe it should be there and as far as he is concerned ii we are going to use staff thats, the kind of issue we should discuss. If we can get a grant we can get a grant someplace else and it should not be driven by grant alone. If this building is going to be a private fundraising affair by a Southeast something commission that is going to get a non -for -profit status and they want to build a social service house that's fine, but that's not going to happen. If this community has to decide and spend this kind of money he thinks it should be done with a lot of thought as to where the best place should be because as far as he is concerned the best place has not been determined by any kind of rational, reasonable dialogue. It has not happened in this community. If Alderman Newman changed his motion to ind-icate that if any work is being done on this in terms of grants that no grants be applied for until a site is chosen, that the City have a dialogue as to where and if they even want to pursue this issue right now and if they do it should be done on a Citywide basis. He would be happy to support that Alderman Newman said consider his motion amended to consider those suggestions. Alderman Feldman said any energy and any money in terms of staff time should be spent to decide, (1) if the City of Evanston needs and can afford a recreational facility like this, and (2) if does, where would It be best place to serve the needs of the entire community. He thinks this is a reasonable approach and it might be exactly one of those sites but certainly doesn't exclude any others. if the City of Evanston gets any benefit at all from the $250,000 and he thinks we certainly should, as well as a neighborhood it would do it well to take the information from this site and use it in any kind of future plans it has for a site that might be located there or anywhere else. He would not support In any way, shape, or form no matter what the costs were as he does not think there is a reason to site this building right now in the three sites that we have nor does he think it is fair because we received a grant to automaticalty exclude to make a study regarding this particular neighborhood that the rest of the City is out in the cold. That shouldn't drive the issue, a study shouldn't drive the issue, a private grant should not drive the issue, what should drive the issue is the needs of the community and he is referring to the entire community as they certainly have something to say. Alderman Newman said it Is interesting to him that as he sat here at the last City Council meeting all the members of the Council were chastised as Irresponsible because we refused to be sensitive to the fact that we could use the $400,000, the grant money that was worked very hard for by the Parks Department where they were successful in getting a grant we were insensitive to the entire community because we didn't want to use that for this. Two weeks ago, those of us who voted for the budget were chastised berause we wouldn't use that money to reduce the Real Estate Levy by 540,000 a year and here two weeks later we have a proposal and the same person who chastised us is saying why won't we spend $500,000 a year at a recreation center that happens to be located in the 8Q1 Ward. When he was going to use the $400,000 for other City needs he was irresponsible that he didn't want to reduce the levy by $40,000. It just doesn't make any sense to him. If we weren't sensitive with the $40,000 we're not being sensitive with the $500,000 that is the cost of operating this building, if they said $390,000 by the time we build it the cost will be 5500,000 or $600.000. This project as it now exists is a budget buster, it is completely inconsistent with all the discussions we had during the budget process and all the people who said we raised the levy too high by taking on a new operation cost of $500,000 a year ten times more than the $40,000 the six Alderman were being irresponsible with. It seems to him we are setting up a process where we can't balance the budget in the future. If some of the recreations costs named are inappropriate then move to eliminate them, you want to eliminate Noyes move to eliminate them, as a member of the Council you have a right to do that At a minimum it is unbelievable that there will be a public meeting and he would ask out of courtesy to those three home owners that second site not even be brought up tomorrow night. He finds is incomprehensible that we're going to bring up a site with no funding, no operation, no thinking of grants and we're even going to suggest that three peoples' Page 13. homes be presented at a public meeting. That is something he does not want to be part of and completely disengages himself and if in any way it is going to be represented that somenow this is the City of Evanston that is acting let the people at that meeting know that the City of Evanston had nothing to co with the selection of that site. What he means by the City of Evanston is the City Council, the governing body of the Crty of Evanston had no knowledge of that site and the three private homes that have not yet been notified they were going to be selected. He considers this to be absolutely inappropriate. If CD dollars is the way we are going to pay for uti:s the other parts of the CD area of this City deserve to be able to have the opportunity to participate in the competbon to get this building and if we were going to get $15,000,000 in grants he would certainty want to know if we could get those grants for other things in the CD area. Right now Crown would be a much better priority than a new building. Why would we build a new building when we have another building that is structurally unsound if we could get the grants and use CD dollars. We should find out before we go on this track what the exact condition of Crown is and we have a study out an that. It even makes matters worse that the people surveyed here didn't even know that the levy Center was going to exist when they filled out the surveys. He would like to go forward with the motion to see what support there is on the Council for the process that has been created here. Also, why should we be representing to people outside of Evanston that we're going to operate this center when we have not made any commitment to operate it. If you go to someboty and ask for a grant you're making a commitment to operate it if you get the grant, we're not making any commitment yet to operate it. This started for one purpose and is now a completely different purpose and needs to go back to the Crowing board. The people who turn out for tomorrow night's meeting need to be told they have a lot of work to do with the Evanston City Council because this W11 cost 52,000,0W if we paid for it, $1,500,000 for the bonds and $500,0C10 for the operating. He would be glad to consider this building when we could afford it and in a different site where everybody else has a chance to compete, and if the Council wants to continue that process he will support it. Alderman Feldman said the motion on the floor Is to reexamine this issue to determine If there Is a need. to determine a proper site for a building like this at all. and that no grants be applied for at anv specific site. Alderman Feldman called upon Betty Ester, in the audience and apologized for having her wait so long to speak. Ms. Ester said she resides at 2100 lake Street. The history of this grant is that $250,000 grant was given on the part of Representative Julie Hamos, and part of that was for James Park. Her doing that was because of a group the CCP, the Community Citizen Planning group which was pulled together and supported through CDBG money. One of their desires was to have a recreation center on the Southeast side of Evanston which was discussed even before this group started. When the money came they said we will get around to doing the study and as Alderman Rainey has said things have changed, the neighborhood has changed. If you take a look at that neighborhood now at what you call Clyde Callan Neighbors you have quite a few condos conversions so when they gave their figures of what to spend wanting swimming pools and all the other things that would probably be a hot priority reflective of that for a below income community. if those neighbors of CCP are soil there in the neighborhood she's quite sure they still want their recreation center as Alderman Rainey has said. That grant was given for the feasibility study of having a recreation center in Southeast Evanston. This group came up with three sites and one of them as Alderman Newman says should not be included because we could not seriously consider acquiring people's property but you have t'xo other sites in Southeast Evanston that was the prospects the CCP felt was going to be happening. To cut it out and not let that process continue is something that says to your public meeting that their process was not worthy, that we don't count in that process and you don't value that process and she does not think that is what you're saying. What you re saying is with this budget we can't afford to build that building, maybe not now, but you say to that community now we have to have a study to open it up to all the _ community. The other component with the CCP group and the CDBG funds in any other of the target areas and the community will decide what their would like to see happening in their community. There has not been any meetings in those communities not in the 2 Ward not in the 5" Ward and not tie 41' Ward but that process is still there as there is money in CDBG funds. Those meetings should be held where people can respond to what they want That community = decided they wanted a recreation center along with other things so that is the process that should keep moving forward. She can understand your point that you're not going to be building it now but the City promised the people that they would give them a survey and evaluate it if it was feasible. When we first asked they said they didn't have any money to build and we got money from Representative Julie Hamos to do the survey to see if it is feasible now the next step is, if its okay with the community to bring it to the City Council and that was the process that was supposed to take place. Thank you. - Alderman Feldman thanked Ms. Ester for her comments. Alderman Newman said that process was never signed off on by the City Council. What is frustrating about this entire project is people have spent an incredible amount of time on it and if the City Council has never committed to the $10,000,000 or $15,000,000 and had no intention of signing off on that amount and have not even been consulted in any way about the operating cost of a building of this magnitude he does not know what these people were being told. To — him the process was if the City Council was going to represent your community that this building was going to be built they _ should have signed off on the amount of money they were going to spend. This was never even talked about as a City Council. The a who are spending their time participating in this process need to know the earliest people pe g pa p g ' p possible time that the Council is probably not going to fund it. if they want to pursue it with the hope of getting outside grants he does not agree with the CD dollars part of it because the other parts of the City should be able to compete for those dollars. if the — Page 14. City is in such a budget crunch that the people who passed the budget get severely criticized for a 540,000 item how can we sign on to a 5500.000 item at this particular time? If he understands Alderman Feldman's motion is not to go forward with these sites and if we do go forward with this kind of a project open it up Citywide. A motion was made by Alderman Feldman to reexamine this issue and not to do forward at these sites, if we do ao forward with this kind of a proiect we should open it up Citywide to determine If we want it, if we need IL if we can afford it, and if that is the case where the site should be. This decision should be made by the City Council as recommended by the Human Services Committee. k s. Ester said all they wanted was a feasibility study to see if it was possible for the Southeast side to hold the canter. There was no dollar amount. Once they got the study then they were going to come to the Council to ask the Council to look for money to fund it Alderman Rainey said first of all she did not believe there was ever a meeting held or a discussion that took place on this matter that all Council members were not notified of. If that did happen she is sorry but she did not take the responsibitity of notifying everybody she assumed that they were and she believes that they were because in some cases other Aldermen did come. Second of all, the focus groups were held several months ago and the purpose of those groups was to design this survey. There was no survey until the focus groups were held. Focus groups were held and the surveys were written from comments, discussions, desires, wants, and needs coming from the focus groups. The surveys were mailed out, the surveys were returned. On Thursday or Friday, of last week, she sat down with the document book and read it on the phone with Mr. Gaynor and the consultants. There has not been any discussion of the results of this survey by any member of the City Council until tonight This is the first time this material has been seen, everyone received it Friday night in their packet If there is any suspirvrt at all that this has been out there being discussed and the community is making plans to have a groundbreaking ceremony or anything that is not the case. This is a document that needs to be discussed by the community and many of the people who have been around for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years discussing this are still coming to these meetings discussing this_ She thinks they are entitled to take a look at this and discuss it and thinks some of them will be a little overwhelmed by this. This is a complicated document. She does thinks it is inappropriate to cut oil discussion about it as people might say if they had any idea that the total sum of our responses equaled $15.000,000 that would be very shocking to them as they did not know that It is important that they see the results of the comments of their survey. Alderman Feldman said his motion did not in any way indicate that Alderman Rainey should not have the meeting tomorrow night. Alderman Rainey hoped that was not all Alderman Feldman just heard her say, she knows that and did not mean to imply that, what she means to say is that full discussion and understanding of this should not in any way be restricted. Just let people take a look at this and see what they did, they don't know what they did yet because as she said the ink is barely dry on this document. Alderman Feldman said that is not what he asked for in his motion, his motion broadened the discussion it did not eliminate it and he does not think that is unreasonable. if these people want to be involved in the discussion may not there by other people in the City of Evanston that want to be involved as well. Alderman Rainey interjected they certainly welcome them, only 69% of the people involved in the survey come from the planning area so there were other people involved in this. Alderman Feldman said there was never a chance or consideration for anything to extend outside of those boundaries. If you invited people to discuss what kind of recreational facility you were going to have within those boundaries, then you are right it was open. He means to broaden it to is it needed in the City of Evanston, if it is needed can we afford it are willing to pay for it and how and once that is established where. That means there are people all over the community that want to and are able engage in that dialogue. When we do this we make choices he knows there are people with high aspirations on the west side of the City that want a very nice branch library and have been working for it a long time. If he understands our budget constraints eventually we make choices he'd like to hear if we're spending that kind of money and there is no commitment whatsoever to do so but if the City Council is discussing the possibility of spending that kind of money even for operating expenses and somebody stands up and says wait a minute you just said a little while ago we're going to start talking about a west side branch, where is that coming from. Alderman Newman asked if he's missing something here, we could not even get the support of Alderman Rainey to go out for a referendum to look at building a bigger building at Crown. To even think about that site it was such a budget buster. Nobody is saying these sites and all the people in the 8h Ward area can't continue to discuss this through this motion. What the people of the 81' Ward should do if there is such strong support for this building, on April 9'0 they should convince the rest of the Council that we should limit the site of this building to only consider it in that circle area. People in the 8" Ward have a tremendous head start, they are ahead of every other neighborhood, they've had had all these meetings, and yes he did receive notice, but he does not go to every local ward meeting around the City that he receives notice of. He supposes he could have gone because he did get the notice. The point is it should be opened up to the rest of the community in a way that the dialogue can go on and the meeting can happen tomorrow night and maybe we'll be persuaded on April 9" that we should do this exactly the way its been contemplated, we should go on and commit to the $15,000,000, and commit to the $500,000 in operating. 8y the way, his priority is he would not take on a new building Page 15. and at the same time be contemplating making cuts in the library as we have a long way to go in the collection at the Library. We should improve the building we have first, or take care of our needs at Crown, there are a lot of different things we can do. The discussion that everybody that participated in once they are notified of that it is highly doubtful that there will be funding from the City of Evanston, once it is spelled out to them that the City of Evanston is not going to take out bonds for $15,000,000 and it is doubtful they are going to pay the operating expenses, if those people want to continue to look for grants and other ways to pay for this, great. If those people want to compete with the other areas of the community with these two sites, let them compete. Alderman Rainey interjected the people in the 8tn Ward don't know about the site yet. Alderman Newman said they will know tomorrow, this is a recommendation to the Council to which Alderman Rainey said, don't put words in their mouth they don't know about it Alderman Newman said tomorrow they will know the City Council Committee which doesn't have authority until the City Council acts has simply made recommendation and they should be invited and all show up on April 91' if they want the City Council to reverse that recommendation. The one thing they should not be told is the City of Evanston doesn't spend money in South Evanston because we just spent $10,000,000. $8,000.000 for the levy Center, 52,000,000 for the fix up of James Park and that does not talk about the S400,000 we spent for the Outpost, the 51,500.000 were spending for the Howard Street Streetscape, and all the money we put into the bonds for Howard and Hartrey. The one thing those people should not be told is somehow the people who live in North Evanston don't want to invest money in South Evanston. Alderman Rainey said they have never been told that, to which Alderman Newman said they have been told that repeatedly, to which Alderman Rainey responded not by her. Alderman Newman said it has been eluded to by Alderman Rainey to which Alderman Rainey said absolutely not her goal has always been to make certain that the paranoia In South Evanston is cured because she feels it is quite unfounded. Alderman Feldman called for all those In favor of his motion to Indicate by saving ave. Alderman Newman and Alderman Feldman voted ave. Alderman Ralnev voted no, oniv because she said she did not quite understand the motion. Mr. Gaynor said they were planning on bringing this to the City Council April 22nd . Alderman Rainey had a point of information and asked Mr. Gaynor if he could tell the committee in what form he is bringing this to Council, is this being brought as information or as an ordinance to Issue $15,000,000 in bonds to build a building. Mr. Gaynor said they were advised by Representative Hamos that there was a grant and have told everybody that there is absolutely zero funding to go any further than just this study. There has never been an understanding by anyone that there was money to build or plan a building. Their method was to come to the Human Services Committee and whatever recommendation came from the Human Services Committee would go forward to the City Council. He had a brief discussion with staff and the outcome was to accept the study or whatever other recommendation that came out of Human Services. On April 22nd the agenda summary sheet will reflect the motion that was made by the Human Services Committee. Alderman Newman requested that the minutes of this meeting be included In the April 22nd City Council packet. Vi. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business or discussions, the Aldermen thanked Mr. Dunlavey, Ms. Martin, Mr. Hess, Mr, Sit and Ms. Jordan for the fine work they had done. The meeting was adjourned at 10:07 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsky, t� Department of Health 3, Human Services Page 16. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, March 4, 2002 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Newman Alderman Rainey Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor. Bob Domecker, Harmon Greenblatt. Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Jane Grover (Mental Health Board); Tom Jager (Evanston United Way); Richard Mesi, Tarra Levin (American Cancer Society) Alderman Feldman Alderman Feldman called the meeting to order at 7:07 p.m. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE FEBRUARY 18, 2002, MEETING The minutes of the February 18. 2002 meetinrt were called and unanimously approved t3-01. CONSIDERATION OF FEBRUARY 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman called for questions or comments regarding the February 2002 monthly Township bills. Hearing none, he called for a motion to approve. Alderman Jean- Baptiste moved for acceptance to approve the February 2002 Township bills, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously approved f3-01. Alderman Newman asked when the Township budget has to be approved. Mr. Terry responded their fiscal year starts April 1" but we have until June 301i to approve the budget. The budget can still be approved during the first quarter of their fiscal year. N. CONSIDRATION OF A REQUEST FROM THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY TO BE ADDED AS A CITY PAYROLL. DEDUCTION Richard Mesi, American Cancer Society Director of Corporate Affairs, introduced himself and Tarra Levin, Regional Director for the Evanston American Cancer Society. He noted packets were distributed to the committee with a request for a City of Evanston employee payroll -giving program. The packet included a letter of testimony from Cook County adding the American Cancer Society with their employee giving. Mr. Mesi said he was here to ask the Aldermen on this committee to look at this proposal and maybe add the American Cancer Society on the pledge card with the United Way. Mr. Mesi and Ms. Levin have been very involved with the health administration aspect of the City of Evanston Health Department and have done training programs in Evanston. The City of Chicago has nineteen agencies in their program that allows their 54,000 employees to select an agency to support through payroll deduction. At the United Sates Conference of Mayor's Practices in March 2001. the Mayor's Coalition together with the American Cancer Society noted that the City of Evanston Cancer fight gets a personal touch from the Mayor, yet we are not allowed to be supported on the payroll deduction for the employees of Evanston. There is a lot of documentation of their association with the City of Evanston and some of their cancer control programs. Alderman Feldman asked if this would work by employees signing pledge cards indicating that a certain dollar amount would be deducted from their paycheck. Mr. Mesi said what they'd like to do is already done with United Way, they would just like to have their name added on the United Way pledge card. If that cannot be done they can produce their own pledge cards. Alderman Feldman asked if the American Cancer Society is a recipient of any United Way Funds, to which Mr. Mesi responded, no, they are not a member agency which is why at this point in time he is making this requesting. They spent over S11,000,000 in Illinois on research with seven local hospitals and throughout the country thirty-one of Page 1. their researchers have been awarded grants and gone on to wen Nobel Prizes in Medicine. They do tremendous programs with the dollars raised and they know the most efficient ways to raise funds for an organization is through payroll deduction because there are no fundraising costs. In the City of Chicago the United Way raises 593,000,000 through payroll deduction and they're just looking to be on the same playing field with them. Once again this is voluntary to the employees. Alderman Feldman asked if they are on the payroll deduction for the City of Chicago to which Mr. Mesi responded, yes they are. They know it is gets rig more difficult to raise funds yet they know this is the most economical way which is why they're here asking to be considered. Alderman Newman said the American Cancer Society is a great organization and has great advantages for raising funds. His concern is how many charities are put on this list or are they only those smart enough to apply. He is also concerned about whether or not this is going to decrease the amount of money that goes to the United Way because all the money raised by the United Way is spent in Evanston and because of the competition he is concerned whether or not the contributions will decrease. Alderman Newman how the 515,000 raised for the United Way campaign this year compares to prior years' campaigns and was told that it was very comparable to last year. Tom Jager, Evanston United Way, said this year's campaign was short 5200.00 of last year. This was a very difficult campaign because there was a late start with the many issues going on with the City's budget but they did come through with over $15,000. As Alderman Newman mentioned the Evanston United Way works closely with the City. They fund many of the some organizations who are looking to United Way to help support them now saying they did get cuts from the City and Mental Health is probably also going to decrease them. The United Way works in a partnership with Human Services, Perhaps some do not know that the City gives money for scholarships at the Childcare Network which was only brought about if the United Way would pick up the administration costs because it was very Gear the City wanted their money just to go for scholarships, Also, City employees have always been involved on their board and currently there is a fireman and a librarian on the United Way Board Most importantly all the money stays in Evanston and they currently give to twenty-eight agencies. They also do a number of services for the City and help with the taxi coupons selling coupons at their office as a community service project at their downtown office that they do not charge for. Through his past experience once you start with other agencies it opens up the door as more and more agencies come in and the money becomes diluted. At this point the Evanston United Way needs as much support as possible to fund many of the local agencies, which this committee is well aware of. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Jager if he thinks it would have a significant effect on the amount of money that would be contributed to United Way if the American Cancer Society was allowed to have deductions on payroll, Mr. Jager said it would mean less money for the United Way. Mr. Mesi said that could be and he is not saying this with 100% certainty but he thinks it was mentioned that employee participation was somewhat small and when adding a health agency the United Way could also benefit from some of the new people who will come on board, they will not give 100% to the Cancer Society but will give some of the new dollars to the Untied Way. Mr. Mesl went on to say the United Way does great things as Mr. Jager has explained, but when adding health organizations some corporations raised more dollars and some of those dollars did go to the United Way, His only suggestion is to take a took at this on a trial basis for a year to see how it works. When you only have a 15% employee participation and when another organization, especially as cancer has impacted so many people, there may be more participation in giving. Mr. Mesi said he is just asking for consideration in this, they also do worthwhile things within the community, Alderman Newman said he has a tremendous amount of respect for the American Cancer Society but at this time finds he would not want to experiment with what United Way is getting. United Way funnels the money and keeps it in Evanston. He thinks the American Cancer Society has a lot of ways to raise money and feels he does not want to take a chance with the United Way contributions as there are a certain number of people who will donate and the money will be divided up. This has nothing to do with the Cancer Society because all one can do is respect it, it has a lot to do with _ having this money stay in Evanston or go outside especially considering this year they reduced the amount of money to the agencies. We should promote private fundraising for the Evanston agencies and this would not be conducive with that Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the American Cancer Society does anything else in Evanston to raise funds besides the Relay for Vfe Program. Ms. Levin said they have several programs, for example, they have a tot of different resources for anyone diagnosed with breast cancer in Evanston. They have the Tela-Friend Program where they have trained women who had breast cancer available to serve as peer counselors so these women do not have to go through the process alone. They drive a lot of the people in Evanston to the hospital, people who can't drive themselves because they're going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Many of their volunteers are cancer survivors or retired persons who volunteer their time to pick up the patient at their home, wait for them at Evanston, St. Francis, or Rush North Shore hospitals or wherever they're going, and drive the back home. incidents of breast cancer with African American— women is higher than most any other group. They have done some special efforts going to churches and training the =- women within the churches to talk to their friends about the importance of getting a mammogram because if breast cancer is detected very early its 97% curable. African American women have lower incidents of breast cancer but they have a Page 2. higher mortarrty because they find their breast cancer too late Their PSA testing for African American men is very important because they also have a higher incidence of prostrate cancer. They have done some of the same outreach programs to that community and try to make sure that they get tested on a regular basis. Ms. Levin works with the Heal'h Department to get materials out to all the different populations in Evanston to make sure people are getting tested on a regular basis. They go into many of the organizations in tries area, i.e., the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary. corporations, etc.. and do programs on all the different types 0 cancer. A lot of the money does stay in Evanston, not all the money stays here because we need to know where the best research is going on. They are really, really trying to find a cure for cancer. She'd like to put herself and Mr. Mesi cut of a job and if we can find a cure we can do that which is why we have to decide what is the most important researcr grant Last year S11.200.000 went to local universities in the state of lEfnois for research programs to try to find a cure for cancer or to provide better treatment for those who have been diagnosed with cancer. She could go on and on but she will not Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what other ways funds are rased in Evanston besides the Relay for Life. Ms. Levin said Relay for Life is one of their biggest events. They get private contributions and sometimes when people die they ask that money be sent to them. They do get it from a few sources. Every time they do an event 94% of the money raised goes to actual cancer activities, services for cancer patients and research. In some golf events that's not the rase, although its a good way to raise money its expensive to take over a golf course for the day. With the workplace giving programs there is no cost at all involved because the employees make a choice and a 100% of all the money the employees give go directly to fighting cancer. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked hew much money they usually raise from the Relay for Life. Ms. Levin said Last year they raised over $40,000 and are hoping to do better as a lot more City of Evanston people are getting involved. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought in light of the concerns that have been raised about the funds that employees donate to United Way maybe we can try to make some other suggestions. We have a cable station in Evanston where you will be able to do some outreach in the community and collaborate and assist in some other ways. Funds raised through City employee deductions comes back to us and we need to find a way to preserve it. Ms. Levin said they do work with cable. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said maybe there are some other ways to explore in the future. Ms. Levin said they have found when employees get a choice the more they are likely to give. The United Way has some wonderful programs if she were an employee she would be more willing to give because she might have been personally touched by one of those issues or that issue might be more important to me. We can't say for sure what the response would be we just know this from our past experience. Alderman .lean -Baptiste said he would like to see us take some time to think this through and come back with a proposal as opposed to an outright refusal. That may be the ultimate decision but he'd like to see us think of different alternatives to express our support and avoid this straight out no vote without some kind of alternative. Alterman Feldman said it might be common knowledge that he lost his father, his brother, and his wife to cancer so he understands the astonishing need and the work that the American Cancer Society does and how important that work is. it Is agonizing to even be in a position where you have to make choices. The easy thing would be just to allow that to go on our payroll deduction. He thinks the City of Evanston has to find ways to support the American Cancer Society in a way that doesn't diminish the kind of work that for years and years the United Way has accomplished in this community. This has nothing to do with one organization being better than the other, it really has to do with a kind of a dual loyalty as far as he is concerned and one place seems more fitting than anomer. The Relay for Life and other kinds of events or organizations may not be the most effective but currently you're raising a significant amount of money here and he hopes that continues. If there is anything he can do personalty he'd be happy to do that. As a Crty he is certain that events and programs would be supported. This recent budget crisis caused members of the City Council to do something that all of us felt saddened by, the fact that we had to reduce our support for various organizations many of which are supported and contributed to by United Way. For us to take a chance on giving those same agencies a double blow would be difficult for him to be part of. He does not know whether that would occur, he suspects that it would and also suspects that those people that are touched by the need for contributions to the American Cancer Society find ways to do that. It may not be the easiest way but they find ways to do it, he does and he knows his family does whether or not it's on a payroll deduct;on. Again, while he respects, admires and supports the American Canner Society at this time and in our situation he would be hesitant to support they're being on the Crty of Evanston's payroll deduction. Mr. Mesi said maybe at another time when things are better we can possibly look at that employee participation level. If you have a small number,15%, participating you have a market of 85% left and you should seriously consider making a program that would appeal especially to the majority of the employees. Hopefully, maybe in the future when things are financially better the committee might look at that especially with the involvement of the American Cancer Society for the people and employees here in Evanston. Alderman Feldman agreed that that is a good suggestion. Mr. Mesi appreciated the committee's tirne and knows their loyalties. He said he has met Mr. Jager and knows the wonderful things the United Way does. Alderman Feldman thanked Mr. Mesi and Ms. Levin for their presentation and the work that they do. Page 3. V. PROPOSED ORDINANCE 12-0-02 AMENDiNG VARIOUS SECTIONS OF CHAPTERS 9110/ AND 11 OF TM-E 7 OF THE EVANSTON CiTY CODE PERTAINING TO THE ENFORCiEMENT OF CITY PARK REGUALTIONS Alderman Feldman noted as a result of some kind of msunderstanding he has an amendment to this ordinance and calls attention to page 7, item 7-11-10: Beach Rescue Squad Desianation The amendment he is proposing is to eliminate the City at the bottom line and substitute tie Beach Rescue Squad of Parks, Forestry and Recreation. There was some ambiguity about exactly what that meant and Mr Gaynor suggested this language would clarify it and it seems to be just the kind of language that makes everything clear without controversy. If that meets with the committee's approval we can proceed with the other amendments. Alderman Newman said he was trying to figure out exactty what is going cn with this ordinance. Ms Brenniman explained as you look through each section for example, if the directions in Section 1 say, Title 7, Chapter 9 of the Evanston City Code is further amended by adding a new Section 7-9-5. then the section underneath 7-9-5 Authority to Enforce is a brand new section. It does not exist in the code at this time. if you look at page 2, an amendment that says adding a 7- 10-7 to read as follows, there is underlining there and in Section 6, for Section 7-10-3, those are new parts of existing Sections. We have underlined the new pars where we have taken an existing Section and made some changes to it. Where we created brand new Sections we did not underline the entire new Section it was just indicated as a new Subsection or new Section in the directions and introduced. Alderman Newman had a question regarding the Doc Beach on page 7, where there is a (H) and a (K); which can't be the only regulations related to the dog beach. Ms. Brenniman said, no. all the others are staying the same, to which Alderman Newman said one cannot tell what they were, one would have to go back to the original ordinance for that. Alderman Feldman asked why (H) was included as it had no amendment to it and asked if it is a new amendment Ms. Brenniman said it is only within the designated area and that should be underlined. Alderman Feldman said if you are excluding a lot in the ordinance that is not being changed and then you are including the items that should be changed, why is there anything in this document that is not being changed. For example, under Windsurfing, there is 1. Only one person Is aermitted on a s€nale windsurfina or similar board. Ms Brenniman said the reason that is included is Subsection 2 has been deleted. If you like she can include that, but d everything was Included it would be very long. Alderman Feldman said if you delete something that is not included they do not know what it is, and how would they know what is being changed. Alderman Newman wanted to go back to the beginning of the ordinance to understand how the changes are being made. The first change is in 7-10-7 where the words histher designee is added Ms. Brenniman explained what is happening in the first three Sections of this ordinance is that new Sections of the Code 7-9-5, 7-10-6. and 7-11-9, are being added to Chapters 9, 10, and 11 of Title 7 To give the authority to the City Manager and his designee to sneclflcaliv enforce the regulations of those specific chanters which is what those three Sections do on page 1, of the ordinance. Authority to Enforce in Chapter 9, Playground and Recreation, Chapter 10, City Parks, and Chapter 11, Beaches and Boat R2FnM. Alderman Newman asked what is being done in Section 5, (E). Ms. Brenniman said they are increasing the amount of fines from $500 to S750 to be consistent with the per day per violation which is up to $750 per day per violation and what we have in the code that affects all tickets that are not specifically otherwise indicated for specific different fines. Alderman Feldman asked if all of this would be under our Adjudication Program. Ms. Brenniman said that is right, we have a particular Section in the Section of the code under Administrative Adjudication which allows for any new ordinances that we pass at this time to go into Administrative Adjudication. Alderman Feldman had a question regarding 7-10-3 (A) that says the Pfavaround and Recreation Board malr develOD and administer an athletic field reservation system He asked if that system comes before the Council or does this give them the power to have any reservation system they choose without ever coming to the Council. Ms. Brenniman said, yes it gives them the authority to do that without coming to the Council. Alderman Feldman then said we don't know what kind of a system the policy is based on. Mr. Gaynor said that could be the case, however, in this particular athletic field reservation system the procedures was an issue that was raised several months ago by Alderman Rainey. Knowing that she was not going to be able to attend this meeting Mr. Gaynor had a discussion with her prior to this meeting. When Alderman Rainey returns they will go over thLs prior to this coming before the City Council meeting which is not scheduled until March 250. Alderman Feldman noted it should be understood that although Alderman Rainey raised the issue it is not solely her issue. Mr. Gaynor said he understood that. Alderman Newman inquired as to what exactly this issue is. Alderman Feldman said the concern regarding this issue is the reservation system or policy should be fair and accomplish certain goals. One of the goals is the ability to freely use the parks, when he says freely he does not mean with permits or reservations, but to do it in a way that does not Page 4 thwart the idea of people to have an understanding that the parks are for them to use. If people do need reservations that case has to be made as to why, whictr he believes is being done. It is that kind of balance between the rights of all to use a decently maintained park system and do it in a way that not only allows for reservations when they are necessary but also is to preserve a certain spontanety in the community. Mr. Gaynor believed that the procedures that are now in place do accommodate exactly what Alderman Feldman is suggesting If there is drop -in actrvity, 7 or 8 people who want to go out and play, that is no problem, t,.lt if there is going to be a group that wants to use rt continuously on a certain day, they can get a reservation fora fee cf 510. That is an opportunrry for us to monitor the use of the fields for the control of the maintenance of the turf and not have the fields dominated or ruined. There are two tiers; one is for a reservation system for Youth Sports Affiliated, the Youth Soccer Program, me Youth Baseball Program, and the Youth Football Program. Foster Field was totally annihilated because of the overuse which we did not have much control over due to the fad that the Wildkit Football Program as there are not a lot of fields for them to use. A lot of time and money is being spent trying to get that field up and running for this spring for the Little League Program that will use it all spring and summer. The next tier is groups wr:o want to use the fields on certain days and we work with them to try to keep them on the same field or try to rotate them around. Then we have the spontaneous groups, neighborhood groups that want to go out and play soft ball, soccer, or whatever, as long as its net an organized activity. Groups that are issued permits are required to keep to the dates and times of their permits so that there will not be any confrontation with other groups. The spontaneity was the Council's issue and specifically Alderman Rainey's concern of a neighborhood group wanting to go out and play. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the spirit of that concern from A.cierman Rainey is one that he shares, but it should be our point of departure that the parks system in Evanston exists for the use of residents of the City of Evanston as long as they do not interfere with groups that have reservations and as long as they do not abuse the park system. The example given about the Wildkit Football Program playing on a regular basis at Foster Field should have been something reserved and managed because it came from an organization and is not a community based effort Mr. Gaynor said they were given a permit but the problem is we are so lacking in facilities that there are only two facilities of ours that Wildkit Football uses, Foster Field and a Field at Crown. We are very Iurnited in space for football. They have come to us a number of times looking for additional fields for the football program. There are not many fields around that are the size they need. There is tremendous competition in the community for fields. At Gage Park there are baseball and soccer fields that are over played because we do not have land for any more fields which is another reason we try to manage and monitor who is playing on what field. We have let our affiliates know that if it rains on the soccer fields they should not play because if a teenaged group of soccer players play on a field after a rain they can knock that field out for a minimum of two weeks before we can have that field repaired Yet we don't hold the Wildkit Football Program to that same standard because that could basically wipe out their program. Alderman Jean-Baptste asked whether ETHS has enough space for the Wildkit Football Program, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, this is a youth program not a high school program and is basically community based and organized. Alderman Newman mentioned that a few years ago a group from Chicago used to come to the park at Dempster to play a very high level of tennis. They would intimidate everybody else off the courts because they czme out with families and friends to watch these tennis matches. Nobody from the neighborhood could get on those courts. He considers it valuable to have the parks department be able to have the authority to regulate the use. Tennis courts should be an hourty alternating system which is tennis protocol, known as the racking up system and which makes the tennis courts more available to the residents. Alderman Feldman did not know how it would work with a group of people from outside of Evanston and one person in that group is an Evanston resident which would complicate this. Alderman Newman remarked that Tallmadge Park has basebau fields that seem to be open all the time. Mr. Gaynor said until this year that was true because that was not a desirable field for little league to use for competition. Because we have taken out several ball fields of play at James Park, Little League came to them last fall to ask for more parks. We worked them and Tallmadge is now going to be used as well as a variety of other parks. Also, the Little League negotiated with District 202 to use three of their fields and ask the Parks Department if they would work on the fields because those fields are not in good shape. As soon as weather permits we will work on those fields to make them available because Little League has 600 or 700 kids in their program and will not be able to use the fields at James Park because they are all taken out of circulation. We are doing an imgation project there and do not anticipate those fields being available until a year from this spring. Alternate baseball parks will be used by permit they may not be the highest quality fields but are very much needed this year. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Brenniman if it would be too cumbersome to give the committee the entire code because where something is subsbtvted it is not clear what was substituted and he wondered how do we distinguish what items are new and what is already in place? Ms. Brenniman explained that Section 6 on page 2, enumerates Section 7- 30-3 of the Code which Is an existing Section and has Subsections (A), (B), (C), (D), and (F). We made some changes to (A) by substituting Athletic Field for Ball Diamond. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a way to have an explanation without producing the entire ordinance. Ms. Brenniman said she and Mr. Gaynor could do a memo that would explain what is happening in each of the items which would make it easier for you to deal with rather than for us to reproduce the Page 5. entire ordinance. Alderman Newman made a reference to the Glass Containers item on page 2, as he did not know what is being done there. Mr. Gaynor said they cannot get any of our parks or beaches clean of broken glass. If it was a metal we could use a metal detector or some sort of magnet but we cannot clean up glass What we would like to do is eliminate the use of glass containers Alderman Feldman asked d there are signs to that effect to which Alderman Newman added he did not think this would ever be enforceable. For example, on the 4` of July there are so many people bringing food and containers into the park. Mr. Gaynor said that is his biggest nightmare they do not a lot of enforcement with 25,000 or 30.000 people at the lakefront as it is. Alderman Feldman said if you don't have signs to this effect how would anybody even know about it Mr. Gaynor said their next step is to post signs in the parks, which they have been working on with the Law Department to come up with the right language. They have funding in the CIP to develop a sign system especially for the Lakefront In his opinion, the current sign program at the lakefront is less than desirable, but ordinances have to be posted in order for them to be enforceable. Ms. Brenniman said the memo she and Mr. Gaynor will prepare would walk everyone through what has happened in each one of these sections. Starting on page 1, it would explain why the three Sections 7- 9.5, 7-". and 7-11-9, are added, what their purpose is and that they are brand new Sections not currently in the ordinance. it would indicate in Section 6, on page 2, the changes that have occurred on 7-1G-3 of the existing Code where we replaced Bali Diamond with Athletic Field, (B) is left exactly the same, (C) at the bottom of page 2, is the same except we included Roller Blades. Skates and Scooters along with the other Items arohibited on Tennis and Basketball Courts. Item (D) is the same, (E) we put the word Use, instead of Playing to make it a little broader, (F) we left alone, and (G) is a new Section. We can give you the description of exactly what we did in each one of the Sections. Alderman Feldman asked if that could be available for the next Human Services Committee meeting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste referred to Section 5, (E), and asked if the level of fine had previously been S500. Ms. Brenniman said actually this section didn't even exist before, we did not have the fine in there and decided to place it in there and make it dear. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if that should then be underlined to which Ms. Brenniman said, no, because this is following a new Subsection. if you want her to go through and underline every new Subsection, she can do that. For example, Section 5, (E), on page 2, is a new Subsection (E) and Section 7.9-4 is the Code. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted we didn't have this Section of the Code and we are now saying If anvone violates any of the reaulations of the Playground and Recreation Board then shall be nuilty of an offense punishable by a fine up to S750. Ms. Brenniman said even if we didn't put that Code in this Section, to understand how the fines work, if a Section anywhere in the code does not give a specific fine for the particular violation it automatically reverts back to the fine set up in Title 1 of the Code which is up to $750. We just put it in here because we wanted to reiterate it. It's the same fine whether or not you put it In here. If its not listed in here then the general fine listed in Title i would apply. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if this is now posted in our parks. Mr. Gaynor said there are so many different signs posted that was one of the issues we want to work with the Law Department on. He does not want to have to post a sign with every one of these ordinances on it; you would need a billboard for that. We need to develop the appropriate language that is enforceable to place on a sign. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to know if these fines were enforced in the past, to which Mr. Gaynor said as he noted in his memo to the committee, according to the current report received from Administrative Adjudication were not collecting fines even though they may find someone guilty, they may be waiving the fines. Alderman Newman said in the memo there were 150 tickets issued in the year 2000 which is about 12 tickets a month, plus about 85 tickets at the beaches. That would mean somebody is being fined every 3 days of the year in our entire park System which is an incredibly low number considering the many violations there. Yl. CONSIDERATION OF THE 2002 NOYES CENTER LEASES Alderman Feldman noted that just this evening the committee received a communication from Next Theater and inquired ROLE if anyone from the Next Theater was in attendance. He was informed no one was in attendance. Mr. Gaynor said they were notified that this issue would be discussed this evening. Alderman Feldman remarked his feelings regarding this is he would have liked the S1000 per month but he is willing to accept the S500 per month with the value that they will try to pay the back rent by the end of the current fiscal year. His reason for saying this is we could negotiate with them and say we want $750, but the fact of the matter is that while he wants the money and he wants them to be current he does not want to do anything that would jeopardize what he considers to be an astonishing asset to the community. He can't think of a cultural facility we have that's better than Next Theater. They have a national reputation and do work that rivals and competes with Stephanwolf and Goodman Theater. He subscribes to all three and knows that the quality of drama at the Next Theater is as good and many times better than both Goodman and Stephanwolf which are nationally recognized and lauded. They did something not long ago called the Laramie Project that is now being duplicated by HBO and NBC on television. While he does not want to give them anything free, they should pay rent; he does not want to = _ threaten that organization. If we lost them, if they moved, we would be losing a superb resource in the community. If you have experience in going to theater in the City of Chicago and in Evanston you would know what he means about how Page 6. marvelous they are. Its the among the finest drama he has ever seen anyplace on a relatively consistent basis. He thinks it is important that they be here and its important that they pay back the money and important that they be current. He does not kna& what the position of the Parks Department is on that but from his point of view if they're willing to pay it back, and they must pay it back, that's all he's interested in. If its $500 a month and takes two and a half years then if takes that long Mr. Gaynor agreed that Next Theater is an important asset but they want direction from the City Council regarding their paying $500 a month of a 515,000 debt which is going to take at least a couple of years to off. The problem with that is each month tney accrue additional debt because they have S500 each month plus they have to pay their current rent and they're having trouble doing that. In the past each year they had to wait until the end of their season to catch up. What we're suggestng, and as Alderman Feldman said, we want them to pay off their debt and then become current. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor if it would make any difference to him if they were to say to you we do not get any money until the last three months of the year, can we pay it then, and they paid. Mr. Gaynor said that is a poor business practice but that's a Council decision. If the Council wants to carry the debt with the possibility of that happening or not happening. that is their decision. Alderman Feldman said according to the letter wherein they say, we therefore resubmit our offer of $500 a month plus the current rent, they did not say maybe the current, or possibly the current rent, are we going to take them at their word or not? Mr. Gaynor said the reason this report came forward is there was a request from Council members as to the status of all of the tenants. We have many leases that are all current with the exception of Next Theater. In a business sense he can say that a year ago Next was very close to closing their doors and the City would not only have lost that asset but whatever the debt was at that time. They have a deal that needs to be acknowledged and supported by the City Council that was made by the Evanston Arts Council which the Arts Council did have the authority to do several years ago, Next Theater asked to pay this at the end of the fiscal year. This will be brought to the City Council and if that is the way they would like to have that occur that's their decision, but we have all the other teases that pay monthly, on schedule and on time. It would be wonderful if at the end of the fiscal year they were brought up to date and the Council's decision from that point forward is that they would stay current. Alderman Feldman said he thought Mr. Gaynor is doing exactly what he is supposed to do bringing that to the attention of the Council. Hawever, the Parks and Recreation Department is responsible for encouraging, maintaining, and nurturing arts and recreation in Evanston and he thinks that a statement on the part of the Parks and Recreation Department indicating the quality of Next Theater, all the things he said but not coming from him but from that department should be part of a memo regarding rent back payments. In other words, if you were to say to him what they do Is terrible and the reason they're in trouble is because nobody wants to go there although they've been around a long time they have audiences and they're behind in rent, that's one thing. But if you say this is a national resource in addition to a local one then it becomes another issue and is something that the Council should be aware of and certainly as far as he is ooncemed the Parks and Recreation Department should be aware of that. The quality of the work done is an integral part of the decision that we make in regard to our attitude towards all the people in Noyes. If there was no significant contribution to this community in terms of artistic merit that's one issue, if there is not that's another. You're right, the Council does have to make a policy on that and he would like to know what their financial difficulty is so he can understand that even better. He does not know if their season is too short, or they don't have the audience. or they're theater is too small, he does not know what the problem is and he would like to understand that. Maybe there are ways we could deal with that, and maybe there are not. It would be difficult for him look at this and think of Next as homeless in Noyes and in Evanston knowing the kind of quality, of merit, and substance they bring to this community. Alderman Newman said for moment lets forget about how good they are. What are they doing in the City Collectors Department all around the City, where people aren't paying their water bills they have to make decisions whether to continue service. He would argue when you cut off water to somebody who can't pay that in some ways is more serious than closing down a theater company. The public benefit of a theater company is much greater but shutting off water is serious. He does not know if people at the Water Department say they want to see what their reason is for not paying before deciding to have a uniform collection policy. To some extent the problem with this is there are twenty other tenants at Noyes, what should be done with the other twenty tenants. If they have trouble paying their rent should a payment plan should be set up for them and then the quality of the payment plan should be based on whatever the subjective view is of how good the organization is. Alderman Feldman said the people of this community that say I will pay my water bill in these number of payments do not have their water bills shut off. Alderman Newman said the people not paying their water bills can't have their water turned off, if they're S15,000 behind they can. Alderman Feldman said we can throw them out, but the question is do we want to shut off the water and do we want to throw these people out, or do we want to collect the money and keep them here. Alderman Newman thought we would want to keep them here but what it does is cause an impossible situation because the people at the Parks Department will be criticized for not collecting the rents. Alderman Feldman said not by him, to which Alderman Newman said then by other members of the Council. Alderman Feldman remarked that we pay for other theater groups and we don't ask them for rent, we take a loss. Alderman Feldman said at the very beginning he did not say they should not pay, they absolutely must pay but it can be done on the basis of paying as they said $500 Page 7. plus the monthly rent which is what we have to hold them to. Alderman Newman wanted to clarity whether they usually pay by the time the summer season is over. They end up paying the whole year in June but they are late four or five months. Mr. Gaynor said his understanding is at the close of their season they have been able to pay their debt every year. He would like to clarify his issue before bringing this forward, as we also think they are a very fine group. Alderman Newman brought up a good point two or three other theater groups in Noyes, light Opera Groups and the Piven Theater Workshop, what we're trying to do is be consistent in the management there. We're not trying to eliminate a group but because an agreement was reached, not with the City Council but with the Arts Council, which is an advisory group to the City Council. He felt it was important for this committee to know especialty when it was last year that they told us they were close to having to close their doors because of finances they were only able to have three performances this year when they normally have four. They were uncertain because of fundraising being very difficult during this period of economic times and were very unclear as to where they were going. You need to know that we're carrying the debt and if they do close their doors the audit will show that we did not collect. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to know what Mr. Gaynor meant by there was an agreement with the Arts Council. Mr. Gaynor said several years ago Next Theater made a proposal to the Arts Council suggesting that they pay at the end of their season. It was not a matter of the Arts Council managing this as it was still managed by the City, but the Arts Council made this agreement and spoke for the City. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he sees this issue as our trying to preserve assets that we have in this community and if an arrangement has been reached to have Next Theater pay their debt and if they pay every year by the end of their season he does not see this as a significant issue, The Issue of the tenants at Noyes Cultural Center came up in the context of the discussion of how we view this, whether we are operating on a double standard in regards to Fleetwood Jourdain Theater, the Arts Council, and the tenants at the Noyes Cultural Center. We need to know the truth and the entire issue of the Next Theater being in debt came to the table, people needed clarification. He does not think we should throw out the baby with the bath water, but we should resolve the problem to the extent that we can be dogmatic in our price clearing up our assets to the extent that we can afford some flexibility, He does not know whether its the same when we compare Next Theater with a resident who is behind in their water bill, but he understands the problem is how do we expect your department to operate do we expect you to be consistent to make the demand to push for resolution and at the same heed Alderman Feldman's caution. Aldermn Newman asked if they were not able to pay up the rent by the end of the season, as they have done In previous years, what would they be expected to do in terms of renting the space next year? Alderman Feldman said they're not going to rent that to anybody, there is no other space or theater group. Alderman Newman said that is not necessarily the case. Mr. Gaynor said there is a very good market for theater space and wanted to clarify we are not here to disrupt Next Theater or to throw them out, we are here to provide information that has been requested by the Council members. Alderman Feldman thought what we should be doing is figuring out a way that we could sustain a group like that rather than figure out how to decide check points whether or not they're in error because he knows of theater groups In this community that would possibly rent them space and nothing that he has ever seen there had been worth the time or energy he spent going there. Who profits by that, we rent a space and make $1,000 a month and we have nothing except poor work that nobody takes pride in and adds little or nothing to the community. What we should be doing Is figuring out ways in which a climate can occur where Noyes can nurture and sustain arts in Evanston. He does not know exactly what that means because we have never wrestled with such a situation which we are now doing to some extent and he appreciate that, but we are noted for that kind of thing and Noyes is a jewel in our crown. We have to decide what kind of community we are and whether or not that's worth anything to us, and if it is what is it worth. In their letter Next offered to pay their rent and to pay on their back rent. The difference is 5500 a month, Mr. Gaynor suggestion was that they pay $1,000 and they said they could not do that but are willing to pay $500 a month. Alderman Feldman asked if the Issue we have here before us is whether to accept the $1,000 or the $500, and was told that is not the issue. Mr. Gaynar said the recommendation is for you to provide us with a policy direction. Next has indicated in their letter they will make every reasonable effort to pay the full amount of that rent by the end of the current fiscal year. They are now paying us the monthly rent and are not accruing additional debt. We have no reason to feel that they are not going to meet that obligation as they have met it every year. The direction they are looking to us is for their new lease, are we going to try to get them to be current like the other tenants, are we giving them the latitude that Alderman Feldman is discussing. That's a policy decision that the Council makes and if this had been done right several years ago we would not be - discussing this tonight, this something you were not aware of. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor d he thought it would cause a hardship on them to pay their full monthly rent if they do not have it Mr. Gaynor said he does not know what their financial picture is, they met with them a couple of times where it was discussed that they use their fundraising and grant monies until the end of the season and pay us with what is left. Up until now there has been enough to pay off the total tease payments and he would hope that that would continue. E Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the policy is one that should be nurtured in the City of Evanston we should try to nurture all of our assets. If we look a the context of how this debate came to the table it was about whether or not we are looking at one tenant one way and another tenant another way. He agrees that we should nurture what we have and work with __- Next Theater to see if we can get them to pay the $500 per month to catch up with their debts. However, if comes to pass Page 8. c that at the end of the year they are unable to do that he does not think we should throw them out, we should work with them. Alderman Feldman said he would do that for Light Opera Works and for the Piven Theater if they had trouble. There are times when yc,1 do go out of your way to help people. Mr Gaynor said his department is clearly supportive of all of the artists We were asked to provide this information. we've given you the leases, there are three new teases to consider to pass on for ao]rovai to the City Council. Alderman Feldman askezz if anyone has a problem with a5owing Next Theater to work the way their letter indicated they are going to pay the mar—miy rent If it becomes an issue this can be brought back to this committee. Alderman Newman had no problem if tney pay at tre end of the season but thinks they have to be proactve in coming to the City and telling us what their situation is. as we should not have to be raising questions about Viem Alderman Feldman asked if they could come before this committee in a separate meeting to let us know their situation, which would be helpful for all of us. Mr. Gaynor suggested his staff have a discussion with Next Theater and see what their theories are for complying with the letter and what heir plans are if they feel that in their next lease they will be able to stay current and perhaps tame back to one of this c:Dmmrree's meetings to discuss that Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not see this committee going tftat far as we have alreacy established that we will take what they have to offer and we want them to be proactive in terms of keepang up with their rent He said we'll cross new bridges when as we get to them and would like to continue with the other leases. Aldemtan Jean -Baptiste had a question regarding the community services part of the leases and asked to what extent are these groups doing the things they said they plan on doing. Mr. Gaynor said they all do community service. Alderman Jean-Sapbste asked if it is correct that the community service represents 15% of the rent as he sees that as a monetary value assigned to the services and he is not sure how this is done other than saying it is supposed to be 15%. Some groups should have a lit more dollars of values assigned to them than other groups. Who determines what they do and the value of what racy do? Mr. Gaynor said they submit to the department what their community service proposal is for the coming year is. The staff looks at it and evaluates it. then talks with them whether they feel it's on target or below target As you indicated there are a number of artists who indicated they are giving two or three times more than what the community service requirement is which is sometimes why you see a greater value to their services. The Arts Council was asked if they would lace to take on evaluating the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, what is their mission, is it a place for new artists. In addition to that we asked if they would also look at the community service to see if it is what we want it to be, are they achieving something that the Arts Council feels is of significant value to the community or what the community needs. Alderman Newman asked it each tease could be gone through to figure out what the artist does and elaborate more than just what is in the packet memo. Alderman Feldman cited as a good example, the Lerman Studio, has art classes for seniors. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is that Sheila Oettinger does volunteering at the Skokie North Shore Sculpture Park. Alderman Feldman said from the list of community service applications or requirements the artists filled out included in the packet Sheila Oettinger volunteers for the Sculpture Park as an evaluator and does works with individual artists that contrite to that and maintain the park. The Sculpture Park is so dose to Evanston that it in a way it is part of the community. The sculptures are all up and dawn McCormick. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how what Sheila Oettinger does benefits us, doesn't Skokie have some way to do what she does. He asked if we want to start identifying what each person does now? Mr. Gaynor said they could certainly prepare a one page alphabetized listing of the artists and what they do. Alderman Newman said he is looking to see what the tenant does and whether or not the space is being used to teach people in the community as a positive. Alderman Feldman said they do not all teach, for example, Light Opera Works has space in the building but does not produce anything in the building that anybody goes to, they produce something outside the building. Alderman Newman commented on Alderman Jean-Baptiste's point regarding the Skokie Sculpture Park versus the Jack Lerman community service where they are actually giving painting lessons at the Levy Center, which is a lot more valuable than what is going on in the Skokie Sculpture Park. Alderman Feldman said he is not disputing that but we do not have guidelines for that, and asked if there are any guidelines for the artists. Mr. Gaynor said the Skokie Sculpture Park is unique because the indNiduals who work on that are not tenants in Noyes. We draw a lot of the art exhibits that are on display at Noyes from a co'.laborative group including the Sculpture Park. Barb Goldsmith and Shi Curry do several exhibits at Noyes and are very heavily involved with sculpture. The artists are intermingled in the sculpture garden and even though in a sphere of influence of Skokie it certainty is of great benefit to the City of Evanston because its right on the border. Alderman Newman asked what Sheila Oettinger does in the building? Mr. Gaynor said she's an artist, to which Alderman Newman Eisen asked if she's a private painter and sculpture giving classes and was told, yes, she teaches adults. Aldermen's questions arose regarding what the following artists do: Laura and Leslie Hsrschfield teach painting, drawing and watercolor classes. Richard Halstead is a portrait painter. Bonnie Kustner is a writer and holds writing workshops. She has a very small space. Alderman Jean -Baptiste Page 9. asked if her business is to hold writing workshops. He was informed she holds a Written Word Community Event. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is a Written Word Community Event and was told last year it was where many poets and writers were rounded up and held meetings. Gail Struve is a painter. Angel Ysguirre is with Next Theater. Elizabeth Ockwell, is a painter Bilson Trainee is a tour guide, a person who volunteers. The Actors Gymnasium, inc.. Tony Adler provides scholarships for participants in his program. Alderman Feldman asked if those are monitored and was told they have sent in a list of the names, addresses and phone numbers of the scholarship recipients and we monitor the dollar amount of those scholarships. Alderman Feldman asked it that is also true of Piven Theater and was told that is true. Fay Kaiser is a musician, teaches music, and also offers public programs. Enid Baron has poetry workshops and is also a writer. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there is a listing available at Noyes of these people and what they offer. Mr. Gaynor said not everybody advertises and the artists wanted to publish a Noyes Cultural Arts Center brochure telling what they do and what they offer but they haven't pulled it together yet Mr. Harmon Greenblatt, Director of the Cultural Arts Center, said they are working on a web site that will do exactly that Alderman Jean-Bapbste said if he wanted to get this information next week could he just ask your department for it, to which Mr. Gaynor said it depends on what it Is you're looking for. Typic* if you are looking for painters or painting classes we have a listing in the building, you can also call to say what type of class you are interested in and they would give you the name and number to call. Alderman Feldman mentioned that Ken Arlen does the jazz alumni program at ETHS, which was an amazing event Mr. Gaynor said Ken Arlen also does one of our Starlight Concerts at Dawes Park. Our budget for the concert is $300 for the night which does not even cover his cost, he's very community minded. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the Evanston Art Center uses the space for storage. Mr. Gaynor said, no, they actually have two studios and would like to convert what they're doing in those studios now to a print shop. They also have three studios in the basement and want to take a studio that they have been using and convert it into a printing studio. They have a jewelry studio and a sculpture studio in the basement, and they constantly teach. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the rent is raised in the new leases? Mr. Gaynor said the leases that the committee has were two year leases, this is the second year of those two year leases and we have raised their rent by 5%, their community service by 5%, and the parking by 5%. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if all these tenants are paying below market, to which Mr. Gaynor said based on a survey done a few years ago 85% of market is what they are paying and the 15% community service raises it up to the market value. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how old the survey and was two or three years old. They are due to do another survey this year. Alderman Feldman asked what happened to the Arts Council Initiative to address the issue of rental policy, what the mission is, etc. What is being done at Noyes, once a tenant gets into that building are they automatically there forever. A question that has been raised by some people is what about young struggling artists. Mr. Gaynor said at one point there was discussion about the Noyes Center being an incubator for arts, performing as well as visual art. For whatever reason that never occurred. Obviously Piven, Next, and some artists have been there 20 or 25 years. At a retreat, a couple of years ago, the Arts Council indicated one of the projects they would like to take on is the mission of Noyes, what it should be. Should n be an incubator, should it be half an incubator, if it becomes an incubator then Piven is gone, Next is gone, etc. If it stays the way it is then folks will be there until they themselves make the decision to move. The Arts Council is going to take that on as a project this year. The City Manager and Mr. Gaynor met with the new chair of the Arts Council and that was one of their primary goals this year. They were also asked when they deal with that to also deal with the community services and whether it is actually worth while. That is a task they will take on and we would hope would come about some time before the new leases for next year are due and a dialogue with the Council can be had on the outcomes. We did stress that this had to be a very public process not just discussions with the artists in Noyes but the entire arts community of Evanston, which we hope mil occur. Mr. Greenblatt will be the staff person in his dual role as the Cultural Arts Director as well as the Arts Council Director. Alderman Newman made a reference to the original point about nurturing the organization and thinks the situation at the Noyes Center in some cases is unappreciated because we are doing a tremendous amount programs there. The rents are low and do not include the capital money that the City has to put into maintaining the building. The building does quite well because there are diverse types of programs there, painting, dance, theater, writing, photography, music, etc., and Ow measure is Piven Theater one of the oldest tenants there, constantly teaching kids in the Evanston community theater and if they went on for another 50 years it would be wonderful. The goal is to maintain diversity, quality, and outreach getting people in an out of the building which is what we're accomplishing. Alderman Feldman said one of the theories was that a certain percentage of the space be set aside for turn over with new artists being taken in and helped maybe even helped more than just with the normal rental although just a small percentage of them expect that That would be a way of helping new promising artists and would allow them once they either become recognized or are able to move Page 10. on they would, or even apply for regular space if it is available. Mr. Gaynor said one of the issues is two artists are there with that original intent. One of them became so popular they did not want to leave and how remains until we can come up with a real mission. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how many vacancies we now have and was told there are now two vacant studios. Mr. Gaynor said one space was previously rented to Pnven until two years ago when an artist passed away and vacated that studio. The other space was rented by a long-term dance artist who retired and that space was leased to Piven. One of the items to be addressed tonight is Piven's request to move to the space where the person retired because it is next to their studio's theater portion and makes more sense for them to have. We're not giving them any more space than they had we are just moving them from one space to another. Bonnie Kustner moved back upstairs, her studio was a very small studio used for writing. We haven't done anything with the open space yet but now that the Fleetwood Jourdain Theater issue in the budget has been resolved we need to make a determination of what space our department needs as it relates to the camps held at Noyes. When that is concluded notices will be sent out for the balance of the space available. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked where those notices are sent and was told they are sent to a number of artists' organizations besides all the regular papers, the Review, the Tribune, etc. Alderman Feldman asked if the new lease states the increase, to which Mr. Gaynor said yes 5% over last year for the rent, community service, and parking. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much of a demand there is for these spaces and was told they could be rented very quickly. He also asked if there is a list of people waning for these spaces to which Mr. Gaynor said lists exist only for periods of times because if there is nothing available people look elsewhere and find another studios We do not yet know what space will be available and for how long. Alderman Newman brought up the issue that there are tenants In the building that want more space. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the evaluation the Arts Council will undertake is important. as we need to make an assessment of the community services, the rent, etc., and also what do we want to accomplish. On the one hand we want to nurture what we have and the new artists that will come forward and may need assistance to nurture their art and do different things. Artists that may be successful might be able to find other space in the City of Evanston and continue to operate. Those are some of the reasons we need this evaluation. Mr. Gaynor said that is something Alderman Feldman alluded to when he said that maybe a certain number of studios might be the incubator philosophy where the balance may not be. However, from his experience he would say this is probably one of the most outstanding artists and residents models in the country. Alderman Feldman added he does not know of anyone that goes into that building that is not inspired. Alderman Feldman called for a recommendation of approval by the City Council for the City Manager to sign the lease agreements. Alderman Newman motioned for a recommendation of approval, seconded by Alderman Jean - Baptiste. Motion unanimously approved f3-01. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked from the added concern stated by this committee he would like to see the analysis of the artists and community services. Alderman Newman added one of this committee's meetings should be held at the Noyes Center where the committee can walk around and visit the studios, which Alderman Jean -Baptiste was very much in favor of. Mr. Greenblatt was sure the Arts Council would love to have that come about as they have actually talked about it at their last meeting and they asked about inviting the City Council to visit Noyes or doing a presentation there. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked about the timetable for the evaluation. Mr. Gaynor said they will convey to the Arts Coun l to give them a specific timetable that the Human Services Committee is requesting this and maybe in two or three months the Arts Council members can attend a Human Services Committee meeting to give an update on that status. Alderman Feldman thanked Mr. Gaynor and Mr. Greenblatt for the information given the committee. VII. UPDATE ON POLICE BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR CHILD DAY CARE HOMES The committee did not have any discussion or questions regarding the memo an police background checks for child day care homes. Vlll. ITEMS FOR FUTURE HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETINGS Alderman Feldman indicated his long-standing reference regarding police outposts could be removed from the agenda. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Tent' to include in the next meeting the presence of the Human Relations Commission along with a record of their activities for the past year. Alderman Newman added he would also like to discuss the Summer Youth Jobs Program. Mr. Terry noted the April meeting agenda will include: A. Township Budget B. Human Relations Commission C. Park Rules will be coming back Page 11. D. Southeast Recreation Center Group would like to give a status report to the committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked who is the Southeast Recreation Group? Mr. Terry said he believes they are a community group coordinated through our Recreation Department Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked which committee to contact regarding the Radio Evanston Project Alderman Feldman suggested contacting the community media. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said If we decide to go forward with that Northwestern has a radio station which is one resource and perhaps the Levy Center also has one. Alderman Feldman suggested the first people he would contact is the Community Media Center as they are in television and it is not a huge jump from production to newsgathering. If they can't do it they would let us know who could. Alderman Feldman said it has to be given a wave band so people would know what program to turn on and when it would broadcasL Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to put this on the table to advance to the City Council what committee needs to discuss a specific proposal and he would do some more research on that Alderman Newman suggested trying to find out what other cities have radio stations and developing some costs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this is not a radio station but radio to communicate. Alderman Newman thought we should get the Northwestern station people to come and perhaps we can do something cooperative with them. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry to contact them to see if they could come and talk to this committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Donna Stuckert could assist as well. Alderman Newman suggested as additional future agenda items: A. Discussion with Fleetwood Jourdain and the Children's Theater about going to the Levy Center B. The Library - Alderman Wynne would also like to discuss with them is the Children's Library Customer Service at the Main Library and the branches Alderman Feldman was very much in favor of Craving a meeting at Noyes Cultural Center where there would be a business meeting and then have the Arts Council make a presentation and show the committee the stud+os and space. IX. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:18 p.m. Respectively submitted, A"Trotsk Department of Health and Human Services Page 12. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, February 18, 2002 Cfvlc Center - Room 2402 6:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman, and Rainey Frank Kaminski, Kathy Brenn,man, Harvey Saver, Alisa Dean, Jay Terry, Elizabeth Hollsclaw (Health & Human Services Intern), Audrey Trotsky Pat Vance (Evanston Township), Jane Grover (Mental Health Board), Dan Madder (Northwestern Police Force), (See Attached List of Attendees) Alderman Feldman Alderman Feldman called the meeting to order at 6:02 p.m. and announced tonight's agenda had to be completed by 7,00 p.m. as the members of the committee have a City Council meeting to attend. Ill. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE DECEMBER 10, 2001, MEETING The minutes of the December 10. 2001. meeting were unanimousty aporoved (3-0). fit. REVIEW OF THE DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Feldman called for comments or questions on the review of CR-01-06. Not hearing any questions or comments, Alderman Newman moved to accent for aaaroval, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion agproved f3-01. Alderman Feldman then called for comments or questions on the review of CR-01-07. Alderman Newman asked where this occurred and whether or not this is a common type of situation. Chief Kaminski responded this situation was very uncommon. Alderman Newman thought the significance of that is some people think there are never any problems downtown at some of the establishments but from time to time there are problems and he does not have any problem with the way this situation was handled He asked when the video camera gets involved as he noticed in the first complaint it said the entire incident was recorded by in car video. Chief Kaminski said they were able to get a grant for some in car video cameras to be put in several of the squad cars. Alderman Newman asked how many video cameras does the department have and was told there are several in the gang crone cars, they are in all of the traffic cars and are trying to get some of them in the patrol cars. There are total of fifteen video cameras in the department. The way the camera is operated is by a light that the officer has. The people walk up to the squad car and the entire conversation and whatever happened during that traffic altercation is on videotape. Alderman Newman remarked then that record becomes public information and can be subpoenaed by an attorney. Chief Kaminski said often times people come in and have questions about the traffic stop and they are shown the tape. The other cameras are in the department's in -take for prisoner processing and all the cellblocks have always been monitored Alderman Newman inquired regarding the discussion about video taping confessions in homicide cases required statewide and wondered if as a matter of practice what our department does in homicide investigations. Chief Kaminski said they follow whatever guidelines the States Attorney wants when they come in for an interrogation. If they want it video taped, we video tape it. Alderman Newman asked if there is any City policy for this, to which Chief Kaminski responded, no, they follow the procedures and guidelines of the State's Attorney as the department wants to be consistent throughout the County to prosecute those cases. The State's Attomey eventually comes out and sees the offender and looks at everything involved in the investigation so there are checks and balances already in place in the system. There are also some other techniques about interviews and line-ups to make it even more effective. Akferman Newman asked the Chief if he finds the type of incidents where people get intoxicated, and something like what occurred in the aforementioned CR-01-07 happens to be on the low end? Chief Kaminski said from the calls they get in the downtown area, yes, these occurrences happen every so often and the local establishments do a pretty good job calling us in the department Page 1. Alderman Newman moved to accept CR-01-07, seconded by Alderman Jean-Baotiste. motion aooroved (3-01. IV, NORTHWESTERN ANNUAL, REPORT Alderman Newman asked if V�.e renewal of the Northwestern University Policy Agreement could be considered at another meeting. Chief Kaminski sa.o this does not have to be considered tonight but Dan Mackler of Northwestern was in attendance tonight to answer any questions the committee might have Alderman Newman and Alderman Feldman both thought the report was ver/ positive in terms of what's going on and that there seems to be a very high level of cooperation. Alderman Feldman asked Offer Mackler if he is pleased with this cooperative effort, to which Officer Mackler responded, yes, they are very pleased to assist the Evanston Police Department and to be able to take actions out on the street to protect the citizens of Evanston and the community at Northwestern Alderman Feldman said their interest is mutual because they are very much interested in all the people who live in the community and Officer Mackler is telling us this is good for Northwestem as wen Officer Mackler said they are concemed because they have a major highway going right through the center of campus where incidents of driving under the influence take place and we are also able to respond to areas close to the campus at the request of the City. Alderman Newman noticed in the report the University's Police force was writing a lot of parking tickets, 3,092 in 2001 compared to 1,419 tickets in 2000.Officer Mackler said they are trying to enforce the areas around the campus to ensure that the fire hydrants are open. Alderman Newman remarked he noted the University Police are not just writing tickets to Northwestern students but to everyone and asked how many vehicles were identified for booting in the year 2001. Officer Mackler responded identifying boot eligible vehicles has been a difficult process for the University Police because most of the booting is identrfied through a hand held ticket writer, which they have only one, to which Alderman Newman asked why they don't buy more ticket writers. Officer Mackler said he did not know whether they could carry that out but that is something they certainly will consider. Alderman Newman said these tickets are being written probably in the downtown area and according to what has been going on in our number of bootings he does not think were booting enough vehicles based on the number of tickets being written. if the Northwestern Poke are writing 3,000 tickets that's 3,000 opportunities to see whether or not anybody has over five tickets. Officer Mackler thought one of the issues is that some of their enforcement occurs at night after hours when they may not have as many people available to boot vehicles. Alderman Newman asked if this could be discussed further at another time because enforcement is a big issue in terms of whoever the serial violators are At this time the committee is not going to approve this report but he would like to follow up with some further of discussion on that issue. Alderman Newman asked how many officers the University has ticketing, and was told that depends as they only have four to five officers out at a time. Alderman Newman thought then there should be hand held ticket writers available to all of them, lets find out the cost of them. At this time (6:13 p.m.) Alderman Rainey joined the meeting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted that Alderman Newman mentioned the fact that most of this ticketing is happening downtown and asked if that is true. Officer Mackler responded, no, its also residential streets, streets adjacent to the campus, a tit are written on Sherman Avenue for blocking driveways or being too close to the driveway, and also for fire hydrant violations. Alderman Newman assumed the foot patrols are out every four hours and would assume they are writing some tickets. Alderman Rainey questioned whether universities of this size and in an urban setting have more police officers or a fewer amount than Northwestem, or is there some formula. Officer Mackler said irs pretty similar and we may have more than some but were pretty much on a par with the number of officers. There are several ways this can be calculated but there are number of factors that have to be considered, Alderman Newman noted we are substantially below the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. Norttrw°este n has 24, they have 60 full time officers, and they have virtually the same size student body, which is one example he is aware of. Officer Mackler said he does not know about full time or part time officers but does know they have a significant amount of people covering a significant amount of area and answer a lot of the calls with the Chicago Police Department, Alderman Feldman thanked Officer Mackler for his attendance. V. SURVEY REPORT - PANHANDLING Alderman Newman was very pleased with the report and said during the last campaign his opponent argued that the Panhandling Ordinance was not going to have any impact whatsoever. From this report and his own observations and sessions with our police force it has had a very positive effect. Kevin Foss, of Connections for the Homeless, felt as if did. One of the things they used this survey for was an opportunity for their Outreach Specialist to get out to the street Page 2. level merchants to find out whether or not they were affecteed by it in a positive or negative way and the survey in if of itself does detail a lot of those experiences that the merchants had He definitely thinks that the availability of not only the police force but also their outreach teams has made a lot of the merchants feel as if they have an avenue to direct people to get help. Alderman Newman asked how often does the outreach team other than when they were soliciting information for this report actually made an alliance wrtn merchants, distrrbutng materials, or anything like that. Mr_ Foss said they are out in the community on a daily basis and certainly respond to any calls They do make frequent attempts to go out and educate the public not only in terms of the services they provide but how they might be able to access those services through their 1-800 number and also through going out and speaking with them as well Alderman Newman inquired about the status of the hard core guys. Mr. Foss said there a couple of them, the numbers themselves area little bit smaller in terms of actual numbers of guys out there. There a few of them that are pretty intent on panhandling as a means to generate income and they're pretty familiar with what the actual ordinance is so they know how to step around it as not to be eligible to receive a tcket Those are they guys we're still trying to engage and are still trying to work with them and let them know if they're using drugs or alcohol or if there is another reason for what's going on why they have to be on the streets panhandling we're there to help them and work with them. Chief Kaminski wanted to explain the process that they have been using for the past several years. About every six weeks the Police Department, the Chamber of Commerce, Evmark, and Entry Point, meet for about and hour to review the state of affairs of panhandling. The Chief said he tries to keep on line with what's going on. if they see a significant trend in one area or complaints coming from one particular area they try to address it to get officers and Entry Point in there to try to solve this. We have a pretty good handle on what's going on, who's out there, and what are some of the strategies to deal with this. If he or one of his officers get a complaint from one of the business people they go and see what they can do. Mr. Foss added, in addition their outreach specialists meet with the local heat officers on a daily or semi regular basis, Also, irs not just the business community we're concerned about, we're concerned about the residents in Evanston so we also address concerns that may come up. For example. when we get a call from someone where there may be a person sleeping in their hallway or apartment building, we'll go check it out with the tenant or the resident that called and also communicate that to the police. Alderman Newman voiced his appreciation for all the great work that is being done Chief Kaminski said they have a great partnership and hopes it continues. Alderman Rainey asked what the 800 number is, to which Mr. Foss responded, 1-800439-6691. Alderman Feldman thanked Chief Kaminski and Mr. Foss for doing and excellent job. VI. CONSIDERATION OF DECEMBER 2001 AND JANUARY 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman called for questions or comments regarding the December 2001 and January 2002 monthly Township bills. Hearing none he called for a motion to approve. Alderman Newman moved for acceptance to approval the December 2001 and January 2002 Township bills, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, Motion unanlmouslr► approved (4-0). Alderman Newman called Supervisor Vance's attention to lire fact that the January bills have the wrong dates and noted that in the month of January the clients increased by 9 cases He asked if this has been maintained since the time of this report Ms. Vance said they are seeing an increase in the number of people coming to apply and the next report that will be received in about two weeks will show an increase Alderman Rainey noted there are 37 clients pending to which Ms. Vance responded of the 37 pending some of them fall off and do not follow through. but they are seeing more people. VII. DISCUSSION OF FY 2002/2003 COMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES BUDGET ALLOCATIONS A] IMPLEMENTATION OF COUNCIL APPROVED BUDGET FIGURES Mr. Terry informed the committee this was based on a discussion he had with Alderman Feldman about differentiating between having the budget amount being a Council decision and the implementation of that amount being something the committee would consider. Alderman Feldman said there is before the Council a few proposals for cuts in the Purchased Services and the issue came up as to whether or not this committee would recommend the manner in which the Implementation and manner of those cuts, if there were to be cuts, would take place. An example an across the board percentage cut for each of the agencies would be one suggestion. Alderman Feldman asked if this is something the committee wants to take a position on? Alderman Newman had a question regarding Mr. Terry's memo as part of Budget Memo 93 and that the total program budget listed seems to be a new set of numbers that are different than the numbers he has previously seen. Alderman Page 3. Newman cited, for example, on this memo the Legal Assistance Foundation organization has a S 10.000.000 budget and their program budget in Evanston is S391,G00 Mr Terry responded that figure is based on the proposal they submitted. Alderman Newman said he has never before seen this set of numbers where the agency's total budget is basically removed from the program budget. Mr Terry responded that is right there was a request from Alderman Wynne to replicate a chart for Purchase Services tnat was prepared by Harvey Saver that was dore for the Mental Health Board and received by the City Council a week or so ago Alderman Newman also noted the numcer we have always presented for BE -HIV as an agency budget was S1.700.000 but in this budget memo it is $246,000 Mt Terry said it is a question whether you look at program or look at total agency budget and for hose agencies where they specify in their proposal what program our dollars are targeted towards and Mr. Saver showed the total program budget as opposed to the total agency budget, to which Mr Saver remarked ,that is what he had prepared. Alderman Rainey commented the CD spreadsheet is very helpful as it shows the various funding contribubons of every single local agency, i.e., City. CD, and Mental Health. For example it shows Chicago Legal Assistance Foundation's national total budget figure and total local agency figure. Mr. Terry said we are at a point in the budget process where we're probably reaching information overload. Since the first proposals came in this fall in earlier meetings and in earlier facets we have given this committee every conceivable combination of figures for all the Purchase Service agencies. Alderman Feldman agreed the committee did have all these figures. Alderman Newman said he is familiar with what we get and he has looked at the figures probably ten or twenty different times over the years. What he is suggesting is what's in this budget memo is a new set of numbers which he does not think fairly reflects what the agency's budget is. This is different than what Alderman Rainey mentioned regarding CD. He has looked at the CD budgets where they list what their total agency funding is and his problem is these figures are being given to other members of the Council who did not get the other information this committee has and nobody can tell him that BE -HIV is rolling in money. An argument can be made that they need our money but their budget is $1,700,000 not $246,000, He does not know how the program they are doing has been extracted but if you want to give the Council these numbers give them what you give us every year. Mr. Terry remarked they were asked by Alderman Wynne to replicate for the City agencies a chart that was prepared for the Mental Health Board agencies, which is what that is. It wasn't intended to be a representation for the total agency financial picture. Alderman Newman said this budget says "Total Program Budget" and unless somebody dealt with those numbers on a regular basis as this committee does they wouldn't know the difference. Y.O.U.'s budget is not $307,000, they have over a S900,000 agency budget. He congratulates them and does not what other communities they're in but they do not have a $307,000 budget, All of a sudden we have a Y.O.U. development program out there which the other members of the Council are being told that the program budget is S307.000. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Baker if they operate outside of Evanston, to which Mr. Baker responded, not realty. Alderman Newman went on to say in his view he appreciates the efforts of misinformation when not in the total context. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired regarding the difference between the program budget and the total budget. Mr. Terry took as an example Y.O.U. that does not have just one program, they mainly serve one community but they do the Drop -in Center, Outreach Services, and Emergency Housing. According to the proposal they submit every year. City funds supports only some of those programs and does not support general agency operations. In some cases City funds do support general agency operations. Alderman Feldman noted the total amount of the budget they have for all the programs whether or not they operate solely in Evanston is the total resources of an agency. The program has to do with that part of it that they allege or maintain specifically deals with Evanston. Alderman Newman wanted to know if we give Y.O.U. $108,000 and if they do not use every dollar on the Youth Development Program, they have to return money to us. He never realized that our money, in terms of Y.O.U. is just going to the Youth Development Program but thought it was a general contribution to the operation of the entire agency. Mr. Terry noted if one recalls when the City Manager first gave his budget with the proposed reductions, this memo was sent out by Mr. Terry with six or seven scenarios. he also included in that a chart with a continuum that one end of the continuum would be the Childcare Network where we are paying for scholarships and we only reimburse for scholarships given. At the other end of the continuum there are four, five, or six agencies thatjust say we're funding general support. Then there are five or six agencies in the middle of that continuum that tell us the dollars are going for program "X". Can we prove that, can we audit that, probably not, but we take them at their word that is what the funding goes for and there is no hard and fast rule for the fourteen agencies we fund. Whether or not we fund a program or the funds just go into the agency pot is a continuum of where these agencies fall on that cnteria. Alderman Newman appreciated the fact that Alderman Wynne asked for that information but he thinks the total agency budget should be supplemented and that information should be provided so people can get a clearer idea of the funding. Page 4 As far as he is concerned, the Youth Job Center, Y O U. and some other agencies are getting general contributions for operating not just for specific programs that are listed in their proposals. Alderman Rainey thought Alderman Wynne got the exact information she asked for. One of the things you learn over the years as an Alderman is what to ask for because you get what you ask for. When Alderman Wynne asked for this information Alderman Rainey wished she had been sitting closer to her so she could have said "you don't really want that." Probably Mental Health doesn't ask for the kind of things CD asks for nor gets the pounds and pounds of details CD gets. The information Alderman Newman wants has already been panted up and distributed. maybe we should get another copy of that and see that it is given out to everybody. Alderman Feldman remarked Mr Tent' is right. there is information overload, and the information in question might be in the information we already have The tendency is to deal with the latest memo you received All the information Mr. Terry has given is very real and pertinent but Alderman Newman is saying is he is very much interested in having the other information as well, which are the total budgets for the agencies. Alderman Newman added he also wanted the information on the yellow sheet and percentage of budget should show percentage of program funded and percentage of total agency budget Alderman Newman noted, going back to Y,O U., the reason this is importance is the information given the committee shows there is a proposed 35% cut to Y O. U. Somebody could think this is a 35°% proposed cut to Y.O. U., which it is not. If you take $108,000 and the proposed cut for example is 518,000 it's a much lower percentage than 35% which Is why this is important in terms of information being communicated to the community. Alderman Rainey agreed with what Alderman Newman was saying. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought all Mr. Terry has to do is to attach some additional information to this information and add a couple more columns of figures to clarify the picture. It may be a question of referring people to the other material already given to the committee as we address the situation to make the picture dear. He understands what Is being said in terms of what perception we're managing, and is sure Mr. Terry can easily remedy that. Alderman Feldman added one of the reasons this is important is if you have an agency with a massive budget it would be difficult for them to claim that certain percentage of a program they have in Evanston isn't funded by the City, and that everything will fail. If you have an agency with a very small budget that claim could much more easily be made which is why this is important for this committee to know. Alderman Feldman asked if there is any interest on the part of this committee to recommend to the Council if there are any cuts at all, should the Council approve whatever cuts there are, they be done on an across the board basis. Alderman Rainey remarked the problem with that is it's the same as looking at our Emergency Assistance Program, but who can have a handle on the effectiveness of the various groups. We all probably have our biases and what it means to take an across the board cut is very difficult. For example, lets say there are some agencies that are not very effective or their mission is fired. or there is some other issue with them, they're treated equally with the good agencies. Alderman Newman thought most of the agencies we now fund are of high quality Over the years we have had some that struggled but and there may be one that has a weaker financial position, but going down the list all the agencies have been pretty good raising money, and they all have good reputations in terms of service delivery. He agrees there are favorites among people but for the most part they're good agencies. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there is anywhere we could get into specific analysis of specific organizations to determine who deserves more than any others It's a difficult job to cut any of the budgets because all of the services are needed and maybe in the coming year we could begin to have some type of review of the various agencies that we fund, but for now he does not see anywhere around the approach of taking a percentage across the board. Alderman Feldman said that is his approach. The question is the fact that this committee had decided, over the last year, to do an evaluation of every single agency that is funded and having done that recommend to the City Manager a budget cut or not depending upon the agency, that would reflect the necessary funds we needed to save that belongs in this committee. Once we decide were not going to do that this just becomes a budgetary item and across the board is as fair a way as he can think of at this point that we're able to do Alderman Rainey asked Mr. Terry it other communities fund not -for -profits as Evanston does, excluding mental health as she is sure they have Mental Health Boards. Mr. Tent' said yes they do, but in the surrounding areas it tends to be more of a Township than a municipal function Alderman Rainey said she was reading some HUD regulations and guidelines about CD dollars and their guideline is an agency is funded for three years, where we have been funding the same agencies for the twenty years. Alderman Feldman noted no action has to be taken, the Council can make that decision, Alderman Newman did not think anybody wants to cut and by the way the City Manager put the Purchase Services on the list of things other communities do not fund, but he does not think anybody on the Council wants to cut as much as was recommended by the City Page 5. Manager. At the same time when we take our $1,000,000 of cuts which we have a better explanation of in tonight's budget memo. it seems to be in the general fund across the hoard reductions in every part of the budget. There are different types of training expenses, postage expenses, expenses all over the general fund that had been reduced and it seems to him that everybody is reducing their budgets Alderman Newman motioned that the Human Services Committee's motion be that whatever reductions. If there are anv in Purchased Services, it should be suaaested that thev are made across the board. Motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, and passed 3-1, Alderman Rainey said she did not know. B) MENTAL HEALTHiCOMMUNITY PURCHASED SERVICES BUDGET CONSOLIDATION Alderman Feldman noted the committee's receipt of Mr. Terry's memo regarding the possibility of funding consolidation and announced that the Chairman of the Mental Health Board, Jane Grover, was in attendance, He asked Ms. Grover if she had any comment or response to this. Ms. Grovner said the Mental Health Board met last Thursday night and this item was on their agenda. This was brought up and discussed very briefly mostly because they did not have any information about what this would entail. There was some feed back that generally and in very general terms a consolidation would stir other issues. The Board is also worried about losing the metal health focus and worried about putting mental health issues on a back bumer or hiding it away behind other community services were there is to be consolidation, but that can be worked out with more information. Alderman Feldman said this does not have to be a final act now, its up for discussion and we have a very short time to do it this evening. He then called for any comments regarding this issue. Alderman Newman said he agreed with almost everything in Mr. Terry's memo and since we have not spent much bme trying to draw distinctions between the agencies he would rather delegate the review to the Mental Health Board if they are willing to do it and are willing to report back to us with a set of recommendations in November of each year. Maybe then we can focus on other issues such the library, the parks, the Summer Youth Program, the Ecology Center, and whatever else we have come before the Human Services Committee. Alderman Feldman thought it would be important for the Mental Health Board to have continued discussions regarding this and in a short while meet with the committee when they feet comfortable in dealing with the issue and when there seems to be some position. He is certain they will have a lot of questions to ask us as will this committee have to ask them, If this can be done we can all discuss this more fully and you can share with us your concerns as they develop. If we decide that is the way we want to go a lot of it will depend upon what your attitude is and what you feel the capabilities and the interest of the Mental Health Board would be. Alderman Feldman asked it this is alright with the committee and asked Mr. Terry if he would arrange for this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would anticipate that process until some call to the community for some kind of feedback to this proposal and the Mental Health Board produces. if the trend of reduced revenue continues then eventually we will be looking at the economy as a scale and try to manage the funds so that we get a maximum kind of bang for it. There are probably a lot of people in the community who will benefit from this service and there *11 be those who don't who will have an opinion as to what direction we may be able to go in. It is important that we open the discussion so that we come with something solid. Alderman Feldman said this memo actually puts aside the question of the amount of dollars, that remains within the purview and prerogative of the Council and the City Manager. The way in which it is distributed and the oversight of that distribution would switch from this committee to that body. That's an additional responsibility and additional worts for a volunteer organization that spends a lot of time as it is. He is sure the Mental Health Board will seriously consider it as will the Human Services Committee and is looking forward to meeting with the Mental Health Board soon. Alderman Rainey asked if we ever get any status of mental health in our community. Are we gelling any better or more mentally unhealthy. For example at one of the hearings we had a youth who got up and said if we cancel this program he will go back to selling drugs, taking drugs, and children will start killing children which made her think, wait a minute how effective are these programs, what are the outcomes? Her question was not meant to be facet*us, but are we doing the right thing, are people benefiting from these programs or are we just cranking them through the system giving them treatment, housing, and other things. Is anybody evaluating our progress? Alderman Feldman said one of the benefits he always felt that occurred as a result of our encounter with the various agencies that we funded was the state of the community we would get from the perspective of each of the agencies and as a lot of the questions this committee asked dealt specifically with that Are peoples' lives being changed as a result _ of this work? Do we have more clients or less? What is the condition of the world outlook from a human services perspective? He thought that was important and it certainly helped, which is the question which Alderman Rainey is c asking. Alderman Rainey said she did not hear a very rosy picture at the last couple of budget meetings. Page 6. Alderman Newman thought we all know it depends on the agency. For example, the North Shore Senior Services does a lot of service per senior at Primm Towers, 1900 Sherman, and Noyes Court. Nobo&j is writing us letters but from time he hears some very positive things. Are we getting feedback from other agencies such as how much social work benefit do we get from the Community Defender and our Youth Job Program which we're continuing to fund. Nobody knows what happened to any of those kids and that's a program that we're doing. It has been his experience, being on this committee for Council ten years, that we get very different types of feedback. Metropolitan Family Services works with individual families and he does not know what theyre telling the Mental Health Board. Ms. Stumme said they give them outcomes. Alderman Newman said in terms of the information this committee gets do they get his information. Mr. Terry said quarterly reports are received from the agencies. Certain agency directors give us wonderful reports and certain other directors all they say is same as last quarter. Vill. ADJOURNMENT There being no other items for discussion, Alderman Feldman entertained a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7:00 p.m, Motion for adjournment unanimous. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Tro y Department of Health and Human Services Page 7. Name: GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Jkp onaay - r-eDruary trs, 6:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Address / Organization: Gr � �L fff MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: i. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Tuesday - January 7, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Newman Kathleen Brenniman, Alisa Dean, Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Ann Rainey, Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard, Michael Kent (iownship Office), Sharon Eckersoll, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor's Office); Irwin Lyons, (Township Auditor) Alderman Jean -Baptiste Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 8:35 p.m. and apologized for the late start of the meeting, which was due to City Council members having been detained in Executive Session of the Rules Committee. ll. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF NOVEMBER 4, 2002 The minutes of the November 4. 2002 meetintt were called and unanimously approved (3-01. Ili. CONSIDERATION OF THE DECEMBER 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for acceptance of the December 2002 Township monthly bills. Alderman Newman motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion to a0arove the December 2002 Township monthly bills was unanimously approved (3.01. IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE ANNUAL AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE YEAR ENDED MARCH 31,2002 Alderman Feldman asked how this audit could be characterized, would it be as a good audit with minor suggestions to improve it, or, are there any seriously troubling issues that can be seen. Mr. Lyons responded these are more housecleaning issues. Because of the new accounting reporting standards the management letter tried to point out the format and therefore the format of the audit report is different than it has previously been. This is the first time this format has been implemented. Because the Township is a component unit of the City there is a three-year phase -in for implementing the new standards based on size, the City falls into the first category. Since the Township is a component unit of the City they had to implement early as the Township is free standing and will have another three years before they will have to implement the changes made to the standards. There is a letter of Management's Discussion and Analysis at the beginning of the audit report that is a required disclosure that gives you a summary of the financial information that hasn`t been included before. The management letter is negative by nature and doesn't point out all the good things that have been done. Many of the items were measured against an ideal system and based on the staffs responses. If there are items, the way they now are, that the staff and Board are comfortable with we can drop those points, if we get some formal feedback from the Board in the minutes. These points are really not critical and a lot of them have already been addressed and implemented. Page 1. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 onaay - Name: i ws` 'iCIA Urnrs' CUD ebruary 1 S, 6:00 F.M. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: Alderman Newman thought we all know it depends on the agency. For example, the North Shore Senior Services does a lot of service per senior at Primm Towers, 1900 Sherman, and Noyes Court. Nobody is writing us letters but from time he hears some very positive things. Are we getting feedback from other agencies such as how much social work benefit do we get from the Community Defender and our Youth Job Program which we're continuing to fund. Nobody knows what happened to any of those acids and mats a program that we're doing. It has been his experience, being on this committee for Council ten years, that we get very different types of feedback. Metropolitan Family Services works with individual families and he does not know what they're teeing the Mental Health Board, Ms. Sturnme said they give them outcomes. Alderman Newman said in terms of the information this committee gets do they get his information. Mr. Terry said quarterly reports are received from the agencies. Certain agency directors give us wonderful reports and certain other directors all they say is same as last quarter. Vlll. ADJOURNMENT There being no other items for discussion, Alderman Feldman entertained a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7.00 p.m. Motion for adjoumment unanimous. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Tro y Department of Health and Human Services Page 7. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: I. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Tuesday - January 7, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Feldman. Jean -Baptiste, and Newman Kathleen Brenniman, Alisa Dean, Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Ann Rainey, Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard, Michael Kent (Township Office), Sharon Eckersoll, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor's Office); Irwin Lyons, (Township Auditor) Alderman Jean -Baptiste Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 8:35 p.m. and apologized for the late start of the meeting, which was due to City Council members having been detained in Executive Session of the Rules Committee. II. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF NOVEMBER 4, 2002 The minutes of the November 4, 2002 meetina were called and unanimously anoroved 13-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF THE DECEMBER 2002 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for acceptance of the December 2002 Township monthly bills. Alderman Newman motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion to approve the December 2002 Township monthly bills was unanimously approved f3-01. IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE ANNUAL AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE YEAR ENDED MARCH 31,2002 Alderman Feldman asked how this audit could be characterized, would it be as a good audit with minor suggestions to improve it, or, are there any seriousty troubling issues that can be seen. Mr. Lyons responded these are more housecleaning issues. Because of the new accounting reporting standards the management letter tried to point out the format and therefore the format of the audit report is different than it has previously been. This is the first time this format has been implemented. Because the Township is a component unit of the City there is a three-year phase -in for implementing the new standards based on size, the City falls into the first category. Since the Township is a component unit of the City they had to implement early as the Township is free standing and will have another three years before they will have to implement the changes made to the standards. There is a letter of Management's Discussion and Analysis at the beginning of the audit report that is a required disclosure that gives you a summary of the financial information that hasn't been included before. The management letter is negative by nature and doesn't point out all the good things that have been done. Many of the items were measured against an ideal system and based on the staffs responses. if there are items, the way they now are, that the staff and Board are comfortable with we can drop those points, if we get some formal feedback from the Board in the minutes. These points are really not critical and a lot of them have already been addressed and implemented. Page 1. Alderman Feldman asked if follow-ups are done on these recommendations? Mr. Lyons responded, yes, part of the process is they start next year with these items based on the responses and then if there are any items where the Board would agree that they are comfortable with the weakness we would then drop those points as there is not a cost benefit to changing it. Those points were listed in the letter on page 3 and would be followed up with three (3) items from last year that had been implemented. The items: 1) Fixed Assets; 2) Vacation Time; and 3) Earnfare Reimbursement. These are items from last year's letters that have been cleared up so there is a continuity from one year to the other followed up. Alderman Newman made the motion, in addition to acceptance of the Annual Audit he would also move that the Township and the Assessor's office report back to this committee within sixty (60) days as to their implementation of all the recommendations, and if thev are not going to implement these recommendations, at that time they are to tell us why. Alderman Feldman seconded Alderman Newman's motion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste referred to page 4 of Management's Discussion letter and Analysis, specifically the Long -'berm Debt. He asked for an explanation of the last sentence which states the Township also has a long- term liability for compensated absences of $7,716. Ms. Vance responded, that is vacation pay, which is currently under the Township policy. We do allow for a maximum of two weeks carry over for vacation. That liability is what they paid the staff, but it should also be known that it has been decreased; these salaries are a higher liability because they carry over more time. As she looks through and reviews the personnel policy she is also looking at a way of phasing this out where there is no carry over of vacation to that degree because vacation has to be paid at the current rate when taken, therefore, it is more expensive each year and becomes a liability. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Ms. Vance is saying she has staff unbudgeted at a value of an additional $7,716 that will have be paid out in vacation salary. He then remarked, that policy can then be amended so staff can be mandated to use their vacation time. Ms. Vance said they are slowly implementing changes in the personnel policy to do that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if, at this point in time, it is the option of the staff person. Ms. Vance said it always been the policy that has allowed this to happen, to which Alderman Jean - Baptiste said then staff would chose to use vacation within one fiscal year or the next as opposed to the need for the staff to work continuously during the year or to take less vacation. Ms. Vance said having been there for only a year she would think for management's sake the incentive thing is scheduling. Because it is a small staff we look at how many weeks each person has and schedule it over the year so that the office is kept running. Mr. Hilliard added, of the eight staff persons they have, at lease four staff persons have been there twelve years or longer. Ms. Vance said these staff persons get at least four or five weeks of vacation time each year, the longer they've been there the more vacation time they have. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then it is possible that next year we will not have that liability, to which Ms. Vance responded there will be some liability because the next year's audit will end this year, hopefully by 2004 we should not see this liability any more. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled Alderman Newman's motion, seconded by Alderman Feldman, that In addition to acceptance of the Annual Audit the Township and the Assessor's office will report back to this committee within sixty (60) days as to their implementation of all the recommendations, and if thev are not golnq to implement these recommendations, at that time they are to tell this committee why. Motion unanimously accepted (3-0). V. AFFORDABLE HOUSING ISSUE FOLLOW-UP Alderman Jean -Baptiste motioned that this issue be tabled for the committee's next meeting because of a number of Issues occurrinq which includes discussions at the Rules Committee level to determine where Affordable Housing will no. Alderman Newman seconded the motion, motion unanimously passed (3-0). Page 2. VI. DETERMINATION OF FEBRUARY MEETING DATE Due to the conflict of other Council meetings the committee decided the next Human Services Committee meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 5°i at 7:00 p.m. Mr. Terry noted the February meeting will have a very full agenda that will include: - The Mental Health Board - Art Center, Lighthouse Landing - A comprehensive report on the Lighthouse District - The Lakefront Follow Up - The advocates of meat at the Farmers' Market want to come and plead their case to the committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that the meat at the Farmers Market issue be deferred until the March Human Services Committee meeting. VII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjoumed at 8:50 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 3. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: I. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Wednesday - February 5, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein. Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Newman Kathleen Brenniman, Harvey Saver, Doug Gaynor. Bob Domecker, Harmon Greenblatt, Toni McKinley, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Jane Grover, Sue Canter, Vicki Kalish (Mental Health Board); Martha Amtson, Sue Brenner (Childcare Network of Evanston); Holly & David Reynolds, Randy Zwik, Katie Stallcup, Marsha Niazmand, Beth Steffen, Penny Miller, (Lakefront Special Events) Alderman Jean -Baptiste Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 7:15 p.m. ll. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JANUARY 7, 2003 The minutes of the January 7, 2003 meeting were called and unanimously anoroved (4-01. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF THE JANUARY 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernstein had a question regarding the S15,000 projection for the Assessor's legal bills which seems to be excessive and wondered if that could be generated by the lawsuits. The annual budget is S15,000 and the current legal fee amount is $2.041.20. Mr. Terry said he believed the Councirs direction was to pay those bills until they reached the budgeted cap and come back to the Council to see what any additional legal expenses might be. Alderman Bernstein also had a question with respect to the Assessor's rent of 51,059 and asked specifically whether the Assessor's portion of the utilities is $821.17, and if all the offices heated separately. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired if it is known why no one from the Township was represented at this time to which Mr. Terry responded he had no idea why. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked that at this time, this agenda item be dismissed and held to see whether anybody from the Township would attend sometime later this evening. IV. DISCUSSION WITH THE EVANSTON MENTAL HEALTH BOARD REGARDING AGENCY FUNDING ALLOCATIONS Jane Grover, Mental Health Board Chair, introduced Susan Cantor and Vicki Kalish Board members, and Executive Director, Harvey Saver. When they last appeared before this committee they came to talk about whether or not the Human Services Committee wanted to consolidate all the Purchased Services funding through the Mental Health Board, which since their last meeting has happened. They understood that the funding process would be involved with six agencies and an additional budget. The Board met, had funding hearings over a long Saturday and heard from all twenty of the agencies they fund. Prior to that they sent a letter to each of the new agencies welcoming them to the Mental Health Board, introducing themselves and giving them background information as to how they do their work. We felt we had a pretty good feet for what those agencies were and how they did their work. The funding deliberations were difficult this year and we ended up eliminating funding for three agencies, NTSW, Family institute, and St. Francis Hospital. These decisions were made for a number of reasons, none of them having to do with the programs themselves, rather we felt the programs they offered the community were valuable and served Evanston residents although not the community they hoped but when the budget is tight it cannot fund these kinds of expenses. Those agencies that did not receive funding from us amounted to less than 1 % of the total agency revenue and we had difficulty figuring out how to really make a difference dropping those three agencies from our funding. We do intend keeping up a relationship with those agencies because they're important agencies in Evanston. We also undertook the fail funding process without the assistance of Harvey Saver, who was gone for several months last fall, and that made it very clear to us how valuable Mr. Saver's services are to the Mental Health Board. Ms. Grover also expressed gratitude to Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky, and Mr. Saver's assistant Joan Barott for all their help in making sure that things did not fall through the cracks while Mr. Saver was gone. Page 1. The funding allocations approved in November were based upon a projected budget not the City Manager's proposed budget and based upon what they thought their budget would be. Since then the Board met in January and heard from NTSW asking us to reconsider our decision of me S8,000 of funding. We met and at a difficult meeting spoke with them at length but we reaffirmed our decision that we could not figure out if we got our moneys worth from NTSW. We also met with representatives from BE-HiV because we had heard rumors that BE -HIV was undergoing a merger with a Chicago agency and we wanted to make sure that BE -HIV was staying in Evanston for Evanston residents. Connections for the Homeless asked us to shift our funding from one program that we had already approved to another program they did as they needed the local funds to get We HUD matching dollars. At he Mental Health Board's January meebrng they talked about the City Manager's proposed three and a half percent (312%) budget reduction. Board members contacted Ms. Grover to express to the Human Services Committee that they very strenuously object to the 3 112% cut especially following the 18 1/2% cut which the Mental Health Board's budget sustained last year. We obviously can make hard decisions but 3 12 % makes them that much harder and if 3 12% does happen to the Mental Health Board's budget, would this committee leave the discretion to decide how to apply this 3 112% to the Board rather than make an indiscriminate 3 112% cut across the board to each of our agency allocations. They would rather keep their priorities in mind to decide where to apply 3 1/2%, if that indeed does happen. Alderman Newman thought the way the 3 112% should be looked at is that nobody on the City Council wants to cut anything. This is a tremendous frustration, actually in the City Manager's budget 22 City employees lost their jobs and we are not filling any vacant positions. With those 22 employees that will be gone there will be a service reduction around the City. One of those reductions will be tree trimming. A lot of people say who cares about tree trimming, but if the trees aren't trimmed property they fall and die and hit people on the sidewalks. There are cuts being made around the budget and from some of our perspective when the City pays out almost $900,000 for Purchased Services and Mental Health which is valuable money, but money going to people who do not work for the City one can argue perhaps the City should be looking to reduce there before some of its own employees. In the sense of rejecting that argument this year this 3 12% was recommended. There are so many items being cut in virtually every department it is not a reflection that this isn't a priority, it is, we just do not have the money to pay. Currently we have the unions AFSCME, the Police and the Firemen, asking us for 4 and 5% increases when we can only afford 2%, that's a $1,000,000 figure and we will perhaps be in a situation where we will not have the money to be able to pay them. This is not about not wanting to fund, its about the State reducing their funding to us, S150,000 was lost in the Photo Processing Tax, we lost a couple of hundred thousand from a replacement tax, the State income Tax, which is part of our budget, is performing much lower because of the down economy, the State has a four to five billion dollar short fall and they may take away from us some of their sales tax revenues that we currently get. Also, we have an $11,000,000 legal verdict out there because we are appealing a case that we also have to start thinking about The City has a very tough situation and he would consider a 3 12% reduction to be a great victory. Alderman Newman said he thinks the Mental Health Board is doing a good job and does not care how the Board divides the money. The fact that the Board reduced some agencies they did not think were effective and put that money into some agencies thought to be more effective is exactly what you should be doing. Alderman Feldman welcomed Mr. Saver back after his absence, and wanted him to know he had been missed. Alderman Feldman also wanted to congratulate the Mental Health Board on their very professional, capable decision -making which he greatly appreciates. As a matter of fact one of the reasons he felt so comfortable in turning this kind of decision over to them is that some time ago having been a member of the Mental Health Board for 8 years he grew to respect the confidence, dedication, and professional way in which that Board handles its obligations and sees that nothing has changed. Three and a half percent out of an $860,000 budget is about $30,000, The Mental Health Board's memo asked for the Council's support and in making those decisions he can assure you that you will have that. To ask you to make decisions and not to give you the support to do that would be foolish and self destructive on our part. Without question whatever decision you make he believes the Council does have faith in the Board's ability to do that. Nobody —_ is going to second-guess it if you keep making the kinds of decisions you have made as indicated in your memo and they are done in accordance with your priorities, which he respects, as far as he is concerned you have his support knowing of course your decision will meet with some discomfort on the part of those concerned agencies which you as the Mental Health Board will have to face. Of course, they can always come to the City Council, which they do, to plead their case. Again, he appreciated the hard work the Board has gone though and the quality manner conducted by the Board. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added that speaks for everyone on this committee and he is sure the Council will give the Mental Health Board all the support they need. There is no approval needed for the Mental Health Board budget as it has already been incorporated in the City's new budget. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked the members of the Mental Health Board for their attendance. Ms. Grover said that the Board will come before this committee to let them know how they are doing, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked the committee would welcome having the Mental Hea!th Board come to them quarterty to keep them updated. Page 2. V. STATUS REPORT ON THE SCHEDULING OF LAKEFRONT EVENTS AS A COMPONENT OF SPECIAL EVENTS POLICY Alderman ,lean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to help us understand how he has incorporated the comments made when this was last discussed and how he projects going forward for the year 2003. Mr. Gaynor remarked he provided additional information in the packet, plus a 2003 calendar of events This calendar shows very few dates actually filled in for the reason that is they have not received very many apahcations for events, whether for the lakefront or anywhere else in the City_ Typically the applications begin to come in at this time. However, some of the things done internally in the department established as administrative policy was to limit events, specifically at the lakefront, based on what activities and the number of event days we feel is a pretty good number. There are twenty-two (22) event days which includes two festivals, the concert series, events the City actually runs, and the other events such the Arbor Day Race which is also a City event We have not received applications for most of the other events. We received a new application this year from the Garden Club, they would like to do a House Walk around the Greenleaf area, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7,00 p.m. They have not yet submitted all the specific information and he has indicated to them that he needs more information in order to make a determination of pasting signs, police traffic control, etc. We were successful in moving the Ricky Byrdsong Race, which had traditionally been on Saturday to Sunday. We are told on Sunday there is least amount of inconvenience to residents and there are other problems that do not occur on Sunday morning that do occur on Saturday. That event is scheduled for June 29 . but at this point he has not received an application from them. Alderman Newman had a question regarding the Ricky Byrdsong Race and asked if they are going along with last year's taycxt, which was different, or do they want to go back to the previous layout Mr. Gaynor said in the past if an application carve in and they could accommodate the activity they did, but based on the challenges of trying to manage the activities better they are now taking a more aggressive position and telling the applicants if they want to have the activities which streets or sidewalks they can use. We have initiated rotating and where staging areas are needed so the events do not all take place only in certain parks. Alderman Newman asked Katie Stallcup, one of his constituents, if the Byrdsong event is the event where she and her neighbors could not get out of their houses, and was it better this year than last year. Ms. Stallcup responded, she was not inconvenienced this year, although she might have been out of town that weekend. To her recollection there was not the problem this year that there was last year, Mr. Gaynor said there were two major changes this year, one was the route, the other was the staffing hours provided for the activities. In the packet for this meeting there is a proposed policy on al special events, including the lakefront, that talks about how they are managing the events. It notes they are bringing in more staff. In relation to the Byrdsong Race two years ago there was a problem because barricades were put out and there were no staff members to help a citizen who wanted to get out of their driveway. This past year there were staff members at all closings whether they were parking enforcement, recreation personnel, or rangers added to assist in the event any resident wanted to get out. In fact there were a number of residents who commented favorably and came out to talk to us. He thinks that is one of the mitigations put in place in order to ease some of the inconvenience. Alderman Newman asked if as part of this policy we can have an ongoing dialogue with the community where these events are as to the staffing and precautions that are being taken and try to incorporate some of their suggestions on an annual basis, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, absolutely. Mr. Gaynor thought he had covered the primary focuses we have had or the steps being taken to introspect the managing better. What they are trying to do in the overall policy is set guidelines and perimeters for special events. When somebody calls and asks to have a special event we can send them an application, which pretty much spells out that you have to apply 90 days in advance. If you want to have a successful event you would certainly want to have it in advance of 90 days to publicize it. This policy also gives us an opportunity for the Special Events Committee to review the special event and make sure it *11 work and does not conflict with other events, if it is a very large event they can bring the event coordinator to our committee so the Police, Fire, Traffic Departments, and ail the other departments effected can talk about what their concerns are and make sure that its all going to work. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired regarding the lakefront issue. One of the points discussed was placement and the possibility of utilizing a larger segment of the lakefront as opposed to concentrating so many events in some of the preferred locations as in the past. He asked if Mr. Gaynor could tell us what events might be moved from what locations to get a better sense of how he is trying to reallocate those events. Mr. Gaynor said they are not planning on moving either of the two festivals or the concert series at Dawes Park. We do have a Starlight Concert at both Dawes and at James Parks. Those ten events, each festival is two days and the six concerts will remain. July a would be the eleventh day when the entire lakefront is shut down and inundated with the focus at Dawes. Beyond that we have not received all the applications. Mr. Dornecker remarked that last year we moved the Byrdsong Race and the Avon Breast Cancer, walk which originally was at Church, further down south by the lake at Dempster. They also moved the Relay for Life Event from the lakefront to James Park, which they found, was an even better venue than the lakefront and will they probably want that park again. Mr. Gaynor said one of the policies they have implemented is to rotate events so that if an event Page 3. comes back that took place last year at Dawes Park we will probably move them south to Clark Square or somewhere else. Alderman Feldman said one of the issues discussed the last time had to do not only with a policy but the intent of that policy which was to limit or manage the impact which seemed to be what a rush of events was having on a given neighborhood. He understands you have a policy about rotating events but within that framework have you come to some idea of an optimum number of events having an impact on the people that live near Dawes Park. Mr. Gaynor said, as earlier stated, there were 22 event days last year the same approximate number the year before, Excluding Apnl and May and using June, July and August as the three summer months. we thought 22 event days in 90 days was reasonable. Those 22 event days do include April and May because one of the races takes place in April. if all the events that took place last year would return this year then our limit would be that number, if an event drops out. As an example, we could consider somebody on a waiting list. We are trying to determine whether each event has to be at the lakefront merely because someone wants it at the lakefront. What goes into the decision of where to place the event is not necessarily who the event organizers are, but for example, it would depend if the Police Department would be able to manage if there are street issues, closing down roads, depending on the number of attendees. The Ricky Byrdsong Event brings in 3.000 and bike riders going down one side and crossing Sheridan getting to a staging area which makes it very difficult. Therefore, the Police Department will have a significant amount of input whether the event should even be there. Perhaps another location would be better. Alderman Feldman understood that not only the number of events but the size of the event effects the neighborhood. Some events are very large and very powerful, and he does not know how many people the Duck Pluck draws or how long that event lasts, but you cannot compare that with an Ethnic Arts Fair. It seems to him that there is some way of measuring the amount of impact over a period of time whether it be in number of events or in the power of the events which Is what he thought we were doing and what Mr. Gaynor was going to do. Alderman Feldman noted it was indicated there are 22 event days and asked why they are called event days. Mr. Gaynor responded, he wanted to make it very clear that the Ethnic Festival is one event but the impact is two days, to which Alderman Feldman said that means that something is going on whether it's the same event as the day before or not. Alderman Feldman asked what would happen if two events dropped out and we had five more applications, have you come to the conclusion that 25 event days are too many? Mr. Gaynor responded, what they are trying to do is balance the demand of what the community and residents who live along the lakefront want and looking at the last couple of years that number of 22 event days seems to be the number. Not many more applications seem to be coming in. If one event cancelled and if an application came in and there was a waiting list, we would consider them. He believes 22 event days in the summer in over a 90 day period of time is not going to be a major negative impact on the environment. The only event that goes on that is a very crushing event is the 4a' of July when we can have anywhere from 5,000 to 40,000 people at the lakefront depending on the weather and things of that nature. Alderman Feldman said what he was trying to understand is whether or not Mr. Gaynor's department has come to the conclusion that a given number of event days is what is tolerable and beyond that it increasingly becomes more of an imposition. Mr. Gaynor responded, he would agree with that statement, 22 is the number they feel reasonable and the policy they are suggesting is ,f somebody else comes in and wants to have an event and we turn them down they can appeal and come to the committee who will determine the number of events if they want to go beyond 22. At this point we think 22 is reasonable. Katherine Stallcun of 144 Greenwood Street, said she lives very close to Greenwood Beach and Dawes Park. There are a couple of points she would like to make as we are considering this very interesting plan. The first is 22 event days in a 90 day period, as far as she can tell not counted in that is Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. While she would certainly agree the O of July absolutely can be a huge event. Those two holidays also bring a remarkable amount of traffic to the lakefront. There are plenty of people on the beach and a lot of picnicking, every square foot is taken up with picnickers and all the parking is taken, which makes for a very heavy additional traffic burden on the neighborhood. The second thing about the 22 event days is certainly the two big events, the Ethnic Arts and Cultural Arts Festivals, it is true Uae set ups begins on Fridays afternoon for each of those and tear down extends into Monday morning. Mr. Gaynor said there may be some minor cleanup on Monday morning but tear down is completed on Sunday night for both festivals. Ms. Stallcup continued but there is a tat of activity beginning on Friday afternoons adding another half day to the events. Those are the points she wished to make. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Stallcup what she would suggest; to which Ms. Stallcup replied she tends to agree with Alderman Feldman as she thinks it would be a good idea for the City to decide on a limit. In her humble opinion she thinks 22 event days plus the national holidays which brings a lot of people to the lakefront is beginning to be a tot of weekend days especially for citizens who live west of the lake who want to come to go the beach and find a parking place without it being a big hassle, who want to have a quiet walk along the lakefront, or want to sit and relax or just read the newspaper. The more days that they cannot do that she sees as a negative impact not just on the neighborhood but on the entire City. Page 4. Alderman Newman remarked a lot of this deper4s on the events, the rest of the City has places such as James Park even though the Little League is there a lot of times peoole just use the park. When referring to the beach you're talking about thousands of people and when an event is added to a Saturday or Sunday when you have the picnickers and the beach goers those days, without the event you are taking up all the parking spaces, as many of people are not from Evanston. He has a lot to say about this policy. for example the North Shore Century Bike Ride, there is no reason this cannot take place at James Park because it needs a lagoon buCcling, James Park has a lagoon, it has bathrooms. 4 has the Levy Center and I.`re parking there, plus a beautiful new p'.ayground. Little League is over then and is no soccer is being played there. As fares he's concerned if there's amplif'x~amn there are no houses nearby to hear it. His problem with this event, in terms of the policy, is this event is going to genera:e thousands of dollars in fees for the riders and our fee to them is $100. They say they are going to charge S15 to S20 for the application for each rider and they have 1,600 riders which would be $16,000, doubled it would be 532,000 Tt-e North Shore Century Bike people charge 532,000 and the City of Evanston is going to get a S100 fee and disrupt t; .e neighborhood for a period and in our policy they only pay 50% of our cost This makes no sense to him, a private group making $32,000 and is an imposition, why we're only getting $100 and then half of our cost if its over 5500. Mr. Gaynor said this event leaves Dawes Park and goes up to Kenosha. If it starts at Dawes Park it will have less impact than it would have if it starts at James Park because at James Park it would go through the entire City and 1500 bike riders are going to need to get over to the takefront anyway, we have don't room for them to be on Ridge Avenue. Alderman Newman asked what about using all those bike paths along McCormick and then getting over. Mr. Gaynor said at some point they would need to close off every major east -west road from James Park to Isabella as they leave the City and starting at Dawes Park they are very quickly out of the City by just going down Sheridan. Alderman Newman remarked they are riding to Kenosha so the extra ride will not be a big deal for them. Mr. Gaynor interjected it is not the length of the ride it is about the inconvenience of the entire City rather than about the mile and a half or two miles going from our City limits at the north end. For a bike ride of this size we would need to close off east west roads, but on this route they could go right off Sheridan and out of the City. Logistically that makes more sense that having them ride the entire City. Alderman Newman said if they were at Oakton and Dodge and went west to McCormick where the bike path is they could cut over to get out of the City. Mr. Gaynor noted we would have to close off Main, Dempster, Church, all the way up the City timits until all 1,600 bike riders get past the City. The bike ride starts at 6:00 a.m. and goes through 11:00 a.m. Alderman Newman said then put them in Lovelace Park where they will be at the edge of the City and you will not have to close streets. What we can do to stop adding some of these special events to the lakefront is work with Mr. Gaynor and make suggestions. Mr. Gaynor said one of the issues we had which Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked after coming on the Council is are there other venues for some of these events, for instance could we move the festivals. We don't have parking for 1600 people and we have a number of people put their bike on the rack who will drive their car to come for this event, park in the Northwestern parking deck where there Is considerable parking, they can park in downtown Evanston, and then utilize Dawes Park. Alderman Newman said that is not where they are parking they are parking on Lake and in the neighborhoods. Alderman Feldman thought for him there is a philosophical difference between these kinds of events. The lakefront serves a very special purpose and the first priority should be those events that are either created by the City itself for the benefit of its citizens, which does not mean that other people from all over cannot come, but it essentially is part of our culture, our appreciation for art, music, etc. The beaches on Memorial Day and Labor Day is exactly the reason the parts was created. All the other events, the Relay for Life, The Rotary Annual Staff Picnic, The North Shore Century Ride, and the Walk for Hope Against Breast Cancer, do not fit into that category. They are the City's attempt to support a group of people that are trying to raise money for a cause, which he thinks we should do. He does not believe that support includes an automatic place at the lakefront. As he indicated with this particular bike ride there can be other places for them. Would that be disappointing to them, probably? Would they rather have it at the lagoon and our glorious lakefront, most likely. He believes before we take anything away or cut down on any kind event such as an arts festival the other things should go first. As a matter of fact unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that event has to be there he does not think we should even consider putting events such as the AiDS Ridge Bike, the North Shore Century Ride, and the Walk for Hope Against Breast Cancer there. There is a dramatic difference between a constituency that may or may not have anything to do with Evanston other than a shared value in supporting these groups and he believes we should do that if that competes with a City sponsored event that is there essentially to express the values of the community, art, music, culture and in some cases recreation. Everybody applies for Dawes and he understands why. Maybe we should rethink that entire issue, that citizen oriented events get first priority. As far as he is concerned they can be moved or not accepted at all if a new event applies at Dawes. Mr. Gaynor was puzzled at Alderman Feldman's remarks as the Ricky Byrdsong Run has at least 50% of the runners comity from Evanston and we are managing that to which Alderman Feldman interjected he said that is a compelling reason. Mr. Gaynor said as far as managing the North Shore Century Bike Ride they probably cannot manage that at Lovelace park because we don't have the parking. The parking lot has only 40 spaces. There are specific compelling reasons we can go back and respond to and go down the list of these activities when talking about the number of participants and where they can park. Yes, they park in the neighborhoods, but parking in the neighborhoods is clearly not adequate, which is why we use the Northwestern Parking deck and the Church Street Parking Garage for a lot of these different events. We know that the people who come to use the beaches are using the Church Street Garage. Last Page 5. year we thought we were on the right track to better manage these events by looking to see at d they can go somewhere else. We looked at putting Byrdsong on McCormick, it doesn't work, We don't want 3000 people running through the Ladd Arboretum, that's a natural environment and shook: be a protected environment With the 22 events we found one group did not want to be at the lakefront anymore, Alderman Feldman asked if there is enough parking at Dawes for the North Shore Century Bike Ride and was told, yes there is. Alderman Feldman then asked about sufficient parking at James Park, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, there probably is not Mr. Gaynor went on to say an example as to why he says probably not, he gave instructions to the manager at the Levy Center not to have any special activities going on a given day because Little League and soccer want to redeaicate the new fields there and there will not be enough parking for all of that activity. If you go to James Park on any Saturday morning, people are parked up and down the drive as well as in the two parking lots and along Dodge as there is nct enough parking for just the use of the actwities fields in James Park. Alderman Newman would like to see how many people on this bicycle nde. when going to Dawes Park, are actually walking from the Northwestern parking lot The people are all parking in the neighborhood, he knows there is angle parking along Sheridan providing 150 parking spaces. He would just like it understood what is going on is that every single weekend the parking in this neighborhood is completely filled because of the beaches. He realmes that at Lovelace Park there would be just this one day of neighborhood parking. His brother lives near Lovelace Park and he is well acquainted with that park. There is a one out of a million chance on a Saturday getting a space in front of Alderman Newman's house, but there is a 100% chance in front of his brother's house as it is an entirety different situation there in terms of parking. On a Saturday at Greenwood, in front of Ms. Stallcup's house there is no parking, whereas near Lovelace Park the side streets are empty. If he thought the bikers were going to go to our garage on Church Street he would say he is with you, but he does not think they are going there and thinks what they do is hone in on the lagoon where the little driveway is and look for the closest space to get to the lagoon. To him this is the type of event, when people are bicycling, that they can bicycle and get out of the City limits from Lovelace Park. Alderman Newman brought up that he could not believe what the City is charging this event that is bringing in 532,000. What are the City's services costs going to be for them, will it be over $500? Mr. Gaynor responded actually the memo says there is very tittle cost to the City. Alderman Newman does not think the fee in any way, shape, or form for this event should be below $500 and to him $500 is cheap. When you put on an event there is an overhead and the place is part of the overhead. If our fee was $500 instead of $100, even it was 51,000 which he knows sounds like a lot, they would have to charge these 1600 people less that S1 more each to pay our fee. If they want the lakefront have them pay 51,000 and let them have Lovelace Park for $100 then we'll see which direction they go. He does not want to give way on the price here because part of the reason we're getting all these people applying is we're giving it away and we're cutting budget. The same thing should apply to First Night, as much as we all like First Night, they're charging people S8 or S9 a head for an event that the City is paying $8,000 or 59.000 for. If 10.000 people come to this event they can raise their price $1 and the taxpayers will not be shelling out 510,000. Therefore. to him we need to be substantially raising our rates in this policy. He also thinks our fees should be charged based on what the organization holding the event is charging. For example, if an event is free, the Rotary Picnic to him is an appropriate event to charge S100 for because they are not charging to get into the picnic, but for organizations such the North Shore Century Bike Race we need to have a much more substantial fee and asked if any other Aldermen agreed with him, which they did. With respect to the North Shore Century Bike Ride, Alderman Bernstein questioned what an affiliate organization of the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department is, which is what this organization is, and how does one become an affiliate. Mr. Gaynor responded it goes through the Recreation Board, they look at the organization and make the decision if they are to become an affiliate group. Basically if those types of organizations weren't there the City would probably be running that type of a program, Soccer for Kids, Little League Baseball, Little League Football, Hockey, etc. If there was not the AYSO program the City would be running it with volunteers and spending the money, the same as w;th the little leagues. Alderman Bernstein asked if the fee we charge is for the use of the lakefront or just for processing the application. Mr. Gaynor responded the application fee is brand new which is something we have not been charging. Our current application fee, starting with this group, is when you apply to have a special event your check for 5100 accompanies the applicaiion. The way the policy reads is if there are additional costs, anything under $500 the City would waiver, over $500 it would be 50% of the cost to the City. Why is the magic number 5500, there is no magic, the amount was just selected and thought it would be debated, it might go up or down. When taking a look at what the 4°1 of July and First Night costs the City in resources, those are significant dollars. First Night is between S10,000 and $15,000 and the 4"' of July is upwards of approximately a $60,000 cost to the City. However. there are extenuating circumstances, the 4`" of July donates a considerable amount of money back to the City. They sponsor a significant amount of the Starlight Concert series. The North Shore Century Bike Club donates back to the City. As an example, they donated the bike racks at the Levy Center, he is not sure whether it was $1200 or $1500. Some of these groups donate back; therefore, we have to look at some of the extenuating pieces to these fees. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested that Mr. Gaynor see if he can develop the policy proposal that Alderman Newman made, that we consider how much we charge organizations based on the revenue they generate plus the cost to us. If Page 6. the event is free we should consider only the application fee, if they are charging and generating 515,000 or more maybe we can recoup some of cost or maybe get a little better contribution from them. Secondly, he would suggest that Mr. Gaynor take a look at the proposal Alderman Feldman and Alderman Newman made to take a look at events that are not sponsored by the City and explore different options and perhaps come back with the compelling reasons to rationalize whether or not that event should take place at the lakefront. That way we can look at Lovelace Park to see whether or not the neighborhood can afford the parking for the North Shore Century Bike Race, and if they can then we may want to consider going with that option If they cannot then the lakefront option with the Northwestern parking option and downtown is something for us to consider. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste wanted to clarify a statement made earlier that these were 22 events within 90 days yet they start in April so it is really within a five month period, but we do have that concentration of events in July and August. Mr. Gaynor said he did mention it actually starts in April and ends in September but the reason he is using 90 days is to be sensitive to the fact that there is a beach out there and we have a lot of people came to the lakefront for the beaches and those 90 days are the highest impact days. Alderman Feldman remarked that in addition to that we have to eventually come to the conclusion that even if an event applies for permission from the City, even if there is a compelling case that's the only place the event can go, if its not of a given category and is beyond the so called tolerance level you should say, I'm sorry, you either go someplace else, or adapt or adjust to it. We are not the only venue in the world for events and it is conceivable that we could say I'm sorry it would be very nice but it's too much. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted that every application is not approved. Mr. Gaynor added if somebody wants to have an event on the same day as another event they are turned down or rejected to find another day. We've proposed not to go beyond the 22 event days. Mr. Gaynor said an item he would like some direction on is an issue that has become difficult and would like to become more efficient at a lack of a coordinated process for the special events. Up until now lakefront events come to the Human Services Committee, all the rest of special events, anything over 250 participants goes to A & PW. On one hand its convenient to take it to A & PW because they meet every two weeks and as these applications come we bring them forward for review before they go to the City Council. On the other hand there has been a policy in place for a number of years that anything at the lakefront comes to this committee. We would like all special events to go to one committee so that they can be better coordinated for the Council in a continuity of knowing that one committee is looking at it and monitoring it rather than going to one committee for the lakefront and going o another committee for what's going on in the rest of the City. This is an important decision outlined in his memo and is therefore presenting this before this committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste believed once we have the policy governing the lakefront and other events throughout the City in place, if for some reason you are not able to get before the Human Services Committee which he why he thought that you name before A & PW, for expediency sake. A & PW meets twice a month and the Human Services Committee meets once a month, sometimes meetings are cancelled and sometimes you still go to A & PW for the lakefront. Mr. Gaynor said the only reason they had was there was a period of time this committee did not meet and it was suggested that when the committee didn't meet any of the items on the agenda would automatically go to the City Council or into A & PW on its way. We would like to standardize whether its coming here or to A & PW so that there a continuity. Alderman Jean-BapWe said he still thinks that the fall back option of going to A & PW is if this committee does not have any time to make that decision, something we should keep in place, but the first option should be at this committee. Alderman Newman said the reason the Custer Street Fair goes to A & PW is because it is a street closure and the same is true of the Arts Fair and the Chamber. These are events that are taking place inside the parks and the parks Is a Human Services issue whereas the street closures is not He does not have any interest in ever approving the Custer Street Fair at this committee. The Byrdsong event is also a street closure and has been going to A & PW. Most of these events are repetitive events and why can't somebody who is repeating appIX by February 1" then we can have all the events applied for and know our calendar. If you do not apply by February 1 you're out If you think you're going to be here, that you're an annual event you have to apply otherwise you're no longer an annual event. We know our ten events apply. Mr. Gaynor has done a great job putting together a calendar and the policies, we haven't had special events policies or a special events calendar we've just had some recordings of when the events take place. Three or four years ago he had a problem the way this was done the way events kept on trickling down and no one knew the actual total. Annual events should apply by February 1" for the area they want if its last year's place, then Mr. Gaynor would not have this problem of the committee not meeting to approve the events. The reason its a problem is because the applications are coming two, three, or four weeks prior to the event and then approval for the is event needed. If the new events don't apply by February 1" they may be told next year apply by February 1". Alderman Newman said there was a specific reason why the lakefront came before the Human Services Committee and he does not want to give up having the lakefront coming to this committee. The reason they came was in 19B9 some of these same neighbors were asking for relief and a series of meetings were held through the Human Services Committee to come up with this policy that events had to be approved by the Human Services Committee if they were for more than 100 people. If we go to this policy for everything to be approved by A & PW for the next two years he wants to be able to be present and considering there are 22 events at the lakefront thinks the 1" Ward Alderman should be present. He thinks the problem of lakefront events is Page 7. solved if we tell everybody to apply trf February 1 ", in terms of not having enough time to come to this committee because we meet once a month. What is w7ong with telling an annual event if they do not apply by February i" they are out. Mr Gaynor said if that is the will of the Council that will be done, we would like to have as much advance notice as possible to publish our calendar. In his opir on the earlier these groups get approval to have an event the better their event will be so they can publicize it. Alderman Feldman said the purpose o` raving the applications in by February 1" is if we have 45 who applicants we could decide which events will take place It would be ridiculous to say if you apply by February 1" that's an automatic inclusion He is suggesting this committee will c,rsider the applications, if at that point we have the calendar and all of the events have applied for us to see. Mr. Gaynor said he understood what Alderman Feldman is suggesting which makes a lot of sense, he will say there will be a lot of events that will come in after that date that we will have to turn down and thet will appeal that decision. If we can have a cut off date he does not have a problem saying February 15"' or January 1 . Alderman Jean -Baptiste said underlurs,.>ctional issue he does not think we have resolved the criteria. If we say all events that take place in City parks of over 100 people are to come to the Human Services Committee then that is procedure that we follow, to which all the committee was in agreement with. He went on to say then all other events that require street closures not utilizing parks will come before the A & PW Committee, Mr. Gaynor asked why we would want to split it up, why not bring everything through Human Services, Alderman Newman said because streets are A & PW and parks are Human Services. Alderman Newman said as far as he is concerned if you want to bring them all to this committee we could spend the night going over those Alderman Feldman remarked some Alderman have great protection over the areas in which their committees have trad;tonatly overseen. Unless we find some astonishing goad reason for it why don't we just leave it the way it is which is the way Alderman Newman suggested and fall back if we need to. David Revriolds. 204 Davis Street, thanked the committee for considering this as it is very reminiscent of 1989 when a number of residents came before Human Services because the event days were up to somewhere between 12 and 14 which had quite an impact on their neighborhood. The events in that neighborhood are very high volume as far as attendees go. At that time the events were limited to the two festivals and six Starlight Concerts. Anything else over 100 people had to be approved by this committee. in the intervening years skrMy but surely the committee started approving more and more events to the point where we are now up to 22 event days. The vast majority of those event days occur within about 300 feet of Church and Sheridan, in a very, very small area. in discussions with the parks and Recreabon Department, over the last year or year and a half, we have had some hope that they would be walling to reduce the number of events held in that area. The Avon Breast Cancer Walk is out on their own volition because they are not going to do it any more, but with the loss of institutional memory this has been ratcheted up from about 12 or 14 days to 22 event _ days. In addition to the two major holidays mat are not included every nice weekend is a major event day at the lakefront, its packed. He would like this committee to consider, if not right now, at least through an attritional basis reducing the number of days that occur in that area so Mat we can get some relief. One of the other things that were talked about in 1989 was spending capital improvement money on other parks so that they could host some of the events, a little of that is being done but not very much. He does think events of this nature can be held in many places other than the lakefront and would like to see the Council move several of them out of there in order to reduce the impact on the neighborhood. Alderman Bernstein asked if the greater impact is vehicular or pedestrian_ If we precluded people from outside of Evanston parking in there on event days, co✓•sd that change things? Mr. Reynolds responded, not on event days. It would certainly change things during the rest of the summer and would lessen the impact on the neighborhood on the nice weekend days and the national holidays. A sot of the North Shore Century Bike Ride people are from out of town and where would they park. Alderman Bernstein said that is his question; he can see some economic sense of getting to the - park somewhere other than the lakefront. They then have to go through the City and maybe when they go back to the garage they stop by a restaurant, wouldn't that impact in a positive way. Mr. Reynolds said the bicycle ride would lessen the impact some but not that much. - Ho1►v Revnolds. 204 Davis Street, said the lakefront neighborhood like any neighborhood has come to think that amplification is necessary to make an event successful. She does not think that is the case and most of the Century Bike Rides have not used amplification, if she is not mistaken, that is an addition in recent years. The Rotary Picnic of course wants it, the Duck Pluck wants it, and she is tasking about where ever these events are held. She thinks it has come to be accepted, as part of the event and that is one of the enormous impacts, but does not think it is necessary. it was said that the neighbors at James Park were not real close to it, but they were there. For any neighborhood amplification makes an enormous difference, they say they'll keep it down, but she can tell you that from many, many years of experience it just doesn't happen. Alderman Newman thought that the amplificatw part of the application should be spelled out much clearer as to what s they want amplification for when they are applying because all the application asks is if you want amplification. Before we approve an application we should know about this. in regards to Mr. Reynolds' comments about the 22 event days = - Alderman Newman thought the list could be gone through to see what events could be placed elsewhere. He mentioned Page B. the Rotary Picnic that is on a weekday and not on a heavy beach day. but Ms. Reynolds said they also see that as being just as disruptive an event. Alderman Newman thought we could be thinking of other places for some of the events. He thought the bike ride could be held elsewhere although parking is an issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked about the Relay for Life Walkathon to which Mr. Gaynor said was at James Park_ they had amplification, was well received and there were no complaints. That event wail again be held in James Park Tie Aids Bike Ride was rotated out of Centennial Park and moved to Burnham Shares last year wnich is part of relocation. Ms. Stalicup asked for clanfication of that. sne knows that are two parts to having a large event such as a bike ride or a walk. Part One is 1,500, 5,000, or even 10.000 participants who travel through the neighborhood and then Part Two is the rest stops, the staging areas, etc., which there would be large numbers of porta potties and big barrels of gaiter aide being served to people and so on. It was her impression that the staging area got moved but not the route that the riders took so that would mean the riders are still coming through Dawes Park but are stopping at the ports potties and the park to the south. Mr. Gaynor asked which event Ms. Stallcup was referring to and she said the Aids Bike Ride last year, it was a huge event. Mr. Dornecker said the Aids Bike Ride was all on streets that did not go down the lakefront at all and the location where the staging was set up was moved off the lakefront to Lincoln School. Alderman Newman asked which women's walk was out and was told it is the Avon 3-Day Walk. He asked if the Breast Cancer Walk for Hope and the Walk for Women are still listed and was informed they have not yet submitted their applications. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this fist shows what we might anticipate and what else we might be able to explore. Alderman Newman asked how large is the Walk for Women and was told it is listed with 20 people to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste added it is one of the event days and we can look at the option of placing this event someplace else. Mr. Gaynor said one of the issues they have is if it's an event with 10 or 20 people they won't even apply. They can go from South Boulevard to Clark Street and back and we would not even know about it because there are only 20 people in that walk. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then it shouldn't be one of the event days to which Mr. Gaynor said we listed it because we wanted to bring forward accurate information. We do not bring anything on the lakefront to Human Services of A & PW unless there are 100 participants. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that this should then be dropped from the list of events which would now bring it to having 21 days of events at the lakefront. Alderman Newman asked about the Indian Guide event which seems to be quite popular. Mr. Reynolds commented that each event in and of itself is not difficult but it's the events in total plus the summertime use of the beach, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the only way we can help reduce that impact is to reduce the number of events that we approve. Summertime people will use the beach, holidays people use the beach and the City will sponsor certain major activities. The only way we can do this is to quantitatively reduce the list. Mr. Gaynor made the suggestion to come back to the next Human Services Committee meeting with an analysis, not including the 47 of July, the festivals or the concerts but including the other events to see if something can be done elsewhere and bang you the comments collectively from the Special Event Committee. The Special Event Committee is comprised of the Fire Department, Police Department, Water Department, etc. The members of the Human Services Committee were very pleased to have such an analysis, and Alderman Newman added he would also like the fees for the events to be addressed. Mr. Gaynor mentioned that is a delicate issue. He cannot speak about the North Shore Century Bike Race, but for most of the rides it's a donation and the best example is Muscular Dystrophy. They want to come in and use everything and when we say we have to charge a fee they say, but its Jerry's Kids, which is true, Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the committee sympathizes with those who live by the lakefront. He lives across the street from Canal Park where one very large event takes place, the 4" of July, and he understands that you have the entire summer to deal with that. That is a concern that needs to be addressed and we will stay focused on that and develop a policy that hopefully can amend this situation. Alderman Newman noted the proposed policy item will be on Monday night's A & PW agenda. Mr. Gaynor said it started with A & PW several months ago to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why couldn't we share the comments from this meeting so it can be a continuing discussion. Alderman Jean - Baptiste thanked all the lakefront residents for attending this evening's meeting. Vi. NORTH SHORE CENTURY BIKE RIDE Alderman Jean -Baptiste tabled this item for the next Human Services Committee meeting when Mr. Gaynor will have options for consideration of placement of this event. Alderman Newman wanted to know the extent of the amplification. VI1. CONSIDERATION OF 2003 NOYES CENTER LEASES Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had some initial discussions with Mr. Gaynor regarding this item and thought this should be tabled, as there is a proposal before the Council to increase the amount the renters pay and take away the community services they provide. Alderman Feldman wanted to clarity how that will work, he was not certain how the raise is implemented and asked how much credit the renters get for the community service to which Mr. Gaynor responded, 15%. Alderman Feldman went on to say if that is taken away they have to make up for that in dollars, they would lose the obligation for the community service and come up with the 15% in their rent payments. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Page 9. how much money this would be, to which Mr. Gaynor said approximately 532,000. Alderman Feldman asked what if we re -instituted or did not take away obligation for community service and attached that to rental. In other words as part of the privilege of being in that building doing community services, raise the rental the way you have it now, then in terms of cash outlay the increase would be the same. Mr, Gaynor said what we are basically saying is that they would still be obligated to do community service and increase the cost per square foot to the equivalent of the $32,000. Alderman Feldman said he heard that the increase in rent that results from this elimination is 15%, but if you disassociated credit with that it is still an obligation that you do not get credit for. He is not certain this was a great idea in the first place but that went back a long time, they'd still have to pay the same thing and would still be obligated for community service. The community service would be but the same, then actual cash outlay would not be any different if we eliminated the community service. Mr. Gaynor said the renters will be charged 100% of whatever the rent per square foot is and in addition be obligated for community service valued at whatever they say. The only other comment Mr. Gaynor wanted to make about community service is it is extremely time consuming on staff, it takes about a weeks of staff time to manage this. Monday night members of the Arts Council came forward and said they were willing to develop a committee to do this for us. If in fact they did that and monitored the services, currently what happens is the artists present their concept of community service. A painter might say he is going to teach three classes at the high school that he gets paid S75 an hour or whatever, which is the equivalent of the 15%. Do we say okay, is that a value or not, is there really something to that. We don't want to take that responsibility and we haven't We have a group that wants to do that There are some who say they'll give tickets away to a performance as their community service. Once that's been accepted and written into the lease then they have to provide that community service. We are approximately 18 days away from the end of the lease and still have some tenants who have not completed their community service. Once the community service is done they have to provide a report that our staff has to go through which is an accountability issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought one of the problems is we never should have paired community service with money because symbolically we want to encourage community services. For someone to be arguing against that creates an entirely different conception problem. if we need to raise rents we should raise them even though we may not reach the $32,000 but we need to come back to them and say we want community services and see if this committee can manage that for US. Alderman Feldman agreed with what the artists said, but with a different purpose in mind, that this isn't a building that's there to house artists in an ivory tower reclusive type of atmosphere. The genesis of community service was that was the reason for us doing this was for them, to be out into the community, not only there to share in what's going on but out into the community one way or another and offering services as their part of the bargain, which he believes to be true. If he felt that community service wasn't part of that he would really begin to rethink the whale idea of Noyes Center as a home for artists, because the only value art has to him in terms of doing his job has to with its interface and its effect on the community and the benefit that the citizens of Evanston get from it. if they don't get any benefit then there is no point in this. He knows Mr. Gaynor has no axe go grind as far as community service, but he thought this is just a way to eliminate their obligation and telling them have to do it in cash instead. Alderman Bernstein asked if the 5% proposed increase presupposed the 15% increase and we are talking about an overall increase of 20%. Mr. Gaynor said what they have done, over the last couple of years, is try to stay at least current with the operating costs of the building. The utilities alone seem to drive us further and further away from that. We certainly can't keep up with the capital improvements as everyone who has been in that building knows because it is constantly requiring dollars for upkeep, yet we try and operate getting as close to breaking even as possible, The 5% is just annual inflation, a term he hates to use. Alderman Newman asked how far away are we from the break even point, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, if you did a zero based budget which meant 1 % of his salary and 2% of Mr. Domeckees, right now neither of them are in that budget. They have three budget elements, the Arts Council, the Cultural Arts Division Programs, and Noyes Center, the revenues spent for which are in the budget book, We're not really that far apart but its not a zero based budget which means we don't do billable hours for all of that if we just take the people housed there, Toni McKinley, our facility manager, Harmon Greenblatt, and the secretary and split some of those salaries among all three elements. We try to keep a good accounting of where the money is spent_ Alderman Berstein said then you submit a budget that contains an increase of 15% in exchange for which they would not have to do community service, plus 5%, an overall 20% increase. If the Arts Council was doing an analysis of the community service what savings would your staff have as a result of their not having to do the chasing, the analyzing, etc. Mr. Gaynor said as he indicated its about 8 weeks worth of work and right now the staff is very busy. Alderman Newman remarked that we would also lose the community service besides Arts Councils change every year. Alderman Berstein noted if that were the case and the genesis of the idea as Alderman Feldman suggested was the fact that this was an open building to get art to interact with the community then it would be up to the arts people to do what they're doing. In terms of a potential budget savings, he knows the rents are low but a 20% increase in one year is extreme. Alderman Newman said let's look at some of the leases to see what the increases actually are. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the question was what is the monetary value of the staffs time put into managing the community service, to which Mr. Gaynor responded its about $6,000 savings of staff time. Alderman Feldman noted if we're referring to the $32,000 than that would be about 20% of the increase. Alderman Bernstein remarked that $6,000 would be available for some other service and the additional 532.000 we're Page 10. giving them back $6,000 that can be used for some other place off of that budget. Alderman Feldman added that would mean the artists would be charged S32.000 minus the $6 000 leaving a balance of 526,000. Mr. Greenblatt said he was present at the Monday night meeting and heard what the Arts Council said but does not think you can say there will not be any staff involvement in this at all As one of the committee Aldermen said there are Arts Councils changing every year, staff will still have to be invcNed. tney will not be there full time may be less; we'll still have to have some interaction. Mr. Gaynor said the Arts Council is individuals who have jobs and work during the day. Probably 50% to 70% of the community service is conducted during the day during school hours and after school hours but before fire 5:00. It is going to be difficult but if the Arts Counal say they can do it he has no problem trying to see how it goes. He does think staff will be involved and the resources of the staff at the Cultural Arts Center are very thin. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the trouble is the politics of it all for us to be on the other side of the fence saying people should not be doing community services. It does not manage the right perception for the community so at this point in time the question is how do we fix that, how do we retain the community service aspect of the lease and how do we raise the rent so that we get some kind of increase. Alderman Newman said its not community service, we're paying for it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked all of the discussion has been that the Co wants to cut community services, we can have a way to argue that and know how to respond to that, but what is going out to the community is that we are preventing the artists from doing community services. We need to keep that in the lease and maybe raise the rent by 10% to strike a balance. Mr. Gaynor said we provided a memo with a comparison survey that was done, not scientific, making phone calls. This was not distributed in tonight's packet but was given to you with the budget memo. The survey was done by our Economic Development people, they looked at what our current rent structure is and some comparisons were made. Our current rents are three different rates per square foot, basement $7.23, first floor S8 26, and $9.36 for the second floor. We made comparisons to other buildings in the area and Chicago and talked to realtors who said the average rent should be around S18.00 per square toot We're not supposing or even recommending 518.00 a square foot but the suggestion that was made of separating the two maybe requiring community service as part of being in the building and then raising the rent to try to get it to what the market value is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked, but we can't do that. Alderman Newman said there are some major fee generating activities among the tenants going in that building. What he found a little disconcerting about Monday night's meeting was that nobody on the Council wants to raise the rents. Mr. Gaynor is in a difficult position, he is getting a mandate from the City Manager's office that his department has to cut a certain amount of money and if he does not raise money someplace else then he has to cut at Fleetwood Jourdain, at the Levy Center, or elsewhere as something has to be cut, He is making major cuts in his department, tree trimmers, etc. He did not wake up one day wanting to cut the artists at all but it was descnbed by one person, who Alderman Newman respects a great deal, as an attack on the arts. There was not any attack on the arts; there's a financial condition of the City that was not appreciated in some of those comments. Alderman Newman said there are commercial entities in his ward that have to pay part of their profits as rent if they gross a certain amount. There are some artists who charge very small fees who this will be hit very hard and there are others that can afford it. He does not know what his compromise does to your budget and does not want to see something else in the recreation area being cut. Alderman Feldman said there are four people on the Council here that he thinks are willing to support an increase in the rents and keep community services. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Gaynor how much money that loses for him, to which Mr. Gaynor responded $16,000. They did an analysis and can provide the committee with a budget memo for Saturday morning showing the 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% increases. Alderman Bernstein noted a good point was raised that a particular tenant is generating a lot more revenue than another tenant, perhaps we can have a sliding scale based on percentage of revenue as about $32,000 is all you need. Mr. Gaynor said it was also discussed that 50% of the tenants are for profit, for profit could be a starving painter. Others are not for profit and are generating huge dollars. Alderman Feldman said there is no way this community can insure that every single artist is able to pay the rent at Noyes. What we have to do is to make sure the City is doing what it always wanted to do which is to support the arts, to support a building that represents and houses the arts and tries to make sure that their effect and involvement with the community is as great a we can make it. That's what he thinks we have to do and if he is comfortable with it and you're comfortable with it the fact that there is a difference between the market value of what we're charging for rent and what they have to pay that represents our support for which we are asking community service. That goes hand in hand if we're willing to support the art not for arts sake but for arts sake in relation to the community. That is how he always looked at Noyes Center and why he feels confident in supporting Noyes which he thinks is a jewel for the community. That doesn't mean that they don't Vhare in the same kind of difficulty that you saw the Mental Health Board is having and everybody else that is involved. When he heard what an artist said to him the other day that he will have to raise his fee to his clients, Alderman Feldman responded, that's right, to which the artist replied some of his clients can't afford it. Alderman Feldman said some people can't afford a lot of things but we can't insure the artist's fee so that everybody who wants to do it can do it. There is no way we can do that, all we can do is do the best we can and be comfortable in the effort were making, which he thinks is what we would be doing. Page 11. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the compromise he is proposing is we try a 10% increase and maintain community services. Mr. Gaynor will bring his budget memo Saturday showing the percentage increases per square foot. Alderman Jean - Baptiste thought a clear statement should be made that we expect that the artists will give back to the community by community services. Mr. Gaynor said that is lust a pre -requisite at Noyes in the lease there would be blank for community service separate from the rent. Alderman Feldman said one of the reasons we did that was people who had a lot more space whose support is greater from the C(t'y we required more service from them. We tie it to the rental as a dollar value. we may tie ii to the space, but there has to be a way that a very large tenant gives much more to community service than a tenant that has a very small space. !Everyone rs expected to do community service. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said at this time approval of the 2003 leases at the Noyes Center will be tabled. Alderman Newman wondered whether we should obtain information from the tenants as to hary much fees they are generating because it will give us an idea of what we're doing to them with this rent increase. Mr. Gaynor reminded the committee this issue will not come back to this committee it will be dealt with at City Council as the leases expire February 28". Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think the rental sliding scale could be in place this year. Alderman Berstein added if the leases expire they then become month to month tenants as of the date of the expiration of their lease. He asked if we can require some kind of financial statement from these artists to see what kind of revenues are being generated. Alderman Newman brought up the Roxy and the deal they had where they had to turn over their gross figures to their landlord every year. We're a landlord and are being told that the proposed rent increase is much too high but our budding is being used to generate fees. The City just put 5350,000 into the park next to this building. From the audience, Sue Brunner, remarked Alderman Feldman set out a policy idea of how the committee wants to go and she thinks you should get the enure 20%, but if you set the policy and have it stated out there then anybody that comes in has to abide by it. Alderman Bernstein noted 20% in one year is a large rent increase although there are some tenants that are better able to afford it. Alderman Feldman asked when wilt we start the new policy, to which Mr. Gaynor said what he has done In his career regarding management is he always requested the IRS statement have it on file to know what the revenues are. Alderman Bernstein would like to see what kind of reserves these not for profits and for profits have. Mr. Gaynor said they may not deal with this in this year's lease, Alderman Jean -Baptiste closed this discussion to be continued at another time. Vill. CiTY OF EVANSTON FOR THE PROVISION OF THE SEED PROGRAM BETWEEN METROPOLITAN FAMILY SERVICES AND THE CITY OF EVANSTON FOR THE PROVISION OF THE SEED PROGRAM Alderman Newman moved approval and remarked this Is a great accomplishment. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion for approval. Alderman Bernstein asked if all of the $400,000 goes to Metropolitan, whether we fund it, what happens. Mr. Saver responded this grant is not just a pass through of the federal dollars. The City has responsiblities for the coordination of some of the grant activities and relationship with the federal government. Alderman Bernstein asked whether the City was compensated for those activities to which Mr. Saver responded, yes. Alderman Newman thought this is a great collaboration. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a concern about outcomes, how we can insure young kids adjust emotionally, etc., that's a good objective but he is not sure whether we will be able to measure that Mr. Saver responded, that is a good question, the outcomes are something that will be developed as the program is implemented. Metropolitan Family Services has contracted with a project evaluator from Rush Medical Center who has a number of years experience with early childhood programs and has worked extensively with The Incredible Years Program on Chicago's West Side and will be working with us to help identify measurable outcomes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled the motion to approve the proposed contract between Metropolitan Family Services and the Citv of Evanston for the Provision of the SEED Proaram. Motion unanimously passed (4-01. IX. COMMUNICATIONS; A) REGIONAL HOMELESS STUDY Alderman Newman asked that the Regional Homeless Study be moved to the next Human Services Committee meeting. B) ADA GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted they have already started addressing that item and a committee has been chosen. Page 12. X. APPROVAL OF JANUARY 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the January 2003 Township Monthly Bills, motion unanimously approved (4-01. IX. ADJOURMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:28 p.m. Respectfully submittec, 6 Audrey Tro y V Department of Health and Human Services Page 13. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - March 3, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein. Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Newman STAFF PRESENT: Judy Aiello, Doug Gaynor, Boo Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Bill Stafford, Bobby Brown, Lloyd Shephard, Frank Kaminski, Sam Pettino, James Elliot, Max Rubin, David Cook, Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Pat Vance, (Township Office), Chief Chafin, (Northwestern Police Department); See Attached Attendance Sheets PRESIDING: Alderman Jean -Baptiste 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. and announced tonight's agenda would not be followed in sequence. Il. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF FEBRUARY 5, 2003 The minutes of the February 5, 2003 meeting were called and unanimously approved 14-01. ill. CONSIDERATION OF THE FEBRUARY 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion for acceptance of the February 2003 Township monthly bills. Alderman Feldman motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motlon to approve the February 2003 Township monthly bills was unanimously approved (4-0). iV. CONSIDERATION OF THE 2003 NOYES CENTER LEASES Alderman Feldman moved for approval on the 2003 Noyes Center Leases, seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Newman asked if the Noyes Center people have seen the report on what is being planned. Mr. Gaynor said that is in the leases but they have not yet received them. A letter was sent to them six or seven weeks ago informing them of the major changes, the 10% increases and the reduction of the community service payment. Alderman Newman said in terms of what floe tenants were asked to supply he hired the part where it is the Illinois Charitable Organizational Annual Report of Not -For -Profits. If they are a not -for -profit he is not sure that we actually have to have a personal tax return. We are trying to get is a sense of the amount of money they're taking in. If they would give us some idea of what their gross revenues are we could have an idea of the money being produced from of our space. Alderman Bernstein said the potential of a sliding scale of rent based on revenue production or capacitive generate revenue was discussed where the large earners could be able to pay a few dollars more a square foot than those who are not making any profit He thinks this could be done and could be a condition of their lease. Mr. Gaynor said in discussions with our business manager it was determined that there will be official forms that have to be submitted to the iRS, one if you are not -for -profit and the other if you are for profit. We felt they should be on the same playing field to provide us with the same confidential information just for the business they do at the Noyes Center and has nothing to do with any other business they may be involved with. Alderman Newman then said we can tell them that the information given us will not be released to any other party and is just to verify numbers. He would like them to be reassured of that. Another item Alderman Newman pointed out in looking at some of the leases a tenant that has 684 square feet is paying $670 a month rent, if one was to rent a 20 X 20 office downtown they would have to pay between $1,500 and $2,000 a month for400 square feet of space this tenant has twice as much space for less. Another tenant is paying S18B a month rent for 220 square feet of space almost a 15 X 15 office which shows how incredibly low these rents are considering the quality of the building. Even though we are increasing the rent and the other action taken there can be no arguments that this is a very, very good deal for the artists and people renting the space. Of course we appreciate all the worts these artists do. Alderman Feldman wanted to clarify the data received regarding these reports but at this point he has not in any way committed to sliding scale rents, as he does not know what those reports are. He would like to understand what is going on and see whether there is a vast discrepancy or anything of that nature as it is good for us to know that it there is data Page 1. to support that. Secondly, during the recent debates regarding t`e Dudget there were voices raised that the proposed increase and elimination of the community service portion cf the 'case was "an attack on the arts", but as Alderman Newman indicated these are substantial support amounts tt;at me =ens are supporting not attacking artists in this community and they do it in a very big way. That building is a ;ewe? and is great for the artists as well great for the City. We're happy to be able to do that and we do veri much apprec:a a them That appreciation is shown in the way we maintain that building and the kind of rent we charge. Heardnq no further comments, Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled the motion for approval to consider the 2003 Noyes Center leases, motion unanimously accepted 14-0). V. STATUS REPORT ON THE MBE/WBE/EBE PROGRAM Alderman Jean -Baptiste stated he recently met with a number of Department Heads to attempt to get clarification as to what the issues are that we have been discussing over the past srx or seven months. Out of this meeting came a proposal for follow-up meetings to come back with a specific proposa; that can be addressed to this committee. Since the Director of the Finance Department is in attendance Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that he give the committee a brief overview of what the program is now about and some of the issues we are seeking to address in terms of potential objectives. Alderman Feldman remarked with all due respect to the Chairman he -would like to be informed as to the kind of issues being discussed in the report to this committee before we receive it. In other words he does not want to get a recommendation that he had nothing to do with in terms of visioning. adding, subtracting, etc., to which Alderman Jean - Baptiste responded we are not yet at that point he is merely saying mat tonight we will not get into a full blown discussion because we are nowhere in terms of where we want to get to any kind of proposal for discussion. He would just like to get a brief overview of what this program is about and some of the issues that have been raised as to what it needs to achieve in the foreseeable future. Bill Stafford, Finance Director, said he would give a quick summary to address some of the issues relative to the MWBE Program. The information the committee received is the background et what has been done in terms of the approach relative to date, which has basically been a purchasing program. The concern during the Task Force was they had brainstormed as to other aspects of the program and to put together a Task Force with senior Department Heads, our Purchasing Director, and the MWBE Opportunity Coordinator. The idea is to meet every few weeks and to work on the program and issues especially some of the key issues. For example. encouraging the employment of Evanston residents, how can we use City resources to leverage resources to facilitate that, hcw can we use Community resources to facilitate that, how we use legal avenues, i.e., things such as Fair Employment Ordinances and others to facilitate that, how can we build capacities to employ more Evanston citizens, and what else can we do. A lot of good ideas came out of the meeting that Alderman Jean -Baptiste Chaired. We are just getting sta-a ng and the direction so far is we have some homework assignments that many of us are looking into to get back to you with, which is actually where we're headed. To date we do not have any initiatives but are just brainstorming and fors i:ng those policy issues and information related to that. Alderman Bernstein inquired regarding the person hired to fill that pos,-,;cr. and asked what duties that person performs. Mr. Stafford said the person has been working on some support inforrna )on, for example, one of the things needing to be done with the new financial system is key into the MWBE data base to consolidate that with a lot of our vendors, which we are currently working on. We had to consolidate some because at one =nt in the budget we were going to have three positions and after we made our cuts were down to only one person, wt•.p was hired. There are a lot of assignments related to that task force. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the next time we meet we will have something more current and notify you to give us some feedback. Vl. CONSIDERATION OF THE DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski noted the committee has before them one complaint in addition to their Annual Report 2002, plus the Northwestern Police Annual Report, Alderman Feldman moved to approve the Consideration of the Disposition of Citizen Comolaint CR #02-072 seconded by Alderman Bernstein. Alderman Newman wanted to discuss the overall report which indicates for the last two years there has only been eight complaints against the Police Department. Considering the high amount of aGrvrty we have and the number of complaints in the past he thinks the Police Department over all, in terms of conduct, has to be doing a very good job. There was some talk at the last Council meeting as to where our prime statistics are as Last year there was a bump in certain violent Page 2. categories. Also, the Chief told us that the crime rate index in Evanston is the lowest it has been since 1972. Looking at the statistics there are probably over 3,000 crimes less in Evanston from 1977 to 2002. All considered the department is doing a very good job and he appreciates the work you are doing being aggressive, trying to protect us, and at the same time giving the type of courtesy you extend. The complaint before the committee is unfortunate and after talking to the Chief today leamed he takes incidents such as this and goes over how the officers should be reacting, They use these cases for training and discussions to try to make sure we don't have these problems, something he thinks we need to watch for. Alderman Bernstein had a question with respect to what our policy is, to pursue or not pursue beyond our jurisdictional lines. Apparently this person was first seen in Chicago, is it the policy to go after him? Chief Kaminski said if they see a suspect there they will go after them and stop them. Alderman Bernstein asked if at the same time do they call Chicago, to which Chief Kaminski said they would call Chicago for a backup d they needed it, but this particular person then crossed back over to Evanston. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if this individual was classified as a suspect because somebody called in the description and this individual was now in Chicago, to which the Chief said he was right at the comer of Howard and Western but then crossed back over. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if our interaction with him took place in Chicago, to which the Chief responded, no, it took place back on our side as he came back on our side of the street. This case is in court, the charge is still pending. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to make note of the complimentary letters received by the department. He knows the Police Department tries to work closely with the citizenry and do their best to keep crime down. Some of the policing the Department has done helped in stabilizing many neighborhoods. One of the issue he will always have Is that we need to find a way to include the input of citizens in reviewing what you do because police policing itself ultimately has some degree of prejudice down the line, which is a long term issue He does not have any problem with that in regards to this report Chief Kaminski agreed with Alderman Jean-Bapbste's comments and said he also has an Advisory Board and tries to get people on A. He meets with them once every three months and one of the questions he always asks them is what are the police doing right and what are they wrong out there. If they hear anything bad or good he tries to use that input as a gauge to see what is going on. There being no further comments, remarks, or questions. Alderman .lean -Baptiste recalled the motion for approval of the report, motion unanimousiv aooroved (4-0). Chief Kaminski introduced the two gentlemen, Lieutenant Sam Pettineo and Sergeant James Elliot who are now handling O.P.S. investigations. He is giving them an opportunity to have some experience In O.P.S., they're off to a good start learning the process and learning to deal with these complaints. Previously Lieutenant Cabanski and Sergeant Sowa handled this. VII. NORTHWESTERN POLICE ANNUAL REPORT Chief Kaminski informed the committee he prepared a memo based on the statistics Chief Chafin gave him for the year 2002 listing the off campus activities conducted and highlights of a lot of the incidents they helped the Evanston Police out with during the past year. In addition to that this past fall they had some issues about parties and Northwestern Police stepped up to the plate and helped them do some enforcement actions with that Chief Kaminski has been In touch with Alderman Kent talking to him about some of the meetings we have had with the people in the neighborhood and at Alderman Kent's request he was asked to extend the jurisdiction of Northwestern to Greenbay and Asbury, to encompass many of the locations that are included for the parties, to be able to take action in those areas. Part of the agreement allowed Chief Kaminski to extend that jurisdiction, which they did, this could become a permanent part of the ordinance. Alderman Newman said he appreciates all the work that the Northwestem Police Force has attempted to contribute to the community. Reading this report he has a bit of a problem as the number of moving violations has increased from the year 2000, they doubled from 535 to 1,055. What the Northwestern Police has basically done to the 1" Ward is turn it into one big speed trap and what has been going on is going to have to stop, Evanston residents who are paying $13,000, $14.000, $15,000. S18,000, $25,000 a year and more in taxes, who live around the University should not be subject to every possible ticky-tacky stop, and he uses the words ticky-tacky stop, that you can image. He knows the department wants to write a lot of DUI's, but the rolling stops, and violations at stop signs, when you're writing them at two or three o'clock in the morning is not doing a lot for him. You have a right to write them but that is not what we're looking for, we're looking to get the speeders who are 15, 20 miles over during the day. We want you in the alleys, we want you on the streets when its dark, we want you helping out with the campus problems that are in the residential neighborhoods, we want you looking for people committing thefts and personal crimes. It seems what we're getting is a lot of stopping of citizens, I'm sure you do know there is such a thing as a warning. You can give warnings to people doing a rolling stop at stop sign. One the places where the police officers like to spend their time is at the rolling stop near Burger King. He wants to get to the bottom of this and is telling our Chief of PoI ce that the Northwestern Police are answerable to the City Page 3. of Evanston and we need to be supervising what they do when we give them this authority to arrest Evanston citizens and to write tickets. He appreciates the help you're giving and would like you to get some DUI's on Sheridan Road and stop the speeders in the middle of the day. From the monthly reports he receives the one violation you need the most help on is the residential overtime parking on Orrington, we rarely see something on that. He would like to know how you get these people for the no insurance charges without stopping them for something else, are you following people around and radioing in their license plates? There are some people from his Ward that came here this evening and would like to testify to the experiences they have had. He can only relate to you the phone calls he has received One of the calls was from someone that does not live in his Ward and was 6 or 7 miles over the speed limit, very late at night The ticket they received was in the name of Northwestern University and the person wanted to make sure the money they were going to have pay on the fine didn't go to Northwestern but came to the City. The reason he is bringing this up now is the report that you filed shows you are writing twice as many moving traffic violations as in the last two years. Judy Fiske, she lives at 2319 Sherman Avenue and has lived on the same block for 25 years. A couple of months ago Northwestern held a series of Community Forums and she attended one of those. A lot of the conversation at that forum was about the Northwestern policing in the neighborhood. There is a lot of support for their policing in the neighborhood as far a fraternity parties and helping out with the neighborhood parking problems but there is a great concern in the neighborhood which people feel is harassment and the presence of northwestern Police parked on the side streets and following people down the streets. She also goes up and down Sherman five times a day, and up and down Sheridan between downtown Evanston and her home and has been stopped twice by the Northwestern Police. She hasn'treceived a ticket but it has been a problem being stopped by them. The first time she was stopped by a police officer on Sheridan Road she was heading north and by the time she realized she was being pulled over she was in front of Tech Institute and stopped for driving without mandatory insurance. Because she has kids in her car in the front seat relatively often with their feet up on the glove compartment she was not able to get it open to get her insurance card out, which was there, to show the police. less than two minutes later there were at least two if not three other police cars there all with their lights rotating. She was being as polite as she could be, called her insurance company on her cell phone, and asked the police if they wanted to talk to her insurance company which they did. The insurance company informed them she had insurance continuously since 1967 which satisfied the police. The problem with this was when her exchange with them was over. This all took about 20 minutes and she did not feel she had done anything wrong, they told her if this ever happened again she was going to be arrested. She thought this was totally out of tine, she called her Alderman, called her son who is a lawyer, and called some other people in the neighborhood to ask them if they ever had such an experience. They said they had and she was not the only one being stopped for mandatory insurance violations. She wasn't driving without insurance she had insurance, but the last word she had from the Non) westem Police was she was going to be arrested if that ever happened again. Another incident was when she was going to downtown Evanston to pick up a prescription and stopped at a red light on Sherman Avenue at Foster, She accelerated from the red light, the speed limit on Sherman is 25 mites an hour and she is well aware of what the speed limit is. She was pulled over by the police not 150 feet from the intersection, and knows this as a fact because she turned to look a the new construction of the condos on Sherman, she was told by the police she was going 45 miles an hour. There was no way in the world her car was going 45 miles an hour within 150 feet and -_ explained that to them, they said they would let her go that time. At that time they waited until the conversation was over and followed her through downtown Evanston, she went into Osco got her prescription and when she came out they were still there and followed her down to Chandler`s, turned around Chandler's came up around Burger King and followed her all the way back down on Sherman at which point she decided to drive over to a friend's house and see how far they would follow her. This was so much more than was necessary and she thought don't they have enough to do. She has talked to people in her neighborhood and has been told this is not an unusual occurrence. She did mention this at the Community Forum the other night. The last thing she would like to mention and is troubling to her is she does not know what the situation was but the one time she saw the Northwestern Police on Sheridan Road they had a young man spread eagle on the parkway and she was appalled by that She thought our Evanston Police are wonderful and she has tong admired them for the sensitivity in a lot of different situations. Her concern is that the Northwestern Police don't share that sensitivity or maybe they don't have sensitivity training. She does not think our Evanston youth needs to be treated like that in such a public place, which she is very concerned about Alderman Feldman asked if a police car is following someone do they decide at that time to contact Springfield to determine whether they have insurance. Why would they stop you for mandatory insurance, to which Ms. Fiske responded they said they ran a check on her license plates. Alderman Feldman then said you weren't being stopped for a violation and you weren't speeding. The first encounter you had with them was when they said you're being stopped for a mandatory insurance violation when they did not even know whether that was true or not and it turned out to be false. =- They also never apologized for that, all they said was they would arrest her if it ever happened again. Page 4. Chief Chafin wanted to give a run down from September to January 31 `of their enforcement efforts. Regarding ticketing of Evanston residents and residents particularty of the 1" Ward, they had a total of 518 moving violations that they were involved in, 104 of 518 which is 20% were written for Evanston residents total for the whole City, 21 of the 518 which is 4% of the moving violations were wntten for residents who reside in the I Ward. Ten of the 21 residents of the 1" Ward had campus addresses, which means we arrested our own students. He heard the word ticky-tacky and would like to give some sense of the arrests they made and what they were fcr. Stop sign violations were 51, 10% of the total, 16 were written for driving the wrong way on a one way street, 113 were wntten for speeding. He would like to let you know that Sunday night into Monday morning they arrested a person on Sheridan Road who was driving 62 miles an hour in a 30 mile zone, the person was drunk twice the legal limit for alcoho4. 185, so there is a reason for us trying to enforce moving violations on streets where there is a lot of foot traffic, day and night students are out 24 hours all over the place. 56 tickets were wntten for red light violations, not for rolling the red light but totally violating a red light. Some citizen other than a student can be subject to being struck by people that are careless and not paying attention while driving a vehicle. He heard another comment that we're trying to do DUl's, we don't do DUI's we're trying to create a safe environment for people living and working and enjoying the immediate area around the campus. We wrote 50 violations for people who have suspended licenses, 23 were for people who had their registrations under suspension. To give you some sense of the violations we have been writing, traffic control signal, wrong way, stop sign, failure to yield turning left, speeding, passing a school bus wig kids are being unloaded, driving while suspended or revoked, improper passing curved roadway, obstructive side and rear windows, uninsured motorist, no drivers license, disobeying traffic signals. Evanston does the same thing and we're not picking on Evanston residents nor picking on people who live in the 1" Ward, we're just trying to do our jobs. Talking about sensitivity, he would hope that after 41 years in law enforcement his experience at four different colleges and as a City police officer, his skill of being a people person and dealing with the citizens at large has rubbed off on his police department_ They don't get complaints, unfortunately Ms. Fiske did not come to him personally with the conversation she had with these officers because he could have dealt with that incident. He is prepared to deal with any incident. He nor Chief Kaminski want their officers out there being unprofessional in their conduct. They're trying to be sensitive and they are also trying to do a job and protect the students, staff, faculty and citizens of Evanston. He knows how distasteful it is to be arrested by the police, to even get a traffic or parking ticket. He understands that as they want their people to be sensitive but they still have a job to do. Chief Chafin wanted to add that this morning, unsolicited, on his computer an Evanston resident on Lincoln Street wrote to him to compliment him and wish they would do more law enforcement particularly along Lincoln between Sheridan and Canal because people speed up and down the street. Alderman Newman thought he said he appreciated the reference, did anybody hear him say nobody is saying that we don't want the speeding, but some of these inr_,dents aren't serious. This afternoon he looked at this report and saw you have officers walking down Davis Street at 3:00 a.m. writing tickets because people are there between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. which shows up repeatedly in your January report. He cannot think of a bigger waist of time for the Northwestern PoCce than to be over there. The point he wants to make is he did not raise these points to hear this defensive report because we should start asking for different data in your report, maybe what we have to do is get to the bottom of this. In your monthly report, on all your speeding violations, for every single over statutory limits on speed posted on the report we would like to know how many miles over the person was. That's an easy thing to give to us, and by the way when you talk about incidents of no insurance you have in your January report an incident where somebody was stopped for no insurance on the 23CO block of Campus Drive without any other accompanying violation being recorded at the time which substantiates and corroborates what Ms. Fiske said earlier. You had another case where there was an insurance stoppage where there was also was mover, In all due respect. Chief Chafin, he does appreciate all the things you do but he does not expect the people in the Wards, when they get stopped, to know your name. How are they to know who the Chief of Northwestem Police is? He must also say your report shows you used to be in the alleys a lot more, in the year 2001 you did 59 alley tows, in 2002 you did 11 tows. At 3:00 a.m. •.vhen the cars were blocking the alleys in his Ward, in January or in some month, your officers were on Davis Street writing parking tickets from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. At the beginning of this item he said he appreciates all the work, nobody made a motion here to say we should not be giving the Northwestern police officers authority, however, when he gets a report that the number of movers has doubled in a two year period and he getting complaints from residents, and people are being stopped repeatedly, there is a concern there. He has seen you do the rolling stops at Burger King, nobody should have a violation there except a warning.. The message he wants to send here is no one is saying you're not valuable but as far as he's concerned the main part of your job is dealing with street crime and being present, traffic is also a part of it and having you patrol the alleys where we've seen things stolen and people who don't belong there be there. It is more important for your officers to be patrolling and also going on the offensive in some of the things that go on off campus, not just responding to calls but being at some of those places in advance. You wanted this authority from the City of Evanston if you're doing the most perfect job you don't have to hear from us, he learned if you get some complaints that's a way to know what might be going right and what might be going wrong. That's what he considers you being there for, to hear from us and what our priorities are which Is not In any way to denigrate what you are doing, to which Chief Chafin said he appreciated that. Margaret Kelly related an issue that took place two months ago when her son-in-law was driving three miles over the limit at Simpson and Sherman and was stopped by a Northwestern police office who called him a jerk and a bone head Page 5. and was totally rude. Ms. Kelly also had some issues that took place a few years ago and Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that she communicate that to the Chief of Polr-e to see if we can find .3 way to prevent these incidents from occurring. Alderman Bernstein asked if the statistics to voucn Alderman Newman was referring to are Ward statistics and is there a reason why the other Aldermen do not get them. Alderman Newman said he gets a monthly report to which Alderman Bernstein said so long as this committee has lunsdirbon over this he would also like to receive those reports. He asked Chief Kaminski what other oversight do we provide with respect to the officers, as he knows how difficult it is to become an Evanston police officer. Our concern, as well as the Chiefs concern, is that we have qualified people on the street because ultimately we're responsible for their actions. Chief Kaminski responded they meet every month and go over any issues. concerns, or complaints. They talk about the problem areas and in the areas where he is getting complaints about traffic and asks the officers to watch those areas. On a monthly basis they talk about Northwestern pnorrbes, the problems where they might be having parties and discuss mutual ways they can do training. They worked on our emergency operation centers together. Every month they go over the 911 transition and secondary number. NorOwiestem's police officers are trained in the state the same as our officers, they're state certified officers in the state of lllinois. Every police officer in the state of Illinois has to go through the same training, that's standard. We expect our officers to work together and in those areas that overlap expect them to back each other up. When we're short of people there have been many times we called on them to handle calls, most recently when we had the gas situation in North Evanston we did not have enough units and were pulling people to watch the houses. They helped us out there. We try to do as many mutual things as we can that benefit each other and he hopes everything is being done to everyone's satisfaction. Alderman Feldman remarked when we first got into this relationship with Northwestern and since that time, it seemed to him a good addition to the safety and law enforcement program of the City of Evanston. We had additional policemen on the street He certainly appreciates and cannot at all fault a ticket for speeding significantly above the speed limit, going through stop signs, or going through lights, etc. The City has an obligation and a right to establish priorities that while not denying the value of what they're doing might ask them to focus on needs that we think are more important Certainly, patrolling the alleys and being around the streets in a manner that limits the danger to women or anybody that walks the streets in a way that might inhibit burglars is important Dealing especially with the safety of people would be his priority, and of course getting the cars out of the alleys as well. What he does not expect is for people to be followed. To him there must have been something wrong with the eyesight of the policeman that followed Ms. Fiske as he cannot at all understand a woman with children in the car being followed for any length of time. Those kinds of issues, such as being impolite is absolutely inexcusable and he knows Chief Chafin wants to stop that as much as we do. He hopes he is getting the message tonight that while we are not criticizing what you're doing, what we're asking you to do is to change and to emphasize certain other kinds of actions. It would be his hope that if there are issues in the 1" Ward you have to deal with, and A1dermian Newman is sensitive to those, that you work with him towards that kind of an eventual goal, Chief Chafin said he definitely is open to everything Alderman Feldman and Alderman Newman said. Something he should have said early on was that on general practices they wouldn't even pun a car over for speeding unless it was doing ten miles over the speed limit, that has been their practice. It was mentioned how enforcement dropped in the alleyways, if your car got towed once or twice you'd probably learn something and you wouldn't be parking in the alleyway where it is illegal. He understands they are not perfect and he can take criticism, he can take direction, my staff can do likewise. Maybe he was a little overzealous trying to tell you what we're doing, perhaps he came across wrong and apologizes if anyone thought he was up tight or offended by your comments, he appreciates that fact. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we all needed to know about that. Chief Chafin said he appreciates what you have done for the University and for the Police Department, and has taken your advice and your confidence. Certainly if Chief Kaminski tells him to do X. Y, 2, he makes sure his staff is aware of it. He will bring all of these issues to the attention of his supervisors 8:30 tomorrow morning as he has monthly staff meetings. He will tell them the concerns of the City and make sure they will tell the officers what we will and will not do and hopefully we will see greater satisfaction on the part of everybody within the City, notwithstanding if there are flagrant violations out there, we still are interested in public safety. Alderman Newman would like to have the Northwestern Police come back next month and would like to get all of the last three months statutory violations. Lets just take the speeding tickets over statutory limits, just give us a report on what the violations were and see what the numbers were on that He would like to have the opportunity, if we could, to discuss with them the one night last September 23r° when they had 25 police cans in his neighborhood within two or three hours for unruly houses right near the University, where there is a lot of students housing buildings. He would also like to see if we could come up with a warning policy for people who are within 0 to 10 miles over, perhaps they get one warning and its in the computer. We can see what the statistics bear out which is why he called today to try to let them know the issue he was interested in and what we found out in their version of the statistics. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested that Chief Kaminski also take under advisement all the issues that have been raised and advise us property whether a warning is something that can be implemented and what is the impact of that kind of policy to shaping the behavior of citizens in other parts of the City as well He would also suggest implementing some Page 6. kind of internal complaint mechanism, if you do not already have one, so the citizenry can at least issue whatever complaints that can be analyzed, considered, or reported and the Chief can keep us posted on that. We will get the Northwestern Police back on next month's Human Services Committee agenda to focus on the issues discussed here this evening. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked Chief Kaminski. Chief Chafn and their staff members. Vlll. SPECIAL EVENTS: NORTH SHORE CENTURY BIKE RIDE Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to give a quick overview of the issues that were discussed at the previous Human Services Committee meeting. Alderman Feldman suggested that Mr. Gaynor refresh his memory regarding the policy recommended with the number of event days. how these additional events fit into that, whether they had been previously scheduled or are historical events and therefore are part of the anticipated events, or is there anything extra in there. Mr. Gaynor said all of the events with the exception of one, that he is not going to recommend but just advise information on tonight, that s a fundraising event for the Garden Clubs of Evanston, have occurred in the past and have actually occurred at the takefront with the exception of successfully moving the Relay for Life Walkathon into James Park last year, they are again requesting James Park. At the last meeting a recommendation was made to the Human Services Committee to recommend approval for the North Shore Century Bike Ride, a nde that has been going on for many years at stages in Dawes Park. This ride goes up to Kenosha turns around and comes back, this is pretty much an all day event that begins at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. and continues until about 2:00 p.m. Questions were raised by the committee with respect to the revenue that was generated and how that was spent. The organization provided a ten-year historical report of the revenues and expenditures they make that was included in the packet Over the last month and this morning and aftemoon we met with our traffic people and the Police Department because one of the requests at the previous meeting was if this event could be held somewhere else and in particular Lovelace Park A considerable amount of time was spent discussing Lovelace Park. Besides a primary concern of parking which is totally inadequate at Lovelace Park they would require parking in the neighborhood. There is no parking structure there, there are two parking structures at the takefront that have or can be used. Besides the parking the ride goes up Sheridan Road and trying to get the participants from Lovekwce Park to Sheridan and then go north would be extremely difficult requiring closing a number of north south streets from Lovelace Park across town. In addition, there currently is tittle or no expense to the City for the ride. They leave the park on Sheridan and go north, other than advising the Police Department there is no are traffic control issues or road closings necessary. We did look at a couple of other possibilities, one having the bike club look at using Long Field as their staging area, it gives the ambiance of a park, its only a little over a half of mile until they are out of the City, and they're on Sheridan. The issue there is they would have to cross Sheridan Road to get on the correct side of the road to go north which is not impossible if Long Field, at Lincoln and Sheridan is available. They also looked at either of the large parking lots on the east or west side of Ryan Feld. Again that does present a number of problems, one is the ambiance of not having a park setting because before and after the rides there are picnics and leisure activities in a park setting. Probably more important is the traffic issue of going from Ryan Field to Sheridan and going north which does create problems along Central with that many potential riders. They did try to look at a number of alternatives to present this evening but still feel that Dawes Park provides the best IocaGon for the event and it is one of the events that has occurred at the lakefront over the past number of years Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much amplification there is during the day of the event and for how long. Mr. Gaynor said in the past there has been amplification of music and we feel that we could ask the club to move that activity to the northern part of Centennial Park, which is at Clark Street Beach moving it far north along the lakefront butting up against Northwestern University where it goes off into the campus. We think that is something we could ask the club although it has not yet been discussed with them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted those people in attendance regarding the bike ride to understand the context of this discussion. Residents on the lakefront had for years been discussing with the City the possible reduction of activities on the lakefront because we ordinarily have about 22 planned event activity days on the takefront besides the conversion of whatever holidays happens during the summer and the usual utilization of the beaches. People came to us to ask that we take a look at events to see if we can minimize the kind of utilization of the lakefront for stage events. The City is therefore in the process of looking at this policy in the context of which this event was being considered. Alderman Bernstein was glad Alderman Jean -Baptiste clarified that because judging by the communications and a -mails he received with respect to the bike club there was a sense among the members that they were being singled out for elimination. What Alderman Jean -Baptiste just indicated is true, we're talking about a cumulative effect and with respect to that his concern is what specific problems, if any, to this bike club have the residents been experiencing and maybe as he indicated if the amplification could be pushed further north there would be less impact on the residents. Also, parking is a concern, if we can do something about that, which is what he would like to determine tonight and ultimately is what he would like to hear with respect to each of the proposed events so that we can determine where is a more realistic place. The Cancer Walk is ideally suited for James Park, they're happy there and do not need the ambiance of the lakefront. If we can have others similar situated in other places maybe we could make that work. He would like to address specific concerns of residents and the Aldermen. Page 7. Alderman Newman appreciated Alderman Jean-Baptiste's comments and one of the things that was miscommunicated mainly because people relied more or less on a newspaper article, was for the last several years the residents on the lakefront who originalty in 1989 were pretty much in an agreement that there would be 9 events over the course time has risen to 22 events. Over the last several years the Parks Department has been exploring with each of the events that are of long duration or high impact if there are other places we can rotate the event. Every organization is very well meaning and wants to start at the lakefront. In many cases as in the Cancer Walk they got to experience all the new facilities at James Park and liked the change, as it was a good place for their event. The question being raised was this continual inquiry of information whether some of these events can in some cases be rotated_ All events are sponsored by fine, well meaning organizations, but what happens is people go to the garages last because they're further away and in some cases they cost. What it means is it is another day where you can totally not get a parking space in a neighborhood in addition to tie 4" of July, the Starlight Concerts. the Ethnic Arts Festival for two days, the other Arts Festival, and all the beach days. What this amounts to is very well intended events being piled on the lakefront and what we're trying to do in our neighborhood is to enlighten people there are other great places in the City that maybe an event such as this or some other events can be held there every other year or every third year, which is why the inquiry was made. it was not necessarily "oh, this events off the lakefront". Because we received so many letters from the people in the bike club basically with a very important message he thinks the people from the bike club need to hear from the residents who actually live in the community every day of the year as there are a number in attendance this evening. Alderman Feldman commented, about ten years ago this issue of impact on the lakefront neighborhood by special events carve before this committee. There was an agreement reached that the City would be very concerned and very interested in making sure a dramatic impact, an amazing and thoughtless diminution of the quality of life was not what we wanted to happen to a neighborhood of our residents near the lakefront. Having said that it is with the understanding that the parks are for the people and as the letter from the Neighbors Along the Lakefront says they fully understand that as well and they also understand that there is an additional burden and responsibility placed on them by the fact that they We there. Just the fact that they live there means they have to put up with a lot of things that go on by nature of the fact that those parks are in such close proximity to their houses are owned and used by the citizens of Evanston. He never got the feeling they had any intention of denying full use of the parks he thinks what they wanted to do was to try to establish a very delicate balance that is constantly shifting and has to be watched. A delicate balance between some decent quality of life that they have a right to expect and at the same time the use of the parks by as many people as possible that also have a right to use them. What we now doing is an examination of that issue of trying to find some policy of accommodating perhaps establishing a limit on the number of special events, as Alderman Newman indicated, shifting events to other parks if possible and sharing the other sites on off years, if that's possible, as well. We do not want to destroy by shifting any event but there might be a difference between destruction and inconvenience as Alderman Newman indicated the first choice of everyone is to be on the lake. All we're doing is trying to find out whether there are ways of adapting this and finding a compromise if we can achieve that balance. Benjamin Shapiro, lives of 150 Dewey Avenue In the a Wand is this year's Chair for the Evanston Bicycle Club's North Shore Century Bike Ride and said having read the article and listening to the comments tonight thinks there are two primary issues we need to address. Those issues are the impact of the club's use of the park for the North Shore Century and safety issues. Their impact on the park is very minor, they are a tow impact organization, they set up at the field house next to the lagoon, they use that space for registration in the morning, their riders depart between 7 an 11 in the morning and basically the park is not used again unW 2:30 o 3:00 p.m. when the riders start to return. During the midday they are not using the park there are no events related to their activity going on other than we are maintaining what we have, setting up and getting ready for riders to return. There is no music at that time, there is no music in the morning, there is no PA system used to announce anything. If you were to walk through the park at 11:30 on the day they run the ride, which is September 21" this year after meteorological summer, no one is there to sun bathe or to use the beaches, they may be dog walking. You would probably not even notice that we were there except maybe they're in CSC jerseys sitting around. We do return again in the afternoon, there is music, we use one amplifier it is either a jazz quartet or string quartet, the music we play is generally not audible from Sheridan Road. We would be more than happy to set up the stage to point the other way towards the lake. The object of music is to give everybody a relaxing opportunity after they've finished in the 8 mile family ride which stays completely within Evanston, the 25 mile ride, the 50 mile ride, the 62 or the metric century or the 100 mile ride which goes to Kenosha and back to Evanston. There are actually 5 rides which offer riding opportunities to a whole range of people, we have kids as young as 5 or 6 doing the family ride. People actually come from all over the world to do the century ride, we have had riders from England, Canada, Mexic,:, and France in the last few years to do this ride. The impact in terms of using the park is for a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the afternoon, one amplifier, there are no food vendors, we're not cooking anything except coffee in the morning, there is a tent with some food in it but its cold food just for the riders who retum, they listen to music, get back on their bikes and ride off to the parking garages. We do recommend that people park in the garages, if you check our web page we have mapped out the four area parking garages and unlike somebody else who might be coring in and walking from the garage our riders ride their bikes from the parking garages to the beach so parking a mile and a half Is not a big thing, it's a warm up ride for them. It means they're off the streets and would most likely to keep their cars and their expensive bike racks out of sight in the Maple Street or Benson Street garage or something of that nature. Page 8. The other piece of impact he would like to point out is they do bring 1,600 people into Evanston on an average and they generally buy a meal or two in town and sometimes buy some supplies so we do contribute economically. The other impact is that as a non-profit organization we donate almost everything we make back except for the seed money for next year and a small contribution towards membership dues. In the fast several years we donated 5500 to the Evanston Police Department for the bike patrol. last year we donated 51.500 to the Parks and Recreation Department and another $660 to buy a custom bike rack for the Levy Center. This is on a level of contribution we make every year. Over the last four years we have donated over 535,000 back into the Evanston Community or into other communities, basically we return more into the City than we take out. He would also like to point out that they have about 25 or 30 people here tonight from the club so we consider this an important event for us Of our membership of 400+ households more than hatf are Evanston households, thus we are already contributing members of this community. On the safety side there are some important things you need to consider when you're laying out a ride like this. What kind of streets are you injecting your riders into when they're first starting out and getting warmed up, were are they setting up prior to going on the ride. Its more than just ambiance. the park is a beautiful place and we love it dearly, we have been there for 13 years. We have considered what bike routes are in the area, what route are we using to get out of the City, and what are the initial streets like as people are getting settled in and moving out We use Sheridan Road for one block and then we cut across the north side of downtown in and out along Lincoln join up with Wilmette, then outwards from there. All our riders use the same route, there are no street closures, all the rest of the ride is designated bicycle routes by the City of Evanston as posted in the map that we did jointly with the Evanston Police Department several years ago. We're staying in routes where the roads are conducive to riding a bicycle. One of the problems that Lovelace Park would have is you're injecting your riders immediately into a high -density road with no shoulders and a high curb. If there are cars in that driveway at the same time the riders are coming out that little driveway from the parking lot, you're right into traffic, there is no chance to see dovrn the road because there is shrubbery on both sides of the interslick and it is an unsafe situation. Beyond the issues we have to extend the riders back out a ways towards Evanston to hook up with the routes to get them back on a safe ride. Its also compietely distant from the family route we use and it would be impossible to run the family ride from Lovelace Park. James Park again, above and beyond the parking situation we would be injecting the riders either onto Oakton where there are no shoulders and there is probably still construction going on with that bridge across the canal and if we were trying to go out that way and then up to Sculpture Park or onto Dodge a high speed street. We've looked at a number of alternatives and the advantage of Dawes Park is that we get onto a street with shoulders, we get off Sheridan fairly quickly and onto quiet residential streets which are designated bike routes. The park itself gives us a place where people can set up, get their bikes into the area. they're in a grassy area, they're away from traffic, they're out of parking, theyre not blocking the foot paths, while they're registering and when they return without clogging up any of the side streets with a back up trying to get into an entrance. Again, if we were to come back into Lovelace Park A would be a possibility that we have people trying to get in and out of the park's parking lot to use the park and we'd have riders backed up on that road which would be an unsafe situation. Though Lovelace offers us the opportunity of a good venue and a good place to set up because the field house is there, the proximity to four parking garages which are not a hindrance to us because people get on their bikes and coast downhill to the park. Dawes Park gives us a good route out of the City it also puts us close to the City of Evanston where we have an opportunity for the riders who need to buy a meal after and some, not many, who need supplies before and after the ride stay in town, so we are able to contribute to the local economy. Alderman Newman asked if the riders come out of the driveway on Sheridan into Dawes where the boat ramp goes, Mr. Shapiro answered, yes. Alderman Newman said when you talk about Lovelace at Dawes you're at the most dangerous intersection in the City of Evanston where we have the most difficult crossing if they come out of the driveway where the Dawes Lagoon is. You're right next to an "S" curve where there's high speed, you couldn't pick a worse driveway. Mr. Shapiro disagreed, he said the "S" curve actually slows the traffic down. Alderman Newman said because of the danger in crossing the streets when events such as the Ethnic Arts Festival, the other art festivals, and even the Starlight Concerts we have to bring in special details of police just to cross people He wanted to understand if you are representing 800 to 1,000 cars will go to the City garages and don't park in any of the spaces up and down Judson, Church, etc., they all just seek out the garages so the neighborhood will not have any additional cars that day. Mr. Shapiro responded that he did not think in any of the letters he has seen, nor he has written, did he say every car will be parked in a garage. What he did say is since this is a cycle -oriented event parking in the garage is no additional hardship for our participants because they simply get on their bicycles and peddle across downtown and come to the park. Our web site is the primary place where people register it has a fink to a Yahoo map that shows where all the parking garages are, the Northwestern Garage, the New Maple Street Garage, the Benson Garage, and the Church Chicago Garage and we strongly recommend that people park in those garages. Do some people park in the neighborhood, undoubtedly, he has no control over that. If you want we would certainly be wilting to put on the registration forms that they should not park in the neighborhood. Alderman Newman said he appreciated that because one of the things we wanted to do by getting into conversations with groups that were having events is find ways to ameliorate the concern. Having represented the 1" Ward now for his 11 or le year, he cannot count the number of Saturdays and Sundays where he has been down to the lakefront when its busy and also because he happens to be the Chair of the Parking Committee he studied parking Page 9. habits here and can tell you how many days on a Sunday he can go to the Church Chicago parking garage and it is virtually half empty. Every single space in his Ward rs taken, you can't find a parking space. if you look at the license plates many of them are from out of town. Human nature is that people like to get the space closest to the front door and he can assure you many of your people that come even if you grve them information as to where the Northwestern Garage is, if they can find a space on Judson right across from the park and park there, they're going to do it. in his view it is fair to say you're a great organization and its great to have the event here, but having 800 to 1000 cars is not a low impact event and take his word for it that day will be another adoitronal day on the lakefront where the people in these residential neighborhoods will not be able to park nor will their guests be able to park_ There are people in his Ward who on the weekends of the Ethnic Arts Festival feel they have to get out of town because of the impact on them. Mr. Shapiro responded to the dangerous 'S" curve aria said it actually works in their favor because it slows traffic. He has done the ride several times and we have been at this location 13 years, this will be the 19o' year we have done the ride, the 10 year hopefully at the lakefront We have never had an accident or serious injury of any kind, none at that location. The "S" curve is an advantage for them, having been a resident of Evanston and driven that route many times, it slows you right down and we place persons at the entrance to the ramp claveway. Of course, we stay to the right anyway. David Barish, lives at 8512 Karlov in Skokie, Illinois, he is not a carpetbagger he has a lot of connect with Evanston and by the way he rides his bike from his home on the day of the event and does not bring his car. His connection with Evanston is he went to Northwestern University, was a property owner in Evanston, a Board member of the Oakton Gables Condominium Association in the 1980s and then moved to a neighboring community. He still belongs to a synagogue in Evanston and his wife teaches Sunday school here. He is the Ride Chairman of the Evanston Bike Club. He thinks you have some sense of who the Evanston Bike Club is, but one thing that kind of tells you type of people you're dealing with is we're the type of people when we have an event and when its time to clean up he cleans up and thinks he does a pretty good job, Joe is going to come and silently pick up whatever he thinks I left, and Julie will pick up whatever Joe left and the lakefront will undoubtedly be much cleaner than the day before the event because that is the kind of people they are. in general that is the kind of people bicyclists are because we tread lightly. To some extent to compare us to an event such the Ethnic Arts Festive, which he thinks is a tremendous festival and loves it, we try to walk lighter than that The music isn't as good or as loud and it isn't on as long, we're just much more of a low impact type of event. What is the North Shore Century, it is the type of event that he thinks the lakefront community would welcome. There are certainly other events, frankly the fireworks, that he can understand why they would be very redolent about having that in their community but it's a City event and they have to put up with it. Ours is like a Leroy Nieman painting they see a swash of colors bicyclists driving by in front of their homes which frankly is quite picturesque from where they stand, As Mr. Shapiro said were a low impact event, the music is not on until later in the day, we don't use a PA system, because we're riding our bikes we're generally not clogging the area, and yes human nature being as it is there people who are going to be parking in the neighborhood and frankly there is no way we can get around it even though as Mr. Shapiro said we wilt certainly work with the City to do whatever we canto minimize that. He would like to remind you all that most of us are home owners, and his reason for saying that is to let the members of the communitty know we're home owners too and we understand what your concerns are and understand your desire to say you bought your home here and paid a lot of money for it, you do have lakefront property, and want to be able to enjoy that home We understand that, we're homeowners too. Skokie runs a race right past his house, fortunately its only one race, so we re sensitive to the community and will remain sensitive to the community. We want you to understand we don't feel singled out, we understand that this committee has a difficult balancing act to take care of, You certainly want to make sure that the lakefront and Evanston is represented and we're certain what that's about, but you also have property owners in your wards that you want to be sensitive to their needs and don't want to say to them that pretty much by eminent domain have just taken over your environment which he knows you can't do. He just wants to assure you that we're on your side, we're going to be sensitive and we're going to work with you in that balancing act when you're looking at the type of event that literally stands for what Evanston is all about, we're it, we hope you keep us at Dawes Park and we won't make you sad that you did it - Tom 0Elden, lives at 210 Davis, is here representing the group of lakefront and other concerned Evanston citizens not about any particular event, but about events in total. In the discussions tonight you made some very good points about the needs of the residents and also the needs of the people holding the events, there has been reference generally to the residents who live by the take. He would like to make a point that the park is used mostly not by people who live right by the take, there are some of us who live there, but there are many other Evanstonians who make use of that park mostly on weekend days. If you walk through that park on a Sunday you will find families from all over Evanston, every ethnicity, who spend the entire day there with their families. it's realty a wonderful thing. One concern that we have is that the number of events have gone from 9 now to somewhere around 20 events, an awful lot of weekend days are taken up by the events. All the events are fine events, but there are too many of them. A low impact event like the bike ride parks out the entire park, there are no available parking spaces after the 7:00 a.m. arrival of the bikers and the tack of available parking spaces means that residents from other parts of Evanston will not find a parking space, won't set up their picnic and won't be there that day. He just wanted to make a point that this is not only about reserving the park for the people Page 10. who live along the lakefront this is about making the park available for all Evanston residents for one of the many intended purposes of the park which is for people to catch a little peace and quiet to have a barbecue on a Sunday afternoon with their families. He thinks what we're advocating is some appropriate :,alamm between events and days with no events that are in essence reserved for everyone else. We have submitted a memo to the committee wth a copy to Mr. Gaynor. What we would like to suggest are two things, Mr Gaynor has prepared a special event information packet that was presented at the last A 8 PW meeting which we thought was gang :o be considered at this meeting but apparently is not on the agenda, and there are three things they would like added to the policy. First would be some fixed limit on the number of events, we were at 9 a number of years ago and it has treat up to 19 and he thinks some number much lower than 19 that would be appropriate. A concern they have is with a tack of a fixed limit on the number of events we spend a lot of time policing how many events there are in the park and each year 0 seems to creep up a little bit. The first thing we're asking for is a fixed limit on the number of events. The second thing we're asking for is a limit on the number of amplified events because some events as was eloquently stated here have much less impact than other events. The type of event matters also. The third thing they're asking for is that there be a slightly different application process and he is not sure how much of a burden this places on Parks and Recreation, but what we are requesting is that there be an application deadline set sometime in January so Parks and Recreabon has a reasonable period of time to sort through the applications, assign them to parks, and then recommend it as a package to Human Services so we do not have to come to every Human Services Committee meeting and see which new event is being added this time. This is the essence of the request of the neighborhood, that there be a set lirnn of events, a limit on events with amplification, and a policy where all the events meet an application deadline and are submitted as a single package for approval to the Human Services Committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the committee will definitely take these sterns into consideration and discuss a policy. He is hoping that it will be on the agenda for the next meeting. Alderman Newman wanted the record to reflect the committee received a letter signed by almost 50 First Ward residents supporting the statement made by Mr. O'Brien. Alderman Newman asked that the people from the neighborhood in attendance tonight who agree with Mr. O'Brien's statements raise their hands to be able to see all those residents in the audience, which they all did. Alderman Newman thanked those residents in attendance. Beth Steffen, 418 Dempster Street, had a couple of questions in terms of rotation of parks. Dawes Park is always the park being requested for the events. For some of the events, not necessarily the bike ride, for example the Indian Guide and Princess Campout could be in Burnham Park on the other side as that is quite a large park between Lee Street and Dempster Street. That park is relatively underused and good if it's a quiet event and people don't need to go down to the beach. That park can be used for some events. She wondered if the City Hall park is every considered for any event, it has quite a lot of parking and on a Sunday when not being used for City necessities could this park ever be used for the bike ride when they could takeoff just down the street and be right in Wilmette and on their way. We have absolutely nothing against the bike ride it doesn't matter at all what the event is. it's the accumulative events, which she thinks you now understand. What they would like would be a rotation of events If you do decide to have the bike ride on the lakefront could you move others from the lakefront, which is really what they want to see happen. We have been coming now for two and a half years and have met with the parks people and haven't had a remedy for anything yet, the events have increased on the lakefront. This is one of the things we would like to happen, to really see a reduction of the events at the lakefront. Alderman Newman asked somebody from the bike club if the position of the club is you have to be Dawes every year in perpetuity. Janet Hauser who lives on the corned of Clark and Chicago said she agrees with these homeowners because her children can't come to visit her on Northwestern's move in day or the different fairs. The bike ride does get people from other states and all over this state, there's a sameness of regularity that they count on and we keep getting them back. If we started switching back and forth we would lose people, they know exactly where we are, they love our ride it goes all the way down the lakeshore to Kenosha. its stable, its YmA run we have over 100 volunteers, so if we were to shift around we would lose people. Because we are a sponsor of the Parks and Recreation and we're Evanston based and feed a lot of our money back into Evanston we would like to be an organization that gets to stay there. Our impact, the third Sunday in September is minimal compared to the summer people, people aren't picnicking there we don't use the park we just use the house. Mr. Shapiro said it generates some very good points which are central to being able to put on a successful event. One of the great draws is departing from Evanston instead of someplace else. Holly Reynolds, 204 Davis Street, said naturally everyone wants to be on the lakefront, which is quite understandable. She would agree this event in particular used to be very low impact but over the years you have grown in numbers and now your numbers and the amplification which you said is only used in the afternoon, nevertheless that constitutes as of last year the 14'" day of amplification in their neighborhood. Amplification is an extremely intrusive force. it is something that in your own home you can't escape, you're right there, for others using the park it's like a loud radio, you can't escape it. She is one of those who feels that noise is as real a form of pollution as others. We don't have anything against this particular event but it does have some impact, we're awakened at times at 6:00 in the morning by people arriving and Page 11. some kxxtly calling to each other. They just aren't thinking meyre exuberant, they're having a day of fun. Someone who had to leave early tonight said this may be a one -lime event tut it happens with other special events along the lakefront. This person had a car belonging to one of your riders towed from her driveway last summer. She lives a block and a half off the lakefront Ms. Reynolds said all she wants to do is bnrg a little perspective into this, of course every event thinks its marvelous and she also thinks this is a marvelous event sne Just wants you to understand that there is some impact. Sarah Rymer, 820 Davis Street, came to talk about the Amercan Cancer Society Relay for Life. It's about a community that takes up the fight against cancer and in 2002 the Evanston community raised over $106,000 for this event. That money went to fund the American Cancer Society's mission of eliminating cancer through research, education, advocacy, and services. On behalf of the Relay for Life of Evanston Corrummee she would like t thank the City of Evanston for their continued support over the past 3 years in this event and hope for your support in making the 4`' Annual Relay for Life a reality at James Park once again. Alderman Newman said he does not accept the premise that the City is bound and obligated to make Dawes Park available for every organization that wants to put an event there just because they say want it and they have to have it. He thinks there has to be a balance as the are so many wonderful groups that he has seen and knows the people in the bike dub are a great group. Certainly the discussion tonight is not about whether or not the bike club is a great group or donates money because we all know the answer is they are great. He would say to any group an event that is there all day with a number of cars is a high impact event. You may be very low impact inside the actual park playing classical music which is fine, but he does not how many hours this goes on. Because of the situation we are in what he would suggest is having the event there again this year, and does not know how 50 people in his ward will feel about that. What he would like to see done before you accept whether or not you want this event here, he wants you to stand behind what you said in the letters which basically implied that you needed that site because of the garages and he would like to see what your plan is going to be to get the cars that come into those garages on event day so the people that live in that neighborhood may have some hope. There is no entitlement to any single park and we all have to work together. He knows the people on the lakefront are not thrilled that the City has decided to karate so many events many of which we sponsor right in their neighborhood. We just relocated the Dog Park there a year or two ago, which has been a tremendous success as there are thousands of people coming to use that Dog Park. He would like to have the City approve this but would like to see the bike club come back next month with what your plan is and also would want to see some reporting to check and see whether those cars got into those garages. If you want to make an effort and work with the neighborhood because you want this event to be there, there is an obligation especially since your are doing a fund raising event You should try to work to make sure this neighborhood has as minimal an impact on that day as possible as he does not think any event having 800 to 1000 cars is going to have a minimal impact. He would like to seethe plan to put those cars in the garages and that you agree that you are going to have an all out plan for this. It is not acceptable for your event to park on the street on Judson, Church and other streets around. People who participate in this event will have to be in the garages, which he thinks is a way to do this. This is the part of the year you say the beaches are no longer open but this is the part of the weekend where this neighborhood can maybe have a chance for people to be able to visit and get a space near their houses because they don't have any chance whatsoever for 15 straight weekends during the summer and he does not think he is in anyway exaggerating this. He would like to see you comeback next month and will be willing to listen to your plan. Alderman Newman moved to approve the North Shore Century Bike Ride continaent on the club coming back with a plan where they are ctoinp to basically reaulre their partfefpants to Dark In the City Garages and the Northwestem Garage on the day of the event. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion. Mr. Barish commented the bike club is certainly willing to work wsth whatever the City wants them to work with. He knows the City of Chicago has zoned parking but does not know whether Evanston has zoned parking. The type of problem you're talking about to him cries out for zoned parking where you wouldn't have this problem. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the City has permit parking and there are fees paid for parking. This is a good suggestion but one that we cannot pursue at this time. Mr. Shapiro said certainly as this year's Organizing Chair he is more than willing to work with the City in any way we can to alleviate the impact_ As a resident who lives a block from James Park and spends summer evenings listening to the soft ball games he understands their concerns. We will do everything we can to encourage our participants to park in the garages. You gave us a month to come up with a plan and we will do what we can to do that, we have made certain steps in terms of the information we give out to people who are registering. We are encouraging them to park In the garages and we can certainly tighten that message up. Alderman Newman remarked he does not want to encourage he wants you to do the best you can to fill those garages up. Ann Olson, is also an Evanston Bike Club member, she grew up in Evanston and now lives in Rogers Park. One comment she would like to make is another solution to this problem. There are a great many riders and volunteers in this event who come to Dawes Park from somewhere within 5 to 7 miles. Quite a few of us ride to the event and don't even Page 12. drive into Evanston, that's another alternative to promote. Also :.--zause Dawes Park is so close to the Davis Street El Station and the CTA now allows us to bring bikes on the trains we can promote that in the registration packets encourage people who are close by to take the El rather than drive their cars Alderman Feldman said his comment may not have anything to do with this particular organization but thinks we should consider having an application process that offers an opportunirf jor each special event applicant to discuss their efforts to examine other sites in Evanston and comment on them. He ccoes not think it is incumbent on the City to force that alone but good citizens and people that have traditionally been using a facility may have a preference. There might be a way in which another site could be used by various organizaticrs He was impressed with the whole issue of safety but not quite as much impressed with the idea that the event had to oe ,n a certain place because your members are so fixated on one location they couldn't possibly find their way to another locaton, or they would be in such a state of discomfort at the change you would lose members. He just cannot believe that is an argument that you want to seriously entertain. If you had to search for a site and if Dawes Park was not available where would you choose to go or would you choose not to come to Evanston at all, that's a possibility. Are there sites in Evanston that you might look at. He is not asking for an answer to this he is posing this as a question for ycu to think about and for the committee think about in terms of a new application. Finally, he is very much concerned w+tn this whole business of amplification and agrees with people that its an amazing intrusion even if you can't get out of your house the least what can happen is you're in your house in peace. He would like the committee to examine this whole issue of amplification, under what circumstances we will allow it, whether or not there are restrictions to it in terms of wattage, etc., where its facing and what part of the park it may be arkiwed. In addition to establishing criteria for the nature of its impact on the neighborhood should be considered as well. Alderman Bemstein would encourage Mr. Shapiro in his report or analysis to also address amplification and what methods he thinks they could use to abate some of the noise. He inquired rf we could ask our Traffic Department how difficult it would be to post or extend the No Parking for anyone other than Evanston residents in that area until 11:00. In that way people would be precluded from parking and it would eliminate some of the problem at least as it relates close to the take. This would include Dempster Street and the park area he does not think it would take that many posters and perhaps some of the ctub's volunteers could put them out the day before. Mr. Shapiro asked if it is possible that such a plan could be included in their registration materials which are already going c;:t to people. Alderman Bernstein said that could be put in the materials and be addressed in a nice way to tell people that this is the concern. Mr. Gaynor had a point of information regarding this and said if we post No Parking signs on Sheridan, Judson, and Dempster then nobody could park there. Alderman Bernstein said he was suggesting the parking should be for Evanston residents only to minimize the Impact. if they do their job appropriately, if people are concerned, hopefully they are all environmental people, they will understand, Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked we have to look at feasibility of Imat suggestion, but the point has been clearly made about balancing. The motion to approve this event for this year and for certain precautions to be taken to minimize the impact on the community has already been motioned and seconded. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled the motion for all In favor of supportinn this motion, motion unanimously approved (4-0). Alderman Newman made another motion pertaininq to the memo received from the N©Ighborhood Lakefront Nelahbors and Other Lakefront Users, that the three recommendations in the memo, the event. the amplification, and the process, the staff considers Incorporatinq Into the final event policy. Motion seconded by Alderman Bernstein and unanimously approved f4-01. Alderman Bemstein asked when will there be the underlying issue of the policy with respect to the number of events. Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded the policy will be brought back to the next Human Services meeting for discussion_ Mr. Gaynor said he will bring another draft that will include the three points of the neighbors which he has to consider as well as the rest of the policy. Alderman Newman thanked the bike dub for working with us. The meeting recessed at 9:13 p.m. and resumed at 9:23 p.m. IX. SPECIAL EVENT: AMERiCAN CANCER SOCIETY'S RELAY FOR LIFE WALKATHON MAY 30 & 31, 2003 Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for approval of the May 30 and 31, 2W3 Amerfean Cancer Society's Relay for Life Walkathon. Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Newman, motion unanimously accepted. X. SPECIAL EVENT: ROTARY INTERNATIONAL'S RACE TO THE FINISH, JUNE 8, 2003 Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for approval of the June 8, 2003 Rotary International's Race to the Finish. Alderman Newman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Feldman, motion unanimously accepted. Page 13. Xl, SPECIAL, EVENT: GARDEN CLUB WALK - MAY 2, 2003 Mr. Gaynor wanted the committee to know this item was added to the agenda. A request was received in January from the Garden Club in January to do a walk through the neighborhood to visit 4 or 5 homes. They will start out at 101 Greenleaf Street at 9:00 a.m. and finish at 7:00 p.m , and ill be walking and looking at these 4 or 5 homes. They asked information about using beach parking, if they need pence, and it there are any restrictions on signage. We asked them for more information and indicated they could have between 500 and 800 participants over the entire day. We have not heard anything more from them and called them a number of times. Time is getting short because the event is scheduled for May 2.2003. We wanted to let you know that may be naming forward and there are a number of residents in that area who are working on this. At this time Mr. Gaynor said he does not have We route information other than starting out at 101 Greenleaf, there will be a boutique sale in a garage, tnen they voll go on to the other houses. Mr. Gaynor said at this time he is not looking for approval but is advising you of this event. The information will be available for next month's meeting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that this should then be tabled without any further discussion. Xil. HARBOR DAY 5 RACE - APRIL 13, 2003 Mr. Gaynor noted they inadvertently were remiss and did not include this in this meeting' s packet. This is an annual race sponsored by our Department, starts at 80 Street, goes up to Dempster, then into the park, up on the sidewalk on Sheridan, comes back around behind Northwestern around the lagoon and back to Lee Street. This starts at &00 a.m. and will finish by 10:30 a.m. Usually there are not more than 150 runners. There is a staging area at Lee Street. Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the April 13, 2003 Harbor Day 5 Race. Alderman Newman motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Feldman, motion unanimously approved. Xlli. PROPOSAL TO APPROVE 2003 UPDATE TO THE RECOVERY ACTION PROGRAM IN PREPARATION FOR THE 2003 UPARR GRANT PROPOSAL TO THE NATIONL PARK SERVICE Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the 2003 Update to the Recovery Action Proaram in Preparation for the 2003 UPARR Grant Proposal to the National Park System. Alderman Newman motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Feldman, motion unanimously approved. XIV. REPORT ON THE STATUS OF FACILITIES AND PROGRAMS AT THE GROSS POINTE LIGHTHOUSE AREA Judy Aiello reported they tried to put together what they believe is the most current information regarding this area and have called this the Gross Pointe Lighthouse Area because there are so many different jurisdictions, entities that use it. This is an area that has a lot of use and a lot of users. From what we could pull together at this point in time what is really needed is a new master plan developed for the area. The best we could find was the last master plan was developed in about 1978 and some of those recommendations were implemented through some grants that the Evanston Environmental Association was able to receive. Over time there had been different entities that used the facilities and put money into it. Through the City it was by our GO bonds, or some of our operating money, or through grants that we have gone after. Some we received some are still pending through the Lighthouse Park District which levies for a certain portion of the City for their taxing district. One of the exhibits shows roughly at least S2,000,000 worth of work needs to be done. That's a rough estimate and does not include all the components, just some that we've had some recent estimates for. That is just keeping things at status quo and some of the questions raised from the staffs perspective are is everyone happy with the status quo, are there some additional uses that should happen at that area and how can we best accommodate because if we would increase some of the activities obviously that would mean more people, more people would need more parking and that's certainly a sensitive area and sensitive issue not in the entire City but where we have limited parking. in throwing all these out from the financial to the usage, to the jurisdictions, we felt we needed to revisit the master plan, seek input from the community because this is a total community asset not just used by he people up at the north. Almost everyone in town at one brae or another has used the Lighthouse Beach, has gone to the Arts Center, has gone up to the Lighthouse. It needs to be Socked at by all of the groups. Right now there is a small planning group that meets quarterly that has been trying to do some informal coordination. That's a good start of a core group to study this area but it really needs to be expanded. Most of the people who serve on this little group are staff people, we think some of the policy makers from the Board of the Arts Center, from the Lighthouse Park District need to be on it, and would also recommend we add someone from the Presen-ation Commission, someone from the Plan Commission Design Evanston, because all of those groups are the entities that need to look at this area, look at the data that we've collected, add to it, have some public meetings. see what the community wants to see in that area, and then come back with some recommendations to this committee. Again we would recommend that there be a new master plan, that we expand the Lighthouse Committee that is currently in place with some of the people we mentioned as outlined in the report and hopefully within 6 to 8 months could complete this task but come back to you every other month or so. Alderman Newman asked what portion of the land is owned by the Lighthouse Park District to which Ms. Aiello responded the Northeast Park is what they own but they lease the Lighthouse and the Keeper's Quarters and southern most area from the City. The City owns the Lighthouse that was given to us from the Federal government to be used for public Page 14. purpose and we entered into a lease with the Lighthouse Paris District. The City also owns the Lighthouse Landing Area and the Arts Center Building they lease it from us, we own the Coach House and Lawson Park which is at the farthest north. There are two other small parks that the Lighthouse Park District owns at the corner of Lincoln and Ridge which is actually nothing much but is listed as a park. Alderman Newman asked what the budget of the Lighthouse is, to which Ms. Aiello responded she believed S60,000 was levied. Alderman Newman also asked what are the Evanston bound vies of the Lighthouse Park District Ms. Aiello said it goes further north all the way into Wilmette. Alderman Newman asked if it is as big as Ridgeville because has at least a $500.000 budget. to which Ms. Aiello responded, Ridgeville is bigger. One of the things Alderman Newman would like to have the staff look at for this committee is how are we dividing all the obligations of the Lighthouse Park District. is the City picking up any of their obligation, to which Ms. Aiello responded, no the City is not. Alderman Newman then asked is $60,000 what they need to which Ms. Aiello said, no, S60,000 is all they can legally levy, they're capped. Alderman Feldman asked why Ridgeville has 5500,000 and they have only S60,000 even though its smaller. Ms. Aiello said before the cap went into place Ridgeville was raising theirs along the lake and the Lighthouse Park District did not_ They have sought some grants and get some private donations which to the best of our information is how they have been able to sustain themselves but as can be seen on the list of what needs to be done there are significant needs at the Lighthouse which is one of the critical issues. In addition to looking at part of what we call the master plan is what options we have. Alderman Feldman asked if there is any advantage at all to the City leasing these buildings to the Lighthouse Park District. Ms. Aiello said we lease the Lighthouse and the Fog Houses to them for S1 a year under the agreement from the Federal government, that was part of our acceptance because it has to be for a public use. If we ran it we have to have staff and assume their obligations for maintaining that building now we do not maintain anything on the Lighthouse. Mr. Gaynor said they do what they are able to with the $60,000 and some grants, but they have to pay their director. Ms. Aiello said they have received some grants and private donations in the past, which at this point is not enough to really maintain the Lighthouse in what we think, and they think, really needs to be done. Alderman Feldman very much appreciated Ms. Aiello's report as he learned a lot more about this entire issue then he ever before has which is both pleasant and very disturbing to him. Disturbing that he should be on the Council as long as he has and not ever received any kind of report at all regarding this area. Not only did the Lighthouse Park District not report the condition of the buildings, their difficulties, or anything else in order to maintain the deterioration of the buildings nor their plans, their meetings, or anything at all. We also did not get any response or reports from the Lighthouse Landing Committee. With all due respect even though there was a member of the Council on this committee there never was any communication to other members. This is an absolute community treasure we have to maintain, we have to sustain it, we have enhance it, and we have to do it, which is why this is not a neighborhood facility. When talking about committee people and community meetings he wants this to be a Citywide community meeting not a 7'" Ward community meeting as this is a Citywide issue that will end costing the taxpayers' of the City of Evanston a lot of money. He agrees with the idea of expanding the committee but just wants to make sure there are people on the committee that have fiscal responsibility and have some sense of the budget constraints and where the money is coming from, not just people that want to make plans but people who are savvy about budgets and our responsibility to the taxpayers. If we have such a committee they will start to deal with this but not until we get an analysis and a plan can we go much further. Alderman Newman noted one of the points he tried to make during the budget process was about the $200,000 that was put into this year's Capital Improvements Budget earmarked to be more or less for the Coach House. At the time we heard from one person about what we had to do to the Coach Houses. When you look at the overall needs of the entire site there are so many needs he is not sure that in absence of this plan we have to spend a lot of money on the Coach Houses as this is an important, incredibly well used area. The Lighthouse Beach is used by all our camps and is a very heavily used beach. One of his concerns is he never has seen how the whole area actually incorporates with each other which is what we have to solve there. When Senator Jeff Schoenberg was a State Representative he wanted to abolish all these units of governments and Alderman Newman said he does not know what this Lighthouse District form of govemment for S60,000 does at all, by existing it inhibits us from having an overall plan as the Council virtually has to pay for everything because now they only have S60,000. Because there are two taxing bodies you cannot have a unified plan for the whole site. You might be able to come up with a better site, better parking, and better surrounding areas. If we're going to put this kind of money into it one of the problems that has to be solved the City should try to negotiate and be in control of the whole thing and then have a unified plan for the entire area. Ms. Aiello said part of what they want to look at is the whole issue of uses there, also the jurisdictional issue, has it worked, is there a different model that could work better. All of the groups that use it are guilty of not telling the other groups that they're going to be doing something there and some better coordination models could come out of it for communication and most importantly some financing opportunities or at least ideas. Alderman Newman said one of the things that can be done is two referendums can be put on the ballot. One referendum tax caps this and says if you want a greater increase you have to go to the community for referendum. A referendum is put on the ballot for the money that is necessary to properly maintain that area on a yearly basis, that would be the first part of the referendum. If the people within the Lighthouse Park District don't want to spend the necessary money on their property maintaining it the answer to that is no, then whatever you need you follow up with another referendum or dissolve it and then turn it over to the City. Alderman Feldman added, then the City and the Park District can vote together on that and would both have to agree. Page 15. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought this is important enough that it requires more time than is available tonight and would like to see this back on the agenda for our next meeting. One of the questions he would like clarified is how did it come to pass that we are charging $1 a year to lease the Art Center space? Ms. Aiello said she thought it was because when the leases came up there was an agreement that we wcuid charge that, but they would pay for some of the improvements that need to go on. They have put money into the inside of a but we also pay for some of the exterior work about 530,500 a year. Alderman Newman said if we were charging them 53,000 a month then we would be taking the S38,000 to pay the maintenance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked at this time we cannot make a real analysis of whether we come on the minus or plus side of this. Alderman Newman said he is not sure if they are maintaining this or just paying $1 a year. Ms. Aiello said they are putting money into it every year, we can get more information on their most recent maintenance. Max Rubin remarked we do repairs on the shell, the outside of the building. and major distribution systems inside the building. They do all the inside maintenance, branch circuiting for electrical panels, light fixtures, exit lights, etc., all that belongs to them, his department only worries about the shell. When the lease was finalized we put $80,000 into ADA improvements ramping the front and making the first floor bathroom ADA accessible. Since that time we have not really put in a lot of money. Previously we did the Sculpture City, but the last three years have not done much. Ms. Aiello said in addition to paying us S1 a year they spend about $35,000 on maintenance of the interior and 51,200 on the flower beds adjacent to the building. Also, they pay us 51,000 a year to reimburse us for the ADA improvements that we put It. Alderman Newman asked what the square footage of the inside of the building is, to which Ms. Aiello responded about 13,000 feet. Alderman Feldman appreciated the Chairs suggestion that this can't continue tonight, he indeed thinks the report speaks for itself, as there are things we have to do now as a result of reading it. One of the things he would like to see happen before we consider it next time is a further expansion of this committee you are talking about with a charge as to what the task of that committee would be including program elements, what the beaches are going to be for, etc., and have a landscape architect and recreation people attached to that committee. This is a major initiative on the part of the City to get a hold of this, this is a major piece of property for the City and offers a tremendous promise in the way of using this land that we never have before. He would like to see this Council get those kinds of choices and the way to do that is to put together a real top notch committee that is able to study these kinds of issues and bring it to this committee as a starting off point. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added that we consider that area for planning possible staging events in the future, to which Ms. Aiello said the parking would be a problem Alderman Newman asked the Chair when this is again discussed could we invite all the state holders, somebody from the Arts Center, and the Lighthouse Park District people_ fits. Aiello said copies of the report were given to the Lighthouse Keeper and the Arts Center Director. Alderman Newman asked if the committee could get to see some pictures of what the entire sight looks like, also if we can have this on the agenda on a night when we can spend at least an hour on this. Mr. Terry suggested for process purposes all of our relationship with the District has been through their staff person the Lighthouse Keeper. He would recommend a letter from the committee be sent to the Lighthouse District Board notifying them this is now on the Human Services Committee's agenda and starting that process because the policy making board has been one which virtually no one has any contact with. Ms Aiello said the same should be done for the Arts Center. X'V. REGIONAL HOMELESS STUDY Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that this item be held once again. XVI. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:58 p.m. Respectfully submittt,71,, Audrey Trots Department of Health & Human Services Page 16. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - April 7, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman Jean -Baptiste, Newman and Tisdahl Frank Kaminski, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Allsa Dean, Maureen Barry, Alisa Dean, Harmon Greenblatt, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Ann Rainey, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office); Charles Jones (Kendall College); Chief Saul Chafin (Northwestern University); See Attached fist of Attendees Alderman Jean -Baptiste Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 715 p.m. tl. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF MARCH 3, 2003 The minutes of the March 3.2003 meeting was called and unanimouslv aooroved f5-0I. Ill, Alderman Jean -Baptiste announced in view of this evening's Large agenda items will be taken out of sequence and at this time he will be piling upon those attendees who signed up to speak about certain issues. He wanted to limit the comments to about two minutes and committee members can ask questions when the particular item is deliberated. Ramona Meher, 482 Sheridan Rd. - Ms. Meher just wanted to say everyone is here representing South Boulevard Beach in their attempt to keep South Boulevard Beach open 7 days a week. She wanted to thank the committee for hearing this issue this evening and if there are any questions in your consideration of that she would be happy to answer them. This has been a good lesson in civics for those of us living on the South end of Evanston and they have formed a nice coalition working with !take Michigan Federation. Thank you for your time. Svlvla Levinson - sald she lives at 1308 Kirk Street and the property immediately adjoining ours, 1304 Kirk, is in the process of being sold to Housing Options for the Mentally III. This has been a real learning experience, she guesses everybody has when they have an issue they haven't paid much attention to. It's really mind -boggling as far she's concerned. For 32 years she has lived in her home and that is what R is, it's a home and has been a single family home for 32 years, as has the home at 1304 Krk Street. Its been a single far y home even though there is a rental apartment upstairs, its always been family that's lived up there and still is up until this moment. Housing Options proposes to put three adults on the first floor and one adult on the second floor. This is the mind boggling part as she has been looking into this, Its seems that the City of Evanston, through a loophole, has enabled organizations such as Housing Options to simply come in and buy the property and come in under the same rules and regulations and codes and housing codes and laws, that she husband and her do. This is clearly a residential group home. It is a home for chronically mentally ill patients. Clearly, clearly it is a residential group home and yet there is no designation in the City of Evanston for that, so there are no rules or regulations they have to abide by. They don't have to abide by the 900-foot rule that says you can't have a residential home within 900 feet of another. Theoretically, they could buy the houses across the street from her and could do the same thing. This is an organization which has a lot of money and they are able to do this. They made over $3,000,000 in 2001. They clearly love South Evanston and they must adore the l? Ward because this is their second home in the a Ward. They don't have to abide by the rule that says a residential facility has to have at least 7,000 feet of land beneath the building. They have to abide by nothing. The only rules they have to abide by are the safe housing code rules that apply to my husband and myself. This will be an unsupervised home. This will be a home where no taxes are paid. My husband and i abide by those rules, we pay over $5,000 a year in taxes, Housing Options will pay no takes. When she asked Housing Options what they will do if there are problems and there is no supervision there, they say call us and we'll come running right away and make it right_ Well, is she then the unpaid supervisor of a residential home for mentally ill patients, she does not remember signing up for that. Because Evanston has allowed this loop hole to remain, that is the wording, no more than three unrelated adults or unrelated people in a unit, they are able to come in and buy Page 1. a house and live under the same rules and regulations and codes as you and I and all of us with our families and husbands and wives. That has to change. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said our Legal Department will be taking that under advisement and see what they can do about that. Alderman Newman remarked there was a long debate about group home regulations more than two years ago. He is very sympathetic and very concerned, one of the things we found when we tried to revisit the Group Home Ordinance and our Zoning Ordinances was we had very limited authority because of federal taw. Ms. Brenniman might remember the extensive discussions. What he thinks we should do is first make the minutes and whatever documents from the Legal Department, that came before the committee several years ago, avai,abie to Mrs. Levinson so she can see how we ended up where we did. He thinks this would be enlightening for her to see. Obviously Ms. Levinson wants us to put this issue on the agenda at some point. This is a difficult issue but he thinks we should do it. Alderman Feldman thought Alderman Newman is right as we've gone through this issue almost every time an application was made for a residential faciirty such as this in a neighborhood that had not had one, That's always a trauma because what we have is very strong competing values, each side has a strong and good case. This is not one sided one way or another. Parents of people with some type of mental disability have called him to say they want to create homes for their children. They grew up in Evanston and they want to make homes for these people to live in Evanston. How does one respond to that? What might be perceived by some as a loophole might be the result of a great deal of agonizing deliberation and policy without ever admitting to it and your articulation of your dilemma was very eloquent to that. The effect that it has on other people is there is a plus and a minus in every case. Thankfully his understanding is that almost in every case where these homes have been involved in the neighborhood its been a successful adaptation. He does not have one next to his house so he cannot personalty subscribe to that Yet, he does not get calls from people saying, "Look what's going here. Look what's happening here." Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted this item is not on tonight's agenda and therefore he does not want to spend too much time on this topic. He will allow the comments that have been made and hopefully this can be put on an agenda at a later date. Alderman Feldman said the only reason he mentioned this is this kind of thing is very incendiary and it's a very difficult subject Alderman Bernstein remarked to throw a bit of water on the fire that may come from this is not only does he have several group homes In his ward but the daddies of all group homes Albany Care and Greenwood Care are also in the 411 Ward. There has never been an incident with any of the Housing Options homes. Quite the contrary he was an Alderman for three years before he realized there was actually a group home in the 1300 block of Maple, he had no knowledge of that. To a person those homes in his ward have become integrated members of the community. They are supervised and quite honestly if you have four teenagers living under a roof, as some of us have on our blocks, you get worse ramifications from a household such as that, which he thinks you are going to see. He does not know if we mll have a chance to vote on this pro or con. Housing Options has supervised methodology, these are not the same kinds of people that are housed by the State of Illinois in Albany Care and Greenwood Care. These folks are often trauma induced mental illness, they have been productive in society and for whatever reason now operate on a diminished capacity. They maintain the premises perfectly. We have a home on Wesley which was a tremendous issue during his campaign and after the fact when there is a block party he sees these people who are a wonderful part of the community and are out there with their barbecues enjoying the party with everyone else. Some of the residents change and some of the prior residents come back and visit. He understands that its all pudding when you think about what might happen but the reality is he does not think it does happen. He sees one of his constituents who fires about four houses from Albany Care and there have been some impacts. Those are just people who don't necessarily like the normal, whatever that means, but to the extent we have an opportunity to address this by a vote he'll address those concerns. He just wanted to let you know in his experience your worst fears will not be realized Mrs. Levinson wanted to add that maybe her worst fear will be eventually faced because there may come a day after 32 years here and paying off her house that she wants to sell her house and to retire and do something else with herself. And when she goes to sell her house she thinks that ability is going to be impacted upon. She thinks when she says the grammar school is four blocks off and the middle school is a block away and the bus stop is a half a block away and oh yes, next door to her is a group home for chronically mentally ill patients. She sees her ability to sell her house as being diminished. Alderman Bernstein remarked his experience has not been that and he is sorry, as he does not want to get into a dialogue now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted a suggestion was made which he thinks the entire committee supports, that we make sure we put this on the agenda to enable to address this properly. Page 2. Carin Wolkenbera - said she lives on 1317 Kirk Street a few houses down from the proposed acquisition of this home by this organization. She thinks that this is a bad plan for Housing Options as well as a bad plan for the community. There has been a lot of discussion by Housing Options and some people even in this room about what this home is. From the outward appearance it does not look like a two flat that is owned by Housing Options, Housing Options is now engaged in a legal fiction that what they're purchasing looks like a two flat, when in fact it really looks like any single family home. As mentioned earner this home has been used as a single family home since it was built and in fact even if it is zoned as potentially being a two family home, even though it has not been used as one, it doesn't currently comply with the zoning codes which is one of their issues. First of all for the zoning code R-3 there are two requirements, it permits a two family and though this is considered the classical grandmother apartment with a little teeny kitchenette up a steep flight of stairs its really not like the two flats in the pictures shown by Ms Wolkenberg. It is really used more like one major integrated home. If you were to call this a two family home legally, under the zoning code, it would require 7,000 square feet for this one tax number, you don't have it. If you are to call this a two family home and use it as a two family home under the current zoning code you need three and a quarter parking spaces, you don't have it. In fact the parking for this property is a separate PIN number, it's around the comer through an alley, in the back, and its unpaved. The proposed use by Housing Options is to house, as they put it, sweet little old ladies over 70 who are disabled. The mini van that is going to pull up to take them to their medical/doctors' appointments, grocery shopping, and even the sheltered workshop, is not going to pull up around the comer in an alley in an unpaved area, its going to pull up in front of the door, which brings her to something else, another zoning violation. According to the set back requirements this front set back is supposed to be 27 feet with no parking in front of the door. in fact this comer is so bad that there are set backs from Asbury for no parking because there have been a number of accidents. So you can't park in front of the door, but where would these vans pull up, obviously in front of the door impacting the current traffic programs which is the current flow of the whole neighborhood. This property, if it is going to be a two family home as Housing Options keeps saying In their claims, the rear set back is supposed to be 30 feet, there isn't even 30 feet in the back yard. Obviously this property comes under nonconforming use and there are a whole bunch of codes without going into it about amending property from one use to another, or using a property or dealing with a property that's a non conforming use that we don't have time for today. The other thing is even though Housing Options says this is not a residential care home Category 1, because they're saying they'll put three people on the first and one perhaps two on the second floor, what they're doing, what they've done in writing is kind of declaring that they are going to in fact use it as a residential care home Category 1. Some of us have received a letter, we have copies of and we have spoken to people at Housing Options where they said quote, 'The house will provide a home for four of our current residents, primarily those who are older and need the home on the first floor." Thais a quote from one of their letters, so what they're engaging in, we believe, is a legal fiction, to try to say what is the threshold, I'm below it, but in fact operated as a residential care home Category 1 facility. She thinks they're creating this legal fiction so that they can operate it as a residential care home without actually having to apply for the license. if they operate it as they have told us on the phone and as they put in writing, with four people on the first floor and perhaps some employee or something on the second or one or two people on the second floor they, for example, as a residential care facility they wouldn't be able to have greater impact on traffic than already exists. We have already established that they will have a greater impact on traffic because there is no parking for this particular house, it's around the comer in an alley. The only place to stop to pick up the sweet little old ladies who are over 70, who have problems, is parking directly in front of the door which she has already said is prohibited for the set back code. At this point Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Wolkenberg to sum this up for the committee to put on the agenda. Ms. Wolkenberg said one last thing, this is also a bad plan for Housing Options and its residents besides the fact that $400,000 plus dollars can buy more housing somewhere else, these residents will be located near a very busy intersection which has had a number of accidents right off a busy road. They'll be located near a school, the adolescents who come to this school tease her dog mercilessly and she can't imagine what they're going to do to these residents. The residents are going to be isolated, this is not a major bus route, the only route that goes by is the 204 that only goes to Howard Street and as she mentioned earlier parking is a problem. In summary we believe that Housing Options is engaging in a legal fiction in order to not declare themselves as a residential care facility when in fact we believe by the operation of the business they're going to operate as a residential care facility, and that's why we don't think it's a good idea. Alderman Newman asked 4 there was a meeting with the neighborhood before the property was bought. Ms. Wolkenberg said they haven't bought the property yet, they were under contract to buy the property and we wouldn't known have about it at all except that some people in our community received a letter, as there is a Board member who lives in the neighborhood many, many, many blocks away. We just basically called them and confronted them and said what are you doing and many of us have, as you have, tons of testimony, and have all heard different stories. Alderman Bernstein asked where the proposed location is to which Mrs. Levinson said the proposed location is 1304 Virk Street, on the comer of Kirk and Asbury. Alderman Bernstein said he has not seen anything about that but thought he received a message from Dick Salem about that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added they all received letters about this. Maureen Glasoe said she lives at 901 Hinman Avenue and was here to voice her support for keeping the South Boulevard Beach open on weekdays, She hopes you will keep in mind the many people who came to the City Council Page 3. meeting a couple of weeks ago to talk and many of them had given the message to you but did not come tonight. She thinks that beach is one of the biggest treasures of Evanston and we need to take advantage of it and not turn people away from not swimming there during the week, The masses are with us. Cvnthla Curran of 494 Sheridan Road said to just briefly to follow up on the South Boulevard Beach she has lived across from it for 30 years and has swam in it spring, summer, fail, and a !mite bit into the winter. She is really against having you close it and feels very strongly against it. She thinks the people who live there that have access to the beaches they pay real estate takes. This somehow reminds her a litde of a Miggs Field that you might close it and then something else happens. There's talk of a marina that would realty pollute the air. Now we have very fresh air, she likes fresh air. She is just hoping you will keep the beach open seven days a week. Alderman Semstein voiced a comment about the beach, its generic but we always leave impressions, the beaches are open when they're open. There is no swimming allowed in the beaches during the winter and other times. He raises this point because he just had a conversation with Mr. Gaynor about a lawsuit that has been filed against the City for someone who was swimming in a closed beach. So, please, swim at your own risk and be very careful. Alderman Ann Ralnev wanted to make a statement especially to Alderman Feldman's comment about the need and people coming to him about their children and group homes. This neighborhood is not opposed to group homes, they're opposed to homes such as Housing Options for the Mentally Iii are proposing and have proposed, She already has one in her ward. They are not supervised, they are not licensed, they are not group homes, they are not residential care homes of either category. The only legal relationship that exists between Housing Options and the mentally ill people who live in them is a landlord tenant relationship, Their scheme is to come under the taw, the law requires supervision and licensing once you have four people in a unit The proposal she is going to make at the Council meeting is to make a reference to this committee that the law be changed to require four people under a roof. The way the taw now exists is they could buy a fifty unit building and put three clients per unit and have 150 mentally ill, unsupervised people in a neighborhood. The Maple Avenue home you mentioned, that's a supervised licensed group home. The homes that this organization owns are on Jackson, Custer, Florence, and one they are not publishing or at least she did not know about. When she supported their home on Custer, after many, many hours of meetings, they promised her, as she asked what are they going to do put them all in the Sri Ward, and they said, "Oh no. Alderman Rainey, we're going to be very careful about that, they're going to be disbursed throughout the community. We support diversity and we support diversity in our housing purchases." At $400,000 for four bedrooms they could do just as well someplace else, trust me. She finds that they violated her trust thars for sure. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this matter will be put on the agenda and hopefully the Legal Department will advise us on how we approach that discussion and share with us what has been done before. fV. SOUTH BOULEVARD BEACH REPORT Before continuing with this agenda item Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to read a statement sent to the committee by Alderman Wynne, who was not able to attend tonight's meeting. "Dear Alderman Jean -Baptiste and Members of the Human Services Committee, Thankgou for placing the reconsideration of closing South Blvd. Beach Monday through Friday on your agenda for your April 7 meeting. I am unable to attend the meeting because it is spring break for Evanston schools and I will be out of town with my family. I did not want to delay this issue until your next meeting which is not until May. I am requesting that my statement be read at the meeting and distributed to the Committee and the members of the public, For many Evanstonians one of the main reasons to live here is our marvelous lakefront and our five beaches. Some of us chose the house, apartment or condo we live in because of our ability to walk to a beach. We don't have a municipal pool in Evanston, we have something better, Lake Michigan. Our five beaches each offer a unique swimming and beach experience - Lee Street is like a big block party with families who all know each other saying hello, Greenwood Street combines the sailors and wind surfers with some of our most dedicated lake swimmers, Clark Street (a beach my family and 1 discovered last summer) has an amazing view of downtown Chicago, Lighthouse Beach, with its dunes and historic lighthouse, feels wild and far away and South Blvd. Beach is the quiet cove tucked into our southern curve. Every one of these beaches makes an enormous contribution to the quality of life in Evanston. As we have learned in recent weeks the projected savings from eliminating weekday use of South Blvd. Beach is only a fraction of what we had been told during the budget process. I want to thank the neighbors who raised the issue and brought the correct numbers to light Thank to this effort we can see that the cot of closing the beach, and keeping people out of the water during the week, vastly outweighs the $4,000 or less that we would save. i therefore respectfully request MULL the Human Services Committee approve a budgetary amendment to reinstate weekday use of South Blvd. Beach. Page 4. Thank you for your time and attention. Yours tmdy. Melissa Wynne, Alderman (Third Ward)" Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor to explain the issue of closing saving us $4,000 as it is not what was argued in what was shared with us, what is the real purpose. Mr. Gaynor said at budget time they indicated the current electronic accounting system, which was the transition of the new computer prograrn the J D.Edwards program, has only one account for elements where we deposit our revenues and charge our expenses against. When we made the recommendation to dose the swimming area at South Boulevard we showed a S13.000 overall budget reduction. At that time it was explained that 55,000 was specifically for elimination of a part-time lakefront manager because we were combining two positions, one the person that was running our Park Ranger program which was part-time as well as a part- time lakefront manager position, and creating one full-time position. The savings was $5,000, in addition to saving an additional sum of money. S8.0D0 by closing the swim area at South Boulevard five days a week. The 55,000 savings will be realized regardless of whether we continue to keep the South Boulevard swim area open or not We have been able to make that savings through hiring a full-time employee who is going to be taking on a number of responsibilities. We anticipate an $8.000 increase in the budget is offset by a 54,000 projected revenue. We hope this year will be the first year we can actually track all the expenditures and revenues by beach and hopefully when the transition to the new Finance Department software program is implemented it will give us that opportunity. Our best guess is an $8,000 expenditure increase with a $4,000 increase in revenue, which would be net expense against the budget What Alderman Wynne suggested is an amendment would be required to add an additional S8,000, 54,000 to the expense side of the budget Alderman Feldman said to him the issue is very clear and he could not possi* support closing the beach for $4,000 with the commensurate impact on the community and thinks the articulation of the concern on the part of the neighbors has been very eloquent and eye opening. Alderman Feldman made a motion that this committee ask the Council for an amendment to restore $8,000 to Element 1724 for the openinq of South Boulevard Beach from Monday through Friday and $4,000 In associated revenue. He would like to commend Alderman Wynne for her very immediate and quick response to this issue and the neighbors concerns. He is sorry she is not here but almost from the very beginning it was very clear what her preferences, sympathies and advocacy would like and appreciated that within minutes after this whole thing started he received a call from her soliciting his support and response to this. Aldermen Tisdahl and Newman both seconded the motion. Alderman Newman wanted to briefly comment that there are two sets of constituencies in Evanston, one is the people who think their taxes are too high, and the other people who enjoy their use of City Services, sometimes they overlap. In this particular case in the last couple of years the Recreation Department has undergone extensive cuts, which he thinks it is pretty well documented. It gets to the point where the people wanting the department have to look for any amount of money they can find. Although this does not seem like a lot of money it wasn't a situation where anybody woke up in the morning and wanted to reduce service in that neighborhood its just a situation where everybody has been struggling to find money and to be able to do things. One of the reasons this did not get as much attention is because it was in the group of the 51,000.000 City Manager cuts. The community helped bring this about and point it out and it was looked at again. Alderman Wynne called and talked to him about this. he knows that at the time of passing the budget all of us were concerned about trying to maintain the City Manager's cuts because we were just trying to come up with a tax increase that was reasonable. We still raised our share of the property tax by almost 7%. A lot of people with high tax bills would argue that's a very significant increase and others who are more sympathetic to the quality of services that they want in the community give the Council a little bit more stack It's a can't win situation and he is glad we were able to correct this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there is a motion to support an amendment to restore this money and the next step would be to make the determination whether the money is available to restore. This committee can advance that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recalled Alderman Feldman's motion of a proposed budget amendment to restore $8.000 to Element 1724 for the openinci of South Boulevard Beach Monday through Friday, and the $4.000 In associated revenue. Motion unanimously approved (5-0). Alderman Newman brought up one other point, regarding one of the comments that was made, there has never been any plan or any discussion whatsoever of having a marina at South Boulevard. Any marina being studied is not at that site but further up. Alderman Bernstein wanted to clarify that there has been a study for which the funds have now been withdrawn, but may be back. contemplating a marina off Calvary Cemetery, no contemplation whatsoever of removal of swimming privileges from South Boulevard Beach. We're too far away, if at all on this, the federal dollars will determine whether or not there is a need for it at all and he is sure the neighbors will be contacted with respect to that With respect Page 5. to this budgeting concern, this was very convoluted and in terms of the necessity of putting funds into a different fund is very difficult for him to follow in the sense of truth in budgeting you have to analyze that a S4,000 net by going 3, 4, 5 different stages is an accounting procedure which is something we have to address. We just spent S3,500,000 for new accounting software which he hoped would facilitate line item accounting. Mr, Gaynor said he did not want to be defensive for the Finance Director but we started to rule out some transition from the old software to the new software March it'. All our budgeting had been cornp►eted by that date and we hope the new budget vnit be into the new software that should be up and running. Patricia Dalton from the aud.ence wanted to make the point if the marina is going to be at Calvary Cemetery that is just a few blocks from the beach and it would pollute the water. Alderman Jean-Baptste remarked he understands what Ms. Dalton is saying but that is not on the agenda nor is it up for discussion and does not want to open the door for that. Ms. Dalton asked where would this be taken up, at the City Council? Alderman Jean -Baptiste said right now this is being studied and there is interest from Chicago to Evanston. If it comes on the agenda it will be announced through public process. When and if it comes before this committee we will make sure it will be published in the newspaper so everybody can be informed as we know there will be a great deal of residents interested. Ms. Dalton went on to say the price of beach tokens had quadrupled within the ten years and asked where does that money go? She thought the beach tokens went to take care of the beaches. Alderman Newman remarked that is a valid point. Mr. Gaynor wanted to comment for those interested in the marina project we are going to be taking the sign in sheet from tonight's meeting and a letter will be sent as there is a very public process for everybody if it gets that far. This was an Aldermanic request a couple of years ago. V. CONSIDERATION OF THE MARCH 2O03 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for acceptance of the March 2003 Township monthly bills. Alderman Feldman motioned for acceptance. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion to approve the March 2002 Townshlo monthly bills was unanimously approved f5-01. Vl. CONSIDERATION OF REFRENCE TO EXPLORE POSSIBLE COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS WITH KENDALL COLLEGE Alderman Newman said several people have had the opportunity to communicate with Kendall College about several issues. As most people know Kendall College Is a top Flight culinary school and a significant part of their student body is studying the culinary arts which obviously means they produce a lot of food. On tonight's agenda there is another Item the Transportation Capital Assistance Grant to try to get more money for transportation for seniors and one of the things were trying to set up with Kendall College which has been very cooperative in trying to have the teaching of food preparation at Kendall benefit the large senior citizen community in our town. He has had several conversations with people who run the senior residences in his ward and they are very interested. The idea would be to try to transport seniors from the Georgian, the Mather, 2300 Noyes, Primm Towers, and other places, maybe once a month, or once a week or every two week, to Kendall, so they can share in the wonderful food served there at a very reasonable price. So - far he has been told by Mr. Terry and Mr. Gaynor that things are going very well in those discussions and he would like to thank the people from Kendall for being so cooperative. Another thing he is hoping we are able to accomplish is some type of collaboration on our Summer Youth Program, actually getting some of those kids into Kendall so that they can have experience in job training that they can parlay into otherjob opportunities, that is the real hope of our program and also for them to possibly see Kendall as the top flight educational Institution that it is. He is hoping that everybody on the administration side is doing everything they can to help make both of these things a reality. Alderman Newman wanted to thank Charles Jones, who was in attendance, and the President of Kendall for being interested in helping us as this is a great opportunity to partner with them. Charles Jones. Director of Develooment for Kendall Colleae. said in the early conversations with Alderman Newman he brought up the idea of using our k=hens to possibly feed senior citizens. We're excited, and have met with Jay Tenys office. We're having a follow up meeting this week and hope to kick off a trial early in May to see if we can successfully get a good product to the seniors in the neighborhood. We'll start with Levy Center, using that as a control station to make sure that we do this right and that everybody is happy with it. in terms of the summer program right now they are working on organizing this to be able to take a number of young people over to the college and actually have them job channeled so they can really learn some of the things we're doing. We're a small school down the block but we're part of Evanston and want to help where we can. Alderman Feldman wanted to thank Kendall College and Alderman Newman for a terrific idea and wondered why didn't this kind of thing happen before. Irs such a natural connection and collaboration and he very much appreciates Kendall's Page 6. very eager response. For a long time he has been aware of Kendall College and their desire to get involved in the community. This is a perfect way of doing it and he wishes them a lot of luck and hopes staff cooperates and brings this around very quickly. Alderman Jean -Baptiste and the committee thanked Mr. Jones for this wonderful effort VII. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Chief Kaminski d he would synopsize the complaints one by one. Chief Kaminski reported 02-08 - was investigated and in his review the officers that were involved were exonerated 03-01 - his disposition on that was unfounded 03-02 - was exonerated 03-03 - that investigation was sustained, found guilty, all the allegations of misconduct were sustained 03-04 - was unresolved, complaint initialty had been filed and numerous attempts were made to contact the people they were from out of state- it was a domestic violence situation and we have not heard from them 03-05 - this was in reference to party and the complainants withdrew the complaint pending a criminal court proceeding 02-05 - a continual investigation from the last time, had been originally closed out as the complainantwas unavailable and could not be located the showed up on January 24, 2003 when the investigation was reopened. Chief Kaminski noted attached to the Complaint Reviews are some of the letters received from citizens slnce our last meeting. Alderman Bernstein had a generic question with respect to CR 02-08 and wanted to know what is the protocol involving determination of medical needs of a suspect. Chief Kaminski responded, they ask the suspect if they request medical attention also if we feel it is necessary we call for this. Alderman Bernstein knows about when they come to the station and get medical attention and asked if there is time when the medical attention would come to the scene and transport them to which Chief Kaminski responded whatever the request is at the time, if they request it at the scene it will be at the scene or at the station if they request it then. Alderman Bernstein asked if we depend on the accused to make the request or do we call the paramedics to make the determination, to which Chief Kaminski responded if we feel medical attention is required we make the call. Alderman Newman thought there was an admission by a police officer that he kicked a person and was Interested in that case because he was not sure what the training or the position of the department is, when do you call for backup and when do you start kicking people. He was referring to the case where the complainant was not compliant. Alderman Tisdahl noted that was CR 03-02 where the person would not get into the police car and read from the complaint review, "Accused Officer One delivers five knee strikes to complainant's right thigh, complainant then enters the car and is transported to the station." Alderman Newman thought when he read this his question was if the Officer was doing that because he couldn't get the person under control and wondered at what point does an Officer start getting physical with somebody who is going to be arrested instead of trying to get backup. Chief Kaminski said the Officers on the scene start with the verbal commands and continue with the verbal commands before using other techniques. Alderman Newman asked why does it have to be right then and there, if this person is acting up and not cooperating why can't we wait until the others get there and not have to strike him. Chief Kaminski said waiting might be more difficult, depending on the person's behavior you would want to get him out of the scene and sent away, which Alderman Newman agreed was a good point. Chief Kaminski went on to say you don't want people standing there with this continuing to escalate you want to make the arrest, get the person in, and get them out of the area. The quicker that can be done the better, there is a regular escalation of restraint the Officers try to use, verbal commands are the first thing they use, then they use other techniques. This was a mild technique to try to get the person into the squad car. Alderman Newman noted there have been a number of sustains over the years, but one of the things we never find out about is what happens to those persons in terms the type of discipline. We've gone back and forth on that but what actually happens we do not know nor do we know whether this person is a repeated offender or anything like that. Chief Kaminski said all he could say was that person is no longer a member of the Police Department, to which Alderman Newman said that is serious discipline. Alderman Feldman motioned for acceptance of the DisnosMon of the Citizen Comolaints against Police Officers: motion seconded by Alderman Bernstein and unanimously approved 105). Page 7. Vill. FURTHER REVIEW OF NORTHWESTERN POLICE DEPARTMENT ACTFMIES (CONTINUED FROM MARCH 3, 2003) Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked Chief Chafin for returning to visit this committee and believed the last time there were a number of issues on the table. He appreciated his responses in breaking down the kinds of activities the Northwestern Police have been involved in, the categories of arrests, stops. etc Most of us recognize the good work being done in terms of assisting to keep things in order in the City of Evanston. At the last meeting there was some criticism as to whether or not there was some over zealous reaction on the part of the Northwestern Police. Chief Chafin began by saying effective June 20. 2003 he is retiring and felt he would be remiss if he did not let the City of Evanston know how grateful he personally and his department and University are for the partnership developed between Chief Kaminski and the members of the Evanston Police Department and would hope that his successor would build and even improve on what has been accomplished over the years. He will miss Chief Kaminski and his relationship with the people of Evanston and the Police Department in particular but will be very happy to retire after 44 years of law enforcement. Chief Chafin noted there were two issues focused on as a result of the last meeting, one of which was did we have an internal policy of not issuing speeding violations for cars driving less than 10 miles over the speed limit The policy has been, and continues to be, that a car driving 10 plus miles over the speed limit we really should ticket, the report given this committee breaks it down. The people arrested for speeding were averaging 15,76 miles per hour over the speed limit. We have cars driving as high as 32 miles over the speed limit in a 30-mile per hour zone. Of the 448 speeding tickets issues only one was written for 7 miles over, 5 were written for 10 miles. 12 were written for 11 miles over the speed limit. In reference to stop sign violations, particularly at Orrington and Clark, the Burger King area, they wrote a total of 74 stop sign violations, of which Evanston residents received 28 of those 74 citations and 3 of the Evanston residents were from the 1" Ward area. They got complaints from citizens and from University folks about people not stopping at that particular stop sign. With the number of students that walk through there, plus faculty staff, plus students that live in the apartments there and there is a heavily populated dormitory there, is just cause for us to spend some time safeguarding people so no one would be struck. We did some checking and found out about two years ago someone was hit at that site which was the reason for our kind of selective enforcement in that particular area. Those are the two items particularly raised he wanted to respond to. As of Friday and Saturday of this week they had a program in place to hire officers overtime to concentrate on sites where kids party on the weekend and for the balance of the school year they will have extra officers assigned to party patrol particularly concentrating off campus where kids have a tendency to migrate to, party and create disturbances. April 14" they're holding another community meeting at the Family Institute for residents of the 4 h Ward and people from the 1s' Ward may also want to attend, at the Family Institute to discuss some of the issues of us being a good neighbor, what the University intends to do as far as policing and patrolling the area, addressing concerns from neighbors created by our students who live in off campus areas. The last couple of meetings students actually came to the meeting and we will try to get them to come each time we hold these meetings. He does not think this is something the University will stop in his absence and throughout the course of the year you will continually see meetings where they will do some outreach to make sure that the community has a chance to express their views and bring some issues that need to be corrected to their attention_ Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked Chief Chafin for his service. He has not personally had a chance to interact with Chief Chafin but from the discussions with Chief Kaminski has been very satisfied with the progress in the relationship between Northwestern Police Department and the City of Evanston Police Department and he thinks having that kind of collaboration is a great asset. Thank you Chief Chafin and have a great retirement. Alderman Newman wished Chief Chafin well and said he did not how much time there was tonight but something he wanted to be able to spend time on when we're not pressed for time. If it means Chief Chafin has to come back before he retires he would like to have him come back. The Chief knows this is a very important issue to his ward and the people who live to the west He very much appreciates what he is hearing in terms of commitment to try to address some of the problems because once you acknowledge a problem exists we can all work together to solve it If everybody understands when you're dealing with police issues that DUI's are important arrests to make. There is a reason why our Police Department does not write as many DUI's as Wilmette and some of the other suburbs, because we do not have the resources to have our police officers sitting and waiting for these drivers. Our police officers are doing other things in the priority chain, which is the discussion we need to have. In terms of something that happened during a Council meeting around September 20, 2002, in a span of a couple of hours there were 23 police calls in the 1 a and 5 Wards in a 6 block radius. We know where the problems are and it takes outreach and also some discussion of University policy because of what University policy is right now. Correct him if he's wrong that undergraduate students are not allowed to have alcohol (kegs) in undergraduate housing. What happens as a result of that policy is those kegs end up in the Evanston community off of campus. That's the major policy that has to be visited which is the discussion we need to have in terms Page 8. of trying to focus on a solution. In all due respect, the Chief has no authority there, that's not a policy he can change by himself there are higher ups involved. We need to have a dialogue and also need to be doing more positive outreach before the fall, spring, or summer when there is changeover in the housing three times a year. He would be glad to have that discussion and appreciates your willing to partake in that. The alcohol policy needs to be discussed. Chief Chafin said he could come back here every night until June 20' but thinks your concern needs to be directed to whoever his successor is because that's who will be really responsible. He can sit here and say he's going to do certain things and a successor can come in and do something totally different One thing we can do between now and the time he leaves is knock on doors with some people from Student Affairs, have them identify where the kids live, and then see if we can talk to them and do some outreach with them. We don't mind doing that and intend to do that within the next few weeks, which Alderman Newman thought was excellent. He vnil probably have the officers doing the party patrol Friday and Saturday nights extend themselves a little bit more and try to get ahead of this and start talking to the kids on a regular basis to stress the importance of being a good neighbor. He really thinks you need to spend time with his successor to talk about what's going to be good for the University because as you say he cannot change the policy. The whole issue Is you have to be 21 to drink, not the kegs. He does not know if kids have kegs in their houses they may have beer but he never heard of keg beer in these off campus residents. Alderman Newman added there is a keg right now sitting off Foster Avenue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we do not have to wait until we have a committee meeting to sit down and work on the policy to make sure it is implemented on a consistent basis. Those major policy issues can still be addresses and can begin between now and next week. What he hears is there is willingness to work together to try to troubleshoot these problems. Chief Kaminski brought up Alderman Kent's issue of extending the Northwestern jurisdiction that he wanted brought to this committee. A1demnan Newman thought we need to get that out at some of the Northwestern meetings because he heard some of those implications at a meeting he attended that Alderman Kent didn't do this or that and one person from Northwestern said you have to call Alderman Kent. He hopes this can be avoided in the future. What this does is just politicize those meetings. Chief Kaminski said at the last community meeting with Alderman Kent he asked this be brought up to you and if you wish he can bring this to the General Council. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it would be good to share that in terms of evolution of the police collaboration that exists right now and asked if anyone on the committee wants to offer a motion amending this ordinance or do we want Alderman Kent to come to our next meeting to talk about this and see if he wants to propose an amendment. Alderman Newman moved that we make the jurisdictional chanpe that Alderman Kent has reauested and oo forward, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Motion unanimously accented 0-01. Alderman Bernstein asked what the rule is with respect to alcohol in University housing. He was told if a student is 21 years he/she can have alcohol in their room, there are no kegs allowed in dorms. Alderman Feldman suggested that as this issue progresses this committee establish a list of priority roles and issues we think would be good for the Northwestern Police to address so that becomes clear and we can then judge on that criteria. We have some priorities that are really well articulated but it is important for them to know what we expect and what we think is importanL Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to add to that and asked that Alderman Newman and Alderman Kent take the lead in clarifying that us to understand the particulars and be able to provide the support. Perhaps at our next meeting it could be further clarified as we discuss the issue of extending the jurisdiction. IX. CONSIDERATION OF THE CITY'S SPECIAL EVENTS POLICY Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted this issue was previously addressed and Mr. Gaynor has gone back and done further work on it He asked Mr. Gaynor to give an update as to what has been done Mr. Gaynor said there were several suggestions made especially with respect to the lakefront and we have somewhat revised the procedure. We looked at this globally for all special events in the City and also at the lakefront and created, as an example, one of the changes as we now have recommendations that all applications need to be submitted by the end of February. By mid April there wili be a calendar and between February and April we will review and work with all the event coordinators to bring either to A & PW if it has to do with a street closure, if its lakefront or in a park it will come to Human Services. [twill get adopted or approved and come to City Council so that by the end of April we will be able to publish a schedule with the special events for the year. When this is finally accepted and adopted by the City Council we will send a letter to the event coordinators, 50 or 65 that have been collected over the last several years, and give them the new application, procedures, and dates to spell out clearly what is necessary to get a special event approved. That is not for a picnic in a park per se, it's a picnic in a park if it exceeds a certain number and we spell that out. Once you exceed a certain number you're looking at public safety issues making sure the Police and Fire Departments are aware of it, possibly the neighborhood depending on where it is, therefore, there are special pieces to this. (At this poln4 8.40 p.m., Alderman Bemsteln left the meeting.) Page 9. Alderman Feldman asked about an articulation of a limit of the number of days they're going to use as a guideline for special events on the lakefront I!dr. Gaynor said they did not articulate any specific number, they felt that would be controlled by the Special Event Committee and the recommendation that would come to this committee andlor the A & PW committee. Lakefront would come here and therefore this committee would then be able to say whether or not they wanted the event He thinks its important to know that we have reduced the number of events an event days at the lakefront over the last three years. We have also made attempts at revising routes even though they may stay at the lakefront, using as an example the Ricky Byrdsong event, we revised that route and had absolutely no impact by the neighbors in the community. Alderman Feldman agreed with Mr. Gaynor that the decision as to the number of days has to fie somewhere else besides with staff. If what you're implying is that the decision be made by A & P W and this committee that decision would then have to be made every single year and what we would be doing would be involving ourselves in political decisions weighing one special event against another. Without a policy or statement someone sponsoring a special event has a reasonable expectation of approval and we don't turn down a lot of people. Say we have 21 days, what if 65 agencies apply and they applied before the deadline all thinking they have a reasonable chance for approval. Without any guidelines or predetermined policy, or any concept of a burden beyond which we do not want to go we have to make that decision and fight that battle every single year. The question he is posing is whether or not we say that we have a certain number of days of usage on the lakefront as you have here and thats it Otherwise we're in the same kind of atmosphere year after year after year and every year the people from the lakefront come here saying what are you people doing, don't do it to us this year or next year_ Why can't we establish a numerical day limit and say that's it Once that's established the people within that limit in the permit process might even come to the Council and say they are willing to accept that kind of responsibility. Without any kind of guideline or limitation the people who make application look at the Council's decision as an ad hoc decision, a decision they make every year without a guideline, without a value, without a purpose and it becomes a very political thing. He would think we would be able to say, no, no matter how its divided up between which organizations, 21, 22, or 19 days of festivity or festivals, whatever we decide is what we should aim for. If there are more applications, then as Mr. Gaynor indicated we should try to direct them some other place and if that is not acceptable then we tell them to try again next year. This is a policy that somebody has to go through to get accepted and he appreciates the date limitations which will solve a lot of problems, and the various fee requirements, etc. Yet it doesn't feel that the main issue these people have articulated for a long time which is that they are willing to accept responsibility, but there is a limit to what they should be asked to accept. He's not certain there isn't agreement to that concept, we haven't decided as to what that responsibility is. It would be unreasonable to expect a neighborhood to accept unlimited days and once you reject them you say what's fair. Are there any drawbacks to having a set number of days? Mr. Gaynor said this was discussed this at length and they said they could take the current events, grandfather those in, and say that's it. What we need to do is come up with something that could be challenged in court and says why this versus that As Alderman Feldman said if we bring it to you each year then somebody has to make the decision why this one Is better than that By grandfathering what we have now we have at least established what has been going on to date. We would be grandfathering in the bike ride, the festivals, those events. Alderman Jean -Baptiste interjected Alderman Feldman is not focusing on the events but the event days and that would be a problem for us if we were to grandfather specific events. He would rather see setting a limit on the number of days that we will have events at the lakefront and then allow people a chance to compete for those days. Mr. Gaynor said then there needs to be a development of criteria that says one event is better than another and we don't want to go there, that's an illegal thing, you need to develop criteria as to the determination. If you say there are a number of events that occur at the lakefront, we have to compute the events into days and the events that are there now which represents a certain number of days are grand -fathered in. If somebody falls off of that we might have a waiting list, we might have new applications, but the criteria to determine who fills the spot will be the one that w l) be legally challenged because the criteria has to be set so that its fair and equal. Ms. Brenniman noted if you are going set any kind of numerical limit for the number of days you're going to have at the lakefront or any other park you have to have a rational basis for doing that. Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Brenniman whether she thought that a rational basis for limiting that is impact on a neighborhood. Ms. Brenniman responded, yes, she does think that but you have to get your facts together and look at that, Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Brenniman if she is saying once you have that the City Council could not legally choose between one event or organization or another, they would say we were discriminating one organization against another. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked right now we are moving into an area where it's more speculative. The key issue is whether or not we want to establish a ceiling in terms of number of event days. Once we establish that we then have to find a way to justify it and a way for other groups to democratically have access to do something by the lake. Alderman Newman thought we are not quite straight on the terminology here because the word events is being used. To understand what is going on at the lakefront forget about what you are calling event days, you have the camps out there the boat launch is there, the wind surfers are there, the beaches are there every single day in the summer, etc. Nobody Page 10. could ever argue that our lakefront is not well used during the summer, ifs very well used. We have a lot of activity there. What these events are, are additional special events beyond the parks being open every day. they tend to attract large numbers of people that are requesting the use of amplification, they may have large numbers of additional cars and everything else coming into the neighborhood. We have actually expanded the number of events Originally in 1989 when we started we had a lot less events. He asked Ms. Brenniman if she is saying we can't pick a number and say that's it. based on the number of event days and all the activities we already have. He's not talking about where everybody can walk into the lakefront without a ticket during the summer they go in for free Ms. Brenniman responded, she is not saying that, if you do that and you exclude any other groups from using that area. Alderman Newman said we're not excluding them from using Evanston. we're finding them altematrve accommodations if we have them. fits Brenniman said she is just saying having a rational bans for doing that, to which Alderman Newman responded that's pretty rational. Alderman Jean-Baptste interjected the only way we can control the abuse or utilization of the lakefront is to set a ceiling on special event days, we can make that decision and then move forward to rationalize it. That's not a big deal, the question Alderman Feldman posed was whether this policy needs to also articulate that for the lakefront we only have 20 or whatever number of special event days available. Once we make that statement we try to work it out and have the applicants come before us to make proposals to use the lakefront, some will be able to do it and others wilt not be able to do it within the context of the limitations we have. That is what we have to decide as we have already stated that we don't want to do that we have just not decided on the number of days which we need to try to articulate and advance it to the Council to see whether or not the Council will support that, and then go forward. A member of the Bike Club in the audience wanted to point our two issues. Alderman Feldman questioned whether managers should set a limit and thinks that should be for the Aldermen to set ifs a policy issue, a governmental issue how many special events we want to have. Once you do that then the question you pose to your managers is you have to have a rational and just basis between them to figure out why someone gets in when someone else does not get in. it is for the Aldermen to determine what the City should have. Alderman Newman noted the events should be chosen on the basis of their impact on noise, traffic and parking, Mr. Gaynor said the impact will be the same on pretty much all of the events because they all will require parking at the lakefront. Alderman Newman remarked, they're all not the same, for example the bike ride has at least 1,000 people, another event has maybe 40 or 50 people. Alderman .lean -Baptiste interjected we are not even at that question yet, we're at the phase of making a determination as to whether or not we want a ceiling on the number of event days. Then our process of making that decision is between November and January and by the end of February we should have a calendar ready by mid or the end of April. That will then come before this committee to make a determination. in terms of the policy he supports having a statement that says, the number of Lakefront event days is ' X' amount and then we go through the process of trying to determine how best to implement that Right now we don't have to get into the discussion of how best to determine that. We need to come to a decision as to whether or not we want that limitation which is the direction we are going to come to some kind of ceiling. The question is how many is rational, how many strikes a balance between protecting the interest of the residents by the Lakefront and benefiting the rest of us who do not live by the lakefront. Tom O'Brien of 210 Davis Street, said he is sure the committee recalled the letter presented to them at the last meeting. They had three requests, one was that events be complied into a single submission which would go to the Human Services Committee for approval so that it did not require a number of meetings, which he is happy to see is in Mr. Gaynor's policy. Although it does seem to be split between Human Services and A & PW, in any event the lakefront events are going before Human Services. There was a change in the policy in how we count the events which is okay if we change how we account for them but then we have to go back and readjust what our expectations are. The report has 15 events for 2001, out account would have had that at 20 or 21 because we account each of the Starlight Concerts as its own event. This is only important because we have this baseline from the 1989 agreement of 9 events. If we are going to change the way we count the events we need to also change the base line from 9 down to 4, just so everybody is clear about the number of events we're talking about. Alderman Newman remarked let's call Starlight Concerts each an individual event. Mr. O'Brien went on to say in the report instead of 15 events it would be 20, instead of 13 in 2002 that would be 18 or 19, instead of 12 it would be 18. it's not something to argue about except for the perception that we're going from 9 to 12. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he understands what Mr. O'Brien is saying but what we have been discussing is a possible way to limit ourselves to deal with special event dates. Mr. O'Brien said they support a limit on the number of event days and would like the number of days to be as close as possible to what it was in the 1989 agreement, that was 9 events and 11 or 12 event days. We would be open to some moderate increase but anything in the 20 range strikes him as too many because that is in essence every weekend day that we have during the summer. Mr. Gaynor said as an example in September they have the North Shore Bike Ride. He understands what this is all about and wants to mention he is trying to be objective about ail the activities in this community. A number of these events are not days, you're talking event days a term which he brought up, we're actually talking event hours. The Duck Pluck is less than 3 hours, the Rotary Picnic is 3 hours, the Arbor Day Race is 3 hours, the Byrdsong Race is probably less than 3 hours and not even held at the lakefront its just a run past that, the Race to the Finish is 2 hours. Maybe we should break it down to event hours. The Starlight Concerts are 2 hours, by previous agreement the concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Page 11. and ends at 9.00 p.m., sometimes it runs over a little bit if there is an enthusiastic audience wanting one more tune. It were putting everything in we also need to put that on the table. Mr, O'Brien added he thought we should put on the set up and clean up time from the very big events if we're going to count hours. Again, what they would ask is a set limit as you suggested on the number of events taking place in the park however we measure those and that limit would be something we would not have to police each year. Their third request was a limit on the number of amplified events because those events have more impact on the surrounding area than other events do in may ways, that limit is also not included. On the weekend days the amplification is allowed 16 hours which rf he tried to do construction on his house for 16 house he would be shut down in a heartbeat. Amplification is allowed from 7 00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on weekends, it's excessive. Alderman .lean -Baptiste remarked you do not have that going on from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., to which Mr. O'Brien said some start early and some go late. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said part of our problem is to be as objective as possible because other members of the Council have different interests and they want to get a sense of what the real impact is as close to saying what the policy says, you can have amplificabon from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. which means that's going on all day long and which is not the case. Mr, O'Brien said the plan was that there be a limit on the number of events with amplification. Alderman Newman asked the people from the lakefront to address if they are looking for this committee to take out events that are there now because that was what was happening with the Century Bike Ride. Mr. O'Brien said it was not happening from them, to which Alderman Newman said he understands it wasn't but if we go with the spirit of your proposal that means that some events have to go. Mr. O'Brien said their proposal would be a limit in the future starting in 2004.One can say that from 2 years ago a number of events have dropped out and new events have come in, so he thinks it would be reasonable if we would continue to reduce the number. Alderman Newman asked if they are asking the committee to remove any events that are currently on the list because that is ultimately what it comes down to. Mr. O'Brien said what it comes down to is the management of a finite resource and our request is that somebody that is in a position to manage it We could pick and chose events, we have not picked and chosen events, if you'd like us to he supposes they could. Alderman Newman said when talking about the management issue, if we had a policy where we reduce these number of days then by definition people that were there last year or the year before in some cases would have to somewhere be reduced, he's just trying to get a sense of where we are on this issue. Mark Knet oer of 1516 Judson, said he did not think this is just an issue of people who live by the lakefront but because we live there we notice it more, this is for all the residents of the community who do not have much access on the lakefront on those event days. One thing he wanted to say, what is jumping out at him when he looks at the events schedule, is some of these events are really big, high impact where there are thousands of people there with tons of garbage and the lakefront is mobbed and there are others which have less than 100 people. There is a big difference between those. Maybe what you want to talk about is somewhat the limitations as you come up with this policy of limitation of days say okay, we will have maybe 3 or 4 or however many it is of these high impact events and maybe have one of those components. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted we have the Ethnic Arts Festival, the Lakeshore Arts Festival. 4" of July Fireworks, those are the major high impact events and did not think we would get any more multi day events at the Lakefront. Mr. Knepper said those are wonderful events what he worries about is if you have this special event situation where you say there are a number of hours or whatever someone's allocating and says they'll remove the Duck Pluck and these other three low impact events then well add another high impact event. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we will make the decisions ultimately based on the comments and the community input of what we think is reasonable for the rest of the community, and asked Mr. Knepper what he intends to say in terms of his comment. Mr. Knepper said what he intends to say is he thinks there is a difference between some of these high impact events and thinks there should be a limitation to them certainly and then maybe a separate category that defines a low impact event and a certain number of those that are allowed. He completely agrees with establishing the number of days so we do not have to come back every year and have the same argument. He also agrees we do not have to make something political that does not need to be political. Alderman Feldman was glad that Mr. Knepper pointed that out but must say the three events pointed out as having the highest impact are the ones that are created by the community for the community. Mr. O'Brien said they understand that they're there and they're fine. Alderman Feldman could not see any events on the list that even come close to rivaling those in events in terms of impact He is absolutely in sympathy with that but must say events In his mind are there solidly and for good reason, if there's a reason to have a lakefront that's the reason to have it They don't fall into the criteria that you can't have these because the people of Evanston who want to use the park can't find parking spaces because other people of Evanston are there enjoying the Ethnic Arts Festival, the Lakefront Arts Festival, and the Fireworks. He wanted to make it clear that these events are indigenous to the community. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we made the statement to Mr. Gaynor to get a policy statement that maybe will frame the three major events we have and our aspiration to maintain that ceiling. Those are the three major events to identify them and then are some lower impact event days or hours we may utilize as we see fit as long as we maintain the ceiling. That =— way it gives us an opportunity to interchange different things but the main impact events wig remain at status quo. Perhaps we can work out some language between now and the next meeting without having to keep this up all night long. — Page 12. Alderman Tisdahl agreed with everything Alderman Jean -Baptiste said and would also like to ask that the number of events with amplification be limited. Mr. Gaynor said the one thing that has to be kept in mind about all these discussions is whatever we do at the lakefront we do for the rest of part system, it must be consistent we can't say one thing for one and say sarething else for another unless there are very specific reasons why not There needs to be a consistency throughout these rules and policies we establish and one of them is the ampl,fcation thing and that goes with anything we do. Alderman Tisdahl said she could not image the neighbors at any other park would not support a limit on the number of events with amplification. Alderman Feldman asked under what circumstances we alioor amplification between 10:00 and 11.00 p m , to which Alderman Tisdahl added and why 7:00 a.m. Alderman Feldman asked if it is known what the rational for that is and if anybody uses ampiification that late. Mr. Domecker noted the ordinance reads 11:00 p.m Mr. Gaynor did not know the rational for this but said they moved a couple of events to James Park that do entertainment on their stage, for example the Relay for Life, they shut down about 10:00 p.m. Alderman Feldman asked if it is conceivable that we could automatically take an hour off by reducing the time from 11:00 p.m. to 10.00 p m. without hurting a sole. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said right now this does not impact anyone as the events end earlier than 10:00 p.m. Mr. Gaynor said he was not here at the time the amplification policy began the permit comes out of the City Manager's office, he will took into the history of that and come to this committee with his findings. Alderman Newman said looking at the application where it says "City Manager's Office: Loudspeaker Permit" is the only place amplification is mentioned. Then you don't gel a sense in the application what they're going to do. What happened a couple times in the past is, for example, the Avon 3-Day Event had bleachers and people on bullhoms at 5:00 a.m. if we don't know and don't make them describe what amplification they want for the event in advance, we'll approve the event with the amplification without knowing what they're going to do. There actually was one of these wonderful events related to raising money for cancer that had amplfication for hours on end. What has to be done in this application is get the applicant to state in advance what they are proposing, the amount and the duration of the amplification. The application does not come to us when we approve the event: therefore, we have no idea what is before us. Part of the policy is lakefront events have to come before Human Services and it doesn't do us any good if the application is in the Manager's office because they have to very specifically state in the application as to what amplification they are requesting for what periods of time. One of the bases for our policy should be events that are requesting additional amplification be directed in other places because we already have a number of events that require a lot of amplification at the lakefront As part of the policy if you require loud amplification then we should try to place your event someplace other than the lakefront. This would one of the bases for additional and new events who apply. We have to assume the 6 Starlight Concerts, the Ethnic Arts Festival, the Lakeshore Festival, and July 4 n no one is asking that they move. Its when these new events come up that the neighborhood is asking if they are going to require additional amplification that they be directed someplace else and we need to know in advance what the events still here are going to do so we can try to encourage them at approval time not to have an adverse impact. Holly Revnolds said it seems to her that a legitimate argument would be for limiting amplification absolutely to those 9 events. As she has said before this is very invasive and difficult to tolerate, as in your home you absolutely cannot escape it anywhere you go you are being subjected to that. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Reynolds how she would deal with the Duck Pluck because they have amplification, to which Ms. Reynolds said it seems to her these and others could be heard to the extend they need to be without amplification and she would agree with Alderman Newman that if they want it maybe they should go someplace where it didn't impact on any homes anywhere in he community. She talked to Skokie, one example of another community, an they believe culture amplification is reasonable. and she is not sure it belongs outside of the public space that its just one of those things that maybe has gotten to a where it because so many things do and we have to consider pulling that back a little bit when we're dealing with homes and simply not having to tolerate so much of that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought Alderman Newman captured the essence of the concerns that some high impact events will be there and some events of lower impact. Any additional events that we approve should identify what amplification they need. We should make the decision to approve or disapprove based on that kind of criteria, whether its creating more invasion to the community and whether its interfering in people's lives. If the Duck Pluck can go forward with a lower level of amplification we can encourage that If there are any additional events we want to substitute in the future for those already on the list we should make sure that there is very low impact on the community. He thinks we have basically discussed this and hopefully you can try to articulate all of those issues in writing and bring it back to us. Ms. Reynolds wanted to add we have gone over that in the past and she can only say from experience, which might change in the future, once you allow amplification at all, at least in the past, it has proven virtually impossible to control the volume. Even if it happens for one year with the changes in administration or whatever happens the very fact that you allow amplification opens it up to where it is very hard to control. Page 13. Alderman Feldman said Ms. Reynolds is probably right unless we're going to have somebody there to enforce this it will be very difficult, wha^'m is true of a lot of regulations. As mentioned it is very difficult to tolerate living in your home and having all this going cn all day long, you can't escape it. For example, the Duck Pluck, that lasts only a short period of bme and there is nott,:ng else scheduled for that day, that's 2 hours and the amplification while its there is short lived. He knows that any amplicaWn is an imposition, but if you had limits on it, a limit wnh a permit if amplification was absolutely necessary for the event, and we could not place the event someplace else. if we limited the hours of amplification dramatically it wouldn't tie coming into your home at 7.00 a.m. If its possible for us to consider that kind of a policy where a period of bme ally vs `cr amplification then after that it does not so you do not have that constant bombardment and you know there is eventual relief. Ms. Reynolds said that eventually happens, pretty much so far. Alderman Newman said he is sympathetic to what is going on here and wants to help you as much as he can, but thinks we have to have some Aot at of a perspective here and thinks you have to walk in our shoes. To cite an example, Rotary International Picnic, they nave a major building down town, they're on the tax roles, and they're getting offers to move to different places. To be honest with you, right now he does not want to do anything to get them angry at the City because he thinks they make a tug contribution to the community with their building, There are a lot of people who would not think we were very bright if we tell Rotary to get out of the park on Sunday. What he is saying is this is an impossible situation where we should be doing everything that we can to encourage Rotary to be at a place that works. Alderman Jean-Bapbste thought we incurred the input that we consider the impact on the neighbors of the lakefront and we intend to make a policy statement in our events policy to make sure that we limit the impact. The suggestions were made that we take into consideration to balance those interests against the interests of the larger community and as Mr. Gaynor stated he is responsible for planning activities and accommodating different interests in the community and we have to allow him to do that We have to maximize our resources and minimize the impact on the community. The discussion has shown that we are considerate and want to hear it and want to serve the best interests of all those concerned and we will set a policy Alderman Newman said the point he was trying to make was if you take the Rotary Picnic, and we have the most constructive reasons in the world to want to have them possibly be someplace else but when they go into the City office and find out they can't get their permit they will construe that as a hostel act because we're all not there to explain it and that's an unfortunate thing. Alderman Jean•Saptiste said he is expanding beyond that saying the interest of all the residents of the City of Evanston has to be taken into consideration, others who want to use the lakefront and the neighbors on the lakefront, so what we're trying to do is balance everything. David Reynolds said none of us, or we as a group, have ever asked to have a specific event moved or changed. We don't feel that's our job we feel it's the job of the City to chose which events go down there. Its up to the City to decide whether or not the Rotary's important enough to have their event down there when competing with other events that you want to have. Alderman Newman said we want City Council to pick and chose and eliminate some events and what he is saying is while that sounds like its easy they're all highly charged events in their own right and its easier said than done. Mr. Reynolds said someone is going to have to pick and chose if there's a limit, there may be further demand and you're going to have to turn some of them down. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we will do that, we'll make that decision, we'll balance the interest and keep your interests at high priority. Alderman Newman said he was just trying to clear this up in terms of the current events, its one thing to talk about the future and another thing to get a feeling of the expectation of what to do with the current events. Before we decide he thinks that should be cleared up. Mr. Reynolds asked if you would consider lowering the number of events by attrition but reducing them each year until we get to a certain number. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is something we will deliberate over and try to move forward. Alderman Newman said at some point in time we have to bring closure to the issue and these people have been coming back meeting after meeting, tonight was supposed to the night of decision. Now Mr. Gaynor is coming back and they will also be coming back and his reason for spending time on this is its been on our agenda but we have to give Mr. Gaynor a direction to then go to the Council. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said as Alderman Feldman said this policy statement should include a statement on limitation of days, hours or however we frame it. We have also identified the three high impact events that we will not change and we not add any such high impact events to the list, which is the sentiment of the group present tonight. For the other low impact events we will maintain the option to make a determination as to who we fit in, who we take out, based on whether or not we think they're compatible with the community. We have adopted and agreed with a lot of the proposals and the community has accepted our statement of distinction of the high impact events, we won't increase that, but will take a took at the other events to see how they impact the rest of the community, for how long and make a determination whether or not they should be held at the lakefront. Alderman Feldman said it is very difficult for him to separate the two concepts, one the number of events we chose and we have indicated we are limiting the number of days or hours without the implication that we have limited to a certain amount this list changes automatically. This means as Alderman Newman indicated somebody is going to get thrown off. Personalty he's not ready to do that yet, what he is ready to do very clearly and as he articulated in the first few minutes of this discussion is to limit the number of days which is one of the things the community has asked for. An Page 14 absolute limit beyond which we don't go He is also willing to attach the whole question of loud speakers and amplification which he thinks speaks to the majority of your issues. It is very clear to him you articulated you want this list and the number of days implicit with the approval of this list to be reduced. At this point in time he is willing to do that and if this committee is willing to discuss it he is prepared to do it now or at another meeting, he would prefer to do it an another meeting because of the time and he would like to talk to other people and have it percolate a little bit. He is absolutely certain he would support a lima on the number of hours, limit it to exactly what it is this year and not kick anyone out. We have to make a decision on the basis of any new applications that came in whether or not they'd be allowed at the lakefront and what our policy would be if somebody decided not to go and we'd rush to fill it. Alderman Newman said from the lakefront residents historical perspective back in 1989 when they started the policy it was for over a 100 people, since then there have been a number of events added. He thinks the compromise position is there are not going to be any more new events added that have amplification. Alterman Jean -Baptiste said we have to allow ourselves to get a statement that can be considered between us and we can tweak it and come back and get a specific proposal. He does not now want to discuss how many new events, nor new events with amplification, etc. etc. We made a statement no new high impact events, and limitation on event days, and any new events would be considered in fight of impact on the community. Amplification is one of the key issues. He does not think, as members of the Council we can call for any specific statement as to what the community will or will not accept. We have already accepted limitations on high impact events, number of days a policy we want to adopt, how many days we don't know yet. We have stated we will not allow any more high impact events than we already have and those are the 40 of July, Ethnic Art Festival, Lakefront Art Festival. A high impact event would be high amplification, size of crowd at the lakefront, and duration of time. Ethnic Art Festival is 2 days, Lakefront Art Festival is 2 days and the 40 of July is intense fireworks In the evening with a lot of amplification. Any new event we consider, whether for 2 hours, 5 hours or whatever, the impact of it on the community will be weighed and one of the most important criteria will be amplification. We are not going to try to bring new events that bring large masses to the lakefront but new events that may come in the future may request amplification which we have to take into consideration to make modifications. Mr. Gaynor said he thinks what has been asked for between himself, Mr. Domecker, and Ms. Brenniman is they'll have to take a lot what the criteria is to be able to establish a rational behind it that will stand the test and bring that back. Alderman Newman said the rational is the impact of the traffic, the parking, and the noise. Mr. Gaynor said at one time somebody said there is an environmental impact on trees and bushes to which Mr. Gaynor said there is no environmental impact. Although you might look at the park right after the event and say there's a lot of trash and the grass is matted down, two days later there is no trash and the grass back up. There needs to be something of substance that we can use and we'll check into that and come back at the next meeting. Alderman Feldman thought there is no better people to do this than staff, at least to suggest to this committee. Ile would like you to look at how amplification is actually used. You know the events and how each one generally uses it to come up with a system or a policy where we can lima that, discard the unused times, discard the inappropriate times, and figure out ways in which an event could be managed so that the amplification they are permitted is limited. If he had to do that he would come up with some crazy hours not based on any understanding or knowledge of how these events operate, you as staff have the experience with this. He would like to see managed amplification policy in addition to asking them to go someplace else and asked if that can be done. Mr. O'Brien wished to make a final comment that we came with requests that we had an agreement in 1989 for 9 events. To include the events everybody wants to protect we now are up to somewhere between 18 and 20 events, we've asked that they be reduced. Nothing that was said tonight reduces the number of events. You have said we are not going to have any new high impact events and new low impact events you'll try to fit them in without amplification. We'd like to see an absolute reduction in the number of events allowed in the lakefront parks, that's our original request. Alderman Jean- Baptiste responded, we hear you and at the same time we have a particular mandate to take care of all the citizens of Evanston and we'll try to balance those interests. He thanked everyone in attendance from the lakefront area. )L CONSIDERATION OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE USE OF FY04 EMERGENCY SHELTER GRANT FUNDING Alderman moved approval for the use of FY04 Emergency Shelter Grant Funding. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion unanimously accented 14-01. Alderman Newman requested that from now on, in order to evaluate this, whenever you show what people are receiving from these funds also show what they are receiving from the rest of the City as this perpetuates individual requests. We have to know what the Connections from the Homeless receives from CD. Mental Health, the City, everything they receive. Also, not to single anyone out although 9 sounds like that, we need to get a report from the Youth Job Center that they actually got to these people because this is not an easy task they are taking on. We know with Connections for the Homeless people are staying overnight and they have all the services there, we know the Ecumenical Council has daytime services and we need to see whether or not this is working. He appreciates them coming forward and he wishes them all luck. Page 15. X. 2003 CULTURAL. FUND AWARD RECOMMENDATIONS Alderman Feldman appreciated the report but said all he gets is names and would like to know why they got the award, for what reason did they reserve the award, what did they accomplish to receive the award Mr. Gaynor said the process is they present their project to a panel who evaluates each project and rates them by points. Alderman Feldman said what he would like to see is what the project is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said what would be helpful for the committee because we are interested in the different groups that applied, who did or did not apply and why did they or didn't they apply. If there could be a brief paragraph describing who contributed what and why. Alderman Feldman said what he would like to know is the project and the breakdown of the tally, as Mr. Gaynor said the projects are rated. Mr. Gaynor said the application tells how many points the applicant received on their score, it doesn't tell how many points the 5 or 6 judges scored. Probably in the Freedom of Information Act this would have to be provided but its getting the point where we are asking judges to sit in a room and rate these and we would not like to ask more of them. Alderman Feldman said what he would then like to know is wnat the project is to which Mr. Gaynor responded that a supplemental packet can be provided within the next week or so. Alderman Feldman moved to approve the 2003 Cultural Award Recommendations. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion approved (3-0. Alderman Newman was out of the room when this vote was taken.l XI. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 13-R-03 AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO EXECUTE AN APPLICATION FOR A PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CAPITAL ASSISTANCE GRANT FROM THE iLLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Alderman Feldman moved approval for the consideration of resolution 13-R-03 authorizina the City Manaaer to execute an application for a public transportation capital assistance grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation. motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion approved (3-0. Alderman Newman was out of the room when this vote was taken.) XII. SPECIAL EVENT: LAPS FOR LEUKEMIA IN JAMES PARK, FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2003, 5:30 P.M. TO 9:00 P.M. Alderman Feldman moved approval for the special event Laps for Leukemia In James Park. Friday. June 6. 2003. 5:30 p.m. to 9,00 p.m., motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion approved (3-0. Alderman Newman was out of the room when this vote was taken.1 XiII. NORTH SHORE CENTURY BIKE RIDE PARKING PLAN Alderman Feldman commented he thought the efforts and plan for this event are terrific. This group has gone way out and executed something they promised they would do, which he appreciates and hopes It works. The Century Bike Ride representative in the audience said their Chair, Ben Shapiro, put this plan together and really deserves ttme credit he could not be in attendance this evening Alderman Feldman wanted all those involved in this to know their cooperation is greatly appreciated. XiV. ENDING COMMENTS Mr. Terry noted two things for future agendas that were missed this evening, one a reminder that the Township Budget was part of this evening's packet and it needs to be approved by June 30"' which means there is only a May and June meeting for consideration of this budget. He would ask that the committee think about whether or not a special meeting =_ is needed for that or if it could be done within the committee's regular agenda. Another item, given all the history that Alderman Newman and Alderman Feldman are particularty aware of, he would like some clarification as to what you see the Human Services Committee's role relative to this new Housing Options issue as it is clearly a major issue in play that will probably be discussed by the Mental Health Board at their next meeting. There is so much history on this issue and our legal constraints as to what we can and cannot do are pretty narrow and he is unclear as to what you see the Human Services Committee's role. Alderman Feldman said he would like to see all the issues that constrain us and limit the actions of the Council in one way or another, what we can do and what the limitations are. He would like to also have an analysis of the kind of charges heard this evening that the people are using, what they perceive as a loophole to go under the law to get what they're =_ getting. There was a final item that was not at all clear which was when you talk about a group home you don't Identify the constituency that's using that. He does not know whether these people work and have jobs and come home to a Page 16. home, maybe they don't need supervision. Does the City of Evanston demand that everybody is supervised, we don't think that everybody needs supervision. He would like that understood because clearly what was indicated here is that they're not even being supervised. He does not know who they are nor what are the levels of difficulty that these people going into this home have. He does not know d there are categories, is this Stage 1 or Level 3, or whatever the diagnosis that needs on premises supervision, and are those people really in many ways self sufficient except for an occasional visit by somebody. These are things he does not know. Alderman Newman remarked we previously talked about 319 Dempster which is like a low-income housing building in his ward. A woman came to a meeting of one of his constituents supporting getting that building into that ward because the City had to put in some money, which we did. That woman has been made miserable because some of the antics going on in that building. She's had garbage thrown on her lawn, they think she's complaining. There are three different residents calling him that people are putting garbage in the alleys to feed the animals. The garbage is being put behind this woman's property and she is being cited by the City for having garbage on her property. We try to be as understanding as we can but sometimes the least impacts have to be dealt with which is why the issue of supervision comes up. At 319 Dempster there is no supervision for anybody. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked where do we go from here with all the issues that will be coming up, complaints, review of standards and policies, etc_ Mr. Terry said its not a facility, you have two separate units which the City defines as two separate dwelling units and they're below every licensing threshold under the definition of dwelling units. Alderman Newman said the argument is being made that the people from Housing Options are looking for particular buildings where they can qualify without an approval process. If their number went up above six then they would be in a Special Use Category. The other part was there was a commitment by Housing Options, who by the way we fund, who he thought tried to have the+r projects pretty well distributed throughout the different wards of the City. He has actually taken Housing Options into his ward to show them some of the dilapidated housing that landlords purchased to rent to students. These are some of the projects that would be good for them. These are the issues that come up, but the argument that IfWre making is they're picking this place because they can avoid the approval process. Alderman Feldman added that's within in the law, to which Alderman Newman thought without coming to a conclusion without seeing any of what's happening there that may be. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the Legal Department is supposed to give us some advice on some of the issues. Alderman Newman thought where we should start is show Mrs. Levinson everything that went on before in trying to come up with a policy on group homes. There was an effort to try to be sensitive to these types of concerns but we always came back having to stay within the Federal Housing Law which entailed a great deal of time and debate. Alderman Feldman remarked, especially for the new members of the Council he would not mind familiarizing himself with this if some of that material could be obtained for the committee. XV. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:00 p.m. Respectfully submi?44 4 Audrey Trots , Department of Health and Human Services Page 17. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 o naay - Ap ru I. 7:00 P.M. PLEASE PRINT Name: Address/organization: t 11 �:��7 Si�Pry�,�2 EfIci 2 � t?��. /�s ���vC-S y� a -eel 114Kq FgA,,JKU rJ Yo0 175r:�el L3 3(13 0-�5( -�3 � Gwol k 91Z w". 3 2- I L-a k F 16 ;�4 S-r siysAll x -. t-. - j JG // ('olle6 E -04 — SL-4 S;E- A LtP19 DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - May 5, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Jean -Baptiste, Newman and Tisdahl MEMBERS ABSENT: Alderman Feldman STAFF PRESENT: Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Paula Haynes, Maureen Barry, Carta Bush, Jean Speyer, Harvey Saver, Michelle Freeman, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office); Jane Grover, Sue Canter, Gilbert Krulee, (Mental Health Board); Emma Harmon, Linda Cooper (Commission on Aging); Pat Lane (Human Relations Commission); See Attached List of Attendees PRESIDING: Alderman Newman 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. ll. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF MARCH 3, 2003 The minutes of the April 7, 2003 meetinta was called and unanimously anoroved. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF A RESOLUTION 27-R-03 CONCERNING USA PATRIOT ACT Alderman Newman asked if all those wishing to speak were in favor of a Resolution opposing the Patriot Act and was informed that the speakers tonight were mainly against the Patrot Act and for a Resolution. Alderman Newman thought there is going to be general opposition to the Patriot Act and would appreciate it if the speakers try to speak for three or four minutes. Bonnie WUson, President of the Democratic Party of Evanston, said the membership passed the following Resolution, "Whereas the Democratic Party of Evanston is strongly opposed to terrorism and supports the war on terrorism, we affirm that this war must not be raged at the expense of the civil rights and liberties of American citizens. Whereas the Democratic Party of Evanston is deeply concerned with many of the divisions of the uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 US Patriots' Act, and Whereas the USA Patriot Act significantly expands the government's ability to access sensitive medical and mental health, financial and educational records about individuals and lowers the burden of proof required to conduct secret searches and telethons of internet surveillance, gets law enforcement expanded authority to obtain library records and prohibit librarians from informing patriots of the monitoring or information requests, gets the Attorney General and Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups including religious and political organizations and terrorist organizations to grant power to the Attorney General to subject citizens of other nations to indefinite detention or deportation even if they have not committed a crime, authorized eavesdropping of confdenbal communications between attorneys and their clients to Federal custody, and limits disclosure of public documents and records under the Freedom of Information Act. Whereas these proceeding provisions unduly and unconstitutionally infringe on the civil liberties and rights of American citizens, be it hereby resolved that the members of the Democratic Party of Evanston urge Congress to repeal the US Patriot Act and to refrain from passing any further legislation that violates or unduly limits the civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Be it further resolved that the members of the Democratic Part of Evanston urge the City of Evanston, the Cook County Board, and the Illinois Legislature to pass similar resolutions in protest and condemnation of the USA Patriot Act to actively worts for the repeal of this legislation and to monitor the implication of the US Patriot Act and any associate's executive order." We strongly urge you to pass this resolution. (See Attachment A.) Alderman Newman asked Ms. Wilson if she has seen the Human Relations Commission Resolution. Ms. Wilson said this was the one put together by the Democratic Party, she has not personally seen the Human Relations Commission resolution. The committee that worked on this might have seen the resolution and put this together. Alderman Newman then said Ms. Wilson's Resolution is a different Resolution than the Human Relations Commission Resolution and asked Ms. Wilson for a copy of her Resolution to which Ms. Wilson said she would make copies for the Committee. Page 1. Madeline Goldstein, Evanston Civil Liberties Coalition, wished to thank Paula Haynes, Mike Servantes and the staff of tt-e Human Relations Commission for their hard work, courage and vision on behalf of this resolution to protect the Constitution's civil liberties. Thanks to all the people who have put so much work into organizing this and all the people who are here tonight. She must begin with September 11'*' because this horrific event has been the alleged reason for the Patriot Act This largest security failure in US History has over a year and a half later still not been investigated. Only in the last month or so has the so-called Independent Commission been holding hearings. It is a Commission strongly under funded and receiving almost no publicity so the American people have a right to know and who are demanding answers as they have no idea what is going on. Her point is she does not understand how we can come up with a solution like the Patriot Act to this terrible security failure without a full public independent investigation Although some previous administrations have been trying to pass anti terronsm laws because of serious questions about he infringement on civil liberties it wasn't until after the Oklahoma City bombing that the 1996 Anti Terrorism Act was passed. It appears that we already have an act in place to deal with terrorism and standard security procedures to protect our country from attack. These procedures were not activated on 9-11. She has serious problems and questions about the very nature, essence and passage of the Patriot Act because of the haste, secrecy, lack of open public hearings, inability of many Congress people to reason in full while in the middle of an anthrax attack and surrounded by the fear of being called unpatriotic, The Act appears to do little more than give the government license to whatever it wants in the name of making America safer and fighting terrorism. In fact rt makes us not safer but creates a terror of its own in its insidious destruction of the freedoms we as Americans hold so dear. It also makes the assertion that we are bringing democracy to other countries while destroying it here at home, a sham and embarrassment, while many people wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves patriots, every country has a flag. Having a flag makes us no different or better than any other country. She would rather wrap herself in the Statute of Liberty given to us by France, by the way, as a symbol of what truly sets our nation apart and makes it great. Our precious freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly, the right to privacy, due process, open trial, and the right to an attorney, this is our We greatness. To sacrifice and destroy these freedoms make us no better or different than those we say would threaten our safety. In the proud tradition of Evanston consistently taking a leading role and protecting its citizens and taking courageous stands on controversial issues she requests the Human Services Committee pass this Resolution and take it to the City Council either extending it to repeal the entire Patriot Act or passing it in its present form. We have before us another opportunity to make history and join the almost one hundred cities and towns across the country who are saying no to this destruction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is our privilege and right of citizens of the United States to take this stand and absolutely imrerative to pass this legacy onto the next generation. Thank you very much. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Goldstein if she supports the Human Relations Commissions' Resolution, because in his opinion that resolution seems a lithe bit on the weak side. It does not say very much in the body, it just says that the City of Evanston while opposing terrorism insists that efforts to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of fundamental rights and civil liberties, it doesn't speak out against any specific sections of the Patriot Act. Then another section says that we should communicate it to everybody and call on our Senators, and we oppose measures that single out individuals for legal scrutiny or enforcement activity based solely on their country of origin, religion, ethnicity. or immigration status, which says something good. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it also touches on some other issues. Ms. Goldstein said she personally, as an American citizen would like the Resolution to be stronger. Jeff Frank, an attorney with the Chicago Chapter of the !National Lawyers Guild. Mr. Frank's remarks are attached as Attachment 13. Margaret Nagel, a resident of Evanston and has been with the Evanston Civic Liberties Coalition but is speaking tonight strictly as an individual citizen. She also would like to thank the Human Relations Commission and the Human Services Committee for considering this really crucial issue. We're told that we need the Patriot Act as an information - gathering device to protect us from future terrorist attacks. 9-11 happened supposedly because our government had no due that such attacks were eminent or even possible. However, as early as 1993 a Congressional Task Force on Terrorism considered the possibility even back then of hijacking an airplane to be crashed into selected targets on purpose by terrorists. Then in spring 2001 German Intelligence warned the CIA and Israel of impending terrorists attacks involving hijacked airplanes. In summer 2001 Russian Intelligence and the Russian government issued similar warnings so did Israel, Egypt, and the United Kingdom as well as various FBI and other agents. As a final example of information gathered prior to the attacks CIA Deputy Director ,fames Davids states that we knew and we warned that Alkida was planning a major strike. After the attacks the While House has been inconsistent in its pursuit of terrorists or with the Bin Lauden family members who happened to be in the United States on the day of 9-11 and were allowed to fly back home without being detained for questioning. On behalf of the National Rifle Association, Attorney John Ashcroft refused to disclose records of domestic gun sales to the FBI or to close the so-called gun show loophole and we agreed to embark in a major international initiative against firing weapons. Our problems appear to lie not in gathering information but in how we handle the information we do have. In conclusion she would like to request that we repeal not simple parts of the Patriot Act but the whole thing and she agrees that the Resolution from the Human Relations Commission while a very worthy effort and certainly better than nothing does need strengthening. Thank you. Page 2. Hollis Settles, Jr., Is an officer with the NAACP and just wanted the record to show that in February the local branch of the NAACP unanimously voted to support the resolution now in your hands to be put before the Evanston City Council. Several concerns with the USA Patriot Act has to deal with issues and language that is not in violation with the US Constitution which should be enough for most people to discuss and descent the USA Patriot Act. In his opinion there is language in that that is a threat to intemet users. library users. and other activities of everyday Americans. He would like this committee to seriousty approve the Resolution introduced by the Human Relations Commission. As an individual American citizen we have heard a lot of dialogue, a lot of descent and a lot of discussion in public. We all know the atmosphere in which this Patnot Act was allowed to =me out of the US Congress. He for one is not ready to allow reasonable descent and discussion and then have his patriotism or Americanism challenged. He is certainly not ready to exchange his liberty for security. "thank you. Geoff Cordell, a resident of Evanston and has been a professor of U1C for almost 30 years. He wanted to ask respectfully to strengthen this Resolution. To him this Resolution does not go far enough because it does not call for the repeal of the USA Patriot Act which he believes is extremely poor as he will try to point out to you in one moment. He wanted to begin with a brief story that was passed on to him today that took place in New York City at an Iranian Restaurant close to Times Square on March the 20*' of this year. (See Attachment C for this story.) Mr. Cordell continued and said the Patriot Act must be repealed there's no question about that in his mind and he will give a couple of reasons for that. First of all as he said before we must give strength to our elected representatives. They're there to act on our behalf congressionally and we must give them the strength. We must as the people clearly demonstrate to them that we rant tolerate the Patriot Act. As mentioned previously Patriot Act 11, so called, is on the way, Patriot Act I is odious. The more you talk about the loss of citizenship issues there are many, many other issues which are extremely important that people should be aware of about Patriot Act 11. If Patriot Act I is not repealed Patriot Act II will be easy to pass. That of itself may be one of the prime reasons for calling for the repeal of Patriot Act I. Thank you for your time. Kai Stinchcombe, said he is here as a citizen and wanted to comment that he thinks if there is a foundational innovation in our country they could define patriotism, if the belief that our government is fallible which is the core worry he has with the Patriot Act It doesn't seem to take into account the idea that it's just a bunch of guys out there. People writing books like Jesus is My Co-pilot with no sense but the other guy thinks God's in his plane too and he just crashed into the World Trade Center or the idea that our goal is to convince the world that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq without any sense that maybe we're wrong that there weren't any. Similarly when we're stripping protections away from people who would believe to be terrorists there isn't any sense that we may be hitting the wrong people. Its not the FBI that has these powers but a bunch of guys that have joined for a number of reasons. He's leery about entrusting all of these powers to our govemment if we pass something like this or even call for the repeal at the end there are further steps that other cities have taken in demanding that to the extent that they have control over the fiscal resources of the city over its personnel and how their resources are allocated that they not use city resources to implement the Patriot Act. Anya Cordell, a resident of Evanston, and an exceptionally proud member of Neighbors for Peace, which meets in Evanston weekly on Thursdays. She also founded an organization after September i 1"' called the Campaign for Collateral Compassion on behalf of the families of the people who were murdered after September 11"' and the hate backlash. That wasn't very well publicized or in many cases publicized at all in our papers. A lot of people don't know in addition to dv physical assault of the thousands acts of brutality and vandalism that were perpetrated upon people who somebody just didn't like the way they looked after September 110. There were also murders, people were shot cold bloodily. She also hopes that the resolution will call for the repeal of the Act in its entirety and what she wants to share is in the course of the research some of what she did, found some really horrifying quotes and examples that should be brought to bear. The Patriot Act gives teeth to people who would exercise policies based on belief such as the ones she is going to describe. To tell you the truth she is just dumb struck that we need to be here and with the gravity of what it is that we're talking about in our country at this time. Many of her friends here she sees almost every night because they are constantly meeting and have almost depended our families because the gravity of what we're here trying to do just feels much more important On the anniversary of September 11, 2001 various educational., associations were trying to figure our appropriate curriculums for teaching the one year old history of September 11. The National Education Association was forced at that time to take off their web site a link to a curriculum that encouraged tolerance that said very simply basically not everybody in a turban is a terrorist and the like. The people who were the prime movers in getting this to be hauled off the web site were Lynn Cheney the wife of lice President Dick Cheney and William Bennett the former Secretary of Education for this country. The quote was "Vile don't want that usual path about diversity." That kind of attitude is taming from some of the highest levels of leadership in our country and the Patriot Act gives them the ability to enact whatever policies they need to perpetrate those types of points of view. There is a US Congressional representative named Susan Myrick, a Republican from North Carolina, and she said speaking about terrorism, "Well look at who runs the Convenient Stores in every little town in this country." Having met the families, the wives and children the widows and now fatherless children of men who were murdered behind the counters of Convenient Stores, shot in cold blood, thinks that type of remark is an incitement to violence and a source of examples you have already heard today about open season on immigrants as illustrated by that remark. Another representative coincidentally not from North Caroline, a Republican a man named Howard Kobel who sits on the Homeland Security Committee said that Japanese Page 3. Americans were interned for their own protection because they were an endangered species. Indeed, she's afraid that he's right that people who are identified as immigrants in our =jntry are becoming an endangered species and that gives them even more power. She also wants to tell you about a personal experience she had because what's going on now is so stunning that as we watch our rights and liberties lust disappear before our very eyes its almost not to be believed. On March 20 she ended up down town at about 14 3,0 at nigh; on the west comer of Michigan and Chicago. By that time the police had encircled the anti war demonstrators but she was outs;ice that perimeter. She got a call on her cell phone from the wife of a friend of hers telling her husband had been enclosed in that circle and she was very worried about him because he has diabetes and he didn't have food or insulin w=tn him She took one step off the curb at Michigan and Chicago to speak to a police officer as there was a whole raN of them in full riot gear and said she was there was somebody in there and this is his situation and isn't there someway he can be dealt with so he doesn't end up in a medical crisis. As she was saying this the officer stopped looking at her and locked to her left at a man who also stepped off the curb which she was not aware of and the officer said to the man. "what are doing here` and the gentlemen said he was just standing there to which the officer said. " you don't need to be standing here", and the man said he was just listening. Much later she found out the man's son was also in that ring and he was just trying to get a sense of what was going on and what would happen to people who were enclosed. The man was arrested, they literally grabbed him and arrested. At that point she turned around and stepped back on the curb in fear of arrest herself because she also has diabetes and was very worried about what that situation would be. She learned first hand that now with impunity simply taking one step and standing and listening is a arrestable defense in this country and he knows there are so many points throughout the Patriot Act that give allowance to these types of policies and procedures All she can say is this is absolutely stunning and we have to stand against this, we really have no choice, the climate that we're in is terrifying. Thank you. Scott Gilbert, an Evanston resident and a member of the Evanston Civil Liberties Coalition and Neighbors for Peace but Is speaking just as a concerned citizen. He wants to touch briefly on some historical events he thinks are relevant here. We have a long and sad history in this country of passing really regressive laws that undermine liberties during times of crisis of war or dispute and then a generation or two Later acknowledging what a horrible mistake that was. He really would like to see us step forward sooner this time and not wart. Examples are, in 1798 the Alien Extradition Act as we were ramping up towards war with England made it illegal to discrete the government at the time that was supported and has long since proven ridiculously unconstitutional. during the Civil War we know Lincoln suspended habeas corpus several times, which is the right to be brought before a judge and told what your charges are. Supreme Court at the time ruled that constitutional and now of course most of us would not accept that and agree that was wrong to do it in a blanket way. in 1917 we had the Espionage Act where it was made illegal to disagree with the government as it relates to going to war and a man named Eugene Debbs was sentenced for standing outside a recruitment office and arguing that men should not go in. Then we have the Japanese internment during World War If which was also supported by the Supreme Court ruled constitutional and no one today would accept that as constitutional any more to detain everybody of a particular group although we're coming close to it today. Here's this long history of passing horrible legislation that blatantly undermines the constitution and then we have to wait a long time before the laws are repealed and the damage is undone and in that period of course there are many people that suffer greatly under these laws and then later we say basically I'm sorry maybe we overacted. We were scared, we were worried, we wanted to be safe and in each of these cases there is no evidence that these laws made us any safer. He's sure you're familiar with the Benjamin Franklin quote that he would give up some liberty for some safety deserves neither, he would argue with the deserves part and thinks our rights are inalienable and inbom and not necessarily deserve them or not but his sentiment is right on the issue that giving up liberty does not lead to safety. It hasn't been in the past and he does not see it as the case here with the Patriot Act. To put this in context this is not an original unique event there has been a pattern here and as a country we need past this and it will take us standing up as indnrdual citizens and as communities to say no this is not how we respond to crisis. With that in mind he wants to support the resolution that came here from the committee and would like you to strengthen that and there have been a couple good examples of how you can strengthen that. Not putting In City resources is a great one, another one would be the original one passed in North Hampton, Massachusetts shortly after the Patriot Act they were really quick on the ball and in there they ask that they have a reporting system where City workers, elected representatives, concerned citizens, are meant to report to their Human Relations Commission or to the equivalent when you see violations of the constitutions, when you see the Patriot Act being imposed. Certainly we can't tell a librarian to break a gag order on the issue, you can't as the City government tell an employee to break a Federal law and go to jail that's not appropriate, there is a gag order in that case so they won't come and report it. But in other instances when a police officer is told enter without a warrant or things that are clearly in violation of the Constitution you could have them come and report to some commission and keep a tally and keep it public. Also, he would like you to consider not just about the Patriot Act in this resolution. that's the main thing we're talking about, but there aspects of the Homeland Security Department Act and other Presidential executive orders that create the overall climate that we're seeing. He'd hate to see it focused just on the Patriot Act. Please pass it, its very symbolic, the more communities that do it it's a way for us to educate and talk to our neighbors and coworkers and our families so we can get his repealed. Thank you. Dale Lehman, would like to thank the committee and encourage you to strengthen the resolution you're considering to include the repeal of the Patriot Act. There is a quote "When the people lead the leaders follows", which he thinks is Page 4. fundamental to the nature of our society, the values that we hold embodied in the concept of American and that are wrapped up within the symbols of our society, our flag. even though its also used in other ways to defend things we would disagree with. The Constitution which is the basis of our protections of our inalienable rights embodies the values that we hold to be the underpin of our society. There is another saying from Voltaire, 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commr, atrocrues." He would bet that most of the people in this room like himself have not completely read the Patriot Act and we would have in common with the elected officials, our representatives, that most of them passed it without having read it It was presented cynically by an administration that utilized a hysterical time, a tragedy to shove that through Congress under the guise of protecting us citizens from future acts of terror. They claim that they were totally taken by surprise There are many questions that go unanswered by this administration who is now in the process of trying to classify repers from Congress following their investigation as to advanced warnings, who receives them, and failures in standard operating procedures of the North American Air Command which routinely scrambles aircraft that stray off track and lose radio contact. It needed no special order to put fighters into the sky on September i 1" . The other aspect he wants to bung to your attention besides encouraging you to take a look at Unimaginable Futures (See Attachment of an essay he thinks supports the general concerns that its so difficult to believe what is happening in our society that what we took as the ground floor of our rights and the conditions in which we would live and raise our families and plan for the future we're not being told are the epitome and we have to kxik forward to something much less. The Bush administration has shown an arbitrary attitude towards the rule of law. John Ashcroft through faith accomph takes away people's rights justifies it in the name of acting against terrorism. The administration goes unchallenged by the mainstream media which we're dependent on to sort of clarify what's its playing in the world in our society. What is happening that we are being led down a path towards a totalitarian society, which goes unmentioned except by concerned citizens like us which generally are excluded from the public dialogue. He would like to conclude by encouraging you to consider a stronger resolution. To take a look at the parallels presented in the article he presented to you what happened in Germany and to remind you that the liberties we enjoy are not set in stone they're protected by our action as citizens. This is what's happening in this room, the foundation of any Democratic society where we as citizens participate in shaping the values, the goals and the means to those ends. More people die from tobacco smoke, second hand tobacco smoke even, than died on September 11', And yet they're telling us we need to throw away the future. They're telling us we have to accept their version of what our lives will be like. The point that escaped him before he started his conclusion is ii you take a look at the Patriot Act it's a very complex document rewriting existing laws that were very specific by the change of a comma, colon, or period, the addition of an and, its not something that was put together immediately following September 11 " this has been planned as an agenda just like the Project to Our New American Century written well before the plan produced to go into the Middle East and consolidate American hegemony there. Just like other reactionary think tanks have planned to establish control over our economy to make American a labor pool for their interests and not one of fully empowered citizens who have human values not just labor inputs. Thank you. Alderman Newman announced in regard to the agenda item Consideration of a Reference to Amend the Residential Care and Croup Care Home Licensing Ordinance, Alderman Rainey has asked that we not have a substantive discussion tonight because she could not be here. He thinks the only discussion we have on that item is whether that items stays at the committee and he wanted to let the other speakers on the list and the other people who came for that item know that and he regrets he did not do that earlier. Alderman Bernstein said he was very gratified by the fact that so many of his fellow Evanstonians came out in force but is also frustrated by the fact that we have had to take this activity. He is frightened by the fact that so many people have verbalized his fears in such a way that theyre devaluating now. By way of his history he was raised very conservatively and radicalized when he saw what life was about. When he got his first flu shot he was convinced there was an implant and for a very long time he was concerned that he was being followed, he's not taken to paranoia but that was a concern. It's a frustration that he is more frightened of our government than he is of terrorism. As a result he thinks we have to make a stand. We know that Evanston is an island. In this last election we saw that in fact Illinois was an island. He does not know what is going on in this world, but he knows we have to take a stand here because that's basically all we can do. He thanks the Human Relations Commission for its work and thinks in a large part the commission does something and sends it on for approval, they may temper it, they may soften it, so that in fact it gets approved. He thinks the Patriot Act, and he can't claim to have read it all but he has certainly read enough that it frightens him, has some of the Resolution clause that talks in terms of protecting the rights of people who are singled out solely because of their country of origin, religion, ethnicity, or immigration status. It leaves too many of us unprotected and as a country were as strong as our protection is for the weakest of us all. He would like to move that we modify this resolution and ask for the total repeal of the USA Patriot Act He does not know whether we can do a preemptive against Patriot Act 11 but thinks that Evanston must send a message to whom ever will listen and the unfortunate circumstance is we can't call our Congresswoman because she already votes our conscience. To the extend that we have somebody who represents our interests and he knows he is not speaking for all of Evanstonians because he has had conversations with people who believe in the Patriot Act and are fearful if we don't take some "strong action' that our liberties might be eliminated by terrorists. Again, he is more concerned and he is not going to put a name on it but d just happens to be a government of laws and its become a government of men which frightens him. As he said before he hopes his constituents don't feel Page 5. that he is as unapproachable as he feels he as a constituent to the people other than our Congresswoman. He would like to move that we strengthen this resolution and in lieu of the clause that talks about monitoring and repeals those sections that violate thats too ambiguous. We would go on indefinitely trying to determine which of those violate certain order. Alderman Bernstein moved that the City of Evanston adopt Resolution 27-R-03 as amended and as referred to in Section S. work for the repeal period of the United States Patriot Act. Motion seconded by Alderman Jean - Baptiste. (The audience applauded Alderman Bernstein's motion ) Alderman Tisdahl asked Alderman Bernstein why we can't use the Democratic Party of Evanston language and ask that they refrain from passing an further legislation that violates or unduty limits the civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution as part of the Patriot Act Alderman Bernstein said he would accept that. Alderman Newman asked if its just that language or the whole thing to which Alderman Bernstein said in addition to the repeal of the existing Act, a prelude to the future. Alderman Newman said then you are just adopting that by resolve and inserting it. to which Alderman Bemstein said its in addition to Section 5, if you want to put a Section 6 that is fine and he would accept it. Alderman Newman asked if when kaokmg at Section 2 that also goes with Section 5, Section 2 in a way is a bit ambiguous but goes to taking out the Sections and not repealing which is proposed in Section 5. Alderman Bernstein said he has no pride of authorship in this document and his guess is neither wilt Human Relations. He does not think it is on the Wednesday, May 7`' City Council agenda and he would move that we clarify this language as he means it to be absolutely clear. Alderman Newman asked who is going to do that to which Alderman Bernstein said perhaps we can do that as he does not think the Legal Department is going to undertake to do this and agrees with Alderman Newman to the extent that the language is ambiguous we should clarify it and if that means elimination, if that means paring it down, the trust of this should be that we as a City feel that we want this eliminated. Alderman Newman asked what if we kept Section 4 and used the DPOE language for Section 5 and take out the current Section 5. Section 5 should say " The City of Evanston urges Congress to repeal the US Patriot Act and to refrain from passing..........." It does not have to say be it hereby resolved it could just say that the City of Evanston urges Congress.... and then the rest of that paragraph. Section 3 can be left as is. Alderman Tisdahl said she would be happier with Section 2 eliminated. Alderman Newman said Section 1 is good, That the City of Evanston, while opposing terrorism, insists that efforts to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of fundamental rights and civil liberties. Alderman Newman asked for any comments on any of the Whereas statements, everyone thought they can be left as it Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested that we also adopt some of the language of the last paragraph of the DPOE statement that is The City of Evanston urges Cook County Board and others to which Alderman Newman said we're doing that by urging the repeal. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we need some language that addresses any future repressive legislative as well. Alderman Newman said he is going to propose having the City Manger inform the Council about efforts to enforce or monies extended, he wants that separate from this resolution. What if we keep Section 1, take out Section 2, leave in Sections 3 and 4, substituted that The City of Evanston urges Congress to repeal the US Patriot Act and refrain from passing any further legislation that violates or unduly limits the civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution, as Section 5. Alderman Tisdahl had a final question before voting on this at the City Council, and asked if someone can get her a copy of the entire Act Alderman Newman said that should be included the Council packet. Alderman Newman called for a vote an Alderman Sernstein's motion on the amendments that was seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. motion unanfmousiv passed (4-01. Alderman Newman wished to make a special point to move that the Human Services Committee recommend to the City Council that the City Manager be instructed to inform the City Council of any act or proposed expenditure of resources that would come out of his office to enforce any aspect of the Patriot Act, and that he further inform us of any requirements of various City agencies to have to comply with the Patriot Act so we are fully informed as to what those might be. We have heard a little bit about the library and probably do not know about anything else. Alderman Bernstein said some municipalities have actually gone as far underwriting civil disobedience and if he had greater faith in the Supreme Court he might do that as well but he is afraid that when the action gets up to them they might overturn a lower court- To the extent that we can't tell the librarian not to turn over materials. Some municipalities including Skokie have posted notices on the front of their library informing people that as the Act exists their privacy is not going to be maintained. We should notify people that's the case rather than compelling a City employee to break the law which we can't do, we should notify people of the Act and maybe even publish a copy of Neal Ney's article that he wrote to the librarians and he read before the Human Relations Commission which compels somebody to turnover and then mandates the silence about having turned over. Alderman Newman proposed taking the Resolution in the direction he lust proposed that the City council give the City Manager and also ask the staff to come up with some wamfnas for the library in regard to oeoole who use the library about the obligations that the Patriot Act as the law creates. and discuss this further at the Cltv Page 6. Council meeting. Alderman Newman's direction was seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, proposal unanimously accepted (4-01. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted this would not t)e part of our Resolution but would be an intemal direction to which Alderman Newman said this would be a direccci to the City Council to the City Manager how we K-ant information about the Patriot Act and about the expenditure of resources to enforce it Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would like to make sure that we publish the Resolution as far and wde as possible throughout the City because there are people who do not watch cable. Alderman Newman noted the Resolution says "the City Clerk is hereby directed to communicate this Resolution to all City Departments, employees Illinois Congregational Delegation, to all HumaNCornmunity Relations Commissions in the State of Illinois, the Gove, � ,or and Attorney General of Illinois, the Illinois State Polre, etc." Alderman Newman would like this to be put in the Highlights and on the cable channel. Alderman Jean -Batiste also requested that our local publications publish this, to which Alderman Newman said that will be discussed with the City Manager. A woman in the audience commented that last week the state of New Mexico repeated the Patriot Act and in their repealing the Act instructed all of their state em"4oyees whether State Police or any Police Departments throughout the state of New Mexico to not comply with any of tf a Patriot Act and to report any time they were called upon to comply with that Act, they report it but not to comply wth rt The woman had a copy of that article which Alderman Newman asked if it could be given to the City Manger's office to be distributed to the Council. Another woman in the audience asked what will happen now, to which Alderman Newman said this will go to the City Council at our May 19r' meeting. The woman asked if the Legal Department will retool this to which Alderman Newman responded the Resolution we adopted is going to be amended the one that the Human Relations Commissions put before us with our changes and that will be changed by our staff and will be on the May 19'" agenda. Alderman Newman requested the minutes of this meeting be included in the May I City Council packet so that the Council members who are not present will be able to read the comments of everybody who spoke here tonight. Therefore, there will not be the need to hear the citizens again. IV. ITEM PREVIOUSLY CONSIDERED: SPECIAL EVENT POLICY AND APPLICATION Alderman Newman noted he distributed a memo in the neighborhood with language that said the number of events would be kept at the current level as he thought this was going to be a staff recommendation. Mr. Gaynor remarked that is exactly what was said. Alderman Newman added then it says the number will be reviewed on an annual basis using special events applications. Mr. Gaynor said that number could go up or go down, it needs to have the flexibility for it to be reviewed annually by the City. We could have a reduction in the number of events as well as an increase which is why we need the flexibility. Alderman Jean-Baptste remarked the sentiment is that it will be held at the current level but there is an application process, and people put applications before us. Alderman Newman commented that he had a meeting with some people in his ward where he thought he had this issue resolved. The problem is when you go back to 1989 there was the Starlight Concerts and the Ethnic Arts Festival and the Lakeshore Festival and over the years there have been a number of additional events added. A number of the events added at the lakefront have been extremely disruptive, one was discontinued, one was shred to James Park in a somewhat different form, another that had a lot of cheering sections at S:DD a.m., is now gone. The people at the lakefront have already undergone an expansion over the last several years and what they're saying is, "don't expand anymore find other places." When we talk about the expansion we're talking about an entire summer of the boats going in and out every day, the beaches open every day, on the weekends you cannot move at the lakefront, and these are special additional events with all the other things going on, besides a lot of ramp activities. This is great that there is a lot of use of our lakefront These special events, especially when they re big like the Ethnic Arts Festival, a two-day, all day event that basically closes down the neighborhood. He does not know what is going on in the City Manager's office but they're saying the number of events has already been expanded since 1989 and enough is enough, theyre not saying to get rid of any events you have now at this point. Alderman Bernstein noted the events contain certain multiple numbers of days and he thinks we're talking about limiting the days rather than the events Alderman Newman thought there had been a compromise, the neighborhood is saying not to eliminate anything but don't add any more. When you say the numt>er will be reviewed on an annual basis using a special event application process we have basically gone through the entire process without giving them anything. It seems as though the entire compromise is gone. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if at this particular point we are going to take a policy position but we do not have any control over future Councils. He asked Alderman Newman if he suggesting that we drop that last statement that says, 'This number will be reviewed on an annual basis, using the following special event application process." We want to keep the number of lakefront events at the current level. The application process will be there for anyone who wants to stage an event but we will keep it at this current level. We would then delete the last statement and say, " the number of lakefront events will be kept at the current level." Alderman Tisdahl brought up the issue of amplification which is one of the concerns and would also like this to say that there will no be increase in events with amplftat=. Mr. Gaynor brought up the discussions from last month's meeting when we talked about high impact and low impact and funkier defined where these particular activities actually occur. As Page 7. an example the Ricky Byrdsong Run is staged at Long Field and not at the lakefront at all, We don't have the ability to control the use of the pathway. Peec?e can run along or walk along the path, it's staging the events that we do have control over. The low impact events cn the event sheet shows the number of events that are low impact and in fact many of them are not at the lakefront. Alderman Newman said we have been over this territory, the events are here, we've seen them, we've talked about them at two cc tnree meetings, Alderman Jean -Baptiste went through a lot of this as the Human Services Chair and he appreciates his patience with this, but thinks we're done. There have been changes made we were at February VO for applications due ana now we're at February 28t'. Mr. Gaynor wanted to clanfy that, last month we said February 1"would be the first step of me application as a letter of intent and the final document had to be in by the end of February, that has not changed. Alderman Newman said essentially wt:ere we are is the number of lakefront events. in the Application Proposal, last line of 2 c, it says "the number of lakefront events will be kept at the current level." He is going to take Alderman Tisdahl's statement as an amendment that there will be no increase in events that use amplification and will second that amendment. Alderman Newman asked the committee if there are any more comments on any other aspect of this proposal. Alderman Newman asked for any other comments from the audience. Mr. Reynolds asked if the special events at the lakefront will be handled by Human Services and special events elsewhere will be handled by A & PW. Alderman Newman said the street closures are handled by A & PW. Mr. Gaynor added Alderman Newman is correct, if it invchres a park it will come to Human Services, if it has something to do with roads it will go through A & PW, a special even: can go to either committee. Alderman Newman thought that was a good way of dealing with that issue. Alderman Newman noted we have an amendment, "this number will be reviewed on an annual basis using the following special event amplification process", and the sentence will be inserted, '"There will be no increase in events that use amplification on the lakefront." Ms. Brenniman asked if these changes being made of the restriction on the amplification will be applicable only to lakefront parks. Alderman Newman responded, only lakefront parks. Ms. Brenniman wanted to reiterate what she has said to this committee before, we need to be careful about singling out the lakefront parks for special kinds of restrictions that are not available in other parks. If you are going to limit amplification on the lakefront you need to give that consideration to the other parks also. You need to be consistent in the kinds of regulations that you have. Alderman Newman's response to that was we're coming up with a policy and nowhere in this policy is there any restriction on amplification on the events that are already there. There is plenty of amplification down at the Lakefront and he invites you to come to a Starlight ConcerL You could not ask for any more amplification than that, that's maximum amplification and probably more amplification goes on that night than in any other park the rest of the year in Evanston. What we're talking about is coming up with a policy to say the amount of amplification at the lakefront park is about as much as we can handle because they already have much more than anybody else. No other park in the City has more amplification or even close to it. Mr. Gaynor noted the fact is on Page 2, Number 3, the way its written under Amplification, as long as we don't have any more language you have placed a limit on the number of activities at the lakefront if you adopt this, you've limited amplification at the lakefront by doing this. Alderman Newman remarked if the amendment is there will be no increase in events that use amplification. Mr. Gaynor said if then the event number is 10 today and somebody pulled out we could replace it but could not go to 1 1 events. This says that without that amendment. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted we clarified that on Page 2, Number 3, the paragraph regulating amplification is applicable to lakefront parks as well as any other parks Ms. Brenniman said that is from the City Code, Section 9-5-23 and is across the board. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said one of the things he wanted to get a better understanding of is why lakefront events with over 100 participants get Council approval but yet other events with 250 attendees do not Alderman Newman said this policy with over 100 was adopted in 1989 and the reason we are now back hereabout this. There was a policy attempting to manage the lakefront it wasn't open ended and the Council passed a resolution and an instruction to the staff that lakefront events with over 100 would have to go to City Council for approval. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why, because you're still managing it through the committee anyway. Alderman Newman said it was because there were a lot of picnics there and we weren't trying to stop small picnics at the lakefront. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said, in other parks there is no need to go to the Council if you have between 100 and 250 people. Ms. Brenniman said she had raised that issue about the difference of 100 and 250 with the Recreation Department. Alderman Newman asked if we want to say that at all the parks over 100 people have to come to Human Services. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said yes, as opposed to going to City Council he thinks the Human Services Committee could handle this. Mr. Gaynor asked who manages these, is the City Council going to manage a picnic of 101 people or is it going to be staffed, you need to make that decision and the sensitivity being shown by this committee is because of the impact at the lakefront. An event at Loveless Park of 200 people may not need to come before this committee. Alderman Newman noted in the past the only events that have come to the Human Services Committee have been the over 100 events at the lakefront Mr. Gaynor -_- added if Lis over 250 it comes through this committee and goes to City Council. Alderman Newman asked for an example of over 250, to which Mr. Gaynor said both festivals and the 4 h of July. Mr. Gaynor noted there is a legal issue that Ms. Page S. Brenniman pointed out and Alderman Jean -Baptiste brought up that may get tested. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Brenniman what she would want for consistency. Ms. Brenniman said she is not ready to set the numbers but she explained to Mr. Gaynor going through this process it is important to treat the rules for the parks as consistently as you can for all the parks. There should not be a different set of rules for one park than there is for another park. Alderman Newman pointed out the difference is you do not have beaches in ether parks. Beaches mean thousands of people coming in, it's different than managing Cartnght Park Ms. Brenniman said to go further with what she said if you are going to make different regulations for different parks than you have to establish the rationale on which you're going to make that difference. Alderman Newman said the rationale basis is the amount of activity at the lakefront in comparison to other parks. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we could modify this particular statement so that it is the same criteria for the lakefront as it is for other parks and get away from unequal regulations. Alderman Tisdahl said if that park wants more amplification ask the neighbors, no park in the City will tell you they want more amplification than the lakefront As was just said there is a maximum amount of amplification you can have at any park in the City. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that was already dealt with he thought we were talking about the number of attendees at the lakefront, if you have a 100 people you have to get City Council approval other parks you have to have up to 250 attendees to get City Council approval. Mr. Gaynor said as he sees the rationale to make our Legal Department comfortable is it compounds 100 individuals plus the level of activity at the lakefront, that's one plus whatever which is different than at Loveless Park because at Loveless Park there is no lakefront or other activity. He thinks we should be able to deal with that. Ms. Brenniman said you could establish that rationale and then see what happens, Alderman Newman said there are more picnics in one weekend in the summer at the lakefront than the rest of the City all summer, which is why you need these additional limitations because the whole thing gets out of hand and the residents there pay the price. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would add that rationale in parenthesis. Alderman Newman called for any other comments on this special event policy. Mr. Reynolds noted Page 2, Number 1 c, says all non -lakefront events with over 250 attendees or requiring a street closure will go the A & PW for approval. He would say all street closures go to A & PW and thinks you need a consistent policy when your dealing with large events, he's not sure you'll get that with this statement. He would think the Legal Department has talked about consistency all along and if you're going to have a consistent policy towards special events probably they all should be going to A&PW. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his understanding is utilization of parks excluding street closure comes to Human Services. We then need to clarify the statement by statinq that all lakefront events with over 250 attendees no to Human Services and those requiring a street closure will qo to A & PW. Alderman Newman seconded that amendment and called for a committee vote. The amendment was unanimously approved (4-0). Alderman Newman said it has been moved and seconded to add the lanquaqe that there be no Increase of events that use amplification and this number will be reviewed on an annual basis, using the special event application process. The committee unanimously approved this motion (4-01. Alderman Newman thought there is a sense of the committee that in the other parks we really want to get a handle on what we do with amplification and try to discourage it. Mr. Gaynor said there is an ordinance on the books so if there is a desire to change that ordinance, whether for in the parks or for instance the amplification for the Cultural Arts Program where we have a concert at the Bank One Plaza and they use amplification, if we want to delineate between parks and other areas we should take that entire ordinance and look at it and then modify it. Alderman Newman asked who handles the Loud Speaker Ordinance and was told the City Manager's office. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this is not an issue right now because the ordinance limits amplification to the proximity to residential areas. Alderman Newman said there is an issue of enforcement because when people make an application they agree in advance as the application states, they will terminate if they're disrupting the neighborhood and when the Police Department goes out they simply tell the neighbors the group has a permit. Mr. Gaynor interjected, the Police Department has the authority to either have them turn it down or they can shut them off, that's an administrative order that needs to be sent out. Alderman Newman requested some commentary on what the Police Department does to enforce laud speakers if they do in fact what Mr. Gaynor just said. because if they're doing that that's fine, but he is not sure they do that. Ms. Brenniman said one of the things they have done is they will issue tickets, she does not know whether they give a warning the first time then go back if people don't shut it down or lower it, as she has prosecuted tickets in court for that. Alderman Newman noted the thing is if people complain to be able to have the ability to get some control over it at that time. Ms. Brenniman said most of those whether they go and ask them to turn it down or issue a ticket usually starts by a complaint. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if the committee could find out where we're going with this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his experience if that the Police would normally go and enforce the policy to which Alderman Newman added that is not his experience in some events the Police go out and tell the neighbors the event has a permit. Mr. Reynolds asked if the tickets that are issued against the loud speaker permits or against people just making a tot of noise. Ms. Brenniman said she has never Page 9. prosecuted one for loud speakers, to which Mr. Reynolds said tnat's the point Ms. Brenniman said she is not the regular prosecutor and does not know if there has ever teen one that was issued for that she would have to ask the Police. Mr Reynolds said the Police generally say they have a permit. to wn,ch Alderman Newman added that is the experience in our ward. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted there is a balance because the ordinance strikes the balance between the interest of those groups and the interest of the neighbors which is why the ordinance says they cannot amplify if the event is 150 feet from residential area Now we cant seek to just throw off the interest of those groups that apply to use the parks, to use amplification. they get their permit and pay their money. He thinks our efforts right now is try to make sure we take the interest of the c,tzens at heart The more complaints there are, if that increases more and more, then we will try to reconsider the ordinance. But for now, at the lakefront, it's an issue and we're trying to manage it, he has not heard of this being a significant issue in other places. Alderman Newman said the number of loud speaker permits going into his ward, might be as high as 25 or 50. His -mard might have more loud speaker permits a year than the rest of the City. Anybody that gets a loud speaker permit agrees when they apply if they're disrupting in a big way they will terminate or significantly reduce and that's the part of it the Police are not getting to. Alderman Newman called for a vote of acceptance for the amended policy. The committee voted and unanimously accepted the amended policy 14-0). Mr. Gaynor said this will now go to A & PW because they have the other half of the review process. This is a total special event policy and there some very definite specifics as it relates to lakefront events which is what has really been at the focus of the discussions for the past several months. The special event policy actually hasn't had much discussion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is it that A & PW will be considering. Mr. Gaynor responded this was originally brought to them, they will also review the policy. Alderman Newman said at this point he did not think there is any need to have a process at A & PW because the street closure policy has not been controversial at all except for the Custer Street event He does not want to sit here and go through 3 or 4 more meetings to try to get this right and then one night at P & D have A & PW going through the same thing, that would just be wasting time. Alderman Bernstein said they always have a bite of the apple when it comes to the Council anyway, whether they do it in the context of A & PW or on the Council floor its not a big difference. it they disagree with any sections of the policy they can ask to change it. He agrees with Alderman Newman that we should not necessarily duplicate our efforts and hopefully they will understand that, you will be there to enlighten them as respect to this. They will either like what we've done or not. Mr. Terry suggested that a member of this committee who is on A & PW convey the sense of this committee as to the policy. Alderman Newman asked if there is any staff member who is not in this room right now who wants to actively work to change this, he would like to advise them that he is requesting that and expecting a phone call. Mr. Gaynor said staff has no issue with this, this started in A & PW and was tabled in A & PW. Alderman Newman disagrees, he thought there are some members of the staff who are not so crazy about some of this policy. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this will be taken up at A & PW. Alderman Newman asked who is the current Chair of A & PW and was told Alderman Feldman. Alderman Newman said one of the things we have to do the night when this gets there, is to arrange an earlier A & PW start so members of P & D can be there when they discuss this. Alderman Newman thanked Mr. Gaynor for all his efforts on this policy. Alderman Newman asked if the residents of the community are clear on where this is going, it will be taken tip an May 1gr at A & PK Alderman Newman thanked everyone for all their time and effort working on this and hopes it works, — V. CONSIDERATION OF APRIL 20D3 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Newman called for acceptance of the April 2003 Township monthly bills. Alderman Jean -Baptiste motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Bernstein. Motion to approve the April 2002 Townshfn monthly, bills was unanimously accepted 14-0). Vi. CONSIDERATION OF ODINANCE 45-0-03 FOR PROPOSED BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWSHIP FOR FISCAL YEAR 2003-04 Alderman Newman announced the Proposed Township Budget will be made a Special Order of Business for the June — 2n0 meeting as one of the first items on the agenda. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry to make a request to members of the City Council that any questions they may have on the Township Budget be forwarded to the Township Supervisor the Monday before the Human Services Committee meeting to be submitted to committee members. VIi, NOYES CENTER COMMMUNITY SERVICE. Alderman Jean -Baptiste motioned for approval, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously passed 4-0 Vlll. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED SPECIAL EVENTS_ Alderman Newman asked if there were any changes in Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival, Evanston Lakeshore Arts Festival, and Starlight Concert Series, and was told there are no changes. Alderman Newman moved approval for these three —RS __ events, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, motion unanimously accepted (4-0). Page 10. Alderman Newman inquired about the Walking for Children Special Event and was 'informed that event will be along the Arboretum, Alderman Newman moved approval of the Walkinq for Children Special Event. seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, motion unanimoustv accepted f4-01. 1X. CONSIDERATION OF REFERENCE TO AMEND THE RESIDENTIAL CARE AND GROUP HOME LICENSING ORDINANCE Alderman Newman said he just wanted to deal with the tAm on a procedural basis not the substance of the item. When this game up as a reference at the Council he suggested that the matter should go to the Planning Commission. He does not know if anybody remembers but he was then admcrrshed in a memo that the Planning Commission has nothing to do with this_ Mr. Terry then came back with a memo which basically supported his recollection of how this particular issue is worked. He believes he is now the only member of the committee who has been through this issue and the drafting of the new zoning ordinance. He remembers very extensive discussions in 1993 of certain aspects of the distancing, a debate which we do not now have, it is his view, which Mr Terry substantiated, that the Group Home Ordinance has always followed the Zoning Ordinance He asked where does Housing Options go first and was told they don't have to go anywhere, they don't need a permrt or a building license to which Alderman Newman said, what you are saying is our Group Homes Ordinance language was based on the Zoning Ordinance. Mr. Terry said the definition of dwelling unit in Ow Licensing Ordinance was lifted from the definition of CNelling unit in the Zoning Ordinance, they're identical definitions. Alderman Newman said their dwelling unit definition preceded the Zoning Ordinance. Mr. Terry said we did no independent research on the question of what constrtutes a dwelling unit since the zoning work had all been done for the adoption of the Zoning Ordinance to be consistent we lifted it right out of that ordinance Alderman Newman asked if that definition is where the three unrelated persons in that dwelng unit is, and was told that was correct. Alderman Newman thought what we should do as opposed to sending it elsewhere is just have this stay with the Human Services Committee for now. Eventually if we were to do anything at some point we would have to revisit that definition in the Zoning Ordinance that would then have to go to the Planing Ccmmission because it really doesn't make sense to have two different definitions. Forget about the Housing Options issue that Alderman Rainey has, the definition of dwelling unit is very important in the a and the 10 Wards because of overpopulation issues. We'll just keep it here and he's sorry about the fact that we got this memo, but there +null be a lot of anger if we were to act on this reference tonight without Alderman Rainey being present because she is out of town. He wishes he would have dealt with that at the beginning of the meeting and does not think there is anything we need to do with this at this time. Alexander Brown, Director of Housing Options wanted to speak, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked if Mr. Brown goes into the substance and we have a debate on it, it would not be fair to Alderman Rainey as Alderman Rainey asked that this item be held until she returns. He asked Mr. Brawn if he could hold off with his remarks until the next meeting unless he feels he absolutely has to speak at this time. Mr. Brown said he had a couple of things to say, to which Alderman Newman asked if Mr. Brown had a couple of things to try to persuade us on the substance, to which Mr. Broom said he would then wait until the next meeting. Alderman Newman said the committee is sitting up here but we're not going to listen to you at this time, but he'd be glad to listen to you and hear your comments at another time. There is one thing he would like to have for this committee, he is not aware of any complaint about the operation of any Housing Options' real estate in the last ten years. If there's any complaint anywhere he would like to be made aware of it because he has never heard of one and he would like to have that as an informational item Mr Brown said the issue is not a Housing Options issue as the discussion has begun he would just like everyone to keep in mind that the ordinance or parts of it are related to a lot of different organizations and a iot of different individuals in the community, it is not just about Housing Options. Alderman Newman asked if Mr. Brown is referring to the impact of the ordinance change proposed by Alderman Rainey, to which Mr. Brown said the potential impact on a broad array of organizations and private individuals. Alderman Newman said the reason that he asked for that information is he is not sure that is any problem that needs to be corrected, this is coming about in the context and he wants be able to deal with this next time At the next meeting he promises we will give you all the time you want in terms of the broader implication of this He's sorry about this but this item will be on the agenda after the Township Budget. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if it is known how many people came to this meeting for the Housing Opbons item and found there were about 6 or 8 people in attendance for that (tem. 1X. CONSIDERATION OF A REFERENCE CONCERNING THE PROCEDURES OF THE HUMAN RELATION COMMISSION Alderman Newman said in regard to this reference the Chairman of the Human Relations Commission wants the committee to take this up when he can attend and that will beat our next meeting. Once items are placed on the Human Services agenda they are only removed by the Chair of the Committee, they cannot be removed by the staff person. He would like the committee to get a copy the Human Relations e-mail sent out by Paula Haynes We will be considering this at the June 2"' meeting and would like Mr. Cervantes and the Human Relations Committee to know that after the Township Budget and the Residential Care and Group Care Home Licensing Ordinance, the Human Relations Commissions will be on the agenda. Page 11. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if its possible that the Human Services Committee not have any other items on the agenda for June 24 . Mr. Terry said just to inform the committee there are four members of the Commission on Aging in the audience tonight At the Saturday Commission on Aging meebng they adopted a resolution asking the City Council to consider expanding the reduced rate for vehicle stickers and tney want to present that resolution at the June meeting. to which Alderman Newman said we will take that item also. Alderman Newman asked if they want a greater senior reduction, to which Mr. Terry said they want to expand the income threshold for the reduction. Alderman Newman directed Mr. Terry to solicit the Finance Department's comment on the Commission of Aging request. X. CONSIDERATION OF A REQUEST TO ALL OW THE SALE OF MEAT AT THE EVANSTON FARMERS' MARKET Alderman Newman said before continuing he wanted to give his opinion on the commentary of what is a proper Farmer's Market Evanston has a fine Farmers' Market and what is the problem with allowing meat As Mr. Sondgeroth says more inspection times are not needed for meat. Ms. Bush said historically the Farmers' Market is uncut flowers, whole fruits and vegetables and either falls under Inspection or the Health Code. Alderman Newman said then your department is not even there. Ms. Bush responded, right, we marginally got involved with the licensed bread, or processed food that are not potentially hazardous. This is potentially hazardous food that's not whole or uncut. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Bush if we have meats what do we have to do on Saturday mornings. Ms. Bush said she would have to inspect, not every day or all the time. Alderman Newman asked what would the cost to us be to do that. Mr. Terry said the cost is marginal because we have staff working the special events virtually every weekend. There will be some staff cost but we feel its workable. Alderman Newman asked if there is a Health Department cost or something of that nature if we allow meats, to which Mr. Terry responded, no. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Speyer, then why do we care whether or not we have meats, does anybody in the City Manager's office care? Ms. Speyer said the City Manager's office met with Mr. Terry' s office and came to the conclusion that we did not have a recommendation. Mr. Terry said the esoteric nature of what constitutes a Farmers' Market is beyond the Health Department's area of expertise. Alderman Newman asked what would the sale of meats do for the Farmers' Market John Sondgeroth said A would add diversity to the market, give it something new and different for the first time ever. Most of the markets they do have ordinances and decisions had to be changed to allow meat in because right now almost no ordinances allow meat Most markets open arms to them because they do add diversity to the market, basically a total different avenue in the market than what we're used to. They are the producers, they are the farmers, and they do this themselves. They don't buy products anywhere unlike some of the products in different markets that they're in. Patricia Sondgeroth said one comment she wanted to make is they can diversify the market you want without competing with any of the products the vendors are selling right now. They're not bringing another vegetable, we're not putting flowers on the side or anything like that everything will be a total new product. Alderman Newman said he understands that but in your letter it says, "if the City of Evanston is truly intent on keeping the Farmers' Market viable", don't we have a pretty viable Farmers' Market? Mr. Sondgeroth said he guessed his challenge was a year ago when they were tumed down for this, we applied a couple of times, we were told you were going to keep it a Farmers' Markel. Mr. Sondgeroth said they don't plan on competing with any area businesses, we're not coming in with a cut rate product, we feel basically anyplace you buy our products we will be priced probably in the upper end of the scale by a substantial amount, we're not going to be cheap. We can't compete on that large scale type operation but do not have the products everybody else has. Alderman Newman asked what other markets these products are sold at. to which Mr. Sondgeroth said they are quite a few at the City of Chicago on Saturdays they're on O mnsron Street at Lincoln Park, they're in Wilmette, and are looking for about 25 to 30 markets a week this year. They started this business a year and a half ago, the Farmers' Markets have been our sahvaUon to keep this business up and alive due to most distributors and retailers will not allow a new product in most of the stores, so we're going about it in a different way. It is our product and it is a different product. Its commodity beef, it tastes like commodity beef with half the saturated fat. They've vacuumed packed everything and have Federal meat inspectors on the premises daily, which he doubts any grocery store, deli or any other institution would have. if anybody has any interest in looking at what we're doing we have no problem with you coming out, we're two and half-hours from here. We take a small part in the market, a ten by ten tent is all they need. Alderman Bernstein asked what our liability is if somebody contracts E coli from meat. If we license we probably have a greater responsibility. Mrs. Sondgeroth wanted to address that and said they carry liability insurance on all their Products, she thinks its 51,000,000 or $2,000,000, commonly the market applications require proof of insurance for product liability. Alderman Bernstein asked if there are indemnification agreements from other vendors? Alderman Newman wanted to know what our liability is. Ms. Speyer did not believe we require any insurance, some of the vendors will volunteer to send insurance as they have their own insurance but she does not think it is required in our application. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if this committee recommends this, can we get a memo from the Legal Department on liability and insurance issues that we might want to look at in general for the Farmer's Market, also with the addition of the meat. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is the average crowd Evanston gets at the Farmer's Market. Ms. Speyer responded, on a given Saturday we get between 2,500 and 3,000 people coming to the Market. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked Page 12. he did not think Mr. Sondgeroth's letter was very nice to wham Mr. Sondgeroth responded they haven't had good response from here. The most asked questions in our area and around Evanston is if we're so good why aren't we in Evanston, now how are we as a producer to answer that. Evanston won't allow meat in. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Evanston has that prerogative and we've been very consistent with the tradrbonal Farmer's Market, at least around here, not to have meat here. He thinks this may open the door to a lot of other competing meat vendors who may want to come. Mr. Sondgeroth said that is true but if you do that, and according to our letter, we want to set the standard to have this done. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked the question is wnetrer or not we want to open up the flood gate to having a number of people corning here who want to sell all kinds of meat and they may have a good rationale. He's not saying your product is not the highest of quality. Last year we debated selling bread and the issue involved if we have a Farmer's Market why aren't we selling farm products, why are we selling bread? The rationale was this is processed from A to Z in Evanston and is consistent enough, so we supported both of the Evanston based businesses. Mr. Sondgeroth said they are also an Illinois based business. Alderman Jean-Baptzste remarked there is an answer to every question. It seems to him to be inconsistent with the pattern we have established and it opens up a can of worms. If the liability issue is something that if we do not ask that every participant be insured then we leave ourselves open. Alderman Newman added because we sponsor the market. rrs different than a grocery store selling produce, this is a City sponsored event. With all do respect, one would think our professional staff would have that covered because this has been totally run out of the City Manager's office for at least 10 years. There used to be a small Farmer's Market Committee that was consolidated into the Human Services Committee about 12 years ago when the City Council was reduced from 18 members to 9 members_ The vendors are talking to the City Manager's office they never talked to this committee about whether meat is allowed. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we get any revenue from this, Ms. Speyer said the vendors have to pay $750 per vendor per year and a further requirement is they have to show proof that they have paid sales tax to the State of Illinois. Mrs. Sondgeroth said she is not familiar with Evanston but in the City of Chicago she believes it's a half percent of all they sell at the Farmer's Market, they report it to the State of Illinois but it does come back to some municipality. She is not sure where Evanston stands, their accountant takes care of that for them. Alderman Newman said he definitely agrees on the liability issues and we need to investigate them. On the floodgate issue, we're already hearing that a number of other Farmer's Markets are allowing meat in them. Do we know of any Farmer's Market where something is happening because they allow meats in there. All you're doing in the case of the Farmer's Market is giving a sort of directness to people to buy things directly from the farm. The bread is different because irs manufactured, the meat is a product that is coming from the farm, and it fits in with the market. For example strawberries, instead of going to the grocery store and gang through a middleman such as Dominick's or Jewel you get them directly from the farmer who grows the strawberries Ms Bush said the reason they have been so uninvolved is the strawberries come directly from the farmer but when you start washing them, dipping them in chocolate, serving them processed, cut, sliced, or added to something, they becomes a retail food and handling is more complex and more of a risk. Alderman Newman said then there is more risk in the meat, to which Mr. Bush said the meat is considered potentially hazardous, as there are requirements for temperature. Alderman Newman then asked Ms. Bush if she will be monitoring that, to which Ms. Bush responded, correct Alderman Newman said then we will have the Health Department and the inspector there if we let meat in and you say you can do it without any increase in cost. Ms. Bush said that will involve more time, inspectors are really taxed to the max every special event that has food preparation they are out at 10:00 or 11.00 a.m. Mr. Sondgeroth said they're meat is also frozen, they're not preparing, they're not sampling, and they're not cooking and they're not selling unfrozen. Alderman Newman said to Mr. Sondgeroth you're selling what you can get in the grocery store in the meat section, to whj--h f: r Sondgeroth responded safe handling is required which they do on their products. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Bush about our inspectors having to be there, to which Ms. Bush said they do not have to be all there all the time, not every Saturday, but they're going to have to monitor periodically, Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why then do you say at no cost. yet you say they're out at 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. for special events, now they'll be out at 7:00 a.m. Ms. Bush said the cost is not a big thing but there are more hours involved, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how many hours, and was told 4 hours maybe 4 times over the season. Alderman Newman asked if we could have a different fee for a meat if we allow a meat vendor. Mr. Terry responded, conceivably this would require an ordinance amendment as there is no ordinance on the agenda tonight this was a "sense of the committee" agenda item. We could do one of two things, if you were to say yes, we could either bring it back next month or go directly to Council. Alderman Newman asked when L~e Farmer's Market starts, and was told the 17' of May. He remarked to Mr. Sondgeroth he could have come to us all year but just came now in May. Mr. Sondgeroth said they've been working on it for a long time since last year to get to this point, they finally got to Mr. Terry and found out who they needed to talk to. They actually applied and have an application from a year ago. Mr. Terry said since we know what the exact language would be we could go from tonight directly to the Council with an ordinance that could be drafted to be introduced at the May 19"' Council meeting. Alderman Newman was in agreement with that and would like to know whether any adverse impact is seen at Farmer's Markets that sell meats or is it seen as a positive. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said he is not yet comfortable with this. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Sondgeroth in what other suburbs he sells meats, to which Mr. Sondgeroth responded, Naperville, Northfield, Deerfield, Palatine, etc. Alderman Newman asked if they have any competition anywhere else, to which Mr. Sondgeroth said they had one person in one market come in against them that brought in basically very cheap coolers that they set on the ground, the market managers did nothing about it and that's where he would draw the line. These products will not kept to the test they need to be kept at, he uses Page 13. an insulated cold plate unit that is plugged in at their facility ovemight and will get down between 25 and 35 degrees below, in fact they have one in the car right now they've had unplugged since 3:DO a.m. and it will probably be between D and 10 below right now. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry to include in tie ordinance something about the quality of the refrigeration equipment because that will basically make sure that anyoody that comes in has to be real serious about investing money. Mr. Sondgeroth said they also vacuum pack their meats other people use the old butcher wrap where customers can't see the product. They're really are trying to do this the right way as far as safety aspects. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if we could have some of these questions answered in the liability issues maybe have some discussion at the Council meeting, or would he prefer to come back to this committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we have to clarify the liability issues and feels it would be a bit premature to go before the Council as there is a lot of work to be done on this. Alderman Nevnran told Mr. and Mrs. Sondgeroth at least a month will be needed before this ordnance can be ready to come before this committee which means it will be at the June 2"0 meeting and discussed further. Ms. Speyer asked if we are going to draft an ordinance are we going to include restrictions on how many meat vendors will be allowed at our Farmers Market. Last year they did have a person from Michigan called in. Alderman Newman asked if we restrict the number of people who can sell strawberries, to which Ms. Speyer said not strawberries but we have a restriction on a total of 32 vendors, we now have 32 for fruits, vegetables, and flowers, the 2 breads, one not -far -profit organization that each Saturday sells baked goods, we have one staff set aside weekly and we have a couple of vendors who only want to come once or twice a year, that makes 37 vendors. Alderman Newman suggested we say 2 meat vendors so we are not creating a monopoly and we can see if anybody wants to compete which would not radically increase the total vendors. Ms. Speyer asked with the restriction of 2 should it be limited only to farmers and not grocery stores. Alderman Newman said they have to be farmers, the meat has to be home grown coming off the farm. Alderman Newman asked if the ordinance could be forwarded in advance to Mr. and Mrs. Sondgeroth. He thanked them for being at this meeting and said we will try to keep our Farmer's Market viable with your help. Mr. Sondgeroth said he did not mean to be offensive in his letter but after working a year on this was a bit perturbed. Xll. WHOLE FOODS MARKET SPONSORSHIP OF THE ETHNIC LAKESHORE ARTS FESTIVAL AND STARLIGHT CONCERS SERIES The committee was unanimous in acceptance of this communication. XIII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:43 p.m. Respectfully submitted-, J Audrey Trots partment of He r and Human Services Page 14. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday, June 2, 2003 - 8:00 p.m. Aldermen, Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman and Tisdahl Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Paula Haynes, Maureen Barry, Harvey Saver, Nancy Flowers. Carla Bush, Alisa Dean, Max Rubin, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Ann Rainey, Pat Vance. Sylvester Hilliard (Evanston Township); Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor); See Attached List of Attendees Alderman Newman Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 8:15 p.m. and noted due to the length of tonight's agenda he will get into the special order of business items that will go to Council immediately and will try to clear some items he thinks are not controversial. If. APPROVAL OF THE MiNUTES OF MAY S. 2003 MEETING The minutes of the Mav 5. 2003 meeting were called for aaaroval. Alderman Tisdahl moved for aaaroval seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Newman called for corrections or additions to the minutes to which Alderman Bernstein noted a correction on page 5, last paragraph, V line, the word "devaluating" should be corrected to read "validated". There being no further corrections, the minutes were unanimousiv anoroved f5-01. Ill. SPECIAL ORDER OF BUSINESS: CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 45-"3 PROPOSED FISCAL YEAR 2003-04 BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Newman called upon Pat Vance, Township Supervisor, and asked that she introduce the Township and Assessor's office staff members in attendance. Ms. Vance introduced herself, Sylvester Hilliard, Township Executive Director of the Township General Assistance office. and the two Township elected officials Sharon Eckersall, Township Assessor, and Ms. Eckersall's staff person Deputy Assessor Diane Benjamin, Ms Vance noted the Township budget that has been presented for consideration and approval by the Trustees is for the GA Fund and the Town Fund. Under these two funds they basically have three budgets, three separate departments that come under this budget, one the GA office, the second the Supervisor's office, and the third the Assessor's office. Her job as Treasurer is to come up with a balanced budget and make sure that the statutory requirements for the General Assistance program are covered. She said has submitted what she feels is a balanced and a workable budget. The budget includes an increase for client assistance due to the economy, as she thinks we have to put more money into this fund and see what the fluctuation will be in terms of the next budget. She had been asked to address that fast year when the Township office entered into an intergovernmental Agreement with the City of Evanston. The City of Evanston has been paid over S200,000 just to administrate the Emergency Assistance Program. Going back over their budget last year, in relation to this year's budget, she did ask you propose that the City, within the Intergovernmental Agreement, put forth S25.000 to help with administrative costs. That was always a pant of her proposal and it is still intended as part of the proposal. Last year's budget clearly shows when they go back with the City the Township did put considerable money in to do the Emergency Assistance Program. S140,000 was allocated and she thinks we have reimbursed the City for less than S80,000. We are still in some discussions concerning the $25,000 for administrative costs. That was part of her budget last year and she has also included it as part of her budget this year. The Township does not plan to ask for reimbursement of those funds until the end of this fiscal year. If the Township sees that it has substantial funds and does not need the reimbursement for the $25,000 then the Township would not ask for this money back, however, it is a part of our budget and if we do need it we do plan to request reimbursement for that amount. That is the budget that we are proposing. Alderman Newman inquired about the Evanston Township General Assistance Office GA Fund Revenues and Expenditures Budget page that shows the budget last year was S752,000 and then says variance $31,171.36 and the proposed budget shows $865,000, Ms. Vance said the variance is the difference between what is shown in the budget and the 12-month actual for 2002-2003. Alderman Newman said then you were S31,000 under, to which Ms. Page 1. Vance said that is right at that point. however money still comes in for that tax period past the tax statement. Alderman Newman asked what the S865,000 is. Ms. Vance responded according to the tax levy and the infcrmation that they have received from the County this is the propcsed amount of taxes that the Township will be geterg for the 2003-2004 year. Alderman Newman noted that the budc-et was S752,000 to which Ms. Vance remarked that was for the previous tax year. Alderman Newman said he understands that but you are actually saying you're going to get $110,000 more, to which Ms. Vance agreed Aldermar Newman asked what is your actual levy, is your levy going up S110,000 because he thought you were subject to cans. Ms Vance said what usually happens is the Trustees pass an Ordinance and will actually ask for more than Sc$5,000 based on the cost of the Consumer Price Index plus the new property starts to add in over a certain period of time, these are the figures that have been given to us. Alderman Newman wanted to clarify whether right now t`e Tow'rship has any reserves, what are the amounts of the reserves and what's currently in the Town Fund and the GA Fund. Ms. Vance said there are some small reserves, off hand she did not have those figures but could get them- to the committee. Alderman Newman added how much is spending going up, is it S110,000? Ms. Vance said no, the 2002-2003 actual budget, the budget for GA was actually at$1,116,000, therefore the actual budget is only going up by S16, 500. What is happening is less money is being transferred from the Town Fund. Alderman Newman remarked then there is really a very small increase in revenues and expenditures went up about $20,000, a very small arrount Alderman Feldman asked if the $865,000 is the amount you would be receiving. Ms. Vance said the tax office sends out a sheet that tells us what the tax revenue will be for tie coming year. Alderman Feldman asked if this is at the same levy as last year or is it a new levy. Ms. Vance saga they base it off of their cap and they go by this Consumer Price Index add the new property to it and tell us the amount of money that we can have. Usually what happens is Bill Stafford does this on the part of the Trustees, when they do the Ordinance they ask for more money than what they say, sometimes we may realize more than what is a=ally put there. New property is beginning to fold into the existing amount We are in a tax cap and can't raise the cap but we can recoup from new property in terms of adding to the base, these figures are given to us. Alderman Feldman said the cap is the cap for a year to which Ms. Vance said the cap is based upon what the prior levy was and tnen are certain fluctuations that they can look at By law we're bound by whatever is the cap and the figures are given to us. Alderman Feldman said then the Township is beginning to benefit from the new development that is going on and he assumes you anticipate more. Ms. Vance said because we are also part of the TIF when that starts to come the Township will realize more money. Alderman Bernstein asked if the Township now gets 3% or the cost of the CPI whichever is greater, plus the difference in assessed valuation which is like the school districts, and was told that is right. Mr. Hilliard added the building going on downtown is part of this increase in the levy. Alderman Bernstein noted for the first time this year the City took some of those monies, but not on that formula, as we would have gotten more money if we took it on that formula. Alderman Newman moved for approval of the Evanston Township Proposed Fiscal Year 2003-04 budget seconded by Alderman Bernstein and unanimously approved (5-0). Alderman Newman asked if this will come before the City Council June gu'meeting. Mr. Terry said we need to have a public hearing on this budget which is scheduled for approval the second meeting in June, June 23r° because a 30-day notice has to be done by the City Clerk. IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE MAY 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernsteln moved for approval of the Township May 2003 monthly gills, seconded by Jean - Baptiste. Not hearing any questions or concerns Alderman Newman called the motion for approval, motion unanimously approved (6-01. Alderman Feldman remarked the budget indicated the projected caseload is 85 and asked what was the projected caseload at the start of last year's budget. He was informed the caseload was 80 and this year was increased by 5. Ms. Vance said they go an an average and feel that 85 for an average is sometimes more and sometimes less. Alderman Feldman asked if the Township is already seeing signs of that kind of an increase. Mr. Hilliard said based on the last two months it has been 82 and 83, all of last year they had about 78.6 and were under by 2.3% of what they projected. This year they projected 85 people being out of work the way they are going they see an increase already and think wtih this budget at 85 we will be able to maintain and deal with those individuals. V. SPECIAL EVENT APPROVAL This item was postponed until later in the meeting. Alderman Newman asked when the Special Events Policy will be going to A 8 PW. Mr. Gaynor said it will be presented at the next City Council. Alderman Newman noted that some of the residents are participating and requested that we try to schedule it a little earlier. Pagc 2. VT. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 34-R-03 AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO EXECUTE AN AGREEMENT WITH FRED NAGLEBACH FOR THE COMMISSION OF A SCULPTURE MTUK FOR THE LEVY CENTER Mr. Gaynor said the information regarding the s-.:!oture has a recommendation for approval from the Public Art Committee as well as the Levy Advisory Board. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of Resolution 34-R-03, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously accepted (5-0). VII. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 35-R-03 AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO EXECUTE AN AGREMENT WITH FRED NAGLEBACH FOR THE COMMISSION OF A SCULPTURE ACORNUCOPIA FOR THE LEVY CENTER Alderman Newman asked what is the difference between the two Resolutions, as they seem very similar. Mr. Gaynor responded there are two actual pieces. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of Resolution 35-R-03, seconded by Alderman Bernstein. Motion unanimously accepted (5-0). Vill. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 52-043 ALLOWING THE SALE OF MEAT AT THE EVANSTON FARMER'S MARKET Alderman Newman noted a report from Ms. Aiello, which in terms of information was fairly positive, was included in the packet He asked if all the liability and health issues have been considered by the staff, and was informed they were. Alderman Newman moved approval to consider Ordinance 52-0-03 allowinq the sale of meat at the Farmer's Market, motion seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Newman called for discussion of this a-,Ianance. Alderman Feldman suggested the safety requirements that will be present be described. Ms. Aiello said the meats will be frozen and the provider can ascribe to validate to keep it frozen, the Health Department will go out and do an inspection to make sure they meet the requirements. Regarding liability we are going to require that the provider have insurance with the City of Evanston named as an additional party insured. We currently have statements from all of our vendors with the Law Department, for this vendor we asked for a certificate of insurance that vrdl meet the requirements. Alderman Bernstein asked if we're going to have a series of standards, this is only one vendor but there may be others when we allow meat. Ms. Aiello said the ordnance will allow for only one other meat vendor. Alderman Newman recalled the motion for recommending to the City Council to amend the Farmer's Market Ordinance to allow the sale of meat at the Evanston Farmer's Market, motion unanimously anoroved (5-01. Alderman Newman noted this will be introduced tefore the entire City Council at the June 9t' meeting. The normal City Council process is they introduce the ordinanm at a first meeting and then vote on the next regular City Council meeting that will be on June 23'° . Ms. Aiello said in her memo there was a reference regarding some food demonstrations and if we can work out the issues with the Health Department and perhaps we =uld do one demonstration with Kendall College or a restaurant with products from the market to see how its received. Alderman Newman thought that was a very good idea as did other Aldermen on the Committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what would be the purpose of this, to which Ms. Aiello said a lot of other markets have some venaors demonstrate cooking done with various produce sold at the market. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked who would be doing that to which Ms. Aiello responded we may do some outreach with Kendall College or some of the restaurants who have often expressed this as many of the restaurants come in to the market in the morning and pick up vegetables and fruits for their restaurants. We're just exploring that as some citizens have brought that to our allenbon. We thought we would go to the Hilton to see if they wanted to do this and are just going to explore this to maybe try one Saturday this summer to see how it works out. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we would need to think about liability issues which Ms. Aiello agreed with. Alderman Jean- Bap5ste asked that when this is brought back all these issues be thought out. Pagc 3. 1 IX. CONDERATION OF A REFERENCE TO AMEND THE RESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON AGING TO RAISE THE MAXIMUM INCOME ALLOWED FOR A REDUCED FEE VEHICLE STICKER Myrtle Wangerin spoke on behalf of the Commission on Aging to ask the committee to increase the eligibility level for people in order to get a reduction on their motor ven.cie sticker. Sne imagines for many of you the amount of money doesn't seem like a lot but for those of us who are ck:er she would say it is a significant amount and they would appreciate it if you would think positively about this She has been tninking a lot about the eligibility for Circuit Breaker and maybe she is speaking from her particular age and perhaps even income level that many good things follow under the Circuit Breaker but that does not take care of rose of us who are just above the Circuit Breaker and really not into a category where finances are not a sencus ma=er. She thinks a lot of us planned very carefully for retirement thinking that we had everything worked out. What happened is that interest on our savings have gone down to almost nothing. Small things that happen during our working years wouldn't have thrown us for example like something that happens to our car. Most of us drive older cars and every once in a while we get the shock of what it costs to repair something that was not in our experience in earlier years, its two or three times more than we ever thought of. She thinks the other thing that has thrown our budgets off, those of us who are above Circuit Breaker, is we really did not anticipate the cost of prescription drugs If she can be personal for a moment she would like to tell you that her husband's and her own prescription drugs costs, prescription not anything over the counter, went over $7,000 this past year. That's a shock to anything they had planned in terms of drinking they were secure and thinks it would be important if you would think about that. Circuit Breaker stops at a level where the rest of us, a number of us anyway, who would say up to the $50,000 mark really are struggling to keep the budget we thought was going to be adequate for us. She would like to ask you to seriously think about that Maybe this doesn't sound like a lot of money to you but it does to us and she would like to ask you to approve an increase in that eligibility for this particular item. Joan Hickman, Commission on Aging member, just wanted to add along with the medical aspect of this when you're working for the most part you're paying health insurance that you never use. But when you get to this age group along with the medical if you are hospitalized you also have hospital bills that you did not anticipate. Another aspect for retirees is at the time you retire there's an amount of money you think you will be able to make it with, but as the years go by and the price of everything goes up and the stock market is going crazy the money you have is getting shorter and shorter. If you're working you can just work a little extra but retirees can't do anything extra to get a little more money so you have to do some creative financing. Alderman Feldman asked if a number of additional people get their stickers at a reduced rate what will that wind up costing the City, and what is the total impact of that Mr. Terry responded, we do not know because we don't know the number of older drivers that are in that income category. At this point it would be a guesstimate, the Finance Department has one estimate and we have no way of knowing whether that many people will take advantage of the program at this time. Alderman Bernstein said he thought there are 500 then the total reduction would be $15,000 to which Mr. Terry added we do not know how many of those people are driving. Alderman Newman motioned to approve a consideration of a recommendation from the Evanston = Commission on Aninn to raise the maximum Income allowed for a reduced fee vehicle sticker. Motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste plus three other Aldermen seconds. Alderman Feldman asked if the issues raised by Mr. Stafford for validation, venfication, etc., will be worked out by Mr. Terry and the Commission on Aging. Alderman Newman said if we pass this we will have an actual report of the total. Alderman Newman recalled the motion to be voted on, motion unanimously approved f5-0i. Alderman Newman commented tonight was a great advocacy for seniors and said he very much appreciated and thanked the Commission on Aging members attendance. X. CONSIDERATION OF A REFERENCE TO AMEND THE RESIDENTIAL CARE AND GROUP HOME LICENSING ORDINANCE Alderman Rainey thanked Alderman Newman and said she has received numerous communications from people she has never heard of who aren't even in Illinois about this issue saying its discriminating against mental illness, etc. etc. She is going to try to ignore all of that and speak instead from the heart for the constituents of hers who live in _ the vicinity of the Kirk and Asbury home that Housing Options is purchasing over everybody's dead body. She is going to start from the beginning, She understands and has read all of the explanations about the Fair Housing Ordinance and thinks her background is strong enough in this community, knowing that housing for her has always been one of her most important issues and the housing in the neighborhood of Asbury and Kirk is also very Page 4. important. She is going to run down a list of the reasons why she has problems with this and is going to try and keep this narrow. She has problems with Housing Opbons for Mentally III, problems with their mode of operation. The way they operate is they get a contract on a home and after almost everything is all tied up, all sewn up, then they begin go leak it to the neighbors. its only after the fact We were invited to a neighborhood meeting where they swore they gave out notices to over 67 neighbors Five or six neighbors attended, one or two received a notice, the room was packed with people that we insisted identify their addresses. People were there from Isabella, from streets way outside of the 8-' Ward. It was a packed meeting where intimidation was the order of the day. Anybody who didn't agree to have mentally ill people next door to them was not a person educated or of any decency. One of the things the neighbors made very clear at that meeting and since then to her is that nobody objects to a property run home for people with mental illness, and by that they mean with standards set forth in our group care Category 1 and Category 2 in our Ordinance, which is both in the Zoning Ordinance and in the Housing Ordinance. What that says is if you have a unit of housing with 4 or more people that are mentally ill, living in the same unit, then you become subject to Category 1 regulations which means you have a person on duty 24 hours a day if a resident of that home is present 24 hours a day. If there is nobody there you don't have to have a person on site. What Housing Options does and this is the crux of everything she objects to about them, is they operate one inch under the radar screen. They never put more than 3 people in a unit. Because of the way our ordinance reads that allows them, if they had the money, to purchase a 50 unit building that lets say had 3 bedrooms per unit in it and put 3 chronically mentally ill people in each unit, having 150 mentally people under that roof, and not be subject to the Category 1 or 2 of the Ordinance. They explained to us at this neighborhood meeting that this is the way they operate because their people don't need 24-hour care. They explained that the people going into the 1300 block of Kirk are seniors, aging people who have been chronically mentally ill for quite a long time, who have been in the care of Housing Options for the Mentally III for at least 10 years. The reason they're buying the house is because the people going to move in there are; number 1) aging; number 2) becoming more and more debilitated; number 3) needing more and more mobility assistance. However, there is not going to be any regular supervision there, these are people who are going to be moved into this building and left there. If you read the Roundtable you would think that the house they're buying is a small rental building where there is a small 3 bedroom rental unit on the first floor and a small rental 3 bedroom unit on the second floor. This is a family home, many of you know Iry and Sylvia Levinson, they live right next door in a twin home. This home that Housing Options is buying has never been a rental property, it has always been a family owned property. Its not a rental building it's a family owned property. If you go in the main door it has a little in-law unit upstairs, this allows them to put 3 people on the first floor in one unit and 1 person on the second floor in another unit which makes them exempt from the ordinance. Years ago Housing Options promised this Council that they would make payments to the City in lieu of taxes. One day they decided that they weren't paying them anymore, so any payments in lieu of taxes that Housing Options was paying to the City of Evanston no longer are being paid. As a result we have 419 Keeney off the tax roles, 1009 Florence off the tax roles, 2120 Jackson off the tax roles, 328 Custer off the tax roles, and soon and 1304 Kirk Street off the tax roles which is currently paying around S5,800 a year in taxes. There has to be a way for this community to come to an agreement with this organization to treat the neighborhoods they move into as they treat their clients. The neighborhoods they move into, no matter what they say, as it is incredibly interesting to talk to any person remotely connected to Housing Options because there evidently is a school that people who are involved with Housing Options go to where they are taught the answers to questions. Now when she talks to neighbors a neighbor will say something to her about Housing Options and she will give them the Housing Options answer, or she can say something to a neighbor and the neighbor will give her the Housing Options answer, its very pat, its very set. You can never make a point with Housing Options. There has to be a way we can have a meeting of the minds with these people. One of the interesting things she received as a member of the Council and she knows everybody else in Human Services did too, is an application made for an additional Emergency Shelter Grant request. We're told that all of the people that Housing Options for the Mentally Ill houses are very healthy people. Only 5, 6. or 7 of them have full time jobs, but they don't need any assistance. Housing Options applied for assistance with a nurse they're about to lose funding for. The Visiting Nurse Association evidentially gave them a grant to hire a nurse and they did and it worked out great. But Housing Options says, after telling us what great shape these people are in, currently all but one of our residents is willing to take medication, however only one third of them are able to do so without assistance. For some residents the seriousness of their mental illness makes it difficult to keep track of their medication schedule. For others poor hand coordination makes it impossible for them to open a pill bottle or package. Residents' ability to take their medications can also change over time with deterioration or improvement in their physical or mental health. How does that affect using the stove, how does that affect leaving the doors unlocked so that anybody can get in, how does that affect their being part of this neighborhood without supervision. Group 1 Category Homes are permitted use in this neighborhood. Nobody objects to that, what is objected to here is, its not a Category 1 home although it is a house with 4 people living in it but because one is going to live in the little in-law apartment where Sylvia's mother lived for years and is no longer subject to supervision, licensing, or anything. We don't know anything about the people who are going to live there, only that Housing Options says everything is fine, don't worry, we're coming into your neighborhood. Years ago Page 5. when she met with Housing Options on their 300 Custer building she said okay what's going to happen here are you going to flood the Bv' Ward with all these homes. They said, oh no, we're not putting another home in the 8"f Ward, we're going to put them here, there, and everywhere. But, alas and alack here they are. They're not getting this cheap, this is about a S400,000 beautiful family home. She has heard Aldermen say that nobody ,n their wards has problems with a home for the mentally ill in their ward. Maybe some of those Aldermen don't have a home in their wards, she does not know, maybe the homes in their wards are supervised, she does not know, but she argued to the neighbors and supported the home in the 300 block of Custer. She thinks its time that dousing Options homes went someplace else. If everybody has to have a Housing Options home no matter what, and its off the tax roles, then everybody should share. She has just found working with them really disturbing, very disingenuous, very back door. They told us an absolute fie about notifying the neighbors with this letter about this meeting. What happened was one or two neighbors who got the notice made copies of it and then made flyers for the neighborhood. That's the only way people found out about it. She knows your hands are somewhat tied because we've been told we'll be sued because we'd be violating the Fair Housing Law. She does not know whether or not that is true, she hasn't researched it to that great extent, but there's got to be something we can do. She has heard this compared to 319 Dempster, this is a single room studio and has nothing to do with this. Somebody compared this to 824 Dobson, which is an accessible building for handicapped people, and she sees no comparison between that and a home for the mentally ill, none. People in wheelchairs are not exempt from certain judicial actions because they're in a wheelchair. People in wheelchairs are not governed by whether or not they take their medication, physically they are but not mentally. This house is off the tax rolls forever, unless of course, funding for the Housing for the Mentally Ill takes a tum for the worst and then we have to ask ourselves what happens in all these cases. In this Emergency Shelter Grant they're arguing that they had a nurse that was funded and now its not, so things aren't going to be as good as they were. We have to work out something with these people so that they will have more respect for the neighborhood that they go into, because right now they don't care. Their attitude is they are more important and their mission is more important than any neighborhood they have been to. Alderman Feldman said working out something for the neighborhood and working out something with Housing Options may not be the same as the proposal before us. He has listened very carefully to what Alderman Rainey had to say, that one of your concerns is the equal distribution of homes throughout the City. That doesn't speak to this issue. Alderman Feldman asked if the only kind of working out that Alderman Rainey envisions, is that kind of negotiation. Alderman Rainey asked Alderman Feldman if he means in addition to this. What she wanted to do is give you a flavor for what's to happen and how surprising it is to get a call and be told that we're moving in and then to call the neighbors who say what are you talking about. Then to talk to the person who sold the house who said, " I don't know they told me they just buy houses." She does not believe we have anyway to confirm what Housing Options tells us if they're not within the scope of our licensing or regulations. How do we know, we don't know. What we know is the people that they house, especially in this house, at least in this house, are chronically mentally ill people who have been with them for 10 years, who are more needy now so they're moving them into this house, that's on the first floor. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what are the specific changes being proposed. Alderman Rainey said she would like to see this business with 3 people in a unit being under their radar, that is supervised, which is something they do all the time. She would like them to be required to, number 1) be licensed, number 2) require supervision. Most importantly supervision and then some accountability to the City. Alderman Newman remarked, that raises an issue. Alderman Rainey said she knows, the staff issue, she read the whole thing. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry if in terms of saying this house they were buying was a Category 1, in the current ordinance, what, if any supervision would be required as he is not sure supervision is required for a Category 1, Mr. Terry said when we last dealt with the ordinance it still called for supervision because there was opposition to that and some concern about its ultimate legality. The Director of Health and Human Services was empowered with a waiver power and compelling arguments were made that licensed 24-hour supervision was a requirement. Alderman Rainey remarked didn't that require a physician of letter or something regarding the individuals in the residence. Mr. Terry was not sure, to which Alderman Newman said we need to clarify that because its an important point as to whether or not there would be supervision if it was a Category 1 home. If the whole rationale for change is to somehow achieve supervision he wanted to go a step further on that. How many times since we did this in 1999 has Mr. Teny invoked supervision anywhere in Evanston under the ordinance. Mr. Terry said there is currently only one --- licensed group home in Evanston that is run by the Anixter Organization for younger people but it will be an age _� comprehensive home. Alderman Rainey said but the point was cradled to the grave concept, was it not, to which Mr. Terry said it's not a Child Residential Care Home, it's a regular Group 1 Residential Care Home. One of the Page b. dilemmas we have is, and Ms. Brenniman can speak more to this, if we read the court decisions we are limited on putting any restrictions that are based on an assumption about persons witn mental illness. We can't require things without knowing specific things about individual residents. The courts have ruled if you know something about these residents you can tailor a set of municipal requirements that address specific needs but you can't invoke blanket restrictions, as after the fact you would know something about those residents Alderman Newman asked if Air. Terry is saying you can't pass and apply an ordinance after you have knowie.ge, to which Mr. Terry said that's the conundrum. Alderman Rainey added you can't get informat ri if they're nct covered by some category, you can't go in and ask people, The only relationship here that exists is landlord tenant. Alderman Feldman asked if it is correct that Housing Options maintains tha; these people don't need supervision and was told that is correct. He is not suggesting this, but just for the sake of discussion lets say if in fact there are mentally ill people that do not require supervision and the fact that they're mentally ill doesn't make any difference in terms of the fact that they could live in a house without supervision and they're not self destructive to themselves or anyone else. If that were true because of what we're saying is regardless of the condition or the diagnosis or the status of the residents we're forcing upon them that supervision is a requirement. He's not suggesting that there aren't mentally ill people that need supervision, but can you figure out why if we knew that people did require supervision, to which Alderman Rainey interjected, you have hit the nail on the head. The problem is they will not allow us to know that, they are saying take it on blind faith they're chronically mentally ill, they cannot live with their families, they cannot live independently, they have to live under our care but we don't provide enough supervision, we have somebody come in. We asked in a course of a week what's the average supervision provided to each of your residents, to which they said an average of 7 to 8 hours a week. Here they're making an argument for the Emergency Shelter Grant that only one-third of their residents are able to take medication without assistance. Alderman Newman said one of the issues that Alderman Rainey raised was the concern of potential litigation which has been thrown out here a lot and for now what he would like to get from our Legal Department is a response to Housing Option's memo on the legal issues and where we've been because that should be a confidential memo. Then we'll be in a position to deal with this. One thing he will say is he has a lot of respect for Housing Options legal opinions, but what he has found in the past is they are advocacy legal positrons, they are very well done, but the last time we went through this in 1999 we did not always agree with the legal position being taken and we heard the concerns about Fair Housing. Lets find out where our current ordinance is and some of the concerns about Alderman Rainey's amendment, some of the other issues and the new case law since 1999, which there has been some. Ms. Brenniman said there is one case in 2001. Alderman Newman said last time we got copies of the cases. One thing Mr. Terry told us in his memo is that he noted we've had a little disagreement technically on the language in the Group Home Ordinance that had originated in the Zoning Ordinance and he knows there was some question when he originally raised that point and he wasn't trying to deny anybody a hearing. He was told they could be resolved to which Alderman Newman said those two sort of go hand in hand and you can't really resolve the issue unless you get them both at some point. Alderman Rainey said the point she wanted to make very clear is that there is no objection to R-3 allowing permitted use of Group Homes, there is no problem with that, the problem is with the definition of group home. Just to clarify, the ordinance does require supervision if a resident is present in a Category 1 home. Alderman Semstein wanted to respectfully disagree that even if there are supervised people you are going to hear objection because there is a perception, that in his experience in his ward, has not been truthful. He has almost 800 beds in his ward, Albany Care and Greenwood Care, has severely mentally retarded people. He does not want it taken in a negative way but if you're not used to the presence of a group of people who are seriously medicated its off putting. He has a group home in his ward and he has not had a bad experience with Housing Options. This in fact is in part a zoning issue and he would like to raise the issue that they have acquired a property which according to what they say is a legal two unit dwelling, so theoretically they have the right of our Zoning Ordinance to have 3 unrelated, not to exceed 3, people in each of those two units. Ms. Brenniman said she does not know whether there has been an evaluation by the Zoning Department on this and whether the Zoning Administrator has been asked to look at this. She believes this has and believes there is an opinion that is being reviewed by one of the other attorneys in the Law Department, so yes, we're looking into that issue. Alderman Rainey noted it is a 3 in 1 to which Alderman Bernstein remarked if you accept that then in fact you have to accept the fact that however you characterize it they're following our ordinance. They may be sliding under whatever but they're following our law and to that extent to what the zoning concept is they're in the pipeline, they have a right to do this. Any action we take here is most probably not going to impact Iry and Sylvia. Alderman Rainey noted there are many neighbors here tonight this is not an try and Sylvia issue, to which Alderman Bernstein said he understands that but what he is saying is this is not going to affect this property because this property has already been lawfully acquired pursuant to our ordinance. He understands what people are saying and with respect to people who are severely mentally disabled some are difficult to live with. He does not want to get into a situation where when he sees a for sale sign go up on his street he has a right to go ahead and scrutinize a perspective purchasers to his liking because that's a process that he's not going to be a part of. That's where he sees the logical extension of this going and this is Paec 7. something in our society that scares him to death. We have too much governmental interference. He trusts Housing Options to scrutinize these people and does not think they are fools, he thinks they're trying to do God's work and right now they have the law on their side. Alderman Rainey said if what Alderman Bernstein says is true why do they operate in such a sneaky manner, why not be up front. Alderman Bernstein said before he sat in this chair most of his practice was zoning and he has come to find that everybody wants to live next door to a park that's for their use alone but the taxes are paid by the City. Any change, no matter how insignificant, changes people's attitude, he does not think you'd get anything but an uproar. Alderman Rainey said she nas been here long enough to know a tot of this and remembers there was an aldermanic campaign where this issue was a huge issue. Alderman Newman said when he was mentioning in the pipeline he wasn't getting in the narrative of anything here he was just questioning the use of in the pipeline, but in any event at this point and in terms of raising the issue of potential lawsuit he thinks we should get some answers from our Legal Department just so we know what the answers are. The last time we went through this for neighbors that came. going through the Group Home Ordinance was a lengthy process involving a lot of cases, a lot to read, a lot of work to do for our attorneys and its not in any way that we're not going to get to, but at this point let's just gather information. Alderman Tisdahl asked if there is any reason she can't ask now for a legal opinion. If she voted to change the ordinance her vote would be specifically to change the ordinance for mentally ill people and does not understand how she could vote that vote without being accused of breaking the Fair Housing Amendments Act, Ms. Brenniman said she has some concerns about it. Alderman Rainey said then we don't have your opinion based on current legal research, to which Ms. Brenniman responded, that is correct, but many of the cases are the same and much of the case law is the same as it was when she researched it in 1996, 1997, and 1998. Therefore, some of her opinions are not going to change. If you want she can provide you with the old opinions maybe that would be good for newer Aldermen, to which Alderman Tisdahl said, no that is okay. Alderman Newman wanted to be very clear on one point because we have had some implication, when we analyzed the present case law and everybody's position we came to the conclusion that our ordinance that we passed in 1999 did comply, and was in compliance considering the Fair Housing Amendments of 1988. Part of what we see in here is questioning of our current ordinance and he thinks there is reason to go back as the Fair Housing Act of 1988 does have a lot of case law that is 13 years old. Some legal issues have been raised tried to get into the Housing Options memo. Ms. Brenniman wanted to get clarification that memo Alderman Newman is referring to, that you wish her to respond to is Housing Options memo of April 22. 2003, that was included in the Human Services Committee packet. Ms. Brenniman said this is going to take some considerable research and since we no longer have a fourth attorney she is not sure she can promise this for the next meeting but she will do the best she can and keep Mr. Terry apprised. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the sense he got out of all of this discussion is that the kind of authority that Housing Options has under this ordinance allows them to place mentally ill people throughout the City and some of those mentally ill people are family members, relatives of ours or strangers. They have the option to CJ that and that has an impact on the community. He has not heard that impact is there have been crimes committed, nor have there been major disruptions other than the potential that property value may go down for a period of time. He thinks it would be self serving for you to try to address this issue but he thinks its important to hear from Housing Options _ what their track records have been and if anybody has anything to say to the contrary then they should say it so that we're clear about the threat, as he is trying to understand what the threat is. Alderman Newman said that's an element of discussion and what we really have to do with this item, having gone through this and spending as much time as we had spent, is have it be the only item on the agenda instead of 11 agenda items as an entire meeting has to be spent on this. The threshold question is why talk about an ordinance change that might not be legal. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is true but he understands a threat is driving the ordinance change and reference because if there are some real threats we should be concerned about them and we should know about them. Alderman Newman asked when we get the response to this we then go over the legal issues and allot time to get into this discussion which is an important part of the discussion. Tonight he wanted to be able to get to Alderman Rainey's reference because last month we waited with this item and he wanted to get the information going. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the only concern he has is that the media is here and the media goes out with a _ particular view, as Alderman Bernstein did speak to the fact that his experience is that this group is doing God's work and such, but he does not know whether this group's work has impacted us in such a way that it has created an atmosphere of discomfort, threats, or anything like that to the various communities and would like to know whether we have had that kind of experience. Alderman Newman said his experience is that the houses Housing Options for the Mentally Ill have purchased have not, and he wants to underline have not. been any problem for this community. — That doesn't change anybody's feeling about notification processes. As a matter of fact he even took Housing Options around his ward and parts of the V Ward showing some of the houses that he thought would be ideal for Housing Options to be located in. On the other hand there are some things that maybe residents feet about institutional uses and his ward has a lot of institutional uses. In Evanston everybody wants everything off the tax rolls, then are a million great reasons to get everything off the tax rolls, there are many great causes that all find their Page 8. way to Evanston which are all for good reasons but eventually somebody has to pay the dill and what happens more often than not is property is taken off the tax role and other people get their taxes increased. Those are all related issues, there are also funding issues related to Housing Options, they have been funded here at the City forever. Alexander Brown, Executive Director of Housing Options, wanted to try to correct some of the misinformation that's out there. Housing Options is fifteen years old, they have been providing supportive housing to adults with chronic mental illness in Evanston for the last ten years. They serve individuals with chronic mental illness who need supportive living. Mental illness exists on a spectrum, he compares it to diabetes. There are some people with diabetes who need to check their sugars every hour, they are insulin dependent, they end up in the hospital regularly, they need close supervision and monitoring. There are also people who can manage their diabetes with just slight changes in their diet_ There's a long spectrum of individuals with mental illness who have to be in nursing homes and have 24 hour supervision to individuals with mental illness who perhaps even are sitting at this table and receive periodic therapy, it depends how you define it. Housing Options is extremely careful about who we screen, who we accept into the program. Our residents are screened by psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, case managers and a nurse before they even come into our program. We did provide supervision to all our residents, we have 46 residents who live in 4 small buildings and scattered site apartments in every single ward of this town except for Alderman Jean -Baptiste, and we're moving our office into his ward in the fall. Our residents receive as much supervision as they need, many of them need someone to visit them in the morning and in the evening to make sure they're taking their medications and that's what they receive. Some of our residents receive daily supervision others less frequently, it depends on what they need. Our team of professionals provides our residents with what they need. We don't accept people who need 24 hour supervision one of the reasons we don't apply for residential care licensing, why we don't go that route, that's not the population we serve. We don't accept those people into our program, we don't house them, we don't serve them. We are overseen by a number of different entities including the City of Evanston. As an agency funded by the Mental Health Board, we provide them with quarterly reports, they visit us, we present to the Mental Health Board, we're fully accredited by a National Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation, we're overseen by the City of Evanston Property Standards Division, the State of Illinois Office of Mental Health, the United Ways of both Evanston and Suburban Chicago, the Illinois Housing Development Authority, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. A lot of people pay close attention to what we do. We try to be as open as we can, we consider ourselves good neighbors. What we've done is when we have a property under contract we then notify the neighbors. Some of you will remember about a year ago we notified neighbors on the corner of Emerson and Asbury that we were going to purchase a property and we were going to have an open informational meeting. Then 2 weeks later we decided it was not the right property for us and we tried to notify everyone that there was no meeting and there was no project. Our Board President, Sue Durburg, sat at the Fleetwood Jourdain Center as some people showed up for the informational meeting and we had to tell them, sorry to waste your time there is no project. It doesn't make sense for us to try to notify people in advance. We had our informational meeting on April 15, 2003, since then he received 3 phone calls from citizens with questions. We're happy to meet with any other group, at any time, to discuss what we are and what we do. We take a lot of pride in our buildings and the apartments that we rent. We have a five-year capital improvement plan on keeping the buildings in the best possible condition. The way he gives tours is he will drive to the block where one of our buildings is and say where do the people with chronic mental illness live, and you're not going to be able to tell. We pay a little more in landscaping than some of our other neighbors but other than that you're not going to see people hanging out outside, you're not going to see broken windows, you're going to see a well cared for facility. Its hard as an Evanston resident to have sat here last month and hear you talk about the USA Patriot Act and see this community take proactive steps to protect the civil rights of our citizens. Its ironic that now this month we're talking about ways of limiting where people live and how they should live. That's hard. Again we are represented in all wards, we have a 10-year track record, we do a good job, and as Aldermen it would come to your attention through Property Standards, your constituents, or the Mental Health Board if we weren't. He is happy to try to answer any questions either tonight or in the future or to meet with individuals or groups at any time. Iry Levinson, said his better half Sylvia Levinson was not present, she is a very good speaker as well. It's accordingly very painful to him because he has been the defender of people who have been made fun of by having mental illness. He worked in a mental institution, or a halfway home many years ago when he was a bit younger and became intimately connected with people who suffer from mental illness. Although we discussed who your clients are, your clients are variable. He does not care how much you scream you're dealing with people with mental illness which means their variability is of some great nature. What is a savings feature is that you have showed us that the people who will move into that household that is going to be a first level because they'll be physically not capable. So when your nurse calls in the morning and calls in the evening what goes on for that remainder period of time will have to be addressed by the other members living in that household, and if they are capable of doing it then they're going to have to care for that individual. Why are we capable of taking care of 4 with special help in a household but we're not capable of providing for 3 in a household. or 2. Most of these people have relatives and they can't live with Page 9. their own relatives because they're in a special program so we're now beginning to look at a different level of our population who can live alone to a degree but still need care. If there are 4 in a building we can take care of them, 3 in a building we can't take care of them, or you can only provide a minimum amount of service. He lives next door and he's truly hoping that the situation will be of such Vial his neighbors will be his best friends when goes out in his yard and he crosses his street and walks out, everybocy there will be healthy and wealthy as he hopes wants to be. But he lives among human beings, he does not know that anybody in this room is healthy, wealthy, and wise. He can't guarantee when stops and points his finger that you with the thing around your neck (pointing to Alderman Bernstein) are not sick. He has thanked you for your assurances but you're not giving him the insurance and assurance that he needs as a neighbor. You'll need pecple who can be taken care of 24-7 and he'll shake your hand and not say another word, and if we put an ordinance through that says we put 4 in that was a mistake, lets put 3 in. The ordinance says it you have 4 its okay, 3 is not okay, then put 3 in and that will satisfy Iry Levinson. What it will do is satisfy the people who will be taken care of. Think about that, you're going to provide and go down from providing if you had 24-7 as an average for your 47 people, you would have about 48 hours a week where they would be taken care of but if you stay where you are you're only giving 9 hours a week to be taken care of. They're being denied all that these other people who live in 4 groups do get. He thinks its the responsibility of the Council when they set a limit that they review the limit and say gee fellows we made a mistake and it really should be 3 and if we need to go to 2, if we need to we can go to t, but we should have the option as the Council when we set the limit that limit will reflect what the people in the community, not Housing Options only, feel about their sisters and brothers who are unfortunate. Alderman Newman said before continuing he wanted to clear up that there were some strong statements being made both ways tonight and one of the things that comes out of this is that we had a member of the Council suggest that we look at an ordinance, we had an organization that does some very good work in the community give us essentially a memo back that was in legal form that basically says that proposed amendment is in violation of the Fair Housing Act. All that happened here tonight, while this discussion was compared to the USA Patriot Act What he wants is to hear more about this from our legal counsel because some very interesting issues have been raised. There hasn't been one member of the committee who said they are voting for this ordinance change. in terms of category and the Council we're obligated to talk about this. When a neighbor's representative raises an issue before a City Council Committee we're obligated to talk about iL that doesn't mean we have to agree with the Alderman, it doesn't mean we have to agree with the neighbors. He does not think there is anything wrong in hearing and having an issue raised and getting some legal advise on it. That does not mean by getting the legal advice we're saying we want to do the amendment or anything else. He thinks we're learning about the issues which is where we are right now and he does not consider any of the discussion here, at least by members of the Council, in any way, shape, or form to be comparable to a movement to pass the ordinance or whether we should now be disappointed in the City Council because last meeting it was so great when it voted against the Patriot Act and this meeting we're discussing something else. Alderman Tisdahl asked Ms. Brenniman since she has been led to believe that we are breaking the Fair Housing Amendments Act and she also believes it would be in violation of ADA to which Ms. Brenniman responded, we'll also look at that issue. -- Xl. SPECIAL EVENT APPROVAL: Fourth of July Celebration. Alderman Feldman moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. motion unanimously approved 15-0). Rotary international Staff Picnic, Alderman Feldman moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion unanimously approved i5-01. CommUNiTY Picnic, Alderman Tisdahl moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Bernstein. motion — unanimousiv approved 15-0I. Walk for Hope, Alderman Bernstein moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion unanimousiv aooroved 15-01. XI. CONSIDERATION OF A REFERENCE CONCERNING THE PROCEDURES OF THE HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION Alderman Newman announced unless he's overruled by the committee he would like to talk about his reference and _ the discussion that will be in order tonight The comments about the word mutt, whether you like it or do not like it, _= we're not talking about that tonight. Whatever opinion anybody has about that term will not be part of this discussion_ at all. The reason for this reference and what we are going to talk about tonight is the procedures of the Human Relations Commission when they have an item that they want to conciliate, investigate, or whatever. That's all we're Page 10, talking about tonight which is all he wanted to clarify in case anybody wants to address the merits of that term, we're not getting into it tonight. This item was on last month's Human Services Committee agenda and held over, as we would not proceed unless Mr Cervantes was in attendance. Alderman Newman said at tre last Human Services Committee meeting re requested that a copy of the e-mail be included in this month's corrmrtee packet. It was not included in the packet but Ms. Haynes had a copy which she gave to Alderman Newman. Aiderman Newman asked the committee if trey are at all familiar with the e-mail and the committee's response was trey were all familiar with it. Alderman Newman asked for a copy of the original e-mail which Mr. Cervantes gave him Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what that purpose is and why do we need that as we know what happened. Alderman Newman said what his concern was. and one of the concerns he wants to address tonight, is that the Human Relations Commission had a special emergency meeting on a Saturday and certain people received notice of the meeting and certain people did not. He wanted people to understand what his concern was about the notice provisions because we had this in the Ethics Ordinance, if you tell the people who are all gung ho that there was an ethics violation that they should be there and you don't tell the people who are accused of violating the ordinance then the Commission doesn't have a fair meeting, which has happened before. He was only referring to the extent that the person related to the subject wasn't notified. Alderman Newman said he and Mr. Cervantes briefly talked about some of his concerns and what he would like Mr. Cervantes to tell this committee is what he sees as the role of the Human Relations Commission in dealing with issues related to race and other conflicts of the community. What you do in terms of mediation and conciliation, what procedures you have which would be a good starting point to begin the discussion. Mr. Cervantes, Chairman of the Human Relations Commission, said first he would like to thank the committee for delaying discussion of this as he was not able to attend the May Human Services Meeting and is very appreciative you were able to hold this off for a little longer so we would have a chance to share with you as much information on these issues as possible. The role of the Commission is really two fold, one is to assure access to various claims of benefits shall we say of other kinds of issues that should be open to every citizen of Evanston regardless of race, creed, color, and the whole list of people, groups, etc., in the community that should have access to each and every part of Evanston's community and other kinds of advantages. The second part of our rote of course is to bring the community together. In bringing the community together sometimes there is a role for mediation, there are kinds of roles for us to bring people together as much as possible. He guesses their third rote which is kind of an administrative role, a legalistic one almost in the sense that we do administer the Housing Ordinance, in some respects we act in certain ways for the City in the case of certain kinds of racial discrimination, etc. We also then investigate various kinds of racial discrimination claims, etc., that occur throughout the City in terms of businesses, etc., that come to play. There is no question that the Human Relations Commission has a great role to play in issues of race in the community. Among other issues are gender issues of this orientation, to which Alderman Newman interjected mediating or conaltabrng and why don't we talk about the difference. Mr. Cervantes said he would ask Ms. Haynes, she is the primary mediator, as he thinks its important that we d&erentiate what a mediation is under our terminology and perhaps what might be under the more common notion of what a mediating process is. We consider mediation to be where two parties come together under mutual agreement a mutual set of rules, guidelines, etc., under which two disagreeing parties come together by which to resolve sorre kind of a conflict. Certainly we do that in housing, and with landlorditenant kinds of issues amongst others. A role that the Commission plays is on selective kinds of situations when we can bring the two parties together we will certainly agree to do that, but he thinks its important that those official, so to speak, mediations are conducted under mutually agreeable kinds of predetermined sets of rules and guidelines which you might say is our official mediating role Mr. Cervantes asked Ms. Haynes if he characterized that appropriately to which Ms. Haynes said the only thing she would add in terms of mediation in a formal sense is that it is confidential. Alderman Newman said he could understand this and asked when this emergency meeting was called was that under the terms of mediation or conciliation. Mr. Cervantes responded the purpose of that meeting was a special meeting that they called certainly following their understanding of the Hecky Powell situation. They called that meeting for two purposes, as you all know special meetings are only allowed to discuss what is on the agenda. On that evening the only item on the agenda was, should we be involved as the Human Relations Commission in this issue, and secondly, if so what would be a set of actions that we felt were appropriate. Those were the only things that were involved. Alderman Newman asked when you say involvement, what kind of involvement were you going to get in the mediation between the parties. Mr. Cervantes said, no, at that point it was more a matter of should we proceed with somehow being involved with what we knew were coming District 65 discussions, that was going to be coming up the following Tuesday. Mr. Cervantes said he really wants to apologize to the committee for the Commission's real lack of awareness and all the information and so forth surrounding that situation. He means by that they called a meeting with only 2 days on the assumption, by assumption all of us on the Commission were of the assumption that we only required 2 days notice for a special meeting. It tums out our bylaws say 5 days, and so therefore the meeting was inappropriately conducted in the beginning and as a result of that the outcome of that Page 11. meeting is nothing went forward. We were informed by the Mayor and Mr. Crum, etc., that it was an inappropriate meeting and as soon as he heard about it he said, oh my gosh, and he certainly apologizes for that misappropriate meeting that was held. Alderman Newman asked if there was going to be some action by the Human Relations Commission, a City Commission. as what he is hearing is there was some action contemplated by a City Commission and District 65 Mr. Cervantes said of course nothing happened Alderman Newman had a question he wanted to address. let's say we weren't going to mediate and we weren't going to conciliate, we weren't going to do any of those. To him if we were going to mediate the mediator wouldn't be putting out an opinion in advance that something that happened was outrageous because the mediation would be almost nonsensical because the mediator would be on one side of the dispute. If you were thinking about some type of action, the way he understood this was that even 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon you were planning on going to District 65 that night, do you think in terms of the way people were notified of this meeting there was anything at all problematic about it. Basically what we have is a City staff person, the Executive Director of the Human Relations Commission, putting out almost a call to arms. He does not want to exaggerate this but for people to attend this Saturday meeting whatever comments that somehow were addressed it seems to him, and he is just speaking his own opinion as a member of Council who by the way funds the Commission or whatever we do with the staff, he has a little bit of a problem with special meetings being called on a Saturday, this could be a very strong action. Then we have people who are all in favor of a proposed action showing up and the person, who possibly the action is going to be against, doesn't even know about the meeting. Mr. Cervantes said the Commission would agree with Alderman Newman whole heartedly on that. The Commission was unaware of any mail, and he wants that very clearly understood which is why he was apologizing up front for Commission's lack of awareness of all of the communications and so forth surrounding this meeting. He was as shocked he suspects as you were that this e-mail existed. In fact when he and Alderman Newman talked about it as you recall he was not even aware of d. He just wanted you to know that even though we didn't give 5 days notice, it was an inappropriate meeting, like in many things of life something good comes out of weird things. Just give us a chance to step back and take a look at our procedures and take a look at what we're going to do in the future and so forth. We discussed at our meeting this week there's no question that these kinds of selective communications are no longer going to be part of the Commission's proceedings. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said apparently from what Mr. Cervantes is saying the motivation was, first all you recognized and you made the self criticism in a sense that the Commission moved with consideration of its rules, regulations, and process. Mr. Cervantes interjected, unless one considers ignorance at the time lack of consideration perhaps in the sense that we were assuming that it was a 2 day as your rules are and had we read up the bylaws in detail we would have seen it was a 5 day notice. By the way, they changed that so now they have 2 days notice just like you do, so in the future that also will not be an issue. Our assumption of the Commission has always been that the only time we invite people to a Commission meeting is there are really only 2 or 3 very clearly specified situations, one is where we're looking for expert kinds of people, for example they invited Chief Kaminski when they were looking into profiling. Anytime we feel that the Commission needs expert testimony we feel very — comfortable inviting people that are expert in that area. Secondly, we think you would agree that anytime someone calls the Commission office and asks for an agenda we are obligated to send them that agenda and is normally what we felt we were doing. We felt the only communications with people who requested to know about the meetings were if you want to know about the meetings we'll send you an agenda. Thirdly, our assumption was that whenever we need community feedback we will hold hearings. He has no problem with the room being stacked with one-sided _ individuals all in favor of one side of an issue provided they themselves got themselves there. Our objection is whoever comes to our meeting they should be there as a result of our public announcements, any hearings we might have, or any responses to requests for agenda and that's the only kind of invitation that should be given to our meetings with the exception of if we're lacking for very special kinds of witnesses, or if we put something in the newspaper. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if ,n the past the Commission has called meetings to address statements other individuals in the City have made, to which Mr. Cervantes replied, not that he knows of, if course he has been on the Commission for a short term. As Chair this was a special meeting he recalls, he's pretty new at this Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Haynes if she has ever done that before, to which Ms. Haynes responded she couldn't recall not off the top of her head. Mr. Cervantes said they had people, for example like Matt Hale and so forth, where we have some protocols with those kinds of situations where obviously we have many kinds of responses to those kinds of things that are so obviously hateful and divisive. For the most part for their regular meetings kinds of issues they depend very strongly on the Commissioners themselves provided with staff feedback, our own investigations on a personal basis to get the evidence and background they need on various kinds of issues. We have committees whose job it is to go into the community to find out more what's going on out there or just getting to gather and to find out what kind of community feedback we should be aware of. He wished to assure the committee of one more thing, the Commission also decided at their last meeting that in the future if there ever are sessions like this where there is Page 12. an individual involved that A is probably a good idea for that individual to be invited. We also agreed that in our guidelines, for down the cpxe. where in this kind of situation we'll do our best to assure fairness so they will be invited in the future. Again, he inmands to seno an apology on behalf of Commission to Hecky. Again, not on the issue but in terms of our procedure. l+aC we known there were other people selected to be invited to this session we would have invited Hecky also, but we Cid not know that so we could not do so. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if at the time of this extraordinary meeting was it invoked because you felt that something wrong occurred and you wanted to try to address it. Mr. Cervantes said we didn't know if we were addressing whether there mas something but there was an evidence. a fact finding you might say. We were aware of the newspaper articles. we even tried our best to get copies of the tape that occurred but did not have much luck getting that for that sess.on. but we did try. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted. but you were motivated to do that because you felt that something was wrong whether or not it turned out to be so. Mr. Cervantes said it was an issue obviously affecting racial ssues in Evanston and therefore we felt that the issue was something we needed to discuss. What action we rseded to take we hoped would come as a result of that meeting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said and you corrected it as a procedural faux pas, to which Mr. Cervantes said he hopes they have, at their meeting on Wednesday new procedures were put in'place. Alderman Newman asked if the committee could get a copy of those new procedures to which Mr. Cervantes said as soon as they get them written up. He also wanted to stress one more thing, since he took over this Chairmanship, since the very retreat they had in January he has stressed and will continue to stress that this Commission is going to be unbiased. It's not to say that they're not heavily orientated toward their mission, it's not the same thing. He feels very strongly that we want the community not only to perceive us as unbiased but to act sally be unbiased in the way that we approach the discovery and evidence and so forth on issues. We just wanted to share with this committee that will continue to be his pressure and he has gotten assurances from the staff that is also going to be the commitment of the staff not only in words but in spirit. He is hoping we will move forward with this and no longer will have to have meetings like this to explain these kinds of issues. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said one of the issues on the table is the e-mail that was sent out and asked if this is your recognition that at this particular point in time that was wrong and precipitous and that action will not take place again. Ms. Haynes responded, absolutely, that was a knee jerk reaction and she can understand inappropriate. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said you also recognize as the Executive Director of that Commission, that office, you have to be impartial and always careful. Ms. Haynes said to show that the e-mail does not appear as though she was impersonal, that was a knee jerk reaction that came from emotion and not a place of practical thinking and she will not be sending anymore like that Alderman Feldman said in addition to the procedures that you have described as being changed, and he is glad you are doing that, but people pay prices for those. We aft pay prices for mistakes, the community paid a price and individuals paid a price and he has a vision of you going to testify before the School Board. Even if the meeting had been legal or not, never having spoken to the person accused and approaching it in a manner that didn't seem to him, considering everything he knows about it. to be a reason why. What happened here, what really happened? Is there any kind of role that we might play in dealing with this issue and how do we get the kind of information, the kind of inquire, the kind of deV, beration that allows for what he perceives a Human Relations Commission function is, which is to responsively, really responsively, deal with these kinds of issues. The only way you can is motivated by decency and honesty, is se~ang up the kind of proper procedures. He also thinks there is a very important thing and that speaks to this e-mail which you have already indicated that it's wrong. The Human Relations Commission having an Executive Direr with this kind of passion sending out a notice to people inciting a response that says, 1 am outraged by Hecky's comments but I am even more concerned about the entire Board and their response they elevated him to a position cf importance was this his reward? Whether they realize it or not, this act condones his skewed and twisted beliefs I hope you folks will be able to attend the meeting. The Commission really needs to hear from the community " The community meaning 12, 13, 14 specially invited people. He did not get a message to come there nor does he know who else got a message to come there, but these people got a message to come there. How could it possit y be that this Commission with a staff that is supposed to advise and provide them with information could come to any kind of a reasonably fair opinion. How could that be? You know how we listen to staff, these are expert resources that the Council depends on and he suspects you need help as much as we do. By the way you have every right in the world to have any opinion you want, what he feels is that if you have these kind of feelings you walk up to the Chair and you say I feel so strongly about this I'm excusing myself from this position, some other staff member will take over and I'm going advocate for the position. He'd respect that 100%. but to walk into a room and play the dual role of passionate citizen, which you are entitled to do, plus dispassionate, professional advisor to the Human Relawns Commission can't be done. Alderman Tisdahl brought up the point about the Council's rules, this is a public meeting if we're going to discuss personnel don't we have to do that in private? Alderman Feldman said he was handed an e-mail that he thought and which Alderman Newman thought is the subject of the procedures of the Human Relations Commission on Page 13. notice and try to get an idea about this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked he had addressed this earner and in order to address this as a procedural matter to make sure that we have a process that is fair, that is impartial, that addresses issues we want e_ address, we needed to intervene in terms of tre procedures that are in place of it and if there were not any procedures in place we needed to put some there The ciscussinn of this particular e-mail only enflamed something that we .,e already said and its corrected. The Commission said it has corrected the processing Alderman Feldman said the fa= cf the matter is trat he felt strongly acc,,;; the success or failure of the Human Relations Commission in td-jz ccrnmunity, in a community that needs it Cacly, its credibility, and that credibility's impact on the community. V,'rmcut the Human Relabons Commission this communrty would be less but a Human Relations Commission that aoesn't function to the hignest level of eth;cs and fairness is no use at all to us. To the extent that's compromised by staff. and its his opinion in this particular case Lnat it might have been, it weakens your ability and our ability to funccon Mr. Cervantes said they have taken steps to see it won't occur again and would have to say that the staff has teen most agreeable, assuring, and so forth gnat the procedures will be followed from here on. Alderman Newman said its cone thing to say that you have a personnel situation if you're going to address the procedures and in that hope we wanted to took at them. This is the problem here, without seeing it, without discussing it, without understanding, the way the meeting was called and how people were notified that's the problem and the reason we're here. 1`. this e-mail had not been sent to certain peop'e without the person who is the main subject being notified, we would not be here, When you use the word enflamed that implies that something improper was done by having the men-,bers of the committee who were going to discuss this see the a -mail. If nothing improper was done by having everybody on this committee see this a -mail, using the word enflame is where that goes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said nm was published in the Review, we're beating a dead horse. There have been discussions already with the Ci-r Manager and between staff and ourselves and among ourselves to a certain extent and steps have been taken tc correct the procedures Alderman Newman asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he knows what those steps are because he certainly does not know. They said it happened last Wednesday when they had a meeting, we have a vert,:al representation and haven't seen how the rules have been changed, we haven't seen anything. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked but they agreed to move forward in the direction that we have suggested and he is just suggesting that we maintain a balance in what we're trying to accomplish, we're trying to accomplish the changes. Alderman Newman said what he heard tonight was that we are now going to notify ail sides or we'll really be careful about our notification process. There is a whole other range of issues here, that might satisfy you and he is glad that does but what are the procedures and what action should the Human Relations Committee take. Action that was going to happen here is a City Commission A -as going to appear before another elected body and he wants to ge: to when they mediate, when they conciliate, and what are these other actions the Human Relations Commission can take because he has read their procedures. they're very sketchy. We don't have them as part of tonight's packe: Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he did not have a problem with that, we are addressing the procedures how hey do business, when they do business. We've already raised criticism of the Executive Director, she's made se:f-crivcism. To him we then move to addressing procedures and we don't have to dwell on the criticism that has already been raised. Alderman Newman said he heard Alderman Feldman express himself on the issue and he hears Alderman Tisdahl raise the issue of personnel He does not consider Alderman Feldman making a statement dwe-cling on this. Mr. Cervantes asked if there are additional questions asking about our approach to things and so forth Alderman Tsdahl had an additional question, having served for 12 years on a School Board she is very touchy on this subject and was trying to dec;ce why this bothered her so much when she was very pleased to vote against the Patriot Act and pleased that you raised that. That was advice to another governmental body but the Patriot Act had a =_ direct impact on the City of Evanston Librarians, they're a simple example. When one governmental body decides to go in front of the School Board who are very dedicated, hard working, volunteers and we're paying our tax dollars for the Human Relations Commission :~tat decides to go speak at a School Board it seems to her that raises this to a level of very high need, in her view you have to be absolutely certain because unlike the Patriot Act where she thinks you are absolutely right nothing could happen in the District 65 Board impacted by City services its another L_ elected body. Do you have any runes, regulations, or concerns about going to a School Board or to another likely body? Mr. Cervantes responded, he certainty doesn't and would like to explain why. It certainly is up to you Aldermen if you wish to put boundarves on how that can work but he feels very strongly that District 65 is a member of our community and our role very clearly spells it out that we are to act with anything that has to do with, the community, the City of Evanston. As. far as he knows that does not rule out the School Board or the schools or all the multitude of issues associated w .h race that go with that school. For example. on our current agenda it is that=_ we wish to be very much involved in the 60% discussions to present the Human Relations Commission's perspective _ on those things and he thinks very strongly that we belong there. To suggest that just because they're a govemmental body they're beyond tt-e issues of race strikes him as an unusual place that you want put your Human Relations Commission in. It seems to him that we should be encouraged to make sure that we don't eliminate any Page 14. segment of our community from that discussion. Just like Northwestern, the issues that have occurred the last few days are things also that we have discussed and probably will discuss some more. Certainly its your purview to suggest how you want to put boundaries but he would very strongly caution you for the some of the same reasons maybe Alderman Bernstein and you brought up earlier when you start putting constraints and limits on your Commissions it strikes him that you're putting a great deal of limitation on whether your citizenry wants to be involved. The Patriot Act is a clear case of a huge abstraction in that sense as opposed to the concreteness of what happens in the School Board and the issues of race. For example, and again not going into the Hecky Powell situation in detail, we were intending very much to acknowledge that the issue of multi racialism is a significant issue for every citizen of Evanston no matter what Commission or Board you're on and he would likely be very disappointed if even the City Council somehow moved itself away from those issues just because you're one governmental body dealing with another. It strikes him that if we're going to bring Evanston together, which he believes is one of the major charges of the Human Relations Commission is that we're going to bring the community together then we just cannot simply ignore those other parts of the community that have a very significant role in how race is determined, and how it is developed, and how it is moved in this community. From his perspective we belong in District 65. we belong at Northwestern, we belong at anyplace in the community where racism is a possibility. Alderman Tisdahl said she does not feel this is any attempt to bnng the community together, to which Mr. Cervantes said he was just giving his opinion whether you chose to acknowledge that its just up to you and of course we will always follow your determination. We report to you and if you chose to put boundaries on what we should do that is certainly your prerogative. Alderman Newman said he was a little unclear as to what exactly you do and the way it stands now which is interesting is that you can do almost anything you want. What he's talking about is you can decide you're going to mediate, you can decide you're going to conciliate, and then you can decide you're going to decide you're going to advocate. Going back to your original point about the meeting you weren't really going to mediate, you weren't going to conciliate, you going to take some other action and what he is concerned about is how broadly the Human Relations Commission may interpret what that other action may be. He looked at your procedures and does not see anything as to what you ought to be doing and when you ought to be doing it and thinks before this meeting was called he did not think the Commission knew what it was going to do nor did they know if they were going to mediate between two individuals or whether they were going try to conciliate a problem over all in the community or whether they were going to take any specific position. Mr. Cervantes interjected, that was the purpose of the meeting, to which Alderman Newman said he understands that but the charge of the Commission and your authority should be laid out, what procedure and what process you're going to go through if you chose to go down that road. When you tell him you're about to get into the 60-40 issue we could go into a room in his ward and invite 100 people there and get 100 different opinions on what the 60-40 policy ought to be in District 65. To imply that anybody on any side of that issue has any type of racial agenda might be a difficult thing to do. 60- 40 it seems is the policy right now at District 65, they're reconsidering it and he's not sure how you go about finding out what the community really feels about that or whether we just have 12 or 9 individuals on the Commission expressing their opinion that sounds almost like a City on the subject He thinks we need to hear more from you as to when you're going to mediate, when you're going to conciliate, when you're going to advocate. Mr. Cervantes said those are all options, he could ask you the same questions when are you going to raise taxes, when are you going to reduce taxes, and could give you the whole specifics that you need to answer. Alderman Neuman said when we raise taxes we have a procedure of hearings. Mr. Cervantes said we do too we have hearings just like the patriot Act if we wanted to find out more from the community we come back here and we will probably conduct hearings on the other elements if we decide to go that way. Alderman Newman thought when we get to the point when we think the Commissions is going to appear before another elected body, and it sounds like on behalf of the City of Evanston, we really need to be clear when that's going to happen. Mr. Cervantes asked Alderman Newman if he would like advanced notice from them when that's going to happen to which Alderman Newman replied, no, he'd like a discussion maybe with us and does not know if now is the time that's going to happen. Mr Cervantes said they would be very pleased to do that in fact one of the things they encouraged and they wanted to do is much more contact with you as Aldermen, Alderman Moran is in his ward and he would probably tell you he calls him more than he'd like to have to. We're encouraging all of the Commissioners to be much more in touch with you. Without question they would like very much more interaction to rind out more from you and he would hope that you would come to our meetings and we'd love more to come to yours, if there are other kinds of ways to discuss issue he can absolutely assure you that every member of the Commission would like to do that. Alderman Bernstein said he was a bit concerned, we are the policy making people. From what he has heard of your statement of what you believe your mission is you believe to be self contained and you believe to be the agency in the City who is responsible for any and all racial issues. Every other Commission about which he has knowledge reports to the City Council and we value your input and value your professionalism and value the time and the analysis you give the situation. Quite honestly, he is a little uncomfortable, because you don't represent the Human Relations Commission you're the City of Evanston when you go before the School Board. He does not know if you have the responsibility or the right to do that. What he would like you to do is create for him, who is one of the people who is going to determine whether or not to continue to fund the Human Relations Commission and he believes we Page IS. absolutely must have a Human Relations Commission, but it has to address problems in a reasonable way. He does not want to dwell an this because Alderman Feldman expressed his outrage with respect to what happened. You can't be a prosecutor and a judge in the same case. Historically long before your lime on the Commission there were situations when that occurred, it was always something about which he had great concerns. He would like the Commission to sit down, he is sure most of us would be happy to meet with you, and come up with a mission statement. He thinks that is what Alderman Newman is trying to get at, what should you be doing. Once you decide what it is you should or not be doing what procedures will you then be following because this is pretty outrageous and in part this should be subject to Executive Session, but that's not going to happen tonight. Mr. Cervantes said we also have to point out that at least the bylaws and ordinances we have been operating under have a mission statement. We have been charged with certain things to be done under the City Ordinance and it is his understanding that's what we're doing. Certainly we're just like the Patriot Act we come to you with any final sort of action, purposes, or recommendation. Alderman Tisdahl said she would very much appreciate it if you would come to us before going to the District 65 or 202 Board and tell us what you're planning to do. She's not asking you not to think about doing it but is asking you before you represent the City of Evanston at District 65 or 202 let us know. Mr. Cervantes agreed with that but wanted to point back to the Hecky Powell issue. That happened to be a School Board meeting that was going to discuss that particular issue and it was going to occur the following Monday. Admittedly we were moving quickly and he will Tess up to the nation that we did move on that and as you can tell made several mistakes as a result of the desire to move quickly to be responsive to that particular session of the School Board. In terms of any future actions certainly he looks forward to his purpose to work through you. Our job is to give you recommendations. What he is suggesting is he hopes you are not going to limit those recommendations to major abstract issues like whether we should have war in Iraq and ignore the issues that occur in our neighborhoods and so forth. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he supports the call for greater accountability for recommendations to City Council for major positions that you may want to take regarding major racial issues or gender or sex, etc., etc., in the City. He also wants to acknowledge the necessity for you to continue to take initiative within a certain boundary that does not violate the rights of individuals to be heard properly and we agreed with that already. He also wants to acknowledge the fact that the Human Relations Commission over the history of its existence has played a significant role in addressing housing discrimination issues, redlining and other kinds of racial racist policies that exist in the City of Evanston. That Commission has helped shape the kind of City we have today so that we feel safe whether we are black citizens, Latino citizens or white citizens, therefore the value of that agency is very important. The call for accountability and greater interaction is very important, the call for prestigious is very important and he does not want us to shoot a fly with a cannon with a product that we are really not looking for. We're still looking for your guidance and your initiative but still under the auspices of City Council. Mr. Cervantes said he agreed with that and said they have no desire to abuse their role. Alderman Feldman said Alderman Jean -Baptiste is right in the sense that this body the Human Relations Commission was deeply invested in many things that have shaped this community. He was on the Human Relations Commission as an Aldermanic Liaison when we rewrote the Fair Housing Ordinance, when we took people to court for steering, when we had people testing, etc. That powerful role is the kind of role he has been looking for the past 5, 6, 7 years, that kind of affect on the community. Either its not there or he does not know about it and he's saying that fairly. Either that kind of role is not being taken or it is being taken and he does not know about it, but knowing that he is not aware of it he would like the Human Relations Commission to inform him. He would like them to let him and all of us on this committee know what you do, how often its done. For example is there any steering going on in Evanston, do you have testers out, do we know that the Fair Housing Ordinance is being enforced properly, are there realtors that are affecting the way people live and are you going to be there, what kind of prosecution and what _ process do you use to determine whether or not people are violating the Fair Housing Ordinance. He remembers the - Human Relations Commission sitting as the quayside judicial body. He asked if they do that now and how often, to =_= which Ms. Haynes responded, absolutely they do that anytime they have the ability to do that. Alderman Feldman asked when was the last time they did that, to which Ms. Haynes responded there has not been a case that has come before them. Alderman Feldman said maybe we've progressed far enough, there use to be so many cases of the Fair Housing Act they had to stagger them. Maybe the City of Evanston has gone back, he's worried about that and he would have to be convinced but that is the kind of powerful needed effect on this community that he yearns for from this Commission. He does not recall whom he spoke to, perhaps it was the previous Chairman but - somebody promised to come before the Human Relations Commission when we talked and he expressed his concern about what is going on. Alderman Newman said we're going to get the Human Relations Commission's change on notices in writing. Also, he would like to move that we amend the Enabling Ordinance of the Human Relations Commission and the Resolutions of Advocacv that passed and before thev're distributed to other bodies that thev come before the Cttv Council, lust like the Patriot Act. Alderman Newman asked if he could get a second to his motion' Alderman Bernstein seconded the motion.. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he was not sure he understood this Page 16. motion, to which Alderman Newman said what he is moving is that we revisit the Enabling Ordinance of the Human Relations Commission and that the Council amend that Resolutions of Advocacy that are put out by the Commission come before the Council for approval. that's all, he's not telling them not to get involved in anything but he wants the Ordinance prepared and to come back here now they know that we're moving it and they can respond to it and comment on it and maybe we won't do it and maybe we will. When he hears about these types of issues it seems like there are no boundaries. Its not a question of boundaries as to what the Human Relations Commission gets into but he thinks that they see themselves as advocates who appear before district 65, District 202, or where ever. With the Human Relations Commission of Evanston has the impression that it's the City and the type of work they're doing, in most cases the City Council will probably agree as we did with the Patriot Act and we can work it out. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we can look at the existing ordinance before doing anything, to which Alderman Newman interjected he is not approving that we do anything tonight he is moving that the staff come back with the ordinance with this amendment that he is suggesting and consider it, that's all. Alderman Bernstein said his understanding is that was the role any way, isn't that the role of any and all Boards and Commissions. In his mind that's what 0 is. With respect to that what we do with the recommendation is subject to our constituency and we represent our constituency, they have a choice of putting us back in this chair. We represent the City of Evanston, the Human Relations Commission doesn't, with due respect Mr. Cervantes, Mr. Cervantes said he agrees with that. Alderman Newman said we will dear this up and take a look at it Mr. Cervantes said he would assume they will have an opportunity to speak to those issues, to which Alderman Newman said Mr. Cervantes will be the first person to be contacted. Alderman Bernstein said he would like a joint meeting with the Human Relations Commission to discuss these kinds of items. Mr. Cervantes said the Commissioners have discussed this a few times and they would like very much to have more guidance, more involvement, they feel that Evanston is at a new point in its evolution in race and always that there is, and just as the School Board is re -looking into this issues he thinks its time for many places in Evanston to be looking into issues. Alderman Feldman brought up the statement made that Evanston is at a new point to which Mr. Cervantes said he is a professor at DePaul and you can push his little switch and he can give you a couple hours tecture. Former Alderman Evelyn Raden made some remarks regarding staff and was told by the committee to take the issue up with the City Manager. XII. SPECIAL EVENT APPROVAL- PRELUDE TO BICENTENNIAL OF HAITi'S INDEPENDENCE PICNIC Alderman Bemstein moved approval of the Prelude to Bicentennial of Haiti's Independence Picnic. seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Alderman Rainey said she does not really have a problem with events at James Park. Every event that's been planned has brought so much more to the south of this Town. Its so exciting to see that park used, neighbors were actually going to watch the Little League games. This is an event that first of all if you notice the sponsor's address is Romeoville. This organization does have an address at Family Focus and the reason they have that address is because the Community Development Block Grant is paying the rent there. She does not believe this is really not an Evanston organization. However, having said that there is a bad reputation that has been developed from previous events in our community. She is willing to say, lets give them a chance, but they're proposing 6 speakers until 11.00 at night That has to be cut back, she thinks they should go off at 9:00 p.m. There is no reference in this to any fireworks, or firecrackers and wants to know if those will happen there. Also, it is stated very clearly that no alcohol will be sold. She wants it stated very clearly that no alcohol will be consumed in that public park, to which Alderman Newman noted that is already the law, and Alderman Rainey said she did not care what's in the law but she does not think they care what's in the law which is why she is asking that a contract be drawn up saying, No Alcohol Will Be Consumed In That Park Our Police Department, who you know what they're put through on the 4'" of July, they're everywhere in this Town, and for them to have to baby sit this organization is most unfortunate. She is asking that if they determine that there is alcohol being consumed that that party be shut down on the spot. She does not think that is asking too much as we ask our residents not to drink in our parks. That park is a beautiful place, it has become a show place for this community and she does not want any negative reputation to be established by this one event. She has talked to Alderman Jean -Baptiste about this and knows he is extremely supportive, she trusts him and trusts that this group will adhere to the law but thinks a signup has to be made on the issue of no consumption of alcohol in the park. Also she did not see where the issue of insurance has been resolved. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not sure what is motivating Alderman Rainey to give the highest level of scrutiny to this organization, to which Alderman Rainey responded she is not. Alderman Jean -Baptiste went on to say the sponsor is an organization, not an individual, the individual happens to be the President of the organization. The history of this activity is that it evolved from a family neighborhood picnic that started over 10 or 15 years ago. The people who initially were sponsoring this were Evanston residents and have been Evanston residents since the early Page 17. 50's. As the community grows, more and more people come to this because they are away from home so traditions, festivals, activities, tend to attract people. If we were in New York or Miami, institutions have created by Haitian Americans over a long period of time and so the community at large has become accustomed to that group of Haitians getting together, doing major events. participation in politics. etc., etc. This is kind of new because this is an emerging group trying to establish tradition and consistency The individual whose home is in Romeoville is the President of the organization who has taken over organizing trine events that had become too big for the particular resident to continue to organize. This means that you have more people helping to secure the place, organize it, be sure that they clean up, etc., etc. He agrees that as it gotten bigger and Canal Park could not accommodate them. therefore, you had people spilling over, double parking, etc. As the policy of the City begins to require that this group goes through a certain process, then that group also begins to accommodate itself. It is has not been 100%, there have been problems with parking because there was never enough parking there which will now be resolved because there will be adequate parking. People have drunk in the park but the organizers have not condoned drinking. People did sneak liquor in, as they sneak liquor in to drink at the lake for the 4=' of July which is not condoned. This group has heightened its vigilance and has said to the community there will be no liquor consumption in the park, but the group is not going to be able to police every individual. The call is out to monitor people's behavior but this group will not be able to walk around and implement and throw people out, they'll tell them not to do it, throw the bottle away or put the bottle away. The group is vigilant about those issues because that criticism has been made. Regarding firecrackers and fireworks he does not think that was on the proposal nor does he think people intend to do that. As for babysitting this organization, at this organization there has never been a violent act throughout the 12 to 15 years that this picnic has been going on, People go to the park, they play their music, they consume their food, and they interact with each other. This has been a cross-section of people throughout the community that have come out, other Caribbean people. American folks have come out, without incident. He would also like to place this in a different context. January 2004 will be the Bicentennial of Haitian independence. People want to use American Independence as a date to celebrate as well because it is not known to everyone but Haitian participated in the Battle of Savannah at all levels with American society and has brought about a lot of good things and as we know Jean -Baptiste DuSabel was the founder of Chicago. In order for us to work things out together we have to be able to accommodate each other. We can't throw the baby out with the bath water, we can't take the harsh position that targets this particular group as if it has something that its doing that's rocking the boat to such an extent, its not. He knows that earlier Alderman Rainey put out this e-mail and he is just trying to calm your nerves to know that some of the residents live in your ward. Alderman Rainey said she was not secretive about her e-mail, to which Jean -Baptiste noted he did not get one but that's okay. Alderman Rainey said the e-mail was sent to all the staff. Alderman Jean-Bapbste said the reality about the Haitian community is that you don't hardly read about them in the criminal tabloids, the folks are hard working, they do what they have to do and when they have an opportunity to come together with their own, they try to party and try to celebrate their cultural events. But they're not about to tilt James Park and besides although the census doesn't give us a chance to access how many Haitians live in this City a whole bunch of them live here and a whole bunch of them own homes, a whole bunch of them pay taxes. He does not think they are going to rock the boat, he thinks they're going to be very careful because they want the party to exist. Alderman Rainey said she would be diametrically opposed to the Daughters of the American Revolution having 6 - speakers blaring at 11:00 at night. She does not care what group is in that park, 300 people cannot be violating the law drinking or playing a speaker at 11.00 at night. She's not even certain how this special events thing works, evidently everybody makes the decision and once the decision is made we're told about it. Alderman Newman said an Interesting point an the loud speaker permits, he gets a lot of loud speaker permits that are copied to him and they are approved at the City Manager's office and its not treated as if there's a special event. He would like to understand Is when we approve the special event are we also approving the loud speaker permit as part of it? Mr. Gaynor said if it's requested it's on the application and that's the answer. We make the recommendation if the committee approves it then the City Managers office will issue a permit Alderman Newman said there's a requestT on the hours but is there any problem with having the speakers go off at 9:00 p.m. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he - thought some representatives might have a problem with that as he thinks the ordinance says that speakers can go unfit 11:00 at night and they have to be a least 150 feet from the closest resident and thinks those speakers will be 150 feet away. Again this year the 4"' of July is on a Friday night and people all over the City will be celebrating. He asked what time the lake activities are over and was told about 9:00 or 10:00. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Aldermen Tisdahl is proposing a compromise that the music can go on until 10:00, Alderman Tisdahl said the 4U, of July everybody is up until 10:00 and asked Alderman Rainey if that is okay with her, to which Alderman Rainey said _ yes, this decision has already been made. There's going to be drinking in that park and she is totally opposed to that and you have said there is nothing anybody can do, Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the law is the law people are supposed to follow it, he is saying that the organization that sponsors it has committed to no consumption of alcohol in the park. What Alderman Newman wanted to be clear on in terms of the way we handle these events, he does not - hear you saying and he hopes you're agreeing that if this organization doesn't run the event the way they're representing it if they come back next year for James Park hereafter that's going to be taken into consideration. All = these things that are being represented as there's not going to be any drinking and hopefully there's not going to be Page I S. any drinking sponsored or promoted by the organization and they're going to be responsible for curtailing it within the scope of their event. Alderman Rainey said its nice that they have Alderman Jean -Baptiste to represent the organization but she would like to hear from the organization if they concur with what you're saying, if they agree. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they concur with what you condone they would not be serving liquor to which Alderman Rainey said she would like to hear that herself. Marie Toussaint of 720 Dobson, said in terms of the drinking they have been making public announcements on a radio station on Sundays and also on Saturdays. We have been making these announcements as we do every year, everyone knows the law. She is also an attorney so she knows that law of the City of Evanston period is there is no drinking in the park. We can't go and monitor everyone but certainly we can endorse the no drinking in the park. If we see someone drinking, put it away. The police obviously will be there and she has to say its 20 years not 12 years this has been going on since she was a teenager. We've never had any problems, basically to be honest with you she thinks the police enjoy the festival. In terms of following the rules and trying to enforce the law as much as they can that will be done and has been done every year and really does not think you have to worry about it We will do our best. Alderman Newman moved to aoarove the event with the understanding that Its until 10:00 at nlaht and as for music Plavinq at soeclal events we ask that the music not go as late. A vote was taken by Alderman Newman, motion unanimousiv Gassed (5-0). Xlll. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 11:02 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey TrotAky, Departme of Health & Human Services Page 19. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - July 7, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman, and Tisdahl Roger Crum. Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Bob Dornecker, Paula Haynes, Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Mayor Morton, Alderman Rainey, Sylvester Hilliard, (Township Office); Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor's Office); See Attached List of Attendees Alderman Newman Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7;10 p.m. tl. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JUNE 2, 2003 The minutes of the June 2, 2003 meeting were called and unanimously approved (4-01. (Alderman Jean -Baptiste was not present at this time.) III. CONSIDERATION OF THE JUNE 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl moved for approval of the June 2003 Township Monthly bills, motion seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Newman questioned if it is known why the client cases are up to 89. Mc Hilliard said looking back at the quarter, April, May, and June, they are under their budgeted amount. They budgeted for 85 clients and those figures were at 83.2, thus for the quater they are still under the budgeted amount. This information was submitted as of the 2e of June when they had to stop in order to take the time to get the packet to the Human Services Committee. Since that time they have terminated about 7 clients. Alderman Newman said then this number is actually 82 clients. Hearing no further discussion of the Township bills or questions for the Township staff, Alderman Newman recalled the motion for approval of the Township bills, motion unanimously approved (4-01. (Alderman Jean -Baptiste was not present at this time.) IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE HOMELESS TASK FORCE CONTINUUM OF CAREWUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS Alderman Newman tailed for approval of the Homeless Task Force Continuum of Care/Fundina Recommendations. Alderman Feldman moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Hearina no discussion reaardinq this motion, the motion was unanimously approved (5-0.) (At this time Alderman Jean - Baptiste entered the meeting.) V. COMMUN ICATIONS: A) EVANSTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY ICE CREAM SOCIAL, SEPTEMBER 20, 2003 The committee unanimously accepted the communication for this event (6-01 B) HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION COMMUNITY ISSUES PROTOCOL Alderman Newman said he spoke to the Human Relations Chair Mr. Cervantes who asked that this be held until the September Human Services Committee meeting. Alderman Newman could not see any problem in doing this and asked HSC Minutes 7/7/03 Page 1. if this is acceptable to the other committee members, which ail members agreed was acceptable. The committee unanimously accepted the Human Relations Commission communication (5-01. V1. APPROVAL OF SPECIAL EVENTS: A) Alderman Newman called for approval of the request to use Ingram Park for the EvanstonlBelize Day in the Park Picnic, Auqust 23, 2003. Alderman Feldman moved for anoroval. seconded by Alderman Bernstein. Hearinq no further discussion, motion called and unanimously anoroved 5-0. B) Alderman Newman called for approval of the request to use Twiggs Park for the Kid Bunch Back to School Picnic, August 16, 2003. Alderman Feldman moved for anoroval. seconded by Alderman Newman. Hearinq no further discussion, motion called and unanimously aouroved 15- 1 VII. STATUS REPORT ON GROSS POINT LIGHTHOUSE DISTRICT Alderman Newman asked if all that is being done on the Lighthouse issue is appointing the committee? Alderman Tisdahl said there have been many people volunteering and she is so terrible at saying no, especially to people who have volunteered for years in the Garden and the Butterfly Garden. She would like to warn you that she might want one or two volunteers who are eager to serve_ Alderman Newman asked who is appointing this committee and who appoints the Board member from the Lighthouse Park District. Alderman Tisdahl said she would assume the Lighthouse Park District Committee, the Evanston Arts Center, and Design Evanston would appoint that person. Alderman Newman asked if in a sense a Task Force is being appointed by the Human Services Committee. Ms. Aiello said that is a special committee to which Alderman Newman asked if that's a special committee that is going to report to the Human Services Committee. Alderman Feldman asked if any design of the membership was thought about besides those who volunteered by which essential bodies. Alderman Tisdahl responded the Lighthouse Park District, as obviously they work on the Lighthouse and raise money for it, the Evanston Arts Center has a major interest there, and the Evanston Environmental Association has camps there. They were hoping we would use their expertise. The Recreation Board is self-explanatory and we wanted some residents who did not We in that immediate area because the Lighthouse is part of the Evanston Park System and people come there from all over. It's the second most used beach in the City. Alderman Berstein asked Alderman Tisdahl if they are looking for the ability to put on additional volunteers, to which Alderman Tisdahl responded she would like at least one additional volunteer. There are people who have worked there for years to which Alderman Bernstein asked if that is different than at large Evanston residents. Alderman Tisdahl thought it is wonderful that people are volunteering to do that and people who volunteer frequently work harder on a committee than people who were appointed to represent a group Alderman Newman said he looked at the timetable and thinks its good that the members of the Task Force are going to meet with the Human Services Committee on multiple occasions as this Task Force needs to get a sense of where we are on the issues and we need a little more definition of what the issues are. For example, we need to be reminded what the $2,200.000 is for, we know there are capital needs out there. The reason he would like to have a close collaboration is he would not like to have the people from the Lighthouse Park District or the Arts Center get the idea that the City is picking up the entire $2,200,000 tab. He likes the Planning Commission, the Preservation Commission, the Recreation Board, they all come up with great ideas and it is always our responsibility as the Council to figure out how to pay for them. He thinks there needs to be some sensitivity and a collaborative effort by the interested parties who are involved here to pick up this tab. At the end of the day we're not going to come up with a lot of great ideas and say, City find a way to pay for the $2.200,000, although that may be the outcome but he is hoping that is not the outcome. He thinks we will have the opportunity to talk about that with the Task Force because the implication here is in August we're going to meet the committee or get an update, then from October to December periodic status updates will be given to the Human Services Committee to know what is going on and have an idea where people are coming out on it, which sounds good. Alderman Feldman just wanted to emphasize the point regarding fiscal responsibilities. His experience is committees like this have a purpose which is to do certain things, things that cost money and they find justification for that. There may be justification, he's not suggesting that those are fantasies. However, from his point of view its always helpful to have a part of that committee be very realistic and express the idea that every choice made here is a choice that will have an effect on some other thing that we're going to do. These represent choices and he would like some kind of advocacy for a realistic understanding of that on the committee. If Alderman Tisdahl can do that it would be Fine with him. Alderman HSC Minutes V7103 Page 2. Tisdahl said they'd be happy to invite Alderman Feldman to address the committee. Alderman Feldman said in the everyday discussions that the City is going to spend money that it could spend some other way we have to have a very good reason for that and its necessary for that point of view to always be in the background. Alderman Bernstein thought that this purpose or goal statement puts reality in the foreground because they're talking about how do we fund the approximate S2,200,000 of capital need. From what he read about it he gets the sense that they were going to identify needs and then come to us and say fund these. The fact that they can't find sources they understand they're subject to the prioritization that we have to do w:th every program. He was glad to see that statement in there because he thought it was a realization that the goal should be to find a methodology other than capital funds from the City to fund their goals. Alderman Newman said the reason he brought this up is he recalls when we had this discussion on these issues and looked to see who owns what land. One can argue that as an alternative for dealing with some of the capital needs, and if he remembers part of the reason some of the capital needs are running up, is we have a dysfunctional system the dysfunction is the Lighthouse Park District of the City of Evanston Park District and to some extent the original Park District. One could argue we don't need Lighthouse Park District or we don't need the original. When there was a list of duplicate unnecessary governments put out by the state the original Lighthouse was on it Part of the problem with the Lighthouse is they are landowners so you don't have one entity managing all that property up there. One of the solutions could be, and he is not sure this Task Force is going to look at it, whether or not the Lighthouse really ought to exist, then you would have one common land owner. Alderman Tisdahl said you would lose the extra money that they put in, to which Alderman Newman said you would only lose it because the people in that particular district are being taxed extra. For example, the people in Ridgeville pay $500,000 a year taxes as an aggregate that the rest of the City doesn't pay for the Ridgeville District He does not know what we pay for the Lighthouse, he would think its substantially less. Ms. Aiello said its only about $60,000 because right now its paying for one employee which is part of their problem they have maintenance issues and have increased their referendum which she believes is why they want to double that amount. Alderman Tisdahl thought that was doubled as that amount sounded too good. Ms. Aiello said they also have some grants to fix the Lighthouse itself for a significant amount of money. Alderman Newman said the S60,000 just being paid by the people in the Lighthouse District might be spread across the entire City and have everybody's taxes go up about ten or twenty cents but then you would put the City or some entity in the position of handling all that land efficiently instead of having two separate tax bodies. He is just throwing that out, it may be that the Lighthouse Park District is the best idea we ever had and there's great reasons to have it, he just hopes we're not deferring maintenance up there because you have different land owners. Alderman Tisdahl said they are deferring maintenance because they're deferring it all over town. Alderman Feldman noted the process for changing ownership is a difficult one and requires a Citywide vote. A Citywide vote should include everyone the majority of the people in the district and the majority of the people in the City has to accept the dissolution of the Park District and the taking over by the Evanston Park District Alderman Newman said he understands that but you would never be able to get rid of any unnecessary form of government if you didn't accept the view that sometimes you are going to have to go out to a referendum. He thinks its confusing to have multiple Park Districts and would be willing to wager that virtually none of the people who live in the Lighthouse Park District know what the Lighthouse Park District is or know what the responsibilities of that taxing body is. He could bring a lot of confusion in the community about Ridgeville. He is just putting that out there, its an idea it might be the wrong idea but it does not make any sense to him to have different land owners, something he will raise at another time. Getting back to the committee, this committee will be appointed within the next 30 days and come to us at the August meeting. Alderman Bernstein said he would like to make a motion to the amendment to add one additional voluntary memberto that committee that would be a third at large Evanston resident Alderman Newman added that would be two oeoule Inside the district and one person outside the district and called for a vote on the motion as amended. Motion unanimously accepted f5-0). Vlll. CHANGE IN HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETING DATE At this time Alderman Newman brought up that a different date will be needed for the August Human Services Committee meeting and moved to change the August meeting date from August 4"' to August 11"1 at 7:30 p.m. Change of meeting date and time unanimously accepted by all committee members. HSC Minutes 7l7103 Page 3. iX. PRESENTATION: ROBERT CROWN CENTER EVALUATION OF EXISTING FACILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT Mr. Gaynor introduced Andrew Metter, Consultant with A. Epstein and Sons International. Inc., the consultant selected to do the study. A month ago Mr. Metter made a presentation to the Recreation Board and last month and gave a very brief presentation at the Council. He is here tonight to give a comprehensive report on his and his team's findings, to make some recommendations, and discuss what the next steps are. Alderman Newman inquired how will what Mr. Metter is about to do tonight differ from what was already presented at the City Council. Mr. Metter said you had a 10 to 12 minute presentation, this will show you some methodologies and pieces of categories that were thoroughly examined though the heating and cooling systems, traffic situations, plumbing and sewer system and a variety of other ice equipment that wdI be talked about in detail to give you a good feel of how in depth this was evaluated. You're getting into two choices of what to do. Alderman Newman asked how much time this will take, to which Mr. Metter said this will take about 30 to 35 minutes to which Alderman Newman said that will do it because one of the basic issues we have is to start at some point to discuss if we want to build new or whether or not we want to rehab, we would like you to give us costs on both. Besides your presentation he would also like you to address for this committee the issue if we did a rehab of the building what the affect would be on the current program, does it assume the building would be closed during that period of time. Whether the ice rink would be closed, whether the gym would be closed, or whether the entire building would have to be dosed and for what period of time to enable us to understand that. Mr. Metter said one of the big differences this time is he brought his consultants with him so if there are more specific questions about any of the issues structural, mechanical, or electrical there are people here to answer that. The last time he did the presentation by himself in about 10 minutes and now we can go further in depth into any of those issues. When we get to address any of the individual items we can talk about whether or not the building has to be closed. Mr. Metter said this is fairly similar to the presentation he gave to the City Council but questions can be asked during this presentation. Alderman Newman said he just wanted it understood that all five of the Aldermen on this committee heard Mr. Mettees 12 minute presentation. Mr. Metter said the outline for the report basically was architectural in terms of looking at the interior and exterior of the building, the condition of the masonry, the condition of the building enclosure, the condition of the interior finishes, an ADA accessibility survey, and interviews with a number of people that are running programs inside the building. This was done in an effort to show a forensic analysis of what is physically wrong with the building, what would it take to fix the building, and what would it take to bring it up to code without doing any program changes to the code given the same programs. We also went through an analysis of the civil engineering on the flooding issues, structural engineering issues and checked them according to the current building codes. His philosophy is people have asked that it conforms to the building code at the time it was built. We did not do an analysis to determine whether it conformed to the building code at the time it was built we asked the relevant question does it confirm to the building code now. Standards and all the other disciplines have been raised since then but that is not the situation now. Again, the plans were drawn and the analysis was done and the building lends itself to thinking about it in terms of the smallest spaces versus the larger spaces. Essentially the larger spaces, which are the gym and senior rink and the main rink, require a different kind of work than the smaller spaces require. We did not get much into the program but from what he heard about the building in terms of interviews the smaller spaces require more programmatic changes obviously than the larger spaces. A gym is a gym and a rink is a rink the question then becomes with those larger spaces are they adequate structurally functional. We did extensive analysis with the mechanical spaces in terms of the building code for the teen room and staff washrooms. The grandstands are another issue, which he did not explain in any detail at the previous presentation. The grandstands require quite a bit of renovation in terms of the seating a lot of it is deteriorated and cracked and falling apart. But also in terms of the accessibility issue for handicapped seating we need to put in lifts, we need to increase the number of seats, take out bleacher seating and put in spaces for wheelchairs. We also need to apply sprinklers aver the grandstand area, in fact over the entire building but its an omission there it wasn't really sprinklered to begin within the original plans. In terms of projects for the building we grouped them by estimates rather than by trade for the concrete work, metal work, skylight work, we grouped the projects within the building that needed to be done to bring the building up to code by category. He thought it would be more legible and understandable what we're getting for this amount of money building outside renovation, interior work renovation, fixing the office, making new bathrooms expanding them, to categorize and organize a report that way and put a dollar figure on each one of those rather than doing it by trade is explanatory. Alderman Newman asked if page 2 in the overall report represents estimates for a new building. Mr. Metter said it was actually put in the executive summary to which Alderman Newman said he understands that but to come up with a figure of $12,800.000 for a new building going back to page 2 you have Phasing Costs for the Report Recommendations and then you have A, B, and C, which seem to add up to over $4,000,000 does that represent what it would take to rehab the existing building. He thought he got a higher figure from you and to get 15 years it would cost $6,000,000 to $8,000,000. Mr. Metter said he believed it was $6,000,000 for renovating. Alderman Newman asked what A, B, and C, means in the report, as they seem to add up to a little over 54,000,000. Mr. Metter said there is A, B, C, and a D which adds up to HSC Minutes 7/7103 Page 4. $6,000,000. Alderman Newman said one of the overall major issues for us is the cost of 10 to 15 years versus the cost of reconstruction and asked Mr. Metter to stay focused on those numbers. Alderman Feldman said he is pretty well set on the general idea of what needs to be done in order to get this building up to shape. What he would like the presentation to focus on is the discussion of the relative values and opportunities both for a new building and what that means in terms of possible program changes. Also, he has already read that even if the building was renovated exactly as it is now we are short two female dressing rooms and other additional space that would require a larger building. He asked Mr. Metter if that is correct. to which Mr. Metter responded he would like to focus on those issues and thinks this a great forum for discussion of those issues. We were hired to do a forensic analysis of this building, not a program analysis, not what's missing or lacking in the program or this or that. It was made very clear to him they were hired to see what was wrong with this building physically, what would it take to make it watertight and stop flooding problems and all kinds of repair structurally, to repair the skylight, roofing and this and that, which we did. We were asked to do that to rehab, bring it up to code, and the dollar amount. Then we were asked to look at a new building or reconstruction of the building with the exact same program, we did not go into any king of program analysis or what needed to be different or the community needs. or the costs to replicate for the same programs. That's the comparison that we have to date in this report. If the discussion is about the program, where should we go in terms of City meetings, to rebuild or not rebuild, that is a policy discussion that we did not concentrate on. We did not do a program on teen rooms. Alderman Newman said the dressing room issue was added by the staff. Mr. Gaynor said the charge to the consultants was to do an analysis of the physical plant and as you recall the staff originally came forward to City Council to propose that a Study be done on the existing program, does it meet or accommodate or should we look at that part of it. The Council said, no, first do this analysis and a consultant did the analysis as he was directed. If you look at the study, the study says in order to meet codes, ADA and those kinds of things using the existing facility you will have to take some existing space away in order to accommodate the ADA and some of the other issues. We have no locker rooms for female skaters, we've got four locker rooms for two teams in one and two teams in the other. When there is a young or adult woman skating she uses the rest room, but that wasn't really in the analysis until this was asked for. One of the considerations that should be looked at by this committee and City Council is should we now do the needs study on the program site based on the fact that the recommendation is for this amount money you can fix the facility. Mr. Metter is ready to talk about whether you have to close it down in total while you're fixing it or you can close certain portions down, etc., and it will last you'X' amount of additional years. Or, build a new facility and whether you can keep the old facility up and running while you're building the new facility, those are some of the things he can talk about. Alderman Newman remarked there has been a brief presentation at Council where they went through this and gave us the figure something like $5,600,000 to $6.000,000 to rehab that would last 10 to 15 years. A new building for $13,000,000 would have a life of 25 to 30 years. Alderman Newman asked if it is the sense of the committee that we want to have another presentation or does the committee want to ask questions. The committee wanted to ask questions. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Metter if we choose to extend the 55,500,000 to rehab the current building could he describe for us what would happen, over what period of time, and how the programs at Crown would be affected during that period of time. Mr. Metter said what he recommended in terms of the basic report was that Phase A describes some of the life safety work that had to be done, specifically with refrigeration requirements. There was a gas connection and an exhaust system that had to be installed and then a recommended number of compressors that had to be put in. The gas connections system and the exhaust system are mechanical and he does not believe the building would have to be shut down for that. Obviously when putting compressors on line there will be some down time but they have not done an analysis to figure "X" amount of days. Program wise the two breaks will experience some down time because of the compressor replacement Alderman Newman asked how much time are you talking about for this down time, to which Mr, Metter said everything will be lined up ahead of time and then they come in and do the work which will probably take a couple of weeks. Alderman Newman said that's valuable information, we would be able to operate an ice skating program or whatever we're doing now with only a two week down time which is not much time. Mr. Metter said that is work that is recommended as life safety work and assessed code issues. In terms of the architectural work from the exterior of the building there are a few items, the cleaning of the masonry walls, repairing the masonry, that can all obviously be done while the building is occupied. The exterior can be renovated while the building is occupied in terms of the masonry work. He does not think there will be any down time for the renovation of the exterior. The other part of the skin of the building that is critical is the roofing and the skylight work. A roof area has to be replaced and we're recommending the skylights be replaced. We're talking about replacing the roof of area and patching the roofing on the other areas, also skylight replacement. Tom Smith, Consultant, pointed out on the roof area where they recommend that we do a complete replacement of the roof membranes because there's some water in the membrane. All of the roofing work itself can done while the building is in operation so there will won't be disruption there. It is recommended that there is replacement of all three skylights. HSC Minutes 717103 Page 5. The triangular skylight siting right over the main floor like a grand central station dcwn mere we would be pulling off that skylight and putting in a new skylight that can't be done if you have people circulabng underneath We have two options. one is to go in when the middle of the buiicusg is not in operation but staff will be within ;dose work of the overhead so that when the sky5ght is pulled off if anything drops, hammers or whatever, no one will get injured The other thing would be to pull the skylight off at night. in terms cf the actual disruption operation we can do some night work that would allow that to take place without disruption. Aicerman Newman said that does not sound like that would cause any disruption at all. Mr. Smith said obviously doing on site there is going to be equipment and screws driven so there will be a little bit of noise but it should be well whhjn the range of not causing any operational disruption, Alderman Feldman wanted to get back to Me cost of renovation and the concept of 10 to 15 years of expected life of the building. He asked what does 10 to 15 years mean, you don't expect at that time the building will just collapse. Mr. Metter said right now if you look at the charts in the back of the report there are phases listed for mechanical, electrical equipment, etc., etc., you'll see equipment in the building that has a 15 year life span thats the estimate of the electrical work. Basically at the end of 13 years there's another couple of million that has to be put in and we did not go beyond that analysis of 10 to 15 years but it seems to be a never ending thing. These things are going to overlap in terms of phases, at the end of 10 to 15 years another group as it says in the review report is going to need replacement that`s another $250,000. At the end of 15 years the sub surface piping system for the ice rink will probably need replacement, that's $500,000 in the report on refrigeration. It's an old building, we're not replacing it or having a new building for $5.500,000 so there are changes in parts of it which are still left over and 26 years aid We need to identify the more egregious parts that need repair now, those will probably last for 25 to 30 years but there are other substantial parts of the building such as the refrigeration system and roofing that are going to begin to wear about 10 to 15 years which is what he means by 10 to 15 year life. For this amount of money you shouldn't expect to put in another million dollars of half a million dollars but after 15 years those other systems that we're not doing now wit start to need to be worked on. Alderman Feldman asked if we would be placed in a situation where we would have recurring maintenance issues, some major and some minor, to which Mr. Metter responded, yes that would be the situation. Alderman Feldman asked if you'd have a greater grace period with a new building but after that you'd have the same situation with things going wrong. What he Is trying to figure out is if we need a building because in 15 years we will have to replace a roof and in 16 years we will have to do something else, and in 17. 18. 19 20 years or whatever have do something else. Mr. Metter said that 's the information he's giving you, for S5,500,000 its probably good for 10 to 15 years, and then you have to start putting another couple of million into the building and then those will last for 30 years but after 15 years there will be other items. It's an old building built in 1974, making it 29 years old. Alderman Feldman said the difference between the two, getting up to a 30-year new building as opposed to a 15 year refurbished building is the longer you try to keep the building the more narrow the differences become in cost. If we're going to try to maintain the building for 20 to 25 more years, the difference between the S5,500,000 and the $13 000.000 becomes reduced as a result of the constant replacement. Mr. Metter added there are also issues which are number one, after we repair the building according to these remedies of drawings and sketches and recommendations, in the end can still affix. You're going to go into the main rink and go into the gym and see big white columns supporting walls. It's not going to be pretty there's going to be columns bolted to the floor, bolted to the walls and there's no architectural finishes put over them. The provision for them is we did kind of a bare bones budget there of what it takes to make the building habitable. The program issue is right now there is hardly any room to watch a basketball game nevertheless put in columns that take up another foot it, wouldn't be great it will be less than great. The second issue is program, he was in charge of looking at a program but its common sense, you've got one here, you fix all this up for $5,500,000 or $6,000,000 and you're stuck with the same program. Does the City need more preschool, more this or that, so until a full program analysis is done as to what does the community really need that hasn't changed. Alderman Feldman said that also means that in essence we will have a building designed 30 years ago and if we were to build a building today chances are there would be many, many things changed Not just the things that have to do with legal and code requirements but design and technology changes. Mr Metter said that is exactly why buildings have a life of 25 to 30 years. in this case it actually is the wail vents that have been cracked but usually its not that issue it's the inner guts that become outdated after the mechanical systems change and technology changes and we have a 30 system that needs better systems. You are right there would be so many things different, we would build the building in the low spot of the entire site so that it flows. Alderman Newman asked if Mr. Metter is saying if we spend the $5,500,000 people aren't going to be walking into a brand new looking building they will be walking into what looked like a lot of patch work because its not going to look that good. Where the ice rink is you're doing things people will see that don't really tit with what was originally done. You're not going to walk In after spending $5,500,000 and think you have a done building. Mr. Metter said you're going to stand out front and say what's different about this building, it will look cleaner, will be structurally sound and have a new roof and style and you will walk in and see fresh paint other finishes, and new skylights. But in the end it wilt look like the same building. Alderman Bernstein said he is still struggling with the obsolescence of a 29-year-old building. This is in a community where he lives in a 110-year-old structure and he knows the mechanics must go on and there are updates that need to be done. What frustrates him is that we're going to spend $13,000,000 for a life expectancy of 30 years. In effect you're HSC Minutes 7r7103 Page 6. rebuilding the shell and fixing the obsolete kinds of equipment and maintenance for them. Much of the $5,000,000 is going to be unseen for the compressor. the upgrade, the rink, and things of that nature. The people are probably not going to be aware of it. What will be readily apparent will be when we clean up bleachers as will be the new washrooms and locker rooms. His concern is the available space and if we starting to talk about jumping ahead to programmatic needs which clearly are gang to change from time to time, what can we put on that space, it's a small space. Alderman Bernstein said that is his concem because if we're talking in the context of rehab versus new and start talking about new, we're already undersized in terms of normal parking. He's guessing new might be two stones on the same foctpnnt or it might be bigger. He thinks we have to factor in those kinds of questions if we're talking about new, it's not just the function of dollars, new versus rehab. its a function of new that could be accommodated on that space. Mr. Metter said in terms of his Feld, forensically one of the drawbacks is that a lot of the walls inside of here are of trying to be friendly a lot of the walls inside of here are varying, the way the building was built with concrete block walls you really can't go in here but they said okay we're going to spend the money and now we also want to eliminate some offices and make two new preschool class rooms, or something like that which we did not get into. You cannot just take down those walls they're varying in structure the way the front part was designed next to the way the back parts that has larger spaces. It's going to be tough to go in there and change that a lot. Alderman Tisdahl asked if other cities replace their ice rinks every 30 years. She has been in a lot of ice ranks as her kids played hockey and that was not her impression. Mr. Metter said in a lot of other ice rinks the construction that he has seen he would venture a guess that 25 years more less they do. Alderman Tisdahl asked Mr. Metter if he thinks tt is typical for a city to replace an ice rink, to which Mr. Metter said it is not necessarily typical for a municipal building to wear out after 30 years. He does not think its typical at a community center building to be replaced every 30 years, but this particular building the way it was built that its underground, the fact that it flooded numerous times, the land that its built on has settled and cracked the walls, this particular building has those issues. Alderman Tisdahl said and you have no idea what a new building would cost to replace if changing the programs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Metter if he is also part of the of the firm that may bid on construction and renovation of a new building, Mr. Metter said he may or may not. Mr. Gaynor said they made it very clear during the interview that this was a study that would stand alone and any future studies whether it would be for program analysis or the next step to renovate, if we needed somebody professional to come in to do the plans and specifications for each time there would be a re -bid and Mr. Metters firm didn't have leg up or a leg down and would be treated as if it was a brand new project Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought based on the initial analysis we've seen about the building the key issues were where the building was built and the impact of that on this town dating on the structure of the building which was the main thing that shortened the life of the building. Most of the discussions about renovation was how to make this structurally sound, etc., etc. What we principally seem to be addressing is the resolution of a lot of internal problems. He knows the question was raised before as to what is the usual expected lifetime of some of these systems. We have not only been taken by where the building was built and how it was built but also the systems that were placed in the building. Alderman Newman asked what Alderman Jean -Baptiste meant by taken, does he mean taken advantage of because the wrong choices were made in 1974, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded, yes, that is what he means. Alderman Jean - Baptiste went on to say, remember part of the criticism is that the architect and the builder ended up building the building in a location that they should not have built it at which has caused many problems. Alderman Newman asked haw do we know without looking at the minutes of 1974 that maybe the architect and the builder were told this is where the building is going to be built Aiderman Jean -Baptiste asked, were told by whom, to which Alderman Newman responded, by the City Council, the City Manager, by the Parks and Recreation Director at the time as he does not know how this happened. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said whoever made the mistake, his understanding is that it was a mistake to have it built where it now stands. Alderman Newman asked if Alderman Jean -Baptiste is saying it might have been a mistake at the time for the builder not to inform us that this was a bad site. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said whether or not it was a question of informing, whether it was a question of not going forward and building it there, whether it was our internal error by our staff in identifying that as a proper location, whether the soil testing people didn't do the proper analysis, he does not know. He bets we h 3ve all come to understand that this was a bad spot. What he is saying is since this discussion in terms of the amount of money we have raised we would spend it toward renovating the building. It seems that the bulk of the money would go to do a lot of internal system replacement as opposed to doing something where we would see a major renovation that would look new. The space would look more attractive. We're talking about ending up with good systems, new systems, a building with usable space reduced because you will need to place columns in the building, etc., etc. In the end he is asking whether or not we receive proper warrantees, whether the internal system you want to replace were things that normally would be replaced at this time as well. Alderman Newman said Alderman Jean -Baptiste is raising a good point and asked Mr. Metter to comment on that Mr. Metter said he would say the answer is probably a mixture, he thinks there are systems within the building that after 30 years are expected to be replaced and he does not think you were taken by anybody as most of the mechanical systems after that time would normally need replacing. The codes were different at that time and our analysis is trying to bring this building up to today's codes as the codes have changes so we can't necessarily say that's the fault of the architect who HSC Minutes 7/7/03 Page 7. designed it when he was complying with the codes at that time. You say te building was built where it shouldn't be built, that's a complex issue. Alderman Newman asked if what we're doing would soive that problem or because we're at a bad site wiii that continue. he understands this is a fix but is 9 a permanent fix or because of that site will it put more pressure on the building. We know we have to fix it because of that. is that a probiern that you're recommending will be solved or if we fix it will it come back again down the line. Mr. Metter said this is a civil issue that the solution we described for the flooding will not be resigned with a 100-year storm and does not foresee aemg different 50 years from now. We feel that its time to further address the structural issue in terms of the settling and it is his understanding that its probably settled as much as its going to settle and probably not going to settle anymcre There's no guarantee but over 30 years A settled a certain amount and time analysis can be geotechnical versus anarfvs that it is probably not going to settle any more. We recommended setting a monitoring program over a period of a year to see if the building does settle and if it settles further over that period there is certain criteria to do some more soil tests and go in and see if it has to be stacked up. Another speculation is that if it does not settle the fixes we're suggesting has permanent fixes in that. Given the low point elevation of the building even in the soil here there are ways to deal with tnat, it can be built up. Alderman Newman said that is not an issue addressed in your estimate and you are speculating that the building will not settle any further, so are you saying we have to run the tests before we actually do a rehab, to •which Mr. Metter said, no. Mimi Peterson, from the audience, wondered if we know when was the last time the skylights were replaced and when the last time the roof was replaced. Mr. Smith said the original roof is still in place. In 1991 a new roof was put on what they did was put a layer of insulation in the existing roof and then applied the new roof so the roof you see is approyimately 12 years old, Thars about half of its life it's a really good manufacturer, one of the best around and the system that's on there that went on in1991 is an excellent system for this building. Ms. Peterson asked if this is on the B Part or the A Part of the building, to which Mr. Smith responded it is throughout the whole area The reason there was leakage was not because of a bad membrane it had to do with some wall cracks and then there was water coming in the skylight area so that was realty not a roofing problem but water getting into the system. That is the original skylight, two are the original skylights, one skylight that looks relatively new was probably put in 1991. looking at the original skylights those are plastic lenses and with that kind of age the plastic cracks, is exactly what you would expect for that lifetime. One of things he recommends is going bark to glass instead of plastic which costs a lot more and is much more energy efficient_ He would recommend replacing the curved skylight with plastic because to try to get glass into those is very expensive. Mr. Smith said he did his invesbgation last year and at that time it rained and the skylight was actually leaking. He gave some interim recommendations for maintenance type things. He does not know if those have been implemented as they were short- term things but the skylights were actively leaking a year ago, both the main and the others. Ms. Peterson said it there was a new building that had similar effect skylights with a similar type roof the roof was only half way through its life but the skylights are to be replaced with regular maintenance type items. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Peterson if she is saying if we built a new building we put skylights in the new building, to which Ms Peterson said she is saying those are regular maintenance items that we need to replace. Mr. Smith said the plastic skylights are less expensive but they have a shorter life, if we want them to last the initial cost would be quite a bit greater which is a trade off that you get. What you see in the skylights is they are just aging. Alderman Newman said just to be clear if we build a new building it may not have skylights. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we invest the $6,000,000 into this building, its still sitting at the same location, are we expecting similar problems to develop or could they develop. Tod Gerkel, consultant, said he could never give you any absolutes but what he could tell you is what has happened to the building thus far over its 30 year history. Alderman Newman interjected, the part of this decision is we need to focus on whether or not we're going to have additional settling, because if the settling is not over or if there's a substantial chance that there's going to be settling once we have done the repairs we need to know that Mr. Berkel said settlement is not necessarily always the issue, it's the differential — settlement that causes the problem. If the entire building would settle one inch it would probably not cause that much diffcuttywith the operation and most people wouldn't even notice that it happened What has happened atone place in ==__ particular on that wall of the ice rink is the grand stand has fallen further down than the exterior wall and the grand stand's = falling down pinches the door so the door no longer operates which everybody notices. Also, what has happened is the exterior wall has bowed out a little which everyone looks at and obviously doesn't know what to do about it. We do have _ a relatively easy repair fur that which is relatively inexpensive and is the only place where differential settlement has hurt this building. He can't say for any great certainty the building will not continue to settle but we have taken care of it in this particular spot There"s no reason to believe that because no other location in this building has had any problem over that 30-year history that over the next 30 years anything other than that detrimental should occur. We do not believe anything else to hinder the operation of the building will occur. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the roofer just indicated that the problem with the leaks are not problems related to the - quality of the roof and asked if the leaks are due to the differential settling. Mr. Berkel said the leaks are mostly due to — -_- the skylight and flashing, the water can get in by the skylight and the flashing that is adjacent to the skylight. If you get underneath the membrane you can get into all the insulation which just kind of ruin things. - HSC Minutes 7/7/03 Page 8. Alderman Newman wanted to get into settling, is what you were saying that there has been a differential settlement and by doing the remedial things it is your position that you don't expect the location of the building to be of any further problem for differential settlement It happened here, we're going to correct it but you don't have evidence that because we're on a poor site that its going to happen in other places over the next 10. 15, or 20 years. Then this was basically an exception and based on your study you do not expect it tc happen again, to witch Mr. Berkel said this is correct. Alderman Newman said that tells us something, whether we want to rely on it, Alderman Feldman could not refer to the $5,500,000 any more as the City's investment to refurbish the building because once we do that we're locked in to constant repair that we're going to get after 10 or 15 years and that money will soon add up to a lot more. The question we have to face very quickly is, is that the kind of building we want to put money into not just the S5,500,000 but lets say we have our sights up to 20 or 25 years, the $5,500,000 in another ten years we have to face a brand new building again. What he has teamed here is that we have a steady expense on this building starting from the S5,500.000 all the way through as long we own the building and we will have more of an expense on this building plus not have the ability to deal with what the needs of this community are. For some reason he can't believe that the needs of this community in terms of a building in that park including an ice rink is the same as it was 30 years ago. He is very much interested in that because if he knew that the program aspirations of this community were identical to what they were then and they're not a compelling need, that places a whole different story on this scenario. What we'd be doing then is just comparing the new with the old but we're doing much more than that. We're comparing an old building that going to cost significantly more than $5,500,000 over a period of time which a new building will not only be a new building but it will be a building that meets the needs in the community in much more significant ways than this does now. if we need that then we have to take that into consideration. We may not be able to afford this, but we have to know whether we need it or not and what the expirations and the needs of this community is regarding this particular building, which we should start thinking about Alderman Newman said he thinks where this is leading is the beginning of the discussion of rehab versus a new building and he does not know where people are after reading this report. This building was a rehab in 1980 and now we have a $20,000,000 bill. We have the bond for 20 years to get this S5,000.000 or S6,000,000 however" get it we'd be paying for that the building before the 20 years are up and would need addrbonat monies. He thinks where we've would gone right is we would have made 3 mistake to rehab the Levy Center we built it new which he thinks is a great building, we would have made a mistake with the Library and went and built a great building there. The City of Chicago tried twice to rehab Soldier's Field and spent mufti, multi millions before they figured that out they now spent 5 or 6 hundred million on. Alderman Feldman said the theme was just not to rehab but caused the change in all of those buildings including the Levy Center, including the Library and including Soldier's Field it was the rise in what we expected and what we demanded In those buildings. Alderman Newman said the reason he brought up Soldier's Field is after they rehabbed 4 twice they still had a bad building and the question is do we feel that the Crown Building itself, the way it works is so special or that its worth preserving by making the investment. What were hearing and what you generally hear about the Crown Building is you have the tremendous criticism of how dark and dingy it is in the central area and that it really has not been that great of a building no matter what the reasons were. We weren't here in 1974, is there an opinion on the committee about whether or not for the 10 or 15 years invest the $6,000,000 to save this building, do we want to continue to explore that. Alderman Bernstein said he would not preclude any possibility He thinks this building has been Largely an ice rink which has generated a lot of money the reduction of which revenue you have to contemplate because you're not going to build a new one without taking this one down unless you build it adjacent and then you don't have parking space and those problems attending to it His concern is just the physical status and what other programmatic needs of a new community center can be addressed on that space in that park, which is part of the equation he is concerned about. You also have to factor in we do have a new Levy Center with possible problematic uses in that building that we never had when this was up that's something that might offset what we have here. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Gaynor to what extent does the presence of the Levy Center alleviate any of the dernands at the Crown Center, Mr. Gaynor said he could start off speaking but Mr. Domecker can get into more specifics because he ran the Crown Center for 12 or 13 years. The Levy Center will not have any impact on the activities that currently are housed at the Crown Center unless we eliminate the Senior Citizen activities. The Crown Center starts at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. with day care programs that go right on through after school activities. The Levy Center is functioning Monday through Friday with senior programs so he does not see that as having any impact. Alderman Bernstein said we are also discussing concurrently with this discussion whether to rehab this existing Civic Center as a Civic Center. AN those programmatic needs could be addressed in a ne%v civic building so maybe that would address a new building the same type of footprint and same size footprint. These things are obviously not going to be decided tonight but he has a lot of questions. It would be $5.500,000 if we go out and bond initially in one year to do everything that Mr. Metter is talking about, which would be wonderful, and he thinks you would see changes in that building, but does not know if we necessarily have to do that. We have certain needs we have to address in the short HSC Minutes 717/03 Page 9. term which is why we asked him to do an analysis of the structure of the building rather than a programmatic analysis because we were concerned about the separation of the wall from the roof of the east side of the building and now we have yet a third opinion in the last 10 years. It's probably not going anywhere, to which Mr Berkel said you do need to fix it but its very easily fixed. Alderman Bernstein said we also do not have to do all the things that we're talking about here to be competitive. He sees some hockey people in the audience who can address the fact that there are new facilities that has sapped some of our revenues from this facility and sapped away some of the desirability of this facility as a hockey rink. We can put ,n the new compressors and new locker rooms, what is that going to generate for us in the short term. Alderman Newman wanted to raise the point if any of the 55.500,000 for the 10 or 15 years is optional, to which Alderman Bernstein said he thought it is all optional but does not thinks its at? necessary. Mr. Metter said we could probably talk to the Building Department and get them to grandfather in some terms of the previous code uses of the building. We don't go around to every old building in the City and say it has to conform to today's codes. There may be other code issues that the Building Department here may not enforce on specific recommendations. He would not feel comfortable in not recommending those like, sprinklers in the building. For other previous codes the buildings did not have to be sprinklered but according to today's code they have to be sprinklered life safety wise. We figure all new state file floors, painting everything, putting in new fighting in the whole facility, is optional. Yes, nobody is going to die if you don't put in new lighting or don't paint the walls but we put in that lighting because we consider it a basis right of passage if you're going to renovate the facility, Alderman Feldman thought getting the study was the right thing to do and now we have a very detailed list of what the building needs, what it costs to rehab, how long that rehabilitation will last without the infusion of significant amounts of money, what a new building on that footprint duplicating this particular building would cost, we have all of that One thing that's missing, and he is not in any way nearly prepared to make a decision on is whether we should rehab or build a new building. The reason he's not is that is the one critical thing that is absent, what our possible aspirations would be for a new building. He poses that this way, if there is no building on there now and we wanted to build a building with an ice rink to meet the needs of the community, what kind of building would it be, because that's the question that's we're facing. He's not certain that we can afford it but he certainly thinks it belongs in this equation because he can't vote on whether to replace. He would find it almost insane to say that we're going to duplicate this building 30 years later, who would do that. What we need to do is go to the next step, involve the community, involve the Recreation Department and get the necessary study as to what this building might represent to this community, what needs will it fulfill and take us into a new generation, It will respond to a new community because this community is not the same one that was here 30 years ago. People don't think the same way, act the same way, exercise the same way, or recreate the same way. Society has changed everything from day care to child rearing to senior citizen activities, etc. If we are going to build a new building, and he is not saying we are, wouldn't it be better to reflect all of those needs and aspirations, which is the absolute next step to take. Any discussion, at least from his point of view, about whether or not we're going to rehab for $5,500,000 plus, plus, plus, plus, or build a new building a new building exactly like this has to be deferred. Alderman Newman said he looks at this a little differently than Alderman Feldman does, he looks at this in terms of what we can afford and it might very well be that we want to have a new program at that building if we were going to maintain the current program. He has no doubt that what Alderman Feldman is saying, that the program we started with in 1974 is probably not the program that we would want today. If you were going to rehab and if you have a problem at the Crown Center in terms of needs you are going have to correct these problems One of things you would have to be willing to accept if you were going to go the rehab route is that your program for now really was not going to change very much. You would have to stay with the same program and if you wanted to stay with that same program because we can't afford something new this is what you'd have to pay to stay with same program. Before we get into a discussion of what the program ought to be in a new building. Alderman Feldman's point is should we have a discussion with the Recreation Board as to whether or not the current program that was started in 1974 is the way we will continue to go and spend $6,000,000, or are there compelling arguments that program should be different Alderman Semstein is raising a number of issues, he is raising the issue if we were to build a new building he suggests it shouldn't be in Crown Park and we should be looking at other sites in the community to consider a new building if we were going to go that route. What he interprets Alderman Bernstein's comments, as saying is he wants to take a took at doing some form of rehab in the building as opposed to looking at a new building. If we do the rehab you re not changing the program so the discussion Alderman Feldman suggested and maybe what we should talk about here is if we all got to the point where we would agree with Alderman Bernstein we have to talk to the Recreation Board and would we be making a mistake in keeping the same program for that amount of money or do we need something else. Alderman Feldman said if we're going to talk about the sense of rehabilitation he thinks we should also talk about what the real differences are in terms of expenses. He suggests that the major difference ties within the 10 to 15 years, that's the big difference, after that it drops dramatically. If we want to spend S9,000,000 over 20 years as opposed to S13,000,000 over 30 years then that's another issue. If somebody says all they want to do is spend the least amount of -- money and they are not even concerned with whether or not that's the best way to spend it, he thinks the dialogue we have to get into is what the real costs are not 55,500,000. Alderman Newman said we know the new building same HSC Minutes 7t7l03 Page 10. program is about S13,000,000 for 30 years, we don't know if we take the S5.500,000 will we get the 10 or 15 years. We haven't built that number up or what the rest of the building is going to take in order to get 30 more years. Alderman Newman asked if wth this S5,500,000 we spend are we basically starting over in 10 to 15 years. Mr. Metter said no, he thinks its a round robin because the things they do now doing are not going to be updated. Alderman Feldman brought up Mr. Metter just listed S2.000,000 in the first 2 or 3 years Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we can cenctude that Mr Metiers report answers some of our questions which were how much would it take to rehab. We now know that and know how much time that kind of renovation would buy us. The next question is that discussion that Alderman Feldman and Alderman Bernstein have highlighted whether or not its worth investing that amount of money into that building and if we were to think about a new building whether that's the priority sight at this time. That opens the door to an entirely different set of questions that we need to engage in the next few months to come to terms with what we will do Alderman Newman said what happens is until you make that decision if you went the route Alderman Feldman is suggesting you're going to have six months to a year to work on what the new program is going to be and the cost isn't necessarily going to be going up. The threshold question is really whether we as a community want to pursue rehab if we seriously want to look at rehab we need to think about what the figures are going to be over the 30 year period and talk to the Recreation Board and if we decide to rehab then we will rehab. Nobody is ruling it in or out of tonight's meeting, but at some point we have to get to that decision and will need a process to do that. Alderman Bernstein said we are now involved in the first part of the process. His recollection is this was in the works two and a half ago when we first voted these funds and talked about the rehab or reconstruction of the Crown Center. At that time he recalls the Recreation Board coming in and talking about a different sighting on land which would have taken away some of the park space for additional parking because there was an understanding that the existing configuration doesn't cover what we need now. The parking is grossly undersized and his concern is that we already have that history. He wants to talk about whether or not we can meet the programmatic needs of the community but he is not saying a quick fix or a cheap fix, but is also saying the question on that site is whether we can build a facility comparable to the Weber Center in Skokie, to which Alderman Newman interjected we are not there yet. Alderman Bernstein said he thought we started this discussion years ago because that's what the Recreation Board wanted to have that kind of a facility, a full service community center, we already had sited Crown. We deferred and talked about that and he is not saying this is forever. We have substantial short-term needs which can be addressed with less than this S5,500.000. Is this going to be the end deal, of course not, but is this going to generate the kind of revenue that our ice rink generated, is it going to be a facility that's comparable to the new facilities, yes, for less dollars that S5,000,000. Alderman Newman said from what he is hearing he did not think anybody contemplates not having an ice rink. A new facility with an ice rink should be able to duplicate the revenues of the ice rink we have right now. His question is whether or not we knock the building down and build on that site or build someplace else. Alderman Bernstein said he talked about putting an ice rink at the recycling center, it's a shell now and probably would cost less money to even have that as a second ice rink because the ice rinks generates a lot of dollars for us. Alderman Newman said they found out with the Levy Center Committee that anything you might want to do with that building probably is impossible because of the way its built. Alderman Bernstein said he is not ruling out anything. He's not ruling out that he can be persuaded that a good facility can be constructed on that space His sense now is there is not enough space there to do anything more ambitious than the programmatic concepts that we have there now. We're going to lose programs if we do the rehab they're talking about. We're going to have locker rooms to the exclusion of offices and some meeting space. There will be less space, we're going to pick up the ability of ADA compliance, to have a new child care center where now DCFS is going stop us from having a child care center. There will be trade offs and those kinds of things are visited in this study. He's not here to make a decision tonight, his concerns were initially to find out if its broke, obviously its broken, what we need to do to fax it, we have that study now. Now we have to enter into a discussion about what is better to best service the community not only for the next 10 or 15 years but 30, 40, 50 years. Alderman Newman asked if the Recreation Department has been going over this report. and are they going to be prepared to meet with us at some point, to which Mr; Gaynor responded, yes they are. Alderman Tisdahl said she would love to meet with the Recreation Board and absolutely have a recreation center to meet all our needs and hopes for the community for the next 20 years. But, right now the taxpayers are hurting, they're having a very difficult time paying their taxes and she is not sure she is very interested in rehabbing it as well. She is very curious as to what the cost would be and knows that you came up with $2,000,000 quickly but if we go out 30 years she would like some estimates as to what those costs would be. She is concerned for the hopes of taxpayers not to be stressed any more. This is not that bad an ice rink, as she has been to many an ice rinks and we're not doing all that badly. Alderman Newman asked for some numbers to compare to 30 years. Mr. Metter said some of the items that are known now to be obsolete 15 years from now that have to be replaced, the probability of the sub -service refrigeration can be put on the list but does not what else will be on that fist 15. 18. 20 years from now. He is not sure how we could say other HSC Minutes 717/03 Page 11. than we know a certain piece of equipment served a 15 year level now, they'll be at the 30 year level 15 years from now and that's the replacement thees`old after that he cannot say Alderman Bernstein said in the back of the book they tell you the expected life of the new rr.ecthanical equipment. We can talk about that but we can't tell what the cost replacement of "X" is going to be 15 years on, its maintenance and you're going to have maintenance in any building. He's looking for the maximum with tl1e r,,nirnum, he does not want to reinvent the wheel on this site but wants to make it a facility that is functional for its pu rose He's not saying it's a new purpose or its future purpose. but its purpose. We may be better served by knocking it dc'vr7 and starting again but does not know if the area in which it sits can accommodate that. Maybe we should build a ne,v `aoi,^y here on this space and he is not being self facetious because there are assets that we have and now is the time and probably a good time to convene on all of these discussions and talk about where we're going and what our Civic Center needs, what are our programmatic needs. where can we outfit our health center, this is the time to talk about these things Alderman Newman said 15 years after we got into this building we got a report that it was going to cost us $15,000,000 to fix. When you get into a situation that's not so good, and this building is not so good, there are a lot of problems and parking Is one of them. Unless we're sure what we come out with after we put the S5.500,000 or whatever amount in, that the community is not going to have another problem with it and have to do something about it in 10 years. The $5,500.000 buys you 10 years and for S12.000,000 or $13,000,000 it buys you closer to 30 years and he not so sure how we save the taxpayers by doing tte rehab although it is an option. He thinks the next thing we need to do is at some point is make a recommendation to the Council when we go to rehab or the new building that we have a report. We've had a little chance to talk about this, %ften can we get the Recreation Board in to talk to this committee. He asked it they can come to the August meeting for their comments and to talk about the report and some of the issues being raised tonight, Alderman Feldman's issue of the program now as compared to then, what we need now. Alderman Bernstein said this building has never functioned adequately as office space, there was never a reason for us to heat 14 feet high ceilings. He is probably going to be voting in favor of something new or different than this building. That's not the same consideration he sees at the Crown Center, which has functioned adequately for these 29 years. He thinks that's a pretty decent structure. He knows our Recreation Department Chairman would like to do something more grandiose, so would he given the available stakes, but he thinks that building has functioned and will continue to function well or even better than well with some improvements. Again, he can always be persuaded but he thinks this is a finite space. Alderman Newman said from the point of view of the program the ice-skating is great and the gym is fine if you have limited aspirations, as there is no place for people to sit for regular games. He thinks the ice rink has received the best reviews he has ever heard about the ice rink. The overall building itself is not a great building, its not inviting, its dark and dingy and wonders about the idea of putting in the amount for half a new building into a bad structure and is not comparing it to the point that maybe we never should have been in this building. in August our main agenda item will be meeting with the Recreation Board. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Metter if he giving an opinion on whether or not to rehab the building, as he said he sort of heard an opinion on what it's going to look like. Mr. Metter said he really believed whether to save or to demolish depends upon what are the needs of the community. What's the point of saving it if doesn't meet these needs, there's no point. As an Evanston resident the point of this facility is this satisfies a vibrant need for the greater community. He knows just frcm his interviews, that are documented in this report. that there is a need for more preschool space, day care function, access to playgrounds, one can go on and on. Is that something that wants to grow that there is a demand for and if so you have to seriously think about why you'd turn the building into the same program. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Metter if he's saying the program discussion will describe the decision as to whether or not you rehab. Mr. Metter said he doubts this lackluster response but if there is a lackluster response from the community then in a sense Alderman Bernstein is correct After the programming is you have to think when you start designing, we're starting to design a little early. What we were charged with was just a forensic analysis but there are questions to this and that. Alderman Newman asked that the Recreation Board be ready to talk to this committee about the program issues we're starting to get into tonight and answers specifically to Alderman Feldman's questions. Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor if the committee anatyscs of the Recreation Board is the wish list that they had years ago. There was a long, long list of items of what they wanted, what they perceived would be here which is where they were 3 or 4 years ago and he would like to see what that is. Ms. Peterson said she thinks you have come to the right decision to focus on whether to rehab or whether or rebuild. She does not think that the first priority should be programmatic needs especially with some of the programs we had and she hears wonderful, raving reviews about the ice skating rink, that's the programs we had and we're talking about shall we save the building. She thinks given the fact that the building was built in the 70's the City contributed bonds for $1,000,000 and with private partnerships and the fact that it is nearly 30 years old and falling down and into the ground because of the lack of regular maintenance to the building, the best thing we can do for a bargain is to spend S5 or $6,000,000 to keep what we have and make mistakes. We just built a brand new building at the Levy Center for how many million we're at B, 12, she's not sure but the same thing could happen to that building the site issues are similar and HSC Minutes 717iO3 Page 12. in 30 years is that one guing to be another Crown. There has to be an expected amount of maintenance you're going to support on that building, it's a brand new building. We're going to have to live within our means Certainty there is a wish list out there and we just need to consider that the original Crown Center building that was fo,-merly Global Park was a public private partnership that the City contributed bonding for S1.000,000 and a S1.000 000 that came from private residents. That should be considered and perhaps thought about as you go into these discussions. She thinks S5 or S6,000,000 is a bargain given that we have not taken care of that building and we can make it safe and allow people to continue to skate there which has been the primary function of that building. It hasn't been a.1 the other things the day care, etc., because there was no space available and she thinks if you go out and ask everybody in town how many things do they want you're going to get a laundry list like you got the last time That doesn't mean t!-.at given these economic times we can necessarily afford a S13 to S18.000,000 building and we should lump at the chance to repair it. Alderman Feldman said if adequacy is our value we wouldn't have spent all that money on James Park. People can play ball on all kinds of surfaces, he did, he played soccer on not drained fields. If our vision for this community is just adequacy then that's what we should do. We should pour $81$9,000.000 into a dark unattractrie building that there isn't a sole that he knows that thinks has any grace or beauty whatsoever, that barely meets our needs, that's what we should do, instead of thinking about what we might do. By the way, the concept of taxpayers is a very selective thing. If we all said we don't want to spend money, lets shut the budget down. We spend it in a lot of ways, this is just another way you have to compare it to all the other ways we spend money. You talk about putting a recreation center in a civic building, that's possible but that costs money too. All he's saying is give vision a chance and lets decide whether we want to make a big reach, lets decide whether its worth it because we do this all the time. We decide whether or not we want to spend money but whether its worth iL What value do we achieve, how much greater the community is because of what we did. We could have stayed in the old library, a book is a book, you go to the shelf and take a book- The community said, no, that's not our vision for ourselves or our children and we had the same vision for the Levy Center. He's not even suggesting that we'll make that decision, all he's saying is that we have to explore it we just don't say, dark is good enough, its not good enough. He's not trying to get anyone to commit to anything, just an examination of what's possible. Don't preclude it, make the decision whenever you can or whenever you can't or whenever you have to but examine what's possible and then decide. To now know what's possible and to make a decision is to sell the community short no matter how much you save. Saving money is not the end all, but what is the end all is to create a better and greater and more beautiful community with grace and beauty where people are proud and happy and exalted to live here. Alderman Bernstein said please don't misinterpret any of his comments to say that he's selling the citizens of Evanston short. If it's a question of adequate versus excellence he prefers excellence. He is a dreamer and also a realist and was part of the Council as were you that voted to increase our capital expenditures so we could improve James Park and maybe next we can improve yet another park. Everything in good time, given all the money in the world this place would look phenomenally wonderful, he would not design it as he has no taste. The question becomes given what we have to spend how are we best serving our needs. One day when all our condos kick in and the tax vase is expanded and new retail comes on line we may be living in a different Evanston. When the bill we're paying now from historical times, the sewers are paid for, and all other things we'll have more funds available with which we can capture the dream. What we should be talking about is vision, but right now he is talking about a functional facility that he wants to maintain its functionality. Alderman Newman said there's a core issue here, the S5,500,000 buys you 15 years and S13,000,000 of today's dollars buys you 30 years or maybe a little bit more. Remember on the Civic Center we got the first report in 1998 and then five years later the number went from $14,000,000 to 520,000,000 so to take that second 15 years we don't know what its going to cost. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we've opened the door to some discussions that we can have in the next meeting and future meetings to come to terms with what we are going to do, but right now the reality is we have beaten this horse to death. Alderman Newman said we have now spent an hour and twenty minutes on this item. as this is one of the bigger decisions that our committee will make in the next year. We have to flush out the issues on rehab versus going new which is extremely important. He would like to begin the issues of trying to narrow the issues to get to a decision and thinks this can be done by hearing from the Recreation Board, Maybe at the next meeting we have the hockey people give their comments on the type of rink so we can hear what some of their issues are. Alderman Newman thanked the consultants for their presentation this evening and the others that came tonight for this agenda item X. STATUS REPORT ON SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM AT KENDALL COLLEGE Alderman Newman noted this item is an addendum to tonight's agenda. The committee had some discussions about the possibility of Kendall College having some of our youths that the City is paying. instead of paying them and working here at the City we were exploring the idea of paying some of these youths and giving them the opportunity to work at HSC lamules 717/03 Page 13. Kendall. The City Manager was helping us work on that. Evidently there was a lack of communication on this and today those youths working at Kendall were told they could no longer work there, for whatever reason. Dickelle Fonda called Alderman Newman this morning and is here tonight regarding this issue. Dfskelle Forrda, said she is a parent of one of the five students fortunate enough to be hired by the City and be placed at Kendall College for the summer. Because of his record her son was hired to beat Kendall and has been therefor the last 2 and a half weeks which has been a wonderful experience for him. He'll be senior next year at ETHS. Ms. Fonda said she took the liberty last week to call her son's immediate supervisor just to get a sense about what the plan was for him because she was so impressed with this opportunity that he had been given to be there. The supervisor described some of the things her son had been doing, he had been documenting the network infrastructure which her son described is like architectural rendering. He was doing PC hardware upgrades, testing computer images and doing Internet troubleshooting among a variety of other plans they had for him. Unfortunately the kids were pulled from Kendall as of today and the City has reassigned them and probably tried placement for all 5 of those students. However, her concern and her call to Alderman Newman this morning was to let him know she wanted him to explain to her son and for her son to explain to his other four peers who started this wonderful job how this happened. Quite honestly she would like to know how this happened, was it miscommunication, just exactly what did happen. These are high school students and this is something that the adults who run City programs have suddenly changed their minds and pulled them from a program that was really instructive and good for them. She is here tonight to ask a couple of things, one she'd like to be able to go home tonight and explain to her son what happened and also to ask that whoever makes the decisions about where the students are placed that some consideration be given to finding an acceptable way to keep them there, because she is sure that being at the City or wherever they are placed will also be instructive and good placements for them. These five opportunities at Kendall were really quite magnificent and its a shame for them not to have that opportunity. She is hopeful that there is some way that those of you who make those decisions can reconsider it, Alderman Newman remarked a few years ago we were considering eliminating the Youth Job Program and Alderman Jean -Baptiste convinced a number of the aldermen that we should not eliminate but we should try to improve it He thought what we were going forward with was an experiment to try to get the students being paid by the City some better opportunities so that we could have a betterjustification for the 5230,000 spent on the program, After talking with people at Kendall he suggested this as a way to go and thought we were going to go that route on an experimental basis we weren't saying we were going to permanentty change the program. He appreciated the City Manager helping out trying to implement that at the time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Ms. Fonda is his constituent and called him when she found out about this. He saw her at the 4"i of July parade and they exchanged a -mails as to what was going on with the program. He was surprised to hear that the students were being pulled out of Kendall College. His surprise was only one of process, he was concerned about the process itself because in March 2003 this proposal was put on the agenda. In April he thought that the City Manager would have taken into consideration whatever the issues were with regards to whether Kendall College was going to pay or not pay was not the key issue to him. At the time he was called ii was why do we make those issues now because if those issues existed they existed in April and he thought why we would have gone forward and placed students there if we felt that we couldn't do so. To have gone later and pulled these students out of the program seems to him that we missed a step in the process of the implementation of this program after it was resolved. Once the students were placed there he thought whatever issues existed were resolved. Earlier he had some conversations with the Mayor and he emphasized to her his concern was process not so much whether ultimately we had the authority or whether or not the program itself could accommodate public payments for private placement or placement of our kinds in private places for free, that was not his issue. If ultimately our policy says we cannot then that is something we need to follow, but if we knew that at the time this was put on the table it should have been raised. If it was not raised in April in May and June when we were preparing to place the kids it should have been taken into consideration then and the kids would not have been placed there if the policy did not allow that to happen. if they were placed there then we should try to find someway to fix the problem but not necessarily displace the kids. As he said his concern was one of process and he did not know what was going on when this occurred. He spoke to the City Manager who agreed with him that this was a problem of process and said he can explain what went wrong in the process but ultimately we have to fix and establish whatever the policies are. Once we know what the policies are as we implement them we have to make sure we're consistent and take everything into consideration and not three months later try to undo what we have done for the same basis that we are claiming it should not have been done in the first place when we knew about it in April or May. The Mayor herself has a sense of what the issues are. Alderman Feldman did not understand how these students were taken out of the program and asked Mr. Crum who decided to take the students out and why wasn't this committee informed who was the genesis of that initiative, if it was the genesis of it. It would seem to him that a proper procedure would have been to come before this committee and say this is what we did, we have a significant problem we don't know how to resolve and this is what I think 1 might have to HSC Minutes 7i7103 Page 14. do. etc., etc., etc. If this committee was responsible for it was it suggested that it should come before this committee before those children were just yanked out Mr. Crum said he is not aware if this commi:!ee is the one that actually formed this attempt to make the program work. The idea came forth, it was discussed at the cornmMee. he made a decision both places, both wrong decisions. He made the decision to try to make the experiment and put it together. It actua,ty wasn't back in April because we had to work with Kendall to try to find the number of kids to gNe jobs and what extra jobs were appropriate. He and Ms. Haynes especially Ms. Haynes worked for about six weeks tr)r-ng the ins and outs, originally making a list of twenty some positions they wanted that was way beyond our means and finally narrowed it down to five positions. We talked it over and he decided that even thought it wasn't consistent wrath our past practice it wasn't within our policy to pay for anybody working elsewhere. Maybe it was worth a try and in the long nun we do need to look at these opportunities to try to place kids elsewhere and find a way to do it. The way -.%-e did R this time is one that is thought with risk, its City payroll and placing the kids under somebody else's supervision. which as any liability attorney will tell you that is not a good thing to do with kids. Putting them somewhere else you are "ally responsible but someone else actually has them in their control. We thought Kendall was probably a fairly safe p+ace to put them, the jobs were legitimate. However, you are correct he did overlook several steps of process and didn't even work with the Mayor who has been the spokesperson for the program for years. The Mayor puts her name on the letter that goes out to businesses that tells them here is a business opportunity to provide some money and hire kids and the City does the same for City employees. This is the first time ever he went beyond those guidelines and teed to place some kids on City payroll at a different entity. Recently when the Mayor had further discussions and told him that she had made a public commitment and this was not proper under the program, he and no one else made the decision to ask Ms. Haynes try to find over that decision. That's where he is at this time and he agrees this was not handled property. Alderman Newman remarked that we always said this was going to be an experiment and we were tying to find a way to see whether or not with us paying we could get some high quality placements What he finds unfortunate about this is that all the issues that are now here could have been identified at the time we decided to run the experiment. He thinks it was the intent of the City, which in part was brought up at the committee, to go forward with the experiment and all of a sudden it stopped. What he would like to know is, is there anything written anywhere as to what these policies are because he asked for that and asked that be brought to tonight's meeting. In this particular issue he is not interested in somebody telling him what they thought the oral policies were, he wants to see something with what the policies are because no one member of the Council or any elected official by themselves has the right to determine what those policies are. He thinks that is very important and asked if there are any written policies or anything written for this program that say how it is going to work. Mr. Crum said we do not have a specific protocol written that says we will actually never put them in the private sector and we assume that has been the past retard. Mr. Crum referred to Ms. Haynes to correct him on this, to which Ms. Haynes said it is pretty much so, the Mayor's letter that she sends out to the businesses in January or February indicates that businesses are expected to pay but beyond that there is no policy. Alderman Newman said at this point he had some comments for the Mayor to address. Mayor Morton said she really did not think this was a major issue and the situation has been resolved but she wished to talk with Ms. Fonda regarding the situation. She said she has previously spoken with Ms. Fonda and thought she understood when she explained to her about what happened and what her son's environment was going to be when he came to the City, he would have the same type of assignment. As to whether or rot her son understood what happened the Mayor said she did not know but she spoke to him herself this morning. The !aayor also met with representatives from the college and with the kids and the representative from Kendall talked to the kids and explained to them so they would understood when they came to the City they were going to have the same type of assignments. Alderman Newman asked the City Manager who is the administrator of this program, it Is the City Manager's office, do elected officials have a role in administering this program because he knows there are rules that the role of elected officials is purely legislative. The Mayor responded, it is, and she thinks Alderman Newman knows that. Alderman Newman asked the Mayor if she is managing this program, to which the Mayor said she did not handle this program, this program is the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program. When she came into office in 1993 the program was changed to include children from all economic backgrounds. It might have been a good idea to get enabling information of haw this program began because it preceded her being Mayor. She knows when she came in all the youths were considered at -risk and they changed the program to include all teenagers if they wished to apply and of course we have had a very good attendance of applicants at the job fair Alderman Newman asked Mayor Morton if because it's the Mayors special program does she interpret if the program is open to any changes, to which the Mayor responded of course, she thinks courtesy and professionalism would required that in view of the fact that the information that is sent out to the public comes over the signature of the Mayor. If there is anything that is going to be involved with this program and the Mayor has sent something out to the public. the Mayor should be certain that nothing should be done that Is contrary to anything that has been put out there by the Mayor that has been in effect for ten years. This is just an unfortunate circumstance that Mr. Jones of Kendall College was told by someone, and she thinks the person who told H5C Minutes 7f7l03 Page 15. him probably did not understand that this was not a free program for people in the community. Now in another year if the aldermen had to run it and they wished to ez:e: d d the community that's fine, just so people will know in advance. The Mayor sends out 1200 letters to the community whsc.7 tells you the extent of communication that is going on. There's another issue to this that there is quite a bit of fixing :o that and she is so sorry that this has come before us. Kendall College isn't happy with this and they woulc never, never have agreed to have this program in the beginning if they had known then how it is supposed to operate They p,,b not finance all of these kids but they never had the idea that what they would be doing would be something teat s arfferent from what we and the businesses in this community were doing something that would be very different than -wriat Nort-rwestern students and the educational institution is doing. So, we have an embarrassment there, however, sre wants to say that today there was one young lady who Kendall said they would like to have stay and then get that mcne"y from the President of the College to pay this person if the person wanted to stay. Well, unfortunately the young fatty did not wish to stay but they thought so well of her and in our conversation with her she decided that she would stay because tree were some advantages there and they're paying for one student there. Kendall was upset thinking that it was a program that was free to them and she does not think this Council or even this committee, according to the minutes she has read, ever said that this is something that was going to be free to Kendall College. She thinks this was just a miscommunication so that the issue is resolved, to which Alderman Newman remarked it has not be resolved. Alderman Newman went on to say the situation as is as Mr. Terry knows, Alderman Jean -Baptiste knows, Mr. Crum knows, and he thinks Ms. Haynes knows, that everybody here knew, he hopes and it it wasn't dear that when we approached Kendal we were going to be running an experiment, it was an experiment, which Mr. Crum basically previously said, we were going to have the City pay. There's no miscommunication here, the City was going to pay and we were actually going to place some students at Kendall in the hope of getting them some better experiences in cooking, graphic design, etc., as opposed to some of the jobs the students do here. It was absolutely dear that we were going to do an experiment and we talked about the experimental nature and trying to improve the Summer Youth Job Program. His concern is he does not know whose job it was, Madam Mayor, to tell him about it We were very open and discussed this here, he and Alderman Jean-6apbste discussed this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they had some discussions and his concern was he thought it was put on the agenda in the April meeting and the minutes reflect that there was some discussion about some kids being placed at Kendall College. From there on he would say our staff people who handle the program would have had to process this one way or another. Whether the processing led to it cannot be done or whether d can be done, that process had to go on. Mr. Crum is saying that in the processing of this he made some mistakes in terms of not informing the Mayor, so he thinks the discussion we are now having is whether or not there are means to which any of the Aldermen can make a suggestion as there are such needs. Alderman Newman interjected this is a program that is the City of Evanston's program whether or not its titled the Mayor's program it is paid for in the budget in the City of Evanston and if there aren't any written rules that have been passed by this committee then no rules rea'y exist for that program. Also, the administration of the program belongs to the City Manager, that's who members of the Council and the committee have to work with on administrative issues related to this program. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the question then is what is driving the City Manager in terms of his actions. Evidentially the City Manager thought this ►vas a good suggestion and he took the suggestion and went to implement it. Alderman Newman said what Akderman .lean -Baptiste is saying is that suggestion was one that the administrators of the program were open to. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is why his concern is not so much whether or not the policy allowed it but the process of implementation because we now are at the point of undoing what we started and are undoing it at the basis of something we already knew. We already knew that Kendall was not going to pay and the City was going to pay. He's not saying we start out from that supposition as a policy. He's not saying private agencies can get our kids and the City pays, he' not saying that's the policy as he does not know what the policy is other than that's the practice, evidentially we can draw out the policy from the practice. All he is saying is once you set this motion with the knowledge that the City would have to pay these kids and then later you change your mind on the basis that the City would have to pay these kids at Kendall College. to him there is a problem in the process in the first place. there's some failure there. The question is what is motivating our actions one way or another. He's not accepting any set of policies as factual as the way it thinks it was to be, but the process itself should have yielded at inception some objections that say we cannot go forward because the policy is -X', or once we start one then we've taken into account that policy and we cannot change our direction on the basis of just saying there are facts that we already know. We cannot say this is at fault now because of some facts that we already knew because these kids are anb City in terms of their placement and he understands they are being placed at the Coy now. Placed at the City doing what, is it productive, are they benefiting in the same way they would ordinarily benefit He heard the City Manager say he made an error, now he may want to explain to us what the error was in terms of what he knows now that he did not know then and that will clarify for us where we are and where we need to go. Mayor Morton asked if the entire City Council agrees to what do you were saying? Alderman Newman said Madam Mayor is sort of reversing this, the entire City Council never agreed to what you want to do with the program. There has been no vote of the City Council, there is no ordinance on this. Mayor Morton asked if the other four Aldermen know that a �_ commitment had been made to Kendall College to do what Alderman Newman was talking about. Alderman Newman _- said the committee was not told nor was it ever suggested to us by the City Manager or any other member of the staff HSC Minutes 717103 Page 16. that vre needed to go to the entire Council. We were told that the City Manager indicated he was open to the suggestion and he, Alderman Newman, had conversawns with the City Manager when the City Manager told him that this was going to go forward, to which Mayor Morton asked how did the City Manager make that decision. Alderman Newman said he made that decision because he is the administrator of the program, at budget time the Council gave him authority over the program. Alderman Bernstein said his recollection is that we had a minimal discussion here that it came to the City Council and Alderman Newman speaking on behalf of the committee made the representation. The Mayor was frustrated by that and when the issue was on the Council floor was not happy with the fact that it wasn't being administered through the Summer Youth Program. What he is hearing is in fact it was administered through the Summer Youth Program so your concern should have been addressed. Alderman Bernstein said quite honestly he wanted to vote against the Summer Youth Program two years ago because he did not think there is adequate supervision and does not see kids who are sweeping alleys get enough bang for our buck. He was moved to reconsider because he was told by a certain Alderman that family members actually expected these funds and counted on these funds to supplement their family's earnings. At that point in time Dick Peach from Evanston Small Businesses in the Chamber and he started to communicate with businesses to see if we could get businesses involved and maybe supplement their monies with City monies so these kids could have meaningful experiences. He knows the Mayor was opposed to this process involving Kendall College, but that happened on the floor of the Council and his recollection is talking to Mr. Crum who said he could work it out Now it's being administered by Ms. Haynes and he thinks it gives us a black eye to go back on something that has actually gone through the adequate process. Mayor Morton said, no that doesn't mean it gives us a black eye, one of the children had a job at the mailroom, the rest were placed in the computer department and asked Ms. Haynes if she recalls where the others were placed. Ms. Haynes said there were two placed in the Information Technology Department, two were chosen to deliver mail in the mailroom, one was assigned as an administrative assistant. The two kids were placed in the Information Services Department where they have kids install computers, troubleshoot, and do pretty much the kind of things Ms. Fonda indicated her son was doing at Kendall College. One of the mailroom students is here now and going to work in the City Building Division, the administrative aide is going to be working with Mark Franz and Donna Stuckert. They have all been placed in comparable work and probably even better. Alderman Tisdahl said she would claim we now know what we did not know in the April meeting. She did not know that the Mayor's letter had gone out to 1,200 businesses claiming they had to pay, that the City doesn't pat. Alderman Newman asked when does the Mayors letter go out, to which Ms. Haynes said she thought February 1 !. Alderman Tisdahl said it had already gone out by the time we had the April meeting and she also did not know that there was a liability problem if we paid for kids who went off our premises. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Crum if there is a liability problem, to which Mr. Crum said, yes there is a liability problem. For next year he would certainty encourage us to look this over and maybe doing some cost sharing with the private sector, but we do it on a grants basis where we provide the funds or half the funds or something that they match so that the key attraction is being hired on somebody else's payroll rather than our payroll and assigned elsewhere. There is a risk to doing that in general and he would have tried to work that out this year but in the long run we shouldn't have people working elsewhere that are on our payroll and are our liability. Alderman Newman said he appreciated that point and feels what has happened here is that the administrators of the program is the City Managers office and it was represented to him that this was not probtemabc. If those issues existed in terms of liability when we were talking about this the liability issue should have been told to us then. Now today for the first time he is hearing about the liability issues. He has had multiple conversations about this with the City Manager prior to today and never heard one peep about liability, until today the day that the children were removed from that program. To go a step further, when this was discussed two years ago Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to keep this program and made the statement to Alderman Newman that he wanted to improve the program and he, Alderman Newman, ended up voting for the program with reservations because he was trying to be sensitive to what Alderman Jean -Baptiste was saying, lets improve the program. At that point in time having wanted to eliminate the program, which has cut many positions that we need in the City, he found to be frustrating and wanted to make the program better. He thinks this was a very good experiment and a good opportunity to try something new. The City Manager is saying this is probably the direction we want to go. For whatever reason that experiment was stopped today. As far as he's concemed he has never known anything about this program, there's never been one ounce of accountability on where these kids end up, what benefit they get from our jobs, how they are selected for these jobs, what the income level is for this program. There is no policy statement on this program. If there is support for this experiment to go forward and he does not know that there is, he's open to the program going forward but is not open to it going forward with nothing written down as to what the policy is going to be. He does not want the policy to be made up, nor does he want the policy to be disagreed with, he wants the policy to be made by this committee, a policy that this program will finally have some accountability and some oversight because he thinks the way the program is being run now we're not open to suggestions on doing something HSC Minutes 7f7I03 Page 17_ new. A suggestion came in and it was cut off at the knees and as far as he is concerned we need to review this program. We need to decide what incomes are going to be el4ibte for this program, what grants we're going to go after for this program, etc. We should be having reports from the various departments on what these kids are doing, what is their attendance, how often do they get rehired, do they go on to other jobs Since he has been on the Human Services Committee we have never had any report on a=our;tacjl,ty for this program and we need to start getting into that. He is very frustrated because he brought the suggesion to Me City, this suggestion was not about anybody s turf it was about trying to make the program better. Some people m)grt want to try to view this in terms of turf but this is a good safe effort to try to make a City program better, He is frustrated by the way the termination occurred and does not know where we're going with this. What he does know is we need to revnery this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think Alderman Newman should personalize this as making a policy decision on the basis of his intervention. He thinks that the program in of rtseff is a good program, it's a positive program that helps youths in the community and is probably one of the few programs that focuses on trying to specifically assist youth in the summers. The process of improving it is one that needs to be looked at very closely, suggestions need to be made and maybe that debate has started. He asked the Mayor if something we can open up and figure out is what are the jurisdictional issues and who makes determinations of how we forward our suggestions, how do we implement them, what is the line of communications, and in the future do bring in other private partners to participate with the City to make it bigger and more attractive. If nothing else this discussion hopefully will focus us in a way that can help us to get to that end goal which is to make the program better than it is right now. This is not a criticism of what the program is, right now it is a question of it can always use improvement, it can always expand to include greater participation from our business community. He still does not think we have gotten to the point of trying to establish what is the line of authority. Alderman Newman stated Mr. Crum governs the program but the perception in terms of haw we give deference to it is its entitled the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program. toes that mean that whatever suggestions are made ought to be run past the Mayor and then when its run past the Mayor we bring it to debate on the Council floor for adoption for any new policy initiative. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Mayor if that is what she is suggesting. The Mayor responded that the letter that goes out to the business community goes out over her signature because she Is soliciting their support. In this letter she tells them what the program is all about and tells them in detail about the jobs fair we have and other information. This is a four -page letter and she has never heard anybody say to her what she thinks she is hearing it here, how you want to improve the program. She would like to know what's wrong with it because she has never asked what was wrong with it. She knows over the years since she has been here she asked to have expanded the types of jobs the children can have. We have put 3 kids in a bank, children have done artwork and their work is exhibited on Northwestem's campus Block Gallery. There is a whole different variety of activities that we have had and the reason she wanted to expand the program and feels pretty good about it is because when she found out about this program she could not think of supporting a program that only puts kids in the alleys and the desire was to change whatever we could to have a better program and a program that has a potential for a training component and in that respect some rewards. To improve the program she would like to know what specifically is wrong and she guarantees you if the Council wishes to continue the program she'll work very hard to help to improve it if you think there's another direction for it. It is not only a matter of the City here this also involves Kendall College, Mr. Charles Jones of Kendall College told her how this all came about from his perspective and he did not know until he came to City Hall to discuss placing these students that he found that this was a program that was offered to the public and they would have to pay for it, it was a complete surprise to him. Kendall is not into this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the problem is if Kendall College was misinformed in March, then we have April, May, and June and why did we go forward with this and he thinks we have to straighten that out because we don't want to create more difficulties down the road We'd be fighting over whether or not we keep the program because there's a perception of "hands off' by others on the Council whether it's through suggestion to Ms. Haynes or the City Manager or to the Mayor we need to understand what the process is and where the fine of authority is over this. Alderman Newman stated that this is a City program that the City Manager implements and manages. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he does not want to come back at budget time and fight over subjectivity as opposed to objectivity that this is a program that is important for us to retain. He does not want to fight over turf, now that we have the problem in front of us the question is how are we going to go forward. Are we going to go forward on the basis of the City process as we know it or we going to go forward in a different way. if we go forward in a different way then we need to know that so everybody understands what needs to be changed, if anything, and whether they door do not agree with it. This Kendall College issue is one thing, but there will be other things relate to the City's Summer Youth Job Program that we need to make sure that we understand how to improve and how to make suggestions to. If a suggestion is made and is made well in advance and we go forward and implement it why not do it on the same basis or you would not have done it in the first place. That is where the confusion is and when we go to undo it we need to be able to raise some real consistent rational why we do that which to him is still unclear. We need to find a way to came to some kind of firm conclusion so we're not fighting the battles over the survival of the program down the line solely on the basis of subjectivity that people may feel about on how we do business. HSC Minutes 7/7103 Page 18, Alderman Newman said to make it dear on what we do as a C'y Council, when we approve the budget in February, that budget is approval for th3 City Manager to spend the money on the things we designate and is the whole purpose at the budget. We designate S15,000.000 for the Police Department and S10,000,000 for Fire Department. if you wanted this program out of the Mayor's office then what you do in the buocet is say the $230.000 wit go to the Mayor's office. We don't do that it's a City program. Alderman Newman asked A_ Berman Jean -Baptiste if he is still trying to correct what happened here with Kendall College, to which Alderman Jean-8aottste said he is just trying to understand the jurisdictional lines here on what we're doing because that determines n:,A we go forward The City Manger has concluded that he discovered this liability issue he did not know before, they t~at s an entirely different thing, to which Alderman Newman said is why we need a policy statement Alderman Feldman thought what we have to do is somet ,ing rye has not done nor does he think the Human Services Committee has done. He would like to understand and exam a the procedures of the program and wants to know who these children are. He has heard back and forth that its great program, and on the other hand heard that it's a terrible program and does not know whether either one of those has ever been substantiated in terms of facts to indicate its either bad or good. It's very nice to say that this money is spent to help kids, which he agrees. His next question is how does it help kids, and does it help kids, can that money that be spent rm a way that better helps those same kids which he thinks is what we're all interested in. This is not necessarily a &a'terrge what we have to do is to find out and to begin to make specific recommendations to the Council in regard to the program that they're funding. If we can come up with information that might even include the suggestions that the City Manager made, that Alderman Newman made, and all of us might want to contribute in making. To him there is no question cf lunsdicbon this is a City Council program like everything else run by the City Manager. The City Manager runs the programs and establishes the regulatory system that affects it and makes it happen. He forms the application, the way in which rs advertised, solicits certain kids, establishes the amount of money that these children are going make, hires the superewrs, and establishes the tasks. We never did that, the City Manager did that. Alderman Feldman said he would I:ke to understand all of that, what percentage of kids are in the alleys, what percentage of kids are doing other jobs, what s our vision, is that what we want to do forever or as was indicated maybe there are other ways. He thought Alderman Newman's initiative was the freshest idea he had heard in a long time regarding that. He does not think any of us are happy with just having our kids sweep out alleys. That doesn't help anybody out and if we're trying to find other ways kids can spend their summers more productively, lets do iL But, the first thing we have to do is understand this program. Alderman Newman said since the Mayor puts out this letter that goes to all these businesses, he has never seen a copy of it because nobody has ever given him the courtesy of copying this letter as a part of our packet. There are some suggestions for this program he would like to be able to make. one is that we had with some of the City people that we actually pay being placed privately, another suggestion that has been on the table is that this program be only offered to low income children so we can qualify for Federal grant money. another suggestion is that we should find out how long these children hold the jobs do they stay one year, two years. tree years, do we have any accountability in terms of how they've done on the job and what it resulted in. He thinks we need to get some information, but most of all we need to have a policy statement to have a policy of what we do in me program to send to the City Council for aft of us to understand and have something in writing that will govern the Grogram rather than somebody having and idea that this is the way we've always done it. He would like to begin some of that at the next meeting The first thing we should start with and we don't know about is a list of where all these cn;:cren are working. Alderman Newman asked if we have income levels of these families, to which Mr Crum responded. no. we do not track income level we try to employ as many kids as possible with the money we have available. It is not spe- -ficalty a training program that you step up to something although we hope that they get basic skills and do a good job. but it is a Summer Youth Employment giving employment to kids who otherwise might not have fobs Alderman Nehman asked if we could have the number of children we're employing, the amount of money we're spending per child. tree hourly rate, how many are actually working in the various places within the City, i.e., alley work, art work, computer wont marl work; then also get a memo of the staffs official position on this idea of trying to place some of the people we pay for out in the community He would like to know how many kids are actually placed in jobs privately and would like a'! the information on what Federal grant money is available and whether we can qualify for grants if we made any charges to the program. If that information can be gathered 30 days from now then maybe prior to February when the Mayors letter goes out if the City Council wants to make some changes to this program they can. Lets come up with a policy statement so we can understand how this program works and hopes you are open to changing the program if we find it can be improved. Ms. Fonda wanted to make a statement that her intent here was not to be the emphasis for opening a can of worms that obviously this program needs. To summarize from her perspect~ve what she just heard and what she will explain to her son and she knows this was explained to the kids and they did hear it from that advantage point. To her it seems what happened to these rive kids was a breakdown of communication between the people running this program. It is fortunate they have all been placed in comparable positions and they wit be fine and they will learn. She is not unhappy about that, she is grateful to the City that her son is working but she does think that after three weeks being at such a prime location HSC Minutes V7103 Page 19. as Kendall and in such a wonderful position d was very disappointing to her and to her son and she is sure to the other three children, as one of them stayed at Kendaft because of the lack or breakdown of communication here at this level they got caught in the middle. That's pretty cleat to her, she's song and thanks everyone for hearing her out. Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Fonda for coming this evening. Mr. Crum said at the risk of offending everybody here he is going to review individually each of these positions himself with Ms. Haynes and we may just hold it to that, but he is going to review it one more time. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Crum what that means, to which Mr. Crum said he's going back and review the decisions we've made on placement and what Kendall feels and what we feel and where they are now Mayor Morton noted Mr. Jones told her had he known in the beginning, none of this would have not come about. The children are innocent. Alderman Rainey was in attendance in audience and remarked any student who has the opportunity to be placed in the City of Evanston Information Systems Department versus Kendall should fall on their knees in praise. Our Information System Department is far superior to Kendall's. If the students were placed in the food service at Kendall that would be a different story but our Information System gives them an opportunity that they should be thankful for, as they are now much better off. Alderman Newman asked if children have ever been placed in this department, to which Ms. Haynes said, absolutely. Alderman Newman then asked how many have been placed, to which Ms. Haynes responded over the last couple of years about four kids. Alderman Newman noted these kids were only placed there because they were duplicating what was happening at Kendall and they wouldn't necessarily have been there otherwise. There was a question from someone in the audience regarding how are young people are selected if they are not selected on the basis of income then how are they selected for this program. Alderman Newman said they are selected by whoever appfies for the jobs to which the person asked if every kid who applies gets a job. Ms. Haynes said they have to attend a job fair and they come and interview and compete for a job just as you do in the real world to get that experience. Alderman Newman suggested to Mr. Terry to include as part of the information requested how the kids are selected and how many apply to help members of the Council understand the process. XI. ADJURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:15 p.m. Respectfully submitt aaA&4 `2-1� Audrey Trots . Department of Health & Human Services HSC Minutes 7/7103 Page 20. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - August 11, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman and Tisdahl MEMBERS ABSENT: Alderman Bernstein STAFF PRESENT: Doug Gaynor, Bob Dornecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Frank Kaminski, Paula Haynes. Maureen Barry, Harvey Sever, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office) (See Attached Attendance Sheets for other attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Newman 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:39 p.m. 11. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JULY 7, 2003 The minutes of the July 7. 2003 meeting were celled and unanimously approved (3-0). {Alderman Feldman was not present at this time) III. CONSIDERATION OF THE JULY 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion to approve the July 2003 Township monthly bills was unanimously approved 13-0). (Alderman Feldman was not present at this time.) IV. SPECIAL EVENTS: A) REQUEST FROM EVANSTON ENVIRONMENTAL ASSOCIATION TO USE THE LAKFRONT LAGOON FOR THE ANNUAL DUCK PLUCK ON OCTOBER 4, 2002, 3:00 P.M. UNTIL 5:00 P.M. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval for this event, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, motion unanimously approved 13-0). (Alderman Feldman was not present at this time.) B) REQUEST FROM McGAW YMCA TO HOLD THEIR ANNUAL Y GUIDES AND Y PRINCESSES LAKEFRONT CAMPOUT ON SEPTEMBER 13-14, 2003. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval for this event, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, motion unanimously approved (3-0). (Alderman Feldman was not present at this time.) V. CONSIDERATION OF THE DISPOSITION OF CMZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Newman moved to accept the recommendation, motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. (At this time Alderman Feldman joined the meeting.) Alderman Jean -Baptiste congratulated Chief Kaminski for all of the support received from citizens of the City and complimented him on all the good work that is being done. When reading the Chief's report he was a bit confused as to what the issue was in the first place. As he recalls there were a couple of other complaints that came through in the past where some very minor issues triggered altercations and the initial handling of the conflict was what exacerbated them. Chief Kaminski responded they had a number of complaints from the elected officials as well people on the block HSC Minutes 811103 Page 1. about significant gang and drug activity that was occurring they responded to that because it was getting out of hand. They put a lot of resources there to try to curb some of the violence and the events that were going on. The police were there for a particular purpose to respond to those issues for the community. The concerns were that these activities would happen, some one would get hurt, or some other acts of violence would occur and we were trying to prevent that by a very positive presence in the neighborhood. VVe have had several problems in the past in this neighborhood where we needed to come back to try to stabilize, then we have to come back again, which is what we have to do. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what time this incident took place, and was told it occurred in the evening. Alderman Jean -Baptiste went on to say somewhere along the way somebody testified it was dark and the issue there was that this young man who was not necessarily charged with anything initially, was riding his bicycle when the police told him to stop. Chief Kaminski said there is a lot of activity in the area, the officers were trying to identify with people in the area and were giving direct orders for everyone to comply with so they could find out who is there and who is doing what. This person who was riding the bike as indicated was told to stop, he did not, then at that point there was this confrontation with the other officer. We were there for a lot of reasons as a lot of the good people on the block had a number of concerns about the activities that were going on so we put a mission team together there to try to deal with that situation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said ultimately this confrontation became the central occupation of the police at that time. They were there to try to take care of other ossues then this confrontation preoccupied everybody's time and this went to the fore. Chief Kaminski said everybody then tried to get it resolved and restore order back in the area. Yes, this individual triggered the event in the area. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how old this individual was and was told he was a young man, not a teenager. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then in the process of arresting him his arm was broken, to which Chief Kaminski said the report notes this may have been a reoccurrence of a previous injury from an accident the individual had. We were not too sure how the injury occurred but it's a Not Sustained determination. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted this almost made him recall the incident where a major altercation evolved out of the fact that somebody spit on the sidewalk. Chief Kaminski said the current incident occurred right across the street from that incident. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked it was hard for him to define the ultimate justification of the escalation of this, He understands this individual was riding his bike and there are conflicting stories as to whether or not he rode his bike into the police officer. Apparently he was saying he did not have brakes so he had to stop the bike with his feet and the police officer in fact stopped it and then from there he does not know what else happened to lead to the major fight, his arm being broken and his being taken into custody. Chief Kaminski said as he stopped he swung at the officer and hit the officer. The officer then took him into custody and at that point had to arrest him, but he did hit the officer. This was not the kind of situation where he hit the -- officer and said, excuse me I'm sorry, This was a situation where the offender further escalated the incident. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if it is known why this individual was specifically being singled out, did he do something? Chief Kaminski said the officers were in the area because of the gang and drug activity and quite often a lot of the drugs are sold by people riding bicycles in areas and at times part of the things they have to deal with. They were just trying to detain him, to stop as they were going — to check everybody out in the area where they have the complaints, if the individual had complied as everyone had been doing there would be no escalation of the incident. The individual went into the officer and the other events occurred. It is not uncommon that we see that type of behavior that bikes and people on bikes are delivering and selling drugs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded that the individual did not have any drugs on him and no one has identified him as specifically having committed any violations previous to the confrontation that occurred, to which Chief Kaminski said that is correct, Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked he understands that the police duty is to maintain control. Many times he has called the Police Department to speak personally to Chief Kaminski about preventive kinds of measures. He thinks it is very important to manage these conflicts sometimes so that they do not =— escalate to the level that they seem to escalate to, at least as this incident had and the incident that occurred previously. Since this individual was not particularly targeted based on a particular violation - HSC Minutes 8111103 Page 2. that he committed, no one had called him in and said they saw him violating any laws. It seems by the time they had gone through this whole process you have an individual that definitely will be totally bitter against the police because he had not initially done anything and the escalation led to him being injured and eventually charged with resisting arrest and the battery of two police officers. Again he would caution that having power does not always mean using it to the nth degree. which is his opinion about that. Alderman Newman recalled the motion to accept the recommendation, motion unanimously accepted (4.01. Vt. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 47-R-03 FOR A MUTUAL ASSISTANCE AGREEMENT FOR POLICE MENTAL HEALTHISOCIAL SERVICES Chief Kaminski noted this is a house cleaning exercise. Since 9-11 there has been a lot of intergovernmental agreements. A while ago they came to the Council about dealing with police agencies throughout the entire state. This deals specifically with police social services. Many police departments in this area are very fortunate to have police social workers that help respond to situations. We already have an agreement with many of the communities on the North Shore. As many of you can recall one of the incidents that actually started these plans was the Laurie Dann incident in Winnetka. We were then part of that response team when we received a call from the Winnetka Chief asking us to help him out and we sent our social workers there. After that event all the police departments got together and said there should be a plan and so an informal plan was developed for our general orders, which has been in effect ever since then. Since 9 -11 the social workers are trying to be more expansive and more definitive in their plan. We have submitted a plan than has as much merit as the other intergovernmental agreements we have if there is a disaster or any other type of situation and we need a lot of social workers here, hopefully we will never have this occur, but it certainly is nice to have that kind of response from other agencies and be able to have those services provided without anybody worrying about whether we can or we can't do it. He knows for a fact if we did not sign the Chiefs would still send their people but he does believe the right thing to do is to solidify this plan for all the social workers as they would feel more comfortable with this, which is what this agreement is. Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion unanimously approved (4- 0). Vl1. ROBERT CROWN CENTER FACILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT Alderman Newman noted that at the last Human Services Committee meeting the committee received the Infrastructure Report and a presentation was made by the consultants. The basic information is that it will cost about $5,500,000 to rehab the current building and about $13,000,000, without furniture or anything, to build a new building. He asked if there is any rehab that would work that can be done short of the $5,500,000. is there a $2,000,000 or $3,000,000 plan out there that would work? Mr. Gaynor said he thinks the consultant pointed out in his study that over the next 10 to 15 years you have certain things that are going to fail. Based on that the answer to Alderman Newman's question is no, you can do $1,000,000 or $500,000 today or tomorrow, but somewhere down the line all of these components to this facility have a lifetime. Its not any different than in your home you have a refrigerator that lasts 15 years, some may last 30 years or some may last only 7 years, but the facility is 27 years old. Last year we replaced the water heater and we would expect that to last us a while. Eventually the components of the facility are going to wear out. We speculate how long they will last based on what the manufactures tell us. Alderman Newman said then if a member of the Council was interested in a $2,500,000 rehab instead of $5,500,000 would the staff's position be that would not work. Mr. Gaynor said they would look at what the most high priority areas are now, then be back in a period of time when the next series of components might fail, it would be a continuation over the next number years as the consultant indicated. Alderman Newman said this meeting was set up to try to get an idea about the Recreation Board' s thoughts on this. Ann Carra, President of the Recreation Board, introduced Richard Marbarry and Kristian Hanis fond daughter Alexis). Ms. Carra said they have spent the better part of their last two meetings talking HSC Minutes 911iO3 Page 3. about the Crown Report. What they would realty like to see is some sort of limited feasibility study based on the programming and how the building is now affecting the programming. The programs currently at Crown are the ones that should be there, that is not the question. The question is can these programs be better and how are the limitations of the building impacting the program which is what we need to get at, that is the piece that comes after the current report that we have to be able to create the vision and make sure whatever changes we do whether rehabbing or a new facility are targeting the program needs of the community. That would be our recommendation, to do a limited, focused feasibility study and the program being impacted by the building right now. Alderman Feldman asked if it is known how long a limited study would take. Ms. Carra said the ones they have done in the past were very broad and does not know if a limited one is limited in the questions but the actual timeline may be the same. By limited she means the focus of the study rather then limited in time. Alderman Feldman said what he is interested in is an examination of how our present building impacts on programs and how a different or a new building or a rehab building could greatly enhance those. Also, what needs to be enhanced and what are the possibilities of enhancement? The feasibility study is not a study that says what do you want. He is not a statistician and would not know the kind of questions that would be asked or how they would proceed but it seems to him they would not proceed by knocking on doors but by a professional evaluation of the programs relating either to the present or the new structure that is what he sees as very meaningful and proper and what we want to know. Mr. Gaynor said the first question to ask is how long something like that would take. They would probably take the date the Council gave them direction to implement that, not more than B months, but it might be shorter. The process is creating the request for a proposal so we can hire a consultant to do that. As you krow there was an appropriation made so there is funding available for that. A good part of that process you describe would be focused on the existing programs and the consultant would bring together those special user groups, those folks that engage here, those using the gymnasium, those in hockey, figure skating, speed skating, boom ball, etc., at least to form a basis and then have some type of a public meeting input. He thinks the Crown Advisory Board needs to have some input, which he is not sure what it is, but that's what the consultant would tell us in general about the community needs. We know that our day camps have very limited space and we sometimes bus the kids off site, which are the kinds of things that need to be part of the study. Alderman Newman said he is not looking for another consultant study because we've done the consultant studies. Alderman Feldman made an excellent point at our fast meeting in discussing rehab versus a new building that you can't assume what you did in 1974 in terms of setting up a building is _ the building you want in 2003 in terms of programs. it's more of an internal evaluation and the focus Y needs to be whether or not we have this issue to rehab or build new, are there things we're doing there now that maybe we do not need as much, or is there something more we really need in the community. He is not saying we make the Crown Center the salvation of all our recreation needs but if there is one or two things out there we ought to be doing that we're not doing, and most communities are now doing in recreation, maybe we'd say these are a couple of things we should include. It seems that we waited two years to get to where we are now with Crown in terms of this consultant, and he is not faulting anybody for that as he knows we have to go through these regular processes. At some -- point he's interested in hearing from the Recreation Board whether we should do a rehab or a new building and if we do a new building rather than recreate what we had in 1974 maybe we can put more of an emphasis on this because this is where recreation is in the year 2003. He would like to see something from the Recreation Board and the Crown Center Board in terms of looking at what we've been doing at Crown and then trying to focus on this of rehab versus total renovation. Mr. Marberry said he thought that's a great idea and would ask Mr. Gaynor whether the department itself is in a position to do that type of evaluation. He thinks the department is excellent and quite likely would be able to do that type of evaluation based on the study that we have. If we can come back as a Recreation Board with the input of the department as an expert and say that we want to z�= build something that's a little bit different so that we can accommodate a number of different things, i.e., the programming and the access which at this time is not safe, period. Alderman Newman asked �= Mr. Marberry what he meant by that, to which Mr. Marberry said if you view the front of the building you have to go to the left to go to the front desk, you can also go down an aisle to the right which has HSC Minutes 8/11/03 Page 4. no egress and there is no person looking at anybody who is coming into the facility. Alderman Feldman added then it is perfectly accessible to anybody without any scrutiny whatsoever. Mr. Marberry said they do have cameras but nobody is there by the cameras all the time. Alderman Newman noted that is a good example of a problem being identified that was not emphasized before, to which Marberry said he is now emp`tasizing this. The other thing he would like to emphasize is the infrastructure itself in the way it was built in somewhat of a deep pit which presents a water problem and has to be taken care of because if we have a facility that exists as it is its going to continue to have that type of a water problem. We could do band aids on that but thinks that's a mistake, lets do it right so that we don't have a water problem going on in the future. The other thing is the ice facility, we don't have sufficient locker rooms to accommodate all the people that use that ice facility, men, women, and other types of teens. In his opinion those are the major types of things other than the wall in the back of the ice area between that and the facility collapsing to a certain extent. If we can go from this study without spending more money he would be ecstatic. He does not know whether or not the department can do that and he would be happy as a member of the Recreation Board to work with them to do that. If they feel they can do that it would be great. Maybe we can get some minimal input from some experts to the extent that's needed and required, but he does not disagree that using what we have would give us an ability to evaluate what we really need to come up with in the end. An additional study was something that we were basically recommending as a Board because we thought that this committee and the City Council would want a professional report. Alderman Newman asked what would we get out of an additional study, if this is a survey of the community on what we need at Crown. Mr. Marberry said we have done reports like that before and its very clear that in his opinion as a member of the Recreation Board he would like to see Crown torn down and rebuilt so that we can accommodate a lot of the desires and needs of the community, but there is no question about the fact that we can't afford it. What we're doing here is we have an existing facility with existing programming which is not able to live up to the standards they need to live up to and accommodate the demands that they have. What we need is to renovate and change the facility not just the renovation according to the plan but an additional facility so that those programs that exist are going to be continuing. We could add new programs and additions, we could put in a swimming pool, and do whatever you want to do, but he does not think that is feasible just now. Alderman Newman asked if there is anything we've been doing there for a long time that the Board thinks we should be putting a little less emphasis on and possibly doing something else. Mr. Marberry said he would have to say no, if we wanted to we could have a state of the art facility there and as a City make a lot of money off of that facility. We could rent it and do a lot of things with it but at this particular point we don't have that information. We don't have the gym space that we need at the facility, we have programming but we don't have facility rooms to accommodate the programming in the way the programming was intended to operate, and we don't have security. Plus, the building as a whole is subject to erosion because of the way it was built. Alderman Feldman said this is the kind of thing he really wanted to hear. There is probably no better resource to the Council than the people that use the building. That's who you go to, the people that are in there regularly that experience the building in a multitude of ways. He thinks staff's job would be to organize the testimony or the thinking of the Recreation Board and its constituents, all of the people in the hockey program, day care, ice skating, gymnasium users, etc. He's already spoken to people that use the ice rink and they have repeated over and over again that the City with an additional, better and larger ice facility or maybe even two ice rinks, would reap a great deal of money that would go to pay for the improvements, in addition to a lot of other things. We had a vision for James Park that was born out of the very kind of thing you're talking about. The baseball people said our diamonds are terrible, the elderly people said there's no place for them because they can't walk there. We had a series of meetings with the people that used or aspired to use it. No one knew where the money was coming from, and you see what James Park is now. Alderman Newman added that we didn't spend the kind of money we're talking about here. Alderman Feldman said he understands that but the kind of thing we're talking about is the people who use it, what they need to use it better, why their programs are limited, why the experience is limited if it is, and what they can envision as a building that enhances it dramatically. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor if its an option for staff, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, typically there is a great deal of, what he hates to say publicly but he will, suspicion that the staff will not be objective. That's not the only reason that you bring a consultant in, but he can put a team of staff members together and along with the Recreation Board HSC Minutes 811 1,03 Page S. we can meet with those groups being identified as the user groups to pull together their comments and can come back to the Human Services Committee meeting and verify or speak to the report that would be submitted. We can do that which obviously will save money but he would like to make it clear that staff isn't necessarily always looked at subjectively. Alderman Feldman said he does not envision this to be a staff generated study, he wants the study to be from the Recreation Board and the constituency. In other words, a Recreation Board report signed by the Evanston Hockey Association, the people involved in day care, etc., with all the kinds of quotes and testimony. Ail he envisions staff doing is providing them the necessary staff to be able to accomplish that kind of report. Ms. Carta said her question was along Mr. Gaynor's line, if in fact our conclusion as a Board is that we need a new facility to the tune of $12,000,000, does an internal study occur of programming done by some folks who ice skate. etc., is that the kind of teeth you want, because we've done a lot of recommendations before that we put a lot of work into, Alderman Tisdahl said she'd have a lot more confidence in a study the Recreation Board did than a consultant. She believes you know that facility and you know the users if you want to know what has teeth in it. Ms. Carta said as long as this would be viewed as a thorough, conscientious, appropriate. . professional report, because if its looked as a lay piece of a puzzle that's missing the professionalism you need to make a really hard decision, that would be a problem. Alderman Newman said we have to think about where we are right now. There are two alternatives in the report, one to rehab and the other to build a new building. The idea is to figure out where we go from here and the question Alderman Feldman raised was why would we want to rehab a building that is 27 years old and not really improve recreation in the community for 2003 standards. He thinks we have to work around this question. If we build a new building there is no unlimited reservoir out there to do ten additional different things, but we know from the 1997 study the gym space is short. We have four areas for you to focus on, all the existing programs, parking is not good there, there is a security problem, all the problems that are connected with the ice rink and he is not sure he agrees with the idea that we can make all this extra money with a new rink because right now Crown is quite heavily booked. Mr. Gaynor said the point being made is currently we have a full sheet of ice and we have about 50% of another sheet of ice which limits the rental for hockey. We could put hockey on one rink and figure skating on another, but you can't put speed skating on the studio rink. The point is it gives you more flexibility and all of that comes down to rental opportunities which we don't have, to which Alderman Newman said we need numbers on that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said except for our financial situation most people would went a new facility that would have to address some of the demands that have been manifested over the last ten years or so and also try to incorporate new and different ideas of recreation. In an ideal world Evanston doesn't have an indoor soccer facility and a lot of different things that you would want. The consultant report before us states that they would need to shore up the sagging walls, etc. In fact the work they would do although it would renovate a lot of systems would reduce the total space that's available for utilization, In a sense we can get from staff nd the Recreation Board and from the community what the current needs are in terms of recreation.�The next issue for us is more a question of what will be the maximization of our investment in that facility. If it is still a building that will continue to deteriorate, although some of the reports have said that the deterioration may have stopped the foundational defect that has led to sagging of the wall, the wall might have sagged as much as its going to sag at this point. He does not think anybody has confidence in that building holding up for the next 10 to 15 years no matter what renovation we put into it. The challenge for us is what can be done in the foreseeable future to rectify this situation. The answer to what the community needs, what programming would be necessary that would most likely meet our needs and thinks if that Information is readily available would not go to a consultant to get that information. We need to take a real serious look as to how we would rectify the situation and does not think its throwing dollars at the existing building. At the same time we don't have any money. Again is there any kind of creative way to approach a resolution particularly the fact that downtown there is the building boom, the new theatre, the parking facilities, etc. Is there any strategy approaching building of a new facility at Crown? He does not see how we can justify the investment of $6,000,000 or $7,000,000. As was asked can we do something with $2,000,000, what can $2,000,000 do, he does not know. HSC Minutes Srl 1/03 Page 6. Ms. Carra said the shelf lives are very short and it always strikes her every time we discuss a recreation building its for 25 to 30 years max, and with repeated use and use and use. It's a short shelf life when you are looking to put the kind of money you're talking about into it, it's the end of something. Ms. Harris added the realization if we put $5,000,000 into what we'd know was wrong that doesn't mean tomorrow something else doesn't go wrong and we need to put another $1.000,000 in and in the next year we're band a -ding some issues we don't even know exist. As you know to put $5,000,000 into the building, in construction as soon as you fix one thing something else needs to be replaced. Maybe we can do $12,04O.D00 or whatever we can do towards a new building that would add an additional 20 years to that life span because we're starting over. Alderman Newman said he is with you in considering putting the $5,500,000 for 10 or 15 years into the building that will not do anything to improve recreation. That reminds him of what was done at Soldiers Field, which might be a gross exaggeration, where they kept on fixing and fixing and fixing and everybody was still unhappy after multi millions was put into it. It would be very frustrating for us to put in $6,000,000 and then be unhappy with where we were. On the other hand there's our experience with the Downtown Library, which started out as a $9,000,000 project and by time it was finished cost $23,000,000. The Levy Center, where we tried to do a quality job, we thought we were going to do something for $6,000,000 and ended up about $9,000,000 which was not that bad. We have to be careful because the $12.000,000 or $13,000,000 for a new building right now is a stretch. The Levy Center was easy because we got all the downtown development to pay for it which was a complete victory, no new taxes, and a new building. This building will actually be paid for out of property taxes. The interesting thing would be if you were able to generate some big number out of usage of the ice rentals beyond what our budget currently is, somehow it would be used on the year by year basis to pay some of the debt service. That's an interesting proposition, but right now the Crown Center generates close to $1,000,000 in revenues which now is a good revenue generator. He does not know how much you will end up with, with a second ice rink that is bigger, which would be worth a consultant study. If we could figure out that we now have $1,000,000 in revenues and were going to end up with $1,500,000 we could actually take $500,000 in revenues and put it into bricks and mortar, which would be worth paying for. Mr. Gaynor said they could run some numbers showing various rentals for various ice programs, but it gives you the flexibility to do that if you have the second ice. In the past few months we have become aware the Wilmette Hockey Program is renting ice in Vernon Hills, he does not know how much ice they're renting but knows they are renting out there. He would think it's a much shorter drive to go to Crown from Wilmette then to go to Vernon Hills. Ms. Carra said our own teams are going elsewhere and spending money. Alderman Newman said the question is it's one thing for somebody to go and spend money but its another thing to build A different ice configuration that is going to generate real dollars. We can always find where people are spending money but it doesn't mean if we do a rink differently we're going to have $300,000 or $400,000 in revenue. Geoff Harlow, President of the Evanston Hockey Association, which is a travel hockey program, said as far as this specific issue he knows we ourselves met with the City a year ago to try to rent additional ice. The City was very cooperative and looked at a day by day schedule and there literally was no more ice to rent. Right now we're committed to spending at least $14,000 at the American Heartland which is a privately owned facility in Lincolnwood. As far as Wilmette going to Vernon Hills he knows they've also rented ice at Lake Forest Academy and Skokie. Even with the explosion of privately owned facilities, for example there's a two ice facilities in Buffalo Grove, Vernon Hills has a brand new two ice facility and there are already rumors they will be adding a third sheet of ice to that. The demand is there, hockey is growing and is right now being under served as far as ice is concerned. We're paying $200 an hour for the ice we rent at Crown and other clubs come in and pay more than that. He feels confident if you have a second sheet of ice you're going to see an 80% utilization on that surface with no problem based on what other clubs are doing. Mr. Gaynor said thu fact is still the economy and that we have the studio ice rink now, incrementally there won't be a times two factor for our operating budget and he needs to make sure that everybody is aware of what the operating budget impact will be on whatever we do. We don't want to come back later and say why didn't we know that before. We have the two ice resurfacing machines now and its 60% of the large surface there already, and from the economy scale on the operating side HSC Minutes 8'11 03 Page 7. we're not going to go times two. Will there be an increase, he has not yet calculated that, but would assume there would be some, but certainly not very much. Alderman Feldman said he would hope that in the study of the report to the Council that the Recreation Board includes that the kind of information. He would love the idea that you go to places like Wilmette and Skokie and try to figure out what that market is. it's nice to hear and he has no reason to doubt this but it would help if it came in a form that had a little more substance than just an Intuitive approach to it which would be one of the things he would be looking for. it would be true of almost all of the users that they think a new or rehab facility would enhance their specific program, he would like to know why. A lot of good information is coming out tonight which he is very pleased to hear. For him it's a portent of a lot of expression by the very people that use it. As you said use is handicapped by the condition of the building, by its present design, its condition, and by the mistakes that were made when it was originally built, and he would hope that is in this report, which he also believes would be given a lot of credence. There are certain kinds of studies professionals should do, one Is the one that we just did, which he would not have asked the Recreation Board to do. When it comes to analysis of an existing program of the weaknesses and the strengths there is no more credible testimony than that from the users. All a good professional would do is go around and ask the people that are using it the very same kind of questions that you could formulate and set up. Alderman Newman remarked knowing that people were supporting pretty much a similar building except enhanced gym space and also a better ice program, an improvement on what we have now, and the potential of generating more money ice wise, in a new building, how would we know what the cost for this would be, assuming it would not be $12,800.000. Mr. Gaynor said that may then require bringing a consultant in to do a couple of things. With the information you would have you can look at current building costs and what has been built as a ice rink in the last year and add 3% inflation, which are some of the things we could do. Then there are the two alternatives; one is to rehab and the other building a new building. If you go with building a new building we have already said as far as staff Is concerned we want to look at the entire Crown. We would want to continue providing the service that the current facility has while we were constructing a new facility, to continue to service and we continue generating the revenue to operate the building. That means we may have to take a soccer field out and replace it which is additional cost beyond building the ice rink Rec center which is another piece to it and that all has to be put into the mix which means the consultant might have to increase the sum conceptua, design work to show current Crown, the new Crown, what soccer field needs to be moved, what the parking will be, and clearly how the drainage is going to work because when the facility was originally designed the parking lot was the run off, the detention area. What did not go into the ground came into the parking lot. The parking lot is above the building and what goes in the parking lot eventually goes into the building. All of this has to be part of the consideration. Alderman Newman asked if we will go back to the consultants that did the previous study. Mr. Gaynor said we were told what they called their forensic study was their forensic study and they said they would like to bid an the next phase, to which Alderman Newman then said that's not a good idea. Mr. Marberry wanted to point out that the study that was done on the existing facility for $12,000,000 talks about redoing the building so that it accommodates the existing program, that's existing ice, existing programming, existing gym space. If we were looking at revenue producing ice -- capacity his guess is that would be somewhat in excess of that. He's not saying that would be a tremendous amount because there might be economy scale in construction, but he also thinks if that were the case and we came to that conclusion we probably would have to have some expert opinion on that. Mr. Gaynor said in the study they found there were some pieces in the study that were missing and we have done more work afterward to identify some of those missing pieces. The dollars they put in their study, in our opinion, are short. It is not short because they didn't add 4O% more ice they just didn't add a few things that we readily identified to our staff. He Is reluctant to use the numbers they have in their book because he does not believe they are accurate and we will present them with more information as we go on but at this point we're not ready to go on. Alderman Feldman asked if from this moment in the process would this committee recommend to this pass to Council or just suggest if it were the wishes of this committee that we proceed in the manner_ that we have. Would we be able to say go ahead and do that considering the fact we're not using the money set aside, at least not now. It does take staff time and there is a direction. Alderman Feldman HSC Minutes 811 V03 .Page 8. deferred to Alderman Newman if he had any preference about that. Alderman Newman said he would rather stay in house and focus on what, if anything, additional in a very limited way within the current study. He would say focus on the ice, focus on the gym space, and we do want to look at Alderman Jean-Baptiste's West Side Library perhaps that could be done at another meeting room. We need to have the focus beyond what is within, the current mission to try to improve the current mission and realize our limitation in terms of the fact that we don't have $25,000,000 to spend. Ms. Carra asked if you four Aldermen authorize will us to go ahead or does City Council need to authorize us. Alderman Newman said ultimately whatever we come up with has to go through the City Council but if you want to think about getting it done the more it costs the harder it is to do. Ms. Carra said they don't want go on for two hours and decide what we're going to do next if the broader City Council needs to approve this. Alderman Feldman said we can keep this here and we're not asking you to spend a lot of money. Alderman Newman wanted to make it clear that something has to happen at Crown, we have to do something there. We're told there's a $6,000,000 minimum right now and what is the best way to solve the problem and what are the dollars needed to do this. There's the question that the City Is going to have to spend money there. At this time we're not saying that there is absolutely going to be something done beyond the $6,000,000 rehab. Ms. Cerra said truthfully their Board has never come to any conclusion, perhaps some of us have opinions but we have never said this is what we want, A or B. We want to be sure we're thorough in our own investigation. Alderman Feldman said it's the job of this body to recommend to the Council and study and report is a way in which we can have the necessary information in order to do that, we may need more then that but certainly need that at a minimum. Alderman !Newman said we also need to start to look at three ways that we might get contributions to the building costs which we still need, if there is any possibility for private funding and we need to work on our legislators for their great membership initiative. The other thing we need to look at is whether or not we have potential to expand revenues based on the ice operation that can contribute to the cost. We need to figure whether that's a real number or a talked about number. If the Recreation Board would look into that on it would be very helpful. Richard Seaman, sold he has been on the Advisory Board since 1983 in one capacity or another. He would like to commend the staff in their efforts through the years to maintain this facility. Historically this site is a former landfill and skating pond and you know of the inherent problems we have had in the last two years with retaining walls and water coming into the gym and the skylight and such. There is an impact on programs when water does come into the gym and it has to be taken off of the use to be able to be repaired and for the floors or walls to be painted. When the compressors go down on the skating program the ice time is down. In the past he is not sure it was taken into consideration that this was a landfill, if there has been a previous EPA study or whether or not it would need to be done at this time. In his opinion to rebuild the present site we should explore the possibility of moving it elsewhere within the park grounds if that site is not found to be appropriate, but what we can do is take it to the bedrock. It was one of the concepts of one of our past and former Board members that he building should be taken to bedrock. Alderman Newman asked what does that mean, to which Mr. Seamen responded, its solid rock, pilings or otherwise similar to the way the Levy Center was done, it goes down to bedrock. Alderman Newman interjected, a point of information, we did not use pilings for the Levy Center we did a dynamic compaction. Mr. Seaman went on to say ice time has been a problem for years and over ten years ago he had a discussion with the Recreation Department about the need for ice time and exploring the expansion of the skating facilities. The skating facilities always have been self-supporting it's the community site that has always obtained some funding from the City. Over ten years ago there was the aspiration of the possibility of going to a 100 by 200 foot skating rink and at that time the existing administration felt that the City taxpayers would not go for that and we should seek corporate or foundation assistance. He is wondering whether or not at this time and this day in our economy the citizens would support a center if it were to go to a referendum vote. The facility has been there for 27 years, it serves a great need within the community end can be and probably should be continued whether its at the same location with the fact that its below ground and the problems that have existed that need to be fixed. We as the Advisory Board look forward to working with the Recreation Department, the City Council, the Human Services Committee, and the Recreation Board find any solutions to the problems and look forward to the future. HSC Minutes 8111,03 Page 9. Michelle Van Der Karr, a user of the facirrty said she is there with her daughters at least five days a week. She is concerned that whatever is done to this facility that the program continue while rehab or construction go on. If those programs disappear for a year it would be devastating for the users. Alderman Newman noted that is another issue for the study, transition and that's the advantage of building someplace else. Alderman Feldman said this community faced an identical problem with the library. Rather than not have library service we had a choice of either paying construction without interruption of moving the facility and renting additional space, which we chose. This caused a lot of problems but it did maintain library services. Bob Nauert, said he Is Involved with the Evanston Hockey Association and travels with them. He wanted to add that this is a program now, and from his understanding hockey in Evanston was very strong in the late 7O's into the early 8O's. It's had its ups and downs but is on the rise again and thinks you would a,so hear from the figure skating and speed skating community. It's growing and is all basically coming from Evanston residents who are coming to us and being responsive to what we're doing in terms of trying to market the facility and programs, With the new coaching that has been brought in we're gaining a lot of interest not only from Evanston residents but people are coming in from outside Evanston as well. This is the time to really take a hard look at this facility sports wise and you will find in this needs study a lot of people want to use this facility but it has already reached Its capacity. We're going to add at least one maybe two teams this coming season and would imagine we would be able to do that as the pipeline is now getting refilled and the staff of the Recreation Department has done a very good job in the last year and half. Figure skating starts with a four -year - old and that pipeline has already been refilled and will keep growing. You've got a lot of kids coming in in the next three or four years to skate. Jennifer Carruth-Multra, skating instructor at Crown, wanted everyone to know that they do everything in their possibility to give the community a strong base of skating. They have found it is very difficult to do that because there is so much going on especially during the summer. There are summer camps, figure skating camp, hockey camp, karate, pottery, all kinds of stuff going on they find themselves conducting classes in the lobby or in a dance studio or they have take the kids out to the field to conduct a class because there is just no room for all of these kids that are coming. This is a good thing, the kids need to have a place to go and we want them to be there but it's also very difficult for us to give quality instruction where there is not always a continual spot for us to be. She thinks they've done a very good job in the suburban community with the hockey program and we see where there's going to be more of a problem with space once the hockey programs start to grow more. Likewise with figure skating we really do need somewhere to put everybody and at the same time to accommodate, we don't want to have to turn anybody away. She can tell you first hand there's definitely a space problem. Pat Harper, a resident of Evanston and an ice skating mom, said Robert Crown Center is one of the most cost effective for families and parents, yet our needs aren't being filled and we're being forced to go to other facilities and pay a higher price for ice time. If we can't get ice time in the afternoon or at a certain point in time or on a certain date we go to Wilmette, to Winnetka, to Skokie and pay $10 an hour versus $5 at Crown. At Northbrook we pay $20 an hour that's per person per hour, and we're finding ourselves in that position now. Being a resident and a taxpayer here she has a hard time with that because again she pays very high property taxes and can't use the facilities here In her community. The facility is not available when she needs it, she is also very concerned about leaving her daughter at the facility because of security and all kinds of things. All the things discussed here tonight are very valid concerns for her as a parent having her young daughter go to that facility and feeling she going to be safe and well taken care of there. As a female that's a very important thing when you're sending your child out in a public place knowing your child is going to feel safe to go to the bathroom. We're talking about kids, young girls especially, she does not have a boy but that probably is the same for them that they not violated in any way and can feel safe and clean about going there. The Wilmette and Skokie communities have facilities where she as a parent is willing to pay the higher price for that so she knows her daughter is safe and can figure skate and feel good about skating again. Alderman Newman inquired it our studio and the main ice rink are used 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day, and was told more than that. Ms. Harper said there's more demand HSC Minutes 8r11;03 Page 10. for ice time then there is ice time available because you can't put everybody in the studio to skate. When you talk about higher level skaters with triple jumps you can't put 20 or 25 of them on the studio rink and expect them to be safe. From her perspective it's very encouraging to hear you talking about it as a community and anything she can do to be involved in making it a better place not only for her child but for other children growing up in this community you have her support. Maiya Leprow, an Evanston resident said her daughter has been skating since third grade and one of the things that does not show up on any of the studies is some of the intangible stuff that some of us need. When her daughter was little she would not leave her anywhere, now this is a place where she can go and feel like she's part of the community. She does not have to stand guard around her, there is a figure skating girls program that she has looked up to since she was in third grade and now she is getting to that level herself. She can go there and hang out in between classes. The diversity you see there not just with the skating but with the day care, you don't see that much anywhere else, a community where kids can just gather. That is a place where kids in this community gather together, play together, train together and socialize, it's a wonderful thing. Another thing you may not know about this skating program is we have just completed the ice Skating Institute World Championship and out of 124 rinks around the world Evanston ranked 7- as far as individual skaters placing 1", 2"Q, as well as synchronized skating. This program we're trying to start at Crown is we're competing for Ice time. We can't get speed skaters or synchronized skaters on the ice because figure skating classes are such heavy competition. The diversity of kids that go there can't be quantified in any of this ice time profitability. What she feels proud of being a part of Evanston is it's a diverse community and if you close this center down, even to build it, you can lose some of that programming and you lose a huge chunk of what is so valuable to so many of our kids. if the kids do not have a place to go and play and socialize you will start seeing problems elsewhere. Roxanne Laux, a mother of a figure skater and a figure skater herself agrees with everything that has been said by both the hockey and figure skating people. She would like to say at the World Championship they did very, very well. We had 68 people from our rink which is really good in terms of numbers. Last year in the Nutcracker program they had 252 people which is the largest Nutcracker they ever had. We do two shows a year, almost all the rinks in this area only do one show a year, so we had an opportunity for people to have performance opportunities for themselves that they would not have other places. When we were skating at these other rinks in Northbrook, Glenview, and Buffalo Grove we saw these beautiful facilities which don't compare to what we have because they have been renovated or they are newer, they have two full size rinks in two out of those three. Glenview, which has a studio rink like ours, at least that facility is bright and clean and well organized and offers amenities like an open concession, a pro shop, and things that we don't have on a regular basis. There are these other facilities available to all these kids coming to our program from other places that offer more because we have all these kids coming in moving up through the ranks and now in the top programs, when they get to the higher levels there won't be ice time. She is also an ice monitor and has had to knock off people on the ice because we have so many people there this summer. What we would like to do is keep all the programs that have because we've been doing such a good job with them and would like to make sure that we offer the facilities for those people that compete successfully with those in our surrounding communities. Ms. Carrth-Multra said as for as figure skating goes you have two factors, you have the recreational aspect but you also have a very competitive aspect and as a coach that is where we make our money we're teaching private lessons. Some skaters have a lesson every single day and those competitive skaters are skating anywhere between three and five hours a day. This includes ballet, off ice conditioning, and all these other types of off ice activities that have to be occurring to produce a strong competitive skater. In the past Crown has produced a couple of very, very competitive skaters one of which is Nicole Bolvack and another one that is now an ice dancer, and a figure skater Sunny Davis. With our facility we've done very well with what we have and as you look at the Instructors that teach at that rink they are people that are national champions of countries, from Poland, Russia, and the United States. Adding an additional rink you're also adding the amount of ice time that the skaters can take and as far a figure skaters go, especially when they start to become competitive they go where the ice is. They go where they can skate, they don't want skate time early in the morning but they do it if they have to. The issue here is the more you make it available for figure skaters the more they will come and they will leave if they don't have that ice. Once they get situated into 11SC;Nfinutes 8111/03 Page 11. another rink, if they happen to leave, and they like the rink why would they come back to a rink that's not accommodating their needs. Competitive skating is a big money maker as well as hockey. Those two sports compete for ice quite a bit and are definitely the profit makers for those rinks. if you had two rinks you would be able to have both hockey and figure skating at the same time making revenue an both. The speed skating is limited as far as time and she has only seen them on the ice two hours a week with an additional rink they would be able to come in for their program also. With producing this Olympic skater they're able to draw more talent come into their clubs. You're looking at a very special rink because we have been able to produce some very good skaters that have very good reputations and people come to that rink because they want to improve their skating. People don't want to come to this facility because it's dirty, and needs improvement. Alderman Newman said he agreed that Crown needs a lot of improvement but you take any Saturday or Sunday and you have that main rink filled with people of at( ages, from 5 years to 55 years of age. Ms. Carruth-Multra agreed with Alderman Newman and said she also teaches at two other rinks and the kids she teaches decline the opportunity to come to Crown for a lesson because they don't want to come to that facility. Its hard to get there, its not well kept, people opt not to come there. They prefer to go to Winnetka. Wilmette, or Lake Forest but not to Evanston. Mr. Harlow said it's a similar problem with hockey where a number of Evanston children are playing in neighboring communities in part because of the dissatisfaction as to the facilities available here. He would also like to say like the figure skaters and the speed skaters we have also had our success. We had a player Steve Richmond play in the NHL, the captain of the last year's Notre Dame team is an Evanston child Evan Gilson. The captain of our high school team is a woman who went on to captain Princeton's Women' Hockey Team and her brother was drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers last year. There are a lot of kids who have been successful coming out of Evanston. He is also very proud to say they have never turned down a child because of inability to pay the fee. They scholarship 25% of their kids and it is something that is a private/public type benefit. This is not something that is funded by the City it is funded by their club and some of the other organizations that use Crown for the benefit of Evanston residents. Alderman Newman said the committee appreciates all the comments made this evening because that helps us as members of the Council to try to figure out what we need to do. He hopes the Recreation Board can come back to us within three months to go over all the needs at Crown and from an existing standpoint educate us on the ice time not being available, the parking, the security, anything you can think what we can do being sensitive to the fact that there's not an unlimited budget here. That $12,800,000 number just to rebuild what we have now is a very large number for us considering where we are right now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would appreciate the Recreation Board trying to give us as much information on revenue as you understand it noting that the Director who is here also will have a lot of input in terms of the interaction. Also what would you predict if we were to have that additional rink? _ Alderman Newman added your focus would be on program, gym space, cost of adding some things, etc. He would like to have a joint meeting with the entire Recreation Board at the and of three months and the reason he specifies three months is we start to put out a capital budget that we pass for the year in January or February. We should start having a concept of this that we can get to our legislators and at least have them try for next year when they do all their action, so it is best to get to them with gap - some ideas in December. At this time Ms. Carra also introduced Recreation Board member Mark ` Sloane who was in the audience. She said as they go step by step they would like to give this committee the step by step information, and if you don't mind helping them it would be great. Alderman Newman thanked the Recreation Board members and all those who came to this meeting for their comments and attendance. Vill. SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM AND GUIDELINES Alderman Newman thanked Ms. Haynes for a very thorough report on the Summer Youth Employment Program. He had some questions about the private sector participation and noted that Northwestern 0_ -- started with 12 people and asked if they are still at 12. Ms. Haynes said she thought there are 7 or 8. _— Alderman Newman asked how many actual jobs there were from the 6 private business participants from the last year. Ms. Haynes said she could not tell how many positions they filled because we HSC Minutcs 8111/03 Page 12. provide them the opportunity to interview the kids at the Job Fair and she does not have staff or time to follow up to see what they've done, or how many kids they hired, she really does not know. She knows for example when they were at Teen Research Unlimited, they talked about hiring 20 or 30 kids but she does not know how many they actually hired. We don't know how many because we don't pay for them, the employers pay. Alderman Newman said the private sector part of this program is a positive thing we're doing and would like to try to get an idea about this. are we talking about 10 jobs or 20 or 30 jobs, which is something Ms. Haynes could come back with. At an earlier meeting this committee heard that 1200 letters go out to the private sector. Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Haynes if she has a discipline problem with the kids and if so how is that handled? What if somebody lust walks off and leaves their job? Ms. Haynes said with teenagers, of course there are discipline problems. They have a discipline protocol which depends upon the nature of the infraction and use a progressive model, kids can be suspended, they can receive a verbal reprimanding, and we have discharged kids from the program. We want to create an environment that is much like the work -a -day world so they're entitled to due process, there is a hearing where they sometimes come with their parents and sometimes other employees come with them to represent them. Also, the supervisors are present and she is the hearing officer. She's not in favor of firing kids they have to do something really wrong to be fired. She fired one this year because he was fighting on City property, in his uniform, after work. It would have to be something of that nature. Before we discharge them we try to do some discipline corrective measures. Alderman Feldman said he gathered from the tone of this while its there, they're not detrimental problems. Ms. Haynes said its not a major problem, several years ago when we had a lot of gang activities in town we had some problems but we worked through them. We like to create a cross section of supervisors for the community clean up and have been fortunate in being able to hire teachers and teacher aids and having an interest in and a desire to work with teenagers is needed to be successful as a supervisor. Alderman Newman said he noticed in the community clean up there seemed to be a particular focus in the 5'" and 81' Wards and wondered if that realty carried over to some of the statistics as cited in the accomplishments. Out of these 159 alleys, 12 traffic calming devices, 54 sidewalks, are those mostly 5" Ward? Ms. Haynes said this year our community clean up craws are much smaller than they have been in past years because we have more lull -time positions in the departments than ever before. We generally had between 70 and 80 kids in community clean up alone. We did lose a little funding and our community clean up component shrunk so we focused on the areas where there was an obvious need to do community clean up, we do other areas as well. Alderman Newman said the reason he brought it up is because he's been noticing when you come in off Lake Shore Drive into Sheridan that portion of Evanston near the cemetery is in terrible condition. It has not been weeded and he just wondered when we're doing these very good things we're doing, whether we are truly taking a citywide approach. Ms. Haynes said the lakefront would not have been cleaned the 4" of July if not for the kids who worked down there. Alderman Newman said he sees the kids at the festivals and the lakefront and it's greatly appreciated. Ms. Haynes said this year we have a small contingent of clean up. Alderman Newman asked where are the assignments coming from, basically by complaint or from Zeltee or David Jennings. Ms. Haynes responded they come by complaint, they come from herself and her staff who literally physically walk and ride through the community. For example they received a request from Aldernan Feldman's ward. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said last year he asked Ms. Haynes whether or not she had a citywide approach to this. He knows that some of the wards, as the 21 Ward may have some needs, but he thought she had a particular approach. Ms. Haynes said they did last year, but they had a much larger component, to which Alderman Jean -Baptista said then you just move principally by complaint and whatever you identify. Alderman Newman questioned the breakdown figures of gander, race, age, and asked if we know if all the kids in this program are actually at -risk kids because if you go back in the history of the program it originally came together because of at -risk types of concerns and various agencies were to participate and to some extent still do. Do we actually know that out of the 100 + kids in the total program paid for by the City how many of these are at -risk kids? Ms. Haynes said she will tell you what a school psychologist has shared with her, all teenagers are all kids at -risk and it has nothing to do with economics or the color of their skin. Alderman Newman said the way we usually used the term at -risk, HSC Minutes 8/11/03 Page 13. and he will stand to be corrected on this, is we're talking about families who have been struggling for one reason or another regardless of what their race is, it could be any family that is struggling and kids aren't getting the support they probably need at home to encourage them to be making the effort they need in education, etc. Ms. Haynes said she knows some of these kids fit that description of at -risk and you are right, the past couple of years the program was geared solely for at -risk kids. If you want to make a difference you don't put all at -risk kids together they need to see some other behaviors, they need some exposures, they need some other outlets. If all the kids were at -risk there would be no incentive for another behavior. We opened it up a little bit, we saw a difference in behavior for the good even in at -risk kids. Alderman Newman asked if that opened up in 1997. to which Ms. Haynes said when they decided to go to the private sector to hire kids is when it changed in 1997. Alderman Tisdahl said one of the things they found at the high school is that kids will somewhat behave in the way you expect them to and if you say this is a program for at -risk kids you are labeling all the kids that come in. In her view it's a better approach to have a mix of kids and not to say this is a program for at -risk kids because the kids know it. If you have a different label on the program the kids will act a lot better. Ms. Haynes said they have seen kids that are at -risk, worked a year or two in community clean up, have graduated and are working in offices, are very appropriate, and fulfilling their responsibilities. Alderman Tisdahl inquired about the attendance, to which Ms. Haynes responded, really good in fact they are going to do their own little awards recognition assembly on their last day which they have never done before. The attendance has been very, very good this year and it generally is. Most of these kids come to work every day, we do have some who take vacations and are gone a week or so, but for the most pert the attendance is very good. The kids enjoy what they're doing, that' have a sense of responsibility and importance it's nice to see them walk around the building. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to get back to the subject of private sector and said he was surprised that there were only 6 because in the City of Evanston there are many possible places that kids could be placed for the summer and he's surprised that we don't have greater participation. It may be naive on his part but he thinks that with a request from us to follow up we could get 50 participants and wonders why we cannot get that. Ms. Haynes thought that's the question that has to be asked and you need an answer to it but she's not sure what it is. There was a time she thought it was because we were trucking heads with the Youth Job Center but does not believe that's the case anymore because they don't do summer kinds of jobs. We have talked to businesses and are told by some they don't want to baby sit, they don't want to put in the time and energy It takes to employ a kid. There Is some time, energy, and commitment that goes along with that because you have to work with and train the kids, they require supervision and monitoring. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he understands that but how do we evaluate ourselves, we sent out 1200 letters which we do every year, and we send them to the same people which has produced 6 returns. Do we then back up and say next year we are going to dedicate some time and follow up on these letters. Do these business write back to you and say they don't want to baby sit kids, or do you get that feedback as a result of having talked to 500 businesses. Ms. Haynes said they started the private sector piece in 1997 they had a lot more business participants. Alderman Newman interjected he knows about the job fair but the private sector started tong before 1997 because Northwestern was using kids. Ms Haynes said that was the only entity that was asked to participate and it was not opened up to the rest of the community until 1997. What she found then was we had new people participating but she was literally going door to door and - going out and visiting with businesses basically selling the program. Now she does not have the professional staff or time to do that but at that time she believes the personal contact made a _ difference. She does not know whether given the economy or the issue of baby sitting what it would look like in 2004, and guesses we're going to find out. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if during the year Ms. Haynes has somebody on staff full time, to which Ms. Haynes said she does not have anyone during the year, but knows why Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked that. She came before CDBG and asked for a position, it was funded but it wasn't added to the budget so she does not have full time staff to handle this program. During the year she has someone for a couple of months. rai> Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired regarding the Kendall College participation proposal where we had issues and conflicts because the City doesn't pay private sector people to have our kids work there. -_ That was a policy that was made by the founding people of the program, since this occurred has there HSC Minutes 8/11103 Page 14. been any further discussion, perhaps to the merits of placement of kids in private sector where they have more diverse expanse and the possibility to get hired down the line. Ms. Haynes responded she is working on it and after the summer will have more time to devote to putting together some sort of program that will d:finitely allow that to happen, but there are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration. She plans on coming back to this committee some time before the 2004 Summer Youth Employment Program and informing the committee what we'd like to do and get your feedback on it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked when the call is put out for kids to come and apply who usually comes and where does that information go to? Ms. Haynes said they flyer every middle school, high school. faith based organizations, community groups, and thinks they do a pretty good job of informing the community that this is going to happen. They've put flyers up in funeral homes, Dominick's. community centers and places where kids hang out. Alderman Jean -Baptiste inquired regarding the responses received and asked if there are many more black kids applying than white kids or Hispanic kids, to which Ms. Haynes responded, yes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then asked if the numbers on your report reflect the percentage break down of the kids that come. Ms. Haynes said when it was considered an at -risk program we saw no white or Hispanic students apply, they just did not come. At one of the job fairs a man, who by the way was white, was driving down the street and saw the kids lined up. He came to find out what was going on and was referred to Ms. Haynes who explained this was a job fair for kids ages 14 to 18. At that time we had the arts skills program and she explained to him that we actually pay kids to create public art. The man could not understand it and said, "you are going hire kids and pay them to create art', to which Ms. Haynes said, "that is true The man then said, 'this is the best kept secret in Evanston." The man left and came back with a van food of kids, who were all white, they all got in line, waited for 2 hours, and went through the process which was kind of the beginning scene of integration in terms of the program. Alderman Tisdahl asked what number of kids come and do not get jobs? Ms. Haynes said they have about BOO students show up for the job fair, of which we hire 100, and being real generous she would say the private sector hires probably 30 or 40 kids and the rest of them walk away. There are 400 or 500 kids that walk away without any jobs. Alderman Tisdahl asked if these kids all get to interview, to which Ms. Haynes said absolutely. If nothing else it's a good experience in terms of training and a lot of the parents who drag their kids in by the ear say they don't necessarily expect them to get a job but they need that interview experience. They fill out an application, go through specs to identify jobs they are interested in interviewing for because many of them have never interviewed before. We give them a crash course in interviewing and give them a little sugar and send them upstairs to the interviewer. They can interview for as many jobs as they like. We've had young ladies interview for every single job in the book and they are at the job fair until 5:00 that night. Alderman Newman wanted to get back to the subject of labeling kids at -risk because he thinks that is a very Important point. In terms of what we were trying to do when we started this program this wasn't a program where we were trying to create an Evanston -wide summer job program. He understands if we have kids who are technically at -risk having role models makes perfect sense, but in terms of bang for your buck we were trying to get to kids who were in the streets, not working, not being supervised by parents, etc. Frankly, he loves kids, his kid should not be in this program for a number of reasons. When you have limited funds you're trying to give an opportunity to kids who weren't getting a role model at home in terms of working, people encouraging them at a relatively young age not to be on the street and would not have the requisite or support of a kid who had the confidence to try to get a job. That's still an important thing because if at the end of the day we're ending up where we have 100 kids we don't have much of a private component. For an expenditure of over $2OO,OOO for 30 to 35 kids who are really in need of getting off the street you don't have a success because we have a limited number of jobs. Ms. Haynes remarked the majority of the kids are at -risk. Alderman Newman said he would be interested in doing a program where we essentially try to get the kids who are not going to be in camps, not have anything to do, and not getting any support at home. If we have 100 kids and we're only getting to 35 or 40, as he does not know what the number is and why he asked this question at the beginning, aren't we closer to 85 or 90. The point of this program was to give those kids who for whatever reason in their families were not getting direction trying to give them at that age an opportunity to get some direction and some help in getting into the job market, which is what he would like to try to figure out, whether or not we're accomplishing that. HSC !Minutes 8/11/03 Page 15. f Alderman Jean -Baptiste was trying to understand Alderman Newman's question whether or not the majority of the kids participating in the program are at -risk and his statement if there were only 35 or so it would not be a worth while program. Alderman Newman said you want to know you're getting some results and having an impact. When he first came on the Council, 12 years ago, we were getting more federal funding than we are now. Ms. Haynes remarked that actually we have never had any federal funding for this program, the initial funding was $60,000, to which Alderman Newman added then there was another $40,000. Ms. Haynes said originally the City paid $60,000 and the Township paid $60,000. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Haynes to go back to the original 1992 budget on those figures because he does recall what those figures were. His point was we originally got into this program to try to get the kids who specifically weren't going to have opportunities anywhere else. When he uses the term at -risk those were the kids we're trying to reach and he's trying to get an idea whether we still are in this number of 100, or did we got away from that because we had to have a mix of kids, which is a good thing, but where are we in terms of at -risk kids. Ms. Haynes said she would venture to say the majority of the kids are at -risk. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to clarify, poor kids doesn't equal at -risk but he thinks what Ms. Haynes is talking about is giving poor kids access to this. As Alderman Newman said his kids may not necessarily be typical of the kids who would be placed because he would be able to find some different options for them, to which Alderman Newman said, yes that a good part of it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said what we're talking about Is this program serving poor kids in Evanston, kids who may not have other options. By other options he means kids who do not have other parental means or support. What Alderman Newman is trying to get to is whether or not the program is serving kids who may not have much and who may not necessarily have jobs readily available for them or other programs they might be involved in to keep them off the streets and productive. He asked Ms. Haynes if she is saying that is the group of kids being served by this program, to which Ms. Haynes said the majority of the kids do meet that criteria. Alderman Newman asked about the agency referrals, to which Ms. Haynes said the kids that come into the community clean up are in the downtown clean up because those are controlled by her office and they get aft those referrals, that's where we go to select those kids. the kids coming from that element are referred by one of the social agencies or churches and what happens is they're able to stay in every year. Alderman Feldman asked if in the selection of the children you have a 100 children you select out of 600 applications. Ms. Haynes said she does not select the departments that participate select the kids. Alderman Feldman asked if there is a program that is open to everyone and everyone has a good a chance as anyone to be selected, or is it the children's economic status, and he's not talking about those that are referred as he can easily see that can be a compelling reason to hire them. Also, in the process of interviewing these other children, and there are children of poor families who are aggressive, get jobs, work hard, so the fact that they're poor has no beating. What Alderman Newman was referring to is when this program began there were some kids in trouble, not necessarily with the law but they might have had trouble with school and needed all the support help they could get. This was one of the ways we were going to do that, to which Ms. Haynes noted and still does, Alderman Feldman went on to say and give them job skills and the idea that they have to show up on time, etc. This wasn't a so called middle class program, to which Ms. Haynes interjected, it still isn't, believe her it is not, they may have a couple of kids here and there but the majority of these kids would probably fit the description of at -risk. They come from single parent homes, she has girls that are pregnant, for -- the last several years she has had at least one 16 year old girl in the program who had at least three - kids and thinks those kind of kids fit the bill. Alderman Feldman said the reason he said what he did is that was the original reason for its genesis, and there has never been a discussion on the Council since that time as to changing things, to which Ms Haynes said that is right, and it hasn't changed. Alderman Feldman went on to say there has never been a discussion, and he's not saying its not appropriate, but if we had come to that and decided lots change it or lets not we'd have a clear message. What he is concerned about is in its evolution and in its development it has changed direction, to which Ms. Haynes said the majority of these kids are still at -risk, high -risk kids which is the reason we take them to the boot camp in Cook County Jail at Northeastern and Oakton. We give them those exposures and say you keep up and this is where you're going to and up. Alderman Feldman said he feels it would be great to help as many children as possible but we have a limited budget and from his point of view the people that should benefit from this are the people that H5C Minutes 8111103 Page 16. absolutely need it most. Ms. Haynes said that is the case except as Alderman Tisdahl said we still have to have a plant here and there she's not saying we're going to hire a third of these kids who will be middle class or upper middle class but you need some plants there in the group to model appropriate behavior. The kids are so caught up in it if they're just around kids that are having the same old problems its not good for them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we understand the essence of what you're saying is the program is not 100% `at -risk kids', and if some other kids show up, apply and interview they also get hired, but the majority of the kids that participate don't get jobs.. Alderman Feldman said this is actuaity very selective if you take 1 out of 6, that to him means choices are being made and is not serendipitous, it has to be an intellectual choice he would assume on values. Alderman Newman said you don't necessarily have to have a program where kids are working in teams, what we also might be doing in the alley and the clean up program. He understands why you might be doing that but ideally you might be trying to get placements all around the City for kids. One thing we found out tonight in terms of private participation, and when he says this he is not blaming Ms. Haynes, is when you have a City such ours where literally its an amazing statistic that 40% of the people who live in Evanston work in Evanston. There are job opportunities in Evanston and we've been building all these businesses through our efforts downtown, we have a Chamber who gets a significant financial contribution from us, we have all types of connections here and its an amazing thing to him that Evanston Hospital or St. Francis Hospital don't participate. Ms. Haynes said St. Francis Hospital did participate but when the nuns came they stopped participating in the program. Alderman Newman said when this was discussed last month we talked about why we could not place some of the kids at Kendall with us paying the bill. There was an implication that we had this significant list of private participation and the private participation here is limited. It would seem to him that we really need to improve and think about what we're doing about the private participation because those are the most valuable placements. if you get some kids into Evanston Hospital there would be all types of opportunities there for them. He thinks at this point we have to say we can certainly ascertain to something greater than what we have here in the private sector and how should we proceed from here. We need an outreach person. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we really do need an outreach person, he has some experience, which was a little different than what exists in the City. He used to be part of a community group that went to local businesses with the kids and knock on doors and try to negotiate jobs here and there. ff that's part of your ongoing program you'll find more response than if it's just a letter writing campaign. Maybe we should go back to CDBG and try to justify hiring someone, but if we do get somebody hired to do the work they would have to be able to show some real results. Ms. Haynes said if you recall when she made her presentation to CDSG that was all a part of having a full time person not only to follow up with the kids but also to work and develop this piece in the private sector. Alderman Newman said he would t-e willing to look at more CD funds for that person and add on only on the condition that if we gave you a year we'd go from 6 to 40 or 50 jobs. One of the things we do around here is once we start something we never end it based on performance. This is something we need to do and he thinks we need to get some ideas how we can improve this private end part of the program. On the federal funding, according to Charles Smith of Kendall, he was told if we had income limitations on our program which we clearly don't have and he's not being critical of that, there are federal funds available for these types of programs, at least that's what Charles Smith told him on the phone. This report says you've done an exhaustive internet search, he would like to see the City Manager's office put some resources into helping find grant money for this and if we have to make some changes to our program to get grants why not consider them. Ms. Haynes wanted to say that early on Alderman Tisdahl found $40,000 dedicated from the Private Industry Council (PIC). PIC has income guidelines, they shut down in Evanston because a few years ago they could not find kids to meet the income guidelines interested in participating in the program. She does not know what the picture looks like now but knows that 3 or 4 years ago they had a tough time trying to find kids who were interested in or had the desire to work and who met those income guidelines, but we will certainly continue to pursue it. Ms. Barry of the City Manager's office said they can certainly take a look again but after you had raised that question whether it was last year during the budget time or the year before we had Jessica HSC Minutes 811:03 Page 17. Bullock, who does grants and research out of the Parks and Recreation Department, use her resources to see if any money was available for that program. There wasn't really anything along the tines of the program that we had. Alderman Feldman said the program would have to be dramatically changed to which Ms. Haynes added it would have to be clear driven training and that's not what this program is designed to do as those were the funds that we found when we looked. Alderman Newman again thanked Ms. Haynes for her report and presence this evening. IX. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:00 P.M. Respectfully submitted, C& Audrey Trot Ao,-4� Department of Health and Human Services HSC Minutes 8/11103 Page 18. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEEG Monday, October 4, 2004 Evanston Civic Center— Council Chambers 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT. Judy Aiello, Frank Kaminski, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor. Vince Jones, Gavin Morgan, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Rainey, Alderman Wynne, Alderman Moran, Pat Vance (Evanston Township), Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessors Office) Sue Canter (Mental Health Board); PRESIDING: Alderman Tisdahl 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Tisdahl called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. and thanked everyone for attending. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE SEPTEMBER 20, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the September 20, 2004 Human Services Committee were called and unanimously approved. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP SEPTEMBER 2004 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl called for approval of the September 2004 monthly bills. Alderman Newman asked if this included the Hoover legal bill and was told it did. Alderman Newman then asked that the Hoover bills be voted on separately to be able to discuss this bill. Alderman Newman moved to approve the Township September monthly bills with the exception of the Hoover bill regarding the attorney's fees. Alderman Berstein seconded the motion. Alderman Tisdahl called forany further discussion. Alderman Newman asked If the legal bill has been paid yet and was told It was not. He then said he did not think it's that unusual for a lawyer not to be paid right on time and each time we make a significant payment he would like to have Mr. Hoover be in attendance. Also, he expects Mr. Hoover not to charge us to attend a meeting because he sees that Mr. Page 1. Hoover charges for travel time to and from his house, not all lawyers do that Alderman Newman said he wants to know a!ut the progress of the case each time we pay a significant bill and fAr Hooverwill have to keep us informed. he's not in anyway saying he should not get paid but one of things his bill does not show is what we totally paid to date. He would I i.e to be able to monitor this closely because he does not know where this is all going, he does not know how many more S3.000 or S10,000 payments there will be and would therefore like to held this bill over until the next Human Services rneeting, if Mr. Hoover has a problem with this it's not the Supervisors fault it's the Trustees' fault and we should be arred not you. ids. Eckersall said first of all she offered to have the attorney come here tonight and nobody said they should be here. She gave them the weekend, she called Mr. Terry this morning, nobody said anything, they would have been here tonight. Second of all they have not been paid since .tune, and third of all her budget line item shows you what has been spent to Oem. You have approved her budget for X amount of dollars, that includes legal and she would like Ms. Brenniman to address that issue also. Alderman Newman asked if the line item includes what we've paid each year or just what was paid this year. Ms. Eckersall responded, what you've paid this year, to which Alderman Newman said he would like the =1 picture as this has already been going into more than one fiscal year. if he correctly recalls. Ms. Eckersall said it shows you last year on the previous year, year to date, too. Alderman Newman said everybody would have tried to accommodate Mr_ Hoover here tonight except for the fact that we have 100 people here who are waiting to talk about an issue that has already been put off for 3 months. The reason we couldn't get him in here tonight because was tonight the marina issue is the priority. This is unfortunate but when you work with a municipal government that's what you sometimes have to put up with. We'd be very glad to get have him come in so lets get him in. Alderman Bernstein said he had another concern not necessarily not asking him to come in today because of the marina issue but rather because he does not want to pay his fee from his house. None of the other lawyers that we outsource cases to charge us for those services and most of them give us a reduced rate because they're sure they're going to be paid. He thinks it's about time we stopped the bleeding in this case and he would like to talk to Mr. Hoover, on his time. Ms Eckersall said you have postponed your Human Services Committee meetings a couple of times, therefore the bills have been pushed backwards and that is not his fault or her fault, that is the fault of the committee's rescheduling. Alderman Bernstein said he thought Alderman Newman addressed that, blame us. Alderman Feldman said the declaration that this committee is not going to pay him for appearance here that's from our point of view. What if he says he's not coming unless he's paid? Alderman Newman said he would like to answer that and said he thought that lawyers in general love to have cities like Evanston for clients and thinks he'll be here. Alderman Bernstein said it's also based on the representation and the analysis of his billing that the case is not farenough advanced that another lawyer can't pick it up readily. If he doesn't want to work for us we options. Alderman Tisdahl recalled Alderman Newman's motion, seconded by Alderman Bernstein, to approve the Township September monthly bills with the exception of the Hoover bill regarding the attorney's fees to be put to a vats, motion unanimously passed Page 2. Alderman Tisdahl remarked it is our fault and we will put him on the agenda in November, N. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINGS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski said the committee has before them C.R. No. 01 and 03 that vas included in their packets, also included as usual the letters and ccmmunications from throughout the Department. Alderman Newman asked if the first case is the one where the complaining witness didn't follow through and told that was correct. Alderman Newman said he moved acceptance for C.R. No. 04-01. Alderman Feldman asked what SOt_ stands for and Chief Kaminski said it stands for Stricken Without Leave, if she ever comes back or we could get in touch with her we would follow up with additional information and then reinstate the case. Alderman Tisdahl called for and additional discussion, hearing none, recalled Alderman Newman's motion for acceptance of C.R. No.04-01. Motion unanimously accepted (64). Alderman Tisdahl called for discussion of C.R, No. 04-03. Alderman Newman asked if the numbering 04-03 means date complete initiated June 7 h, does that mean that as of June 7'" , 2004 there were only 3 complaints filed all year. For the sake of what we do around here that's a very low number of complaints which he is just throwing out as an observation, Alderman Bernstein moved to accept C.R. No. 04-03, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to talk again about process. He knows we looked at process some time ago and Chief Kaminski indicated that complaints are reviewed internally. Ultimately the Department determines whether an officer has done something wrong against a citizen, His position has always been that it's hard to be objective about complaints against the Department when you're the Chief or are employed for the Department. He remembers the Chief mentioning we have a Citizen Advisory Committee that you interact with. Do you interact with them on anything having to do with complaints that may come in? Chief Kaminski said the standard item on the agenda for the Advisory Committee and that is in reference to feedback, positive or negative for anything that may occur or is asked about he addresses. We do not review this issue. We talked about positive and negative issues that many may have heard about. Alderman Jean- Bapfste asked Chief Kaminski if at any time he foresees the value of integrating private citizens in reviewing complaints against police. Chief Kaminski said that is why during the time he's been around has done it through the Human Services Committee as your representatives of the community to look at these complaints. This is the system we've come up with over time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked when you meet with the Advisory Committee do you discuss the number of complaints that may come before us. Chief Kaminski responded, yes, we go through the whole annual report with them and other issues that are pending. The Board, pretty much advisory in nature, he keeps them updated with everything that is going on in the Department personnel wise and issue wise and they give him their feedback as to what's going on and what they think. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if these citizens are usually chosen, to which Chief Kaminski said they are representatives from a lot of the groups that they deal with, a lot of the programs involved with in neighborhood groups, and are very well representative throughout the entire City. They are a very good group of people very involved and concerned. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he did not have any concerns about the particular complaint that came before us tonight but just wanted to get an update on the whole process as to how you see it and as to how we see moving forward. Chief Kaminski said the committee members have people they'd like to add to the committee because he has people that Page 3. come and go constantty and he's always eager to put some new faces on the committee. Just recently when we had some of the problems at Northwestern and he was able to pick up some of the neighbors from that group who have now been taming and we have been talking strategy about that 11 s aWays good to have a well represented group and if Alderman Jean -Baptiste knows anybody who would Lke to pamcipate, we meet every three months and please give him their names. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there are cmbably some names he would like to submit to the Chief, to which the Chief said he would love to have them. Alderman Newman remarked since we're on these complaints he thinks it would be helpful that at some time in the next couple of months the Chief can come to us and explain what you're doing and the Department is doing in terms of training and raising consciousness. It is a very high priority with the City of Evanston that anybody who is arrested be treated with respect and dignity. Considering what's been out there, and he knows the Department was very aggressive in assisting the State in terms of prosecuting the offenders, but we need to know that we are developing a Department in which every single officer knows that the type of thing that went on or may have gone on is just absolutely not going to be tolerated. Chief Kaminski said Alderman Newman is right and it won't be tolerated. He is glad that our checks and balances do work. Alderman Newman said he thinks we need to understand what goes on in training and how this is addressee by the Department because then we can answer questions in the community about what we're doing and what the Department is doing. Chief Kaminski said whenever you want to put this on the agenda he will be glad to do it, to which Alderman Newman said he would leave this to the Chair to schedule. Alderman Feldman said Chief Kaminski is undoubtedly aware of a recent reference to the Administration and Public Works Committee with respect to the possible use of additional funds for the Police Department to affect the very kind of programs that Alderman Newman has suggested. To that effect it would be appreciated from the committee, if you have not already started thinking of new additional programs that might be used to benefit the Police Department on that subject. Alderman Bernstein thought that the agenda item is a misnomer when it talks in terms of citizen complaints against Police Officers because for the benefit of the public and hopefully the press in addition to any complaints that might be - forthcoming we also get a list of commendations from people in the community, none of which is ever read in this forum. He would ask the Chief to get copies to the media so that they can see that we have a good Department and recent publicity, not withstanding, the Evanston Police Department is doing a good job for the citizens of Evanston. Chief Kaminski thanked Alderman Bernstein and said in fact he counted them before he came here and there are in the packet 116 letters from citizens. It takes a lot for a citizen to write a letter of thank you. Alderman Tisdahl added these are very impressive. Alderman Bernstein noted it's easy to be negative it's much more difficult to be positive. - Hearing no further discussion Alderman Tfsdahl recalled the motion to accept C.R. 04-03, motion unanimously accepted (5.0). V. CONSIDERATION OF THE ANNUAL. LEASE WITH THE NEXT THEATER Alderman Newman asked what they were paying in rent and what are they now going to be paying. He was looking at the i lease and understands that we get more use of the theater and asked if that could be explained. Mr. Gaynor said there Page 4. are r..-:) different types of leases that we have at the Noyes Cultural Art Center, one is an annual lease and the other is a lease `or community space. There are two roams that are used for community meetings and the theater is also what we consider community use and that is on a square footage basis without community service. The annual leases have a reduced rent and it's increased through the 15% of the community service requirement. With the Next Theater Company lease they requested us to consider square footage as it would be an annual lease and include the reduction but they would do community service which is what we're recommending. It's st311 the same square footage formula that is used in all tic- other leases however, there are two different types Df leases and because this was a community space lease it was stra�aht square footage. There is a rate for the lower level of the basement, the first floor is different, and the second Floor is different When they requested us to consider they would community service if we would consider reducing their square footage rate we said that's fine with us and that's what's being recommended. Alderman Newman said he's trying to get a handle on what they are paying now and what will they be paying under the new lease or is it the same, has it gone up, has it gone down. Mr. Gaynor said they are not paying anything because they don't have a lease on the theater. The theater tease because it's community space is an annual lease. Alderman Newman asked what the part is that they owe us money on. Mr. Gaynor said that was combination of their studio lease which was an annual lease and the theater lease, a seven month lease. They have paid that off and we sent a memo informing the Council about this 2 or 3 weeks ago. Not only did they pay it off but they paid it off well in advance of the schedule that had been approved by the City Council, which we were very pleased had occurred. Their current rent based on this lease will be about $2,700 a month, $86 more this year than last year. Alderman Newman moved approval of the Next Theater annual lease, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Feldman said he was very happy to second this because he thinks the Next Theater is a cultural treasure for the City of Evanston and a matter of fact it is probably a treasure for anybody that goes to see their productions. He thinks this is one of the finest theater groups in the metropolitan area rivaling any of the downtown groups In duality and artistic ment_ We're fortunate to have Next Theater here and he's delighted that Mr. Gaynor and the Recreation Department has done so much to help support them in arranging for the delay and the payment of the loan which they paid off long before they were required to do. He thinks good things are happening there, we should do everything we can to support and help them stay. He's very happy to second this and it does us credit to do so. Alderman Newman said the lease says the rate per square foot is 10.76 and obviously there's no taxes paid. A lot of people become agitated with the City that we don't spend enough money on the arts. This is a very low rate of a building of that quality and the expenses that go into maintaining it This rate is a support of the arts and very often we don't get credit for it. People on our staff and Aldermen hear we're not sensitive to the arts, if we had more we could do more but this is not a rate that many people can get for the quality of the space that they have and he is very glad to be helping them, its a great group. He's not sure on their end that people at the Center understand this is a supporting rate of the arts Alderman Tisdahl called for a vote of approval of the Next Theater annual lease, committee voted unanimously for approval (6-0). Page 5. Vl. DISCUSSION OF POSSIBLE CITY DEVELOPMENT OF A MARINA Alderman Tiscanl thanked everyone for coming and announced this is going to be done a little different tonight because we're going tc discuss the money involved first before public comments and that may put rest to some of the public comments. rjoerman Jean -Baptiste asked that this begirt v..th a reminder to people assembled here as to the background, where do we come from this, This has been in the process of discussion since 1966 and on. This was part of the report tnat was prepared for the packet and he thinks is important because hopefully the discussion tonight will either bring closure and put this to the side as opposed to tabling it and having it repeat itself and brought to the table over and over aga►n There was an initial feasibility study done on Match 28, 1966 so this interest has been on the table for a long period of tore The City built the boat ramp in 1982. Interest in a marina was first expressed by a Council member. Members of the Council had met four years ago and itemized a number of items that the Council wanted to address for a possible investigation feasibility in 2002. With the assistance of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky we received a positive response from the Army Corps of Engineers to initiate the preliminary study. After the initial presentation made by the Army Corps of Engineers staff followed up on a number of questions about proposed costs, the availability of funds and the next steps for the Church Street Boat Ramp evaluation. We had asked our Director of Parks, Recreation and Forestry to lead the charge and he has provided us with the necessary information for us to consider. Alderman Moran thanked the committee for giving him the opportunity to discuss this. He distributed pictures to the Council members depicting one of five finalist plans submissions to the Chicago Park District on Request for Proposals from the park distract to expand the lakefront park system from Hollywood Boulevard where it currently ends up into Juneway Terrace the northern edge of the City right south of Calvary Cemetery. It shows segments in each portion of this stretch by address This fall Chicago Park District is anticipated to request feasibility study proposals for this expansion of the lakefront system that it would extend Lakeshore Drive north to Juneway Terrace. It would lead to the creation of bike paths, jogging paths, beaches, other park amenities and open space and green space, in effect expanding whatwe know to be the park system south of Hollywood all the way up to the north end of Chicago. It is anticipated that they will study the feasibility of doing that project this fall. Alderman Moran distributed another illustration to the members of the Council (see Attachment A) thathe explained is a two part picture The top picture was an aerial view taken of South Boulevard Beach, Calvary Cemetery, and then the lakefront an Rogers Park. The bottom portion of this drawing is a depiction of this plan as seen from the same perspective running from north of South Boulevard Beach south to Hollywood. It is essentially from Juneway Terrace on down to Hollywood. but has one other addition to it which is a supplement to the previous submission it includes both a marina and lakefront park property to the east of the marina which would include bike paths, jogging paths, playing fields and other amenities that could be enjoyed by people who live in Evanston and Rogers Park. To the east of what we now appreciate is Sheridan Road and the lakefront there is a section for parking spaces for the marina. The parking spaces are built so they are not seen from either Sheridan Road or any other perspective unless you actually go into the parking area because they're covered by a green sward that would have grass and trees and which would in essence mimic a lot of the environmental projects that are being conducted in the City of Chicago right now including City Hall which as you probably know has a garden on its roof. The parking would be underneath that green roofing and would not be visible. Page 6. The feasibility study for the lakefront exparsion of the park system should kick in soon. He would like to suggest that a feasibility study for the establishment of the manna and other lakefront park amenities that would be determinous of the City of Chicago Lakefront park expansion in one sweeping complimentary fashion and allow for the further amenities that are depicted on this plan The concept dra•rrnc was put together vnthin the last couple of days but was put together by one of the finalists in the Park Front Expansion Plan and is considered by that architectural firm, which has become quite renown in recent times and also is the firm that designed the new Levy Center in James Park, as a very possible, positive addition to the Lakefront Expansion Plan that that firm has put together ove- the course of the last couple of years. Part of the next consideration, if it is allowed to go forward, would be a feasibility study for the marina. it would be his suggestion that the feasibility study include not only a marina but the further parkland that would be adjacent to the marina to the east, the extension of bike paths and jogging paths potentially beaches, potentially other uses on the land to the east. That would be a good thing to find out whether we could accomplish this both economically and in a way that would be environmentally compatible with the community values, which he thinks it could. We won't know unless we continue to examine all the facts related to the issue and he would like to urge the committee and urge everybody here to keep an open mind, open ears, and open eyes with respect to the various issues that relate to this issue in effect allow us the possibility, not the certainty, of providing another amenity to the lakefront and in the words of a member of our Environmental Board, leverage the asset that is our lakefront. He knows that people have concerns of various natures with respect to a potential marina but in the previous study its clear that some of those concerns have been addressed, it's also clear that there are other concerns that need to be studied and addressed and resolved before this project can go forward. What he would like to urge people to do is to think on a broader scale what this could mean for a City like Evanston and give consideration to both its beauty, expansion of recreational uses, and he thinks a smashing addition to our lakefront. Just on a personal note, he has traveled to the state of Maine numerous times to vacation and sail there. He was there again this August when he stayed in a town called Camden Maine what is referred to there as a mid coast region. It's on a beautiful natural bay that has a marina, combination of sail and motor crafts, situated in it. To live in and around that environment and to the town south of Rockport that has a beautiful bay, and the town south of that Rockland that has a beautiful bay, when you see it, when you feel it, and you hear it you know that it is not a detriment but leads to an erwironment that is peaceful, beautiful, useful, and realty helps establish an identity to a place. He would encourage everybody, including the committee, to give consideration to the possibility that that kind of facility and that kind of asset could be acquired by our City for use here. Thank you. Alderman Newman said he had an opportunity to look at the information that was given to us and has some questions - about the financial information. The reason he wants to get that on the table is because he wants to make sure he's correct in the understanding of the finances as it seems this project as proposed is cost prohibitive to this City. Before we spend 2 hours discussing what we can't pay for he would just like to ask some questions of the staff about their memos on marina slip and debt service so we can all get a handle on what this is going to cost. He asked if it is correct that starting in 2006 the City would have to find at least $400,000, and he's not talking about what the study would cost us. Before we got to one operation dollar it would cost us between S600,000 and S750,OOD for the first 10 years that we have to come up within order to pay for the debt service on the bonds to build the $20,000.000 marina. He just wanted to get that straight. Page 7. Mr. Gaynor said the chart teat alderman Newman is referring to is titled Marina Slip Rentals and Debt Service estimates. We worked with the Director of Finance Department. Bill Stafford, who cave us these numbers and we used some other numbers that were in the Army Corps of Engineers Report. It's true that the debt service to 2025 a schedule that they'll put togetrrer shows the first year almost S670,000. Then itjumps to S1,500,000 debt service all the way down to 2026 and for that period of time ,t shows other than in the first year it does show a significant deficit based on the estimated slip rental total at 100% occupancy. The number that was used is the estimated slip fee the average that was documented from the Army Corps of Engineers Survey saying that in Chicago a certain amount goes to Chicago but in th;s location Evanston would be able to get an average of $2,008.50, it's a calculation that shows the revenue that would be brought in times the number of slips, which is the number. There are some footnotes at the bottom of the chart that shows it does not include our operating costs, which we really don't know because that would depend on the type of development of the marina. If you went in with star docks that come in and out, which some of the Chicago marinas have, which are less of a maintenance issue than other types. Alderman Newman asked if we're talking about $200,000 or S300,000 a year, to which Mr. Gaynor said he would not speculate not knowing what the construction of the infrastructure is like. Alderman Newman said his problem is when we started this project the Army Corps of Engineers was going to come up with a substantial portion of the cost to build the $20,000,000 manna That has evaporated because the Army Corps of Engineers is doing things ail over the world right now. He would just like to put this into perspective, we have a Crown Center, the most important building in the City for children, built in the mid 70's which we've been told just to keep the building as it is we would have to put in at least S7,000,000. To make the building something that it ought it to be we probably would have to spend at least $15,000.000 or $20,000,000 and we're going to have bond for it. We don't have any solution for that right now but on the table is a proposal that we would spend $750,000 a year not including operating costs so that we can have a place for 309 boat owners. That's what we would be doing This $750,000 a year, which doesn't include the operating costs, could fund $7,000,000 a year of improvements on the Crown Center. It seems to him that as a matter of practical common sense in terms of capital priorities in this town when we first got into studying this the federal government was going to pay for 80 or 90% and it sounded like a potential source of revenue. This is a substantial increase in the Recreation Department budget if we went forward with these numbers that doesn't help one kid in thi3 town, except for the ones that are privileged to be able to ride on the boats. He appreciates Alderman Moran's pictures but he does not know what the rest of that would cost and where the money would come from. He feels this is much more than just whether or not this neighborhood in Southeast Evanston is unhappy with the proposal here. He wants to remind us that several years ago we were going to close the South Boulevard Beach because we didn't have S10,000 orS5,000 a year, that's how tight money is in this City. He understands people need to explore new ideas and to have vision and everything else, his vision is to be able to fix what we have which is basic and fundamental to peoples lives right now and believes the Crown Center fails into that category. While the Crown Center is falling down we have to somehow find a way to fix that. To even go down this road with $400.000 in a study it makes no sense and he could not support this in any way, shape or form without even before we get to the development issues. Our town has seen a lot of development which he has supported and from his point of view tried to keep the development out of the residential neighborhoods to any extent that we can and thinks we've been pretty successful here. This is right next to a residential neighborhood. We just can't afford to let the priorities in recreation in Evanston be a slave to somebody's dream of a marina for 309 slips. He does not know what other people think, we could have lengthy discussion and it won't change what our priorities are for the City. If somebody thinks he's way off in terms of the priorities of our committee that we have right now and we haven't Page 8. answered the Crown question, set him straiaht. He wishes we had the money to do everything but we have to make choices. This choice does not rate anywhere near some of the other ones that we have before us. Alderman Feldman said he couldn't agree with Alderman Newman more and if you remember it was this committee, and he's not even certain if it wasn't the Council in a policy statement, that said we have rejected the idea of just repairing Crown. The policy wa ; that that money would be good money thrown after bad, $7.000.000 just to repair it and keep the totally inadequate facilities it has in there now Facilities that don't really reflect the needs of the community anymore, at the time it was built it did but no longer does. We have aspirations for a Center that serves a broad specter of our kids in recreational needs is the single most important recreational building in the City. That's sitting there and hasn't been talked about for a long time, every day that sits it gets worse. if you walk around the North Shore, Skokie, Glenview, etc., you see facilities that were built after Crown that cause us to feel great concern and distress for our kids. Crown has no dressing rooms for girls who ice skate there, its really primitive and uncomfortable and unfair. We have this huge aspiration on our plate and nothing is happening and we have to start looking at that again and begin to bite the bullet Its not going to go away, he may not be here to do it but this City and this Council will have to face this issue sooner than later. Looking at Alderman Moran's pictures he thinks they're marvelous if we were in a totally different position, if Crown was up and running, if the new Civic Center was there, if we met our needs for affordable housing in this community, maybe we could aspire to something like that. It looks lovely and maybe there's away to solve all the problems, but the one problem we can't solve is getting the things that we have committed to first and indeed that we need much more than this. He does not know how other people feel but he is ready at any moment now to put this issue to rest and for us to discuss the merits of this plan in the face of what we have, as far as he's concemed is an unrealistic waste of time. In his discussion with members of the Council he does not find any support at all except for Alderman Moran to carry this forward to invest more money, to keep this kind of aspiration alive which he does not see. t!in f-act that's true we should just get on with. if it is true then this sword of Damocles that is hanging over the head of the immediate community, which has demonstrated overwhelming opposition to, should be lifted. They don't have to go through 2, 3 or 4 more years of wondering about this unless we're dead serious and following through with it It's not fair, its not right; it's totally unnecessary and thinks we should make a decision now. Alderman Bernstein said he was going to echo the sentiments expressed by of Aldermen Feldman and Newman. He's been a poster child for the marina and people attributed things to him about himself that he does not attribute to himself. He likes to do his homework. The only reason he thinks he voted to continue on with any discussion whatsoever is because at the time it came up he hadn't read the Army Corps of Engineers Analysis. He does not know if we're going to get to this presentation put he found the analysis less than wonderful in terms of many different aspects including the methodology of sampling and things about which about he does not have a lot of knowledge but it did not seem to him to be the kind of explanation that he wanted when we initially asked for it. This idea generated back he even earlier than 1966. There were Aldermen back then who had the idea but didn't get even a second so it was abated prior to that time. It came up as a proposal for a revenue production and that is our mission as a Council to determine alternate revenue streams. It's not going to work. He's had a lot of conversations with people who are in the marina business and the slip fees might be diminutive relative to what the slip fees would be. The actual money is generated by the sale of gasoline and by other amenities that go along with the marina. In his vision of this atheistic attraction that would serve as recreational amenities to the City of Evanston he saw not a parking lot but tall ships as you came around the cemetery. He loved Alderman Moran's rendition of this but does not know how we would pay for the eastern portion which would Page 9. generate no revenue and based on the numbers knows we can't come close to paying for the marina itself. In the course of a couple three months of analysis he did have conversations with developers and with one creative architect whose plan was to create a manna which would be ringed by a series of $2.500.000 to 53,000,000 single family ►esidential family homes One of the concerns of the neighbors with property values would be diminished which is something about which he never had any questions at all. In his mind the advent of the marina would enhance property values which is just his sense He did not have any problems with the traffic impact either and agreed with the Northwestern traffic information because at that local on the heaviest days of the use he did not think it would be a negative impact. Concerns have been raised and people have now been talking about it. He is glad Alderman Wynne is going to create a path for us to discuss methods utilization of our lakefront because he really does believe we have to use our resources to their fullest. He cautions people if you have an ice cream stand out on the point that attracts people automobiles will attracted to that ice cream stand and absent the land field to provide parking for that, its not going to work. Likewise the kayak facility, you have to be very mindful of the fact that anything you do that generates a critical mass of humanity to a given point is going to exacerbate the existing problem. Nobody wanted to kill Southeast Evanston. He's been there for 30 years and he knows what progress has done to the community because he now faces a brick wall every day when he goes to work so he knows that development is a mixed blessing. The initial concern he had is that we could perhaps find an alternate revenue string utilizing the available resources, one of which is the lakefront which he does not think we can do any more. It would have been close even given the information that we had about the federal government's participation. We're now told that there were some misstatements and in conversations with our Congresswoman's office. He does not know that the impedance is there for her to go forward although she's taken no action until such time as this Council would ask her to go forward. We did ask her to go forward with the analysis, $100.000 it's a lot of money, its our money, federal dollars its still our money, but he thinks it was a worthy effort and part of him is sorry that its not going to come to fruition. The reality is, as Alderman Newman expressed, we can't afford it and for that reason he would go along with those Aldermen who previously wanted to put this thing to rest. Alderman Moran said looking at the debt service schedule included in the packet and there's a very important footnote on it with a double asterisk, that says the debt service is based on $21.000,000 with no reduction for federal government funding. That's an important footnote and it really calls into question the sensibility of the figures on this sheet. The S21.000,000 figure is the total figure that was provided to us as an estimated cast figure in the Army Corps of Engineers Study. He's assuming that we're relating the debt service to City of Evanston funds as opposed to federal funds. The federal funds would provide half of that 521,000,000 so in essence what's shown to be the debt service schedule here is twice as large as it should be. In the first normative year which would be the second year the slip rental total would be $781.000, it shows the debt service payment as $1.532,000 but if you cut that in half the slip rentals revenue exceeds the debt service, so on that basis it pays for itself. In the Army Corps of Engineers Study, and he will apologize in advance if he does not remember it correctly, he wasn't able to read through it entirely again today, but what has been referred to here is there are other revenues that he thinks were estimated to be at approximately 40% of the estimated slip rental revenue which would make it 140% of the figures that are shown here as slip rental. Of course there would be operating costs related to the marina but his guess is if you match those up we'd be pretty close to either a break even or possible a profit. He's talking about facts and figures that have been provided by a reliable source and we need to think about that in terms of feasibility because from an economic perspective the feasibility appears to him to either be there or is close to being there. Page 10. Regarding the discussion about Pobert Crown, we've been talking about Robert Crown for longer than he can remember. He's been all for fixing the problems in Robert Crown for a long time he's never heard such a rush to discuss fixing the problems at Robert Crown than tonight when it's a different subject This project from his perspective pays for itself so if somebody tells you that continuing to examine the feasibility of this project robs the chilcren of the use of Robert Crown they're not gMng you a straight scoop on that. If we had to fix Ro7ert Crown. and we do need to fix Robert Crown, we will do it but whether we continue to examine this project or not should not impact that decision, that's a decision that stems from the Yn11 of the Evanston City Council in relation to its perceived value of Robert Crown which he agrees is very high He thinks we can continue to examine this issue and we can address the Robert Crown issue and all the other issues that we have. It's somewhat unusual to have a discussion of one particular project and references to the other needs that we have to say those needs would knock out any other project. He would encourage people, whether they're here in this chamber tonight or otherwise, to listen to the admonition of a former Evanston resident Daniel Burnham who had a plan for the lakefront in the City of Chicago some of which has been realized not all of which has been realized. In fact, the portion that has been realized has made the City of Chicago a world class City certainly to the extent we have a beautiful lakefront and was to make no small plans. These are not small plans, both for the City of Chicago or the City of Evanston but they are plans that are worth examining. The vote here tonight is a vole to cut off that examination which he finds to be extremely unfortunate, but be that as it may he would ask all of you to think about no small plans and as time goes by give some consideration to the expansion of lakefront amenities. This beautiful asset that we have we do have the ability to leverage and can convert into an even more beautiful asset than we have now. Thanks very much. Alderman Newman said he would like to have clarified if this is our debt service or are we apt to get $11,000.000 to make this half the cost because it should have been explained that way. Mr. Gaynor said in the Army Corps of Engineers report they indicted if there was a bill passed in Congress in Washington D.C. at best we might realize 50%. Therewas a great deal of reluctance based on the priority of what's going on right now at the national level which all he can really say. Alderman Newman asked if it's a low likelihood that we're going to get $10.000,000 to S11,000.000 or is it a high likelihood where we should start spending our money. Maybe we should get Congresswoman Schakowsky here and talk with her if we go should forward putting up money, assuming that we're going to get $11,040,000. If Congresswoman Schakowsky's party is now in the minority in Congress and he does not know if she herself would control whether or not we get that funding. His sense has been that Congresswoman Schakowsky is not that supportive of this right now so the idea that we're going to get this grant is really pie in the sky. We know that when we started this we were told we might get 80%4 or more. that evaporated very quickly. His sense is that it's going to end up with our community's tax dollars being spent here and he's not in a position to risk it. In regards to what Alderman Moran said about the Crown Center, first of all we've been talking about the Crown Center throughout the last year, but he says what we should do is just talk about projects not in the context of what we can spend or what we can afford we should just take one project at a time and if it all adds to a number that we can't pay worry about it later. Part of being in government is you have to choose your priorities and if Alderman Moran wants to be a one man committee to go work on the $11,000,000 grant, then he has a motion. Alderman Newman's motion would be that would be that we defer any consideration of a marina until we get some very solid evidence of what the contribution would be. Alderman Jean -Baptiste seconded the motion. Alderman Tisdahl said a motion has been moved and seconded and called for further discussion. Page 11. Alderman Wynne said she was not planning to speak tonight but listening to the discussion it was just irresistble We're mixing a lot of different issues here. She thinks fundamentally this number that this debt service is based on is 521,000,000 that was the cost of the marina that the Army Corps of Engineers discussed in this extremely preismtnary report. At the first briefing that Aldermen received about this, Alderman Bernstein was present at that time and he'll remember this, when we questioned Mr. Bernstein, who was not Alderman Bernstein, about that number and she wrote this down as a quote, -it was a 10 minute back of the envelope analysis by the Army Corps of Engineers of what the cost of the manna should be," It maybe $21,000,000 but we are doing this detailed analysis about a number that really does not have a lot of firm foundation in research or analysts. That number may be accurate or that number may be significantly off, that's one fundamental issue. The other issue that we're looking at is the next step in any procedure forward would be spending between $600,000 and $700.000 for the next step of analysis and that is money that comes out of Evanston's pocket. Alderman Moran interjected 5011,10. to which Alderman Wynne said that is not correct. The next step costs S600,000 to do an additional analysis and we would have to request money from the Federal government to do any additional study. No matter what we'd have to pay for a significant portion of that. The 50% number being talked about is the amount of possible support we would get if we moved forward to construct the marina and that number has significantly diminished since any of the first discussions that we've had. Fundamentally the federal government is not going to pay for the 5600,000 to move forward with the next step. She thinks the committee has to decide and ultimately the Council, are we going to spend half of that 5300,000 to study this question further. Then her final point is she would say no, because that's 3 small park renovations or 2 large park renovations right there and we know the benefit of what those do. Even if this marina came out in the black somewhere down the road fundamentally the people of Evanston have indicated that they don't want a marina. Even from a purely revenue side when you look at this from a dollars and cents point of view, but thinks that's not how we look at a lot of things that we do, we look at things from a revenue generation point of view. She thinks its very, very, very speculative herewith many, many variables that would cost us a loot of money to figure out one way or the other and does not think its worth our dollars to spend that money to figure out on those variables. The citizens of Evanston have indicated, and she thinks most of the Council knows and feels this way; this is not something that Evanston wants to have along our lakefront. Her final point is that she thinks that Alderman Moran has raised a critically important issue for all of us here in Evanston that we need to start paying to attention to and that the Council needs to start paying attention to, that's Mayor Daily's plan to extend the lakefront. We need to very quickly understand the speed with which that's operating and what its impact will be because if we think that a marina and Catvary Cemetery will have a negative impact on the Td Ward and parts of Southeast Evanston we need to very quickly understand what the impact is of the potential lakefront extension. Her initial reaction is worry, she does need to study it more but thinks that is something that we all need to turn our attention to quickly because we need to understand it and figure out what our position is on it. Thank you. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said while we're talking about all these other issues the bottom line is right now what our perception is of the impact of the marina on the quality of life of people living on the lakefront. This was guiding our discussion even though we talk about priority; we talk about debt service and all the rest of those things. Some of the report on debt service is somewhat confusing; he is reading one summary that says the Army Corps of Engineers determine that the annual slip rental revenues would fully fund debt service. On the other hand when you analyze the table you maybe able to find different conclusions. The City's and the Council's motivation in putting this as something to investigate is that we face a mounting budgetary problem every year. We were looking at our resources and said it would Page 12, be good to investigate the possibility of constructing a marina to generate long term revenue for the City of Evanston to best serve everybody in this City because if you have revenue then you car. fund all kinds of services for privileged any non privileged kids 7 nat was the motivation The study so far has reflected that there is a lot of opposition to the marina right now and the pieces that we wanted to put together to co forward maybe lacking federal government contribution and at this particular point ,n time our pocket is lour That raises the question of priority, how do you spend the money and is why we get into the discussion about Robert Crown versus this or versus that. He would say that the main issues of the impact of this manna cn the quality of life of those who We on the lakefront you have spoken and we've heard you. He's prepared to support a deferment of further action. Alderman Newman remarked he thought the idea of the grant is complete pie in the sky. We started studying the marina when we thought the federal government was going to pay for almost all of it so the potential for income would be in the shortrun, this one is up to 20 years from now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said even if all of the money was on the table right now the community is opposed to that but does not think all of the information is on the table because people are fearful of the impact of this project on their lives, which he understands. He does not know whether we understand the totality of this project If Mayor Daily is seeking to expand Lakeshore Drive right up to us we need to understand all of that and he does not think we fully understand it without engaging in some further discussion and investigation. He does not want to create an illusion for people if this project is knocking on our back door and is immediately south of Evanston it impacts us to. He would be interested and engaged in finding what's going on. He's for saying we do not go forward until we fully understand the impact of the Chicago project, until we understand whether there's any funding that may be available, and it is then that we come to any kind of sensible conclusion to bring closure to this altogether. We may respond right now in the short term but he does not think that it's over. Right now we're not even having the discussion of whether or not you have support on the Council to further study it as a source of revenue. Right now we're focused on the concerns of the community. Are we to put this issue aside without knowing within the next few years what's going on Chicago? Whether we want to or not this issue may be back on the table and we have to continue to have full discussion. Perhaps the Evanston City Council can do something about what Chicago might do, he does not know, in trying to protect the best interest of the City of Evanston we have to study what's going with the City Chicago, we have figure out whether the federal government is going to get involved and supercede what we do, he does not know any of that. He would say in the short term no, we don't have the money; it doesn't seem that the federal government is going to invest the money, but we have to be careful should we put this in the corner thinking it will go away. He does not think it will go away in the short term. He's supportive of the position right now but is just saying to people that you have to stay vigilant and on top of the discussion so that we aren't reacting to anything but are in front of it to be able to manifest the best interest of the community. Alderman Newman wanted to withdraw his original motion and make another motion. Alderman Newman moved that we do two things, number one, that we terminate investigation of the marina; number two, we direct the Parks Department to engage the City of Chicago and report back to us In 60 to 90 days and give us a full update on _ what they're doing In Chicago and what we need to be doing In order to stay and coordinate with them on what they're doing in their lakefront plan. Alderman Feldman seconded the motion. Alderman Newman said In regard to the money to study this he does not know if many people realize this but right now the Lakefront Bicycle Path is crumbling and there are buildings on the lakefront used for washrooms that haven't been fixed Page 13. over the last 40 or 50 years. We have plenty of needs on the lakefront that he is not sure are going to be funded in the next year because of how tight capital money is. He ` ,: s this to be so much pie in the sky and the reason for hts motion. He thinks Nderman Jean -Baptiste is right that we she jid study what is going on in the lakefront but does not see them coming up with 11 out 21 million but we've never rece!•. e7 anywhere close to that as a grant from the federal government for any prcje--t. In the 14 years he's been on the Cou!--,; l we received nothing near that. Alderman Moan said quickly to quote from a letter fror- the Army Corps of Engineers of August 2, 2004, "In relation to the cost projection for the next phase of study it was est.-aird to be in the neighborhood of $400,000 and with the model study it could go up to $600,000 ' In the second page c` the letter it says. 'There is a 50% local contribution for the cost of that study'. So there is not a 10011/c contribution City mc,ney, it's 50' o local contribution. In the same letter on the second paragraph B. Mr. Wickbolt, Acting Chief of the Plannirg Branch, points out that the federal contribution for construction cost sharing is 50% and he points out that the 50% is set by Section 103 C4 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, so according to Mr. Wickbolt it's set by statute He also points out that local interest must provide all lands, easements, rights of way, relocations, and dreg material disposal areas and goes on to say that the value of all those contributions are given credit against the local 50% share. Any contribution of land or easements, rights of way, etc., that would be necessary for the full development of the program would be credited to us we and would not have to contribute cash for that portion of the construction project. He suspects it would be a significant cost contribution for that land located in that area and just wanted to point that out so that everybody understood what the cost implications were. Alderman Feldman said he indicated before that choices and priorities were influencing to a great extent his decision not to support further investigation. We do that all the time. we chose one thing over another and we defer things that even be entertained or dreamed about because we can't think about them now. He never received a single call from anybody saying to him the reason they don't won't the marina is because we can't afford it. We heard that from within City Hall and from other Council members but he never heard it from members of the community. What they said is no matter what it costs they don't want it, even if we could afford it they don t want that. He thinks Alderman Moran is right in a few things one that Chicago has done a magnificent job with its lakefront, its one of the things that makes Chicago great and it's indeed one of the few cities that has kind of a municipal treasure. To think that that expanse of the lake is devoted to public recreational and cultural purposes is astonishing and he's just amazed that they re even thinking of expanding that. We have our treasure too, we have our lakefront and we do adhere in one sense or another to Burnham's admonition to make no small plans to have no power to stir men's heart or blood. We didn't make small plans with the Levy Center and he urged this Council not to think of making small plans when it comes to the Robert Crown. We certainty did not make small plans when we built our Library, which he thinks is a great credit and will be a great credit to us for along time. We do subscribe to that and there's a difference between that and a lot of the work that was done with Chicago's lakefront was supported by private money, the museums were created ty pnvate money and if anybody is familiar with the Millennium Park you know how dramatic a contribution wealthy famines in the Chicago area participated in that. We can't count on that and he does not know where the support is coming from for this, he has no idea what is generating this. It's certainly not coming from many people, not strong lobbying with placards and signs marching around City Hall saying we need a marina and we need a marina for those people that can afford boats. if it was a throw away amount maybe we could spend time and energy thinking about it and solving all the problems that might arise as a result of that but there's nothing like that in sight. He is willing to support and heartily agrees at this moment in time that investigation into the marina should end and we should keep up with the plans being created in Chicago because they will greatly affect us. The idea Page 14. of the outer drive ending at Juneway Terrace is daunting to sa f the least, -rich is an onslaught that we have to prepare. If anybody in Southeast Evanston thinks the traffic issues generated by this are worrisome we really have to worry about that and from a political standpoint we better start tightening our belts and Fcunng out how we're going to respond to that Again, he supports Alderman Newman's motion'o end this and rt doesn't mean that if one of our wealthy home owners in the V Ward came up with S20.000,000 or S30,000,000 we might not cc,sider it again. Alderman Tisdahl said she has listened to everyone and knov s you all are counting your votes which may limit the number of public speakers but she did not do research into the next 10 or 20 years but went to the City Finance Director and did research into next year. She asked if we have S300,000 to pay for a study and the Finance Director said no. Alderman Tisdahl said she asked if she could quote the Finance Director and he said yes. That is her research into this we don't even have the $300,000, our budget is very tight. If there are a tremendous number speakers who want to talk us into this she would encourage you to speak otherwise you may want to save your ammunition because while we will vote on Alderman Newman's motion then the Human Services Committee will recommend it to the City Council and the City Council she is told because the attorney's researched this will then have to vote. All of you may not want to talk tonight if you're counting votes all you could do is talk us out of a position that you want us to uphold. Alderman Newman wanted to go back to Alderman Moran's statementwhen he read the letter that we got from the people at the Army Corps of Engineers. He read the part of the sentence that was supportive that they would get into a 50% contribution. What he didn't read was, "Additionally if the project were approved under the continuing authority cap is a 107 Project, the total federal cost is limited to $4,000,000." A few minutes ago he was representing that we would perhaps get half of $21,000,000, They say later in the letter that Congress is considering raising that to $7,000.000. As the facts now stand the maximum contribution of the federal government would be S4,000,000 if it came at S21,000,000, if it came in at S25,000,000 we would till be on the hook for S21,000.000. As Alderman Wynne said the estimate of that $21,000,000 was a figure that we got and do not actually know what it is. Then they say something about not wanting to contribute to whatever our problem is at the Church Street Boat Ramp. He asked if that means eliminating the boat ramp if we have the marina or is that something else, and was told that is two different issues. The overall point is the best that the federal government could do, if this letter is accurate, if S4,000,000 An alternative approach is to take it outside Section 107 with whatever funding is necessary this action would require strong Congressional support. Alderman Moran remarked, in other words it could go up to 50%. Alderman Newman said it there was a special bill passed in Evanston and the chances of that happening is as likely as it's going to snow next July. To get our facts straight unless somebody has some really good information in Congress, he has not seen overwhelming support coming from Jan Schakowsky's office in the last three months and thinks we have to be realistic. Alderman Tisdahl called upon those citizens who signed up to speak. Cameron Davis, Executive Director, Lake Michigan Federation - The lake Michigan Federation is concerned with the water quality, landfill, erosion, and other impacts that this marina proposal would cause. In short, the marina is proposed for the wrong place. We're also concerned that there was no planning that went into the decision to propose a marina for this site. No alternatives were discussed. There was simple a decision made somewhere at some time to propose a marina at this particular site. The Federation would like to assist Evanston in establishing a coherent vision for its lakefront. Chicago has its Lakefront Protection Ordinance. We'd like to see Evanston do something similar so that ad Page 15. hoc, random decisions aren't encouraged in the future. Evanston can also urge Governor Blagojevich to have Illinois join the Costal Zone Management Program. Illinois could be receiving an estimated S2 million per year for costal protection efforts, but is not right now. In fact, Illinois is the only state of 35 eligibxe costal states to be turning its back on funding that could be going to help the Evanston lakefront. Thank you. (See Attachment B) Janice Loughlin — Evanston Environmental Board - Ms. Loughlin said she had originally intended to summarize the Evanston Environmental Board's comments on the Corps of Engineers' hAahna report. However, since the committee had already indicated an intent to vote against the marina and since i had been given only one and one half minutes in which to speak 1 will speak on behalf of the Evanston Environmental Board and remind the committee that they have in their packets copies of our full comments. After reviewing the Army Corps report and after doing some additional research the Evanston Environmental Board recommends that the City abandon the Marina Study and the expenditure of any more resources to pursue a marina at the site. Marinas, while not inherently evil, do pollute the air and water. The Board's full comments detail the various pollutants which result from marinas and we feet that the Army Corps had done a very poor job of discussing the environmental impact of these pollutants. Our greatest concern and the Army Corps report was its misleading nature in that it appeared to contain an environmental analysis when in fact it did not. Ms. Loughlin mentioned one point from their comments because she had not heard this point discussed. If the City had decided to go forward with the marina project, it would have had to obtain a wetland permit in order to fill in lake Michigan for the parking lot. However, according to the Clean Water Act and EPA regulations, no wetland permit can be Issued unless the permilee can show that there is no other location for the project which would require a lesser impact on the water body. In other words, if location of the marina elsewhere in Evanston would involve a smaller landfill, then the permit could not be issued for the Calvary site. The reason this requirement is of particular concern here is that the comparative analysis that was done as part of the 1966 study did find that location of a marina in the Church Street area or in the Dempster to Lee Street area would require less of a landfill than in the Calvary area, since those northerly areas offered some land for parking whereas the Calvary area did not. Consequently, the City could not potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars studying this marina project only to be told, at the permitting stage, that the City would have to take it north. Thank you. Fred Ash— Citizens for Lakefront Preservation - Mr. Ash's commented on an economic assessment of the proposed Evanston Marina Project. (See attached C for Mr, Ash's summary.) Jack Darin - Director Illinois Sierra Club— On behalf of Sierra Club members in Evanston, thank your for the vote your are about to take to protect our lakefront, which is perhaps our most precious municipal asset. Sierra Club is not just against the marina, but for the lakefront. We urge the City and Community to take advantage of the public attention on the lakefront raised by the marina proposal, and focus it on improving the habitat and recreation potential of our lakefront open spaces. Sierra Club member in Evanston stand ready to help with the Alternatives Task Force organized by Alderman Wynne to identify habitat and recreation Improvements that can benefit all current and future residents, not just the few who could enjoy a marina. Thank you. Don Gordon - Citizens for Lakefront Preservation Rogers Park 4e Ward - Mr. Gordon's comments are attached. (See Attachment D) Page 16. of the outer dnve ending at Jur-- Aay Terrace is daunting to say the least which is an onslaught that we have to prepare. if anybody in Southeast Evanston thinks the traffic issues generated by this are womsome we really have to worry about that and from a political standpoint we better start tightening our belts and figuring out how we're going to respond to that Again, he supports Alderman Newman's motion to end this and it doesn't mean that if one of ourwealthy home owners in the 3' Ward came up with S20 000,000 or 530,000,000 we might not consider it again. Alderman Tisdahl said she has listened to everyone and knows you all are countng your votes which may limit the number of public speakers but she did not do research into the next 10 or 20 years but went to the City Finance Director and did research into next year. She asked if we have $300,000 to pay for a study and the Finance Director said no. Alderman Tisdahl said she asked if she could quote the Finance Director and he said yes. That is her research into this we don't even have the S300,000, our budget is very tight. If there are a tremendous number speakers who want to talk us into this she would encourage you to speak otherwise you may want to save your ammunition because while we will vote on Alderman Newman's motion then the Human Services Committee will recommend it to the City Council and the City Council she is told because the attomey's researched this will then have to vote. All of you may not want to talk tonight if you're counting votes all you could do is talk us out of a position that you want us to uphold. Alderman Newman wanted to go back to Alderman Moran's statement when he read the letter that we got from the people at the Army Corps of Engineers. He read the part of the sentence that was supportive that they would get into a 50% contribution. What he didn't read was, 'Additionally it the project were approved under the continuing authority cap is a 107 Project, the total federal cost is limited to $4,000,000.' A few minutes ago he was representing that we would perhaps get half of $21,000,000. They say later in the letter that Congress is considering raising that to $7,000,000. As the facts now stand the maximum contribution of the federal government would be 54,000,000 if it came at $21,000.000, if it came In at $25,000,000 we would till be on the hook for 521,000,000. As Alderman Wynne said the estimate of that $21,000,000 was a figure that we got and do not actually know what it is. Then they say something about not wanting to contribute to whatever our problem is at the Church Street Boat Ramp. He asked if that means eliminating the boat ramp if we have the marina or is that something else, and was told that is two different issues. The overall point is the best that the federal government could do, if this letter is accurate, if 54,000,000. An alternative approach is to take it outside Section 107 with whatever funding is necessary this action would require strong Congressional support. Alderman Moran remarked, in other words it could go up to 50%. Alderman Newman said it there was a special bill passed in Evanston and the chances of that happening is as likely as it's going to snow next July. To get our facts straight unless somebody has some really good information in Congress, he has not seen overwhelming support coming from Jan Schakowsky's office in the last three months and thinks we have to be realistic. Alderman Tisdahl called upon those citizens who signed up to speak. Cameron Davis, Executive Director, Lake Michigan Federation - The Lake Michigan Federation is concemed with the water quality, landfill, erosion, and other impacts that this marina proposal would cause. In short, the marina is proposed for the wrong place. We're also concerned that there was no planning that went into the decision to propose a marina for this site. No alternatives were discussed. There was simple a decision made somewhere at some time to propose a marina at this particular site. The Federation would like to assist Evanston in establishing a coherent vision for its lakefront. Chicago has its Lakefront Protection Ordinance. We'd like to see Evanston do something similar so that ad Page 15. Ramona Meher - Co-founder of Citizens for Lakefront Preservation - Ms. Meher said she lives at 482 Sheridan Road in Evanston and is one of the co-founders of Citizens for Lakefront Preservation. She wanted to thank the Aldermen for the vote to stop the proposed marina. Especially V Ward Alderman Wynne for working with Citizens for Lakefront Preservation to bring this to a vote and also for leading the newly formed Task Force for Altemative ideas forthe lakefront. She also wanted to thank everyone who has worked to bang this issue to a close. It has been along haul but we can all feel great aoo::t refocusing the discussion through the task force for alternative ideas that has grown out of our work. Finally, she wanted to echo Alderman Feldman's comments, the lake is not for sale. It is not a question of 'will it make money?*, it is not a question of 'can we afford it? The proposed marina is the wrong idea in the wrong place and we can work together to come up with better ideas that are environmentally sound and that create more access to the lake for more people. Thank you everyone for your commitment to preserve one of nature's great wonders! Herb Harris — Evanston Representative for Proposed No Access for Boaters — Mr. Harris noted not all boat owners have large boats; his has a small boat on which he tikes to go out into the take and fish. Mr. Harris feels having a marina here in Evanston would be an added enhancement to our lakefront, to the community and to thosewho enjoy boating and fishing. There are no longer many places where one can go out and fish, for the many of us who enjoy fishing. The marina would definitely add to the beauty of the lakefront for Evanston residents and those who come to enjoy the pleasures of the lakefront. Alderman Tisdahl recalled Alderman Newman's motion, seconded by Alderman Feldman, that we do two things, number one, that we terminate investigation of the marina; numbertwo, we direct the Parks Department to engage the City of Chicago and report back to us 60 to 90 days and give us a full update on what they're doing in Chicago and what we need to be doing In order to stay and coordinate with them on what they're doing in their lakefront plan. Motion unanimously passed ("). Vill. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:10 p.m. Respectfully submitted, A"Trmatsky,partment of He Ith and Human Services Page 17. SPEAKER SiUN-IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Council Chambers Monday - October 4,, 2004 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Name: Address/Organization: ` J~ ZO 1� 1,;ry &1,*Vs77Y1v 6A1,ARIV MA-WAt- 6AY2o 4-,� ;Z:WaD As14 11X� zge.-awo, S10 /� y�Pia7ve- ��PPtcm Pov Bdav-0A 0!5Z)0V—( M�w� (�L c�rsoo- �.1-.p J774f)q-(%i- 6Ut TMr%l IZI XiiWo►ti G.4 f� G V6- Gyp n x or,,, A. -C)s6-161J E?V ftIJ S-11-rom DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - November 3, 2003 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Roger Crum, Frank Kaminski, Sam Petinio, Kathy 13renniman, Paula Haynes, Jim Wolinski, Dr. Catherine Counard, Maureen Barry, Alisa Dean, Carla Bush, Doug Gaynor, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Mayor Morton, Alderman Rainey, Alderman Kent, Alderman Moran, Vice -President Sunshine, Dr. Banis, Police Chief, Lewis, (Northwestern University): Patricia Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office): Irwin Lyons, Township Auditor. See Attached Attendance Sheets for other attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Feldman 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Newman called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. IL APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF AUGUST 11, 2003 The minutes of the August 11. 2003 meeting were called and unanimouahr aooroved ("I. Alderman Bernstein was not present at this time. III. SPECIAL ORDER OF BUSINESS: DISCUSSION OF NEIGHBORHOOD IMPACT OF UNIVERSITY STUDENT BEHAVIOR Alderman Feldman announced the first item on the agenda is a special order of business, a discussion of the neighborhood impact of University student behavior which is a result of some testimony that came before the City Council in Citizen Comments and was referred to this committee. Alderman Feldman noted he had sent a letter to President Bienen inviting him to this meeting. President Bienen sent a letter back respectfully saying he was not able to attend but in his stead suggested Senior Vice President Gene Sunshine would attend along with some additional Northwestern officials. Alderman Feldman welcomed and was happy to see those in attendance at this meeting. Mr. Sunshine said he wished to take a few moments for introductory comments and would then introduce Bruce Lewis their new Chief of Police and Dr. Bill Banis the Vice President of Student Affairs, who will speak at greater length. Mr. Sunshine remarked there are two matters relating to our student's security and off campus behavior that are a concern to all of us tonight. The first one is the misconduct of some Northwestern students off campus about which you specifically asked us to talk tonight. Some of this behavior has certainly been atrocious. We said it before and we'll say it again on behalf of the University we apologize for their behavior, it was very bad, and in no way do we condone it. We fully recognize our obligation as a University to do something about off campus behavior or misbehavior, and we think we are. Please allow, him to remind everyone that the University sought and received increased jurisdiction from the City Council for its police so that University Police could expand its coverage into off campus areas. A typical reason for our thinking this was to better enable our University Police to assist Evanston Police in meeting the off campus student behavior problem. The University also pursued allowing the University Police jurisdiction to be extended into the 5'" Ward. As you will recall that under the original City Council authorization this had not been uniformly allowed for the University. In May it was officially granted by the City Council for the University Police to increase the jurisdiction into the 5°' Ward as well as other locations. Over the summer and with a great deal of internal consultation into the various constituencies of the University, the University decided to expand its code of conduct jurisdiction so that students in certain off campus areas would be subject to the same behavioral standards of students on campus. We all know that there was some very bad behavior in the later part of September and early October on the part of a small portion of our students but he is pleased to say indications are that we think they're dramatically better in that regard over the last three weekends. Many thanks are in order to Chief Kaminski and his colleagues in the Evanston Police Department. We think that our combined policing efforts, the Evanston Police and the University Police, any deterrence caused by the extended new code of conduct jurisdiction appears to be working. HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 1. Before introducing Mr. Lewis and Dr. Banis, Mr. Sunshine wanted to make mention of a second matter involving our students and security. truly a very paramount concern to us. All of you know that about five strong-armed robberies have occurred on or near our campus in the past few weeks and one student was very severely hurt. Again we're very grateful to Chief Kaminski and his colleagues for working wilt~ our police in investigating this matter. Some arrests have been made and some people are being questioned. While, unfortunately, we haven't gotten to the bottom of it collectively its not for lack of effort and cooperation on the part of the Evanston Police and the Northwestern Police. We would like for everyone to please understand the very high degree of attention this is getting from us. He knows it's not the topic for tonight's discussion but we do not want to lose sight of it tonight or any other night. With that he would like to first introduce Chief of Police Bruce Lewis who will descnce to you about our policing efforts with the Evanston Police, what we're doing, how we're doing it, what we're finding, how its working, etc. Then subsequent to Chief Lewis, Bill Banis Vice President of Student Affairs will talk to you about the University code of conduct what it means to the students, what it doesn't mean, how the process works, etc, Chief of Police Bruce Lewis thanked the Chairman for the opportunity to address this body and would like to read a brief statement which he will attempt to expedite. University Police began party patrols in the off campus neighborhood on Monday, September 15a'. This was four nights prior to the date when new freshmen moved onto the campus. These patrols are in addition to our normal officers assigned to patrol the campus in their campus areas. During this time period we visited many off campus residences where students live and emphasized our enforcement stance regarding ordinance violations relations to loud parties and quality of life issues. On the Thursday night prior to the arrival of freshmen the detail was increased to six officers and this continued through Sunday morning. A total of four officers performed garty patrols Sunday, September 21" through Sunday, September 2e. On Friday and Saturday, September 2e and 27 the detail was increased again to six officers. NUPD (Northwestern University Police Department) has written 146 compliance tickets to date in off campus areas since September 150. A total of 37 citations have been written for loud parties, 65 C tickets have been written for having an open alcohol container on a public street. In comparison to the same period last year, NUPD wrote 106 citations. Last fall NUPD had written 27 citations from September 17"' to October 4"`, 2002. On October 5"4, 2002 Evanston Police extended our jurisdiction on Fridays and Saturdays to include the a Ward areas were parties were occurring. 36 citations were written by NUPD on that first day of the extension, a total of 43 citations were then issued through the end of October. In comparison by October 5v' of this year NUPD had already issued 111 of the 146 citations issued to date. NUPD continues to work closely with the Evanston Police Department to combat these problems. All the patrols since the first week of school have included an Evanston Police Department and one NUPD office riding together jointly on Friday and Saturday nights. Each weekend EPD has delivered a list of party hot spots and nuisance residences. We have programmed this information into our computer -aided dispatch which allows us to respond accordingly. Since September 27 we've experienced a series of strong-arm robberies near the campus and on the campus. Since that time NUPD has drafted a response to these strong-arm robberies. We've assigned three uniformed contract security officers to patrol the main campus, two of who patrol in golf carts the other on foot. We've assigned three university police officers as tactical officers to work very closely with the Evanston Police Department Investigations Unit. We've also strategically placed our patrol units in a position to assist the tactical team. We've publicized these recent incidents in the University's web page and our own police department home page. He is encouraged that the joint efforts between Evanston Police Department and NUPD in addressing the off campus party issues are beginning to reduce the number of calls for service and incidents both departments are responding to in each subsequent weekend, He is also grateful for the continuing response and partnership of the Evanston Police Department to robbery incidents. He would be happy to assist you by clarifying any of the above information. Alderman Tisdahl asked Chief Lewis what if anything the City of Evanston and/or Northwestern University could do to help Chief Lewis make the campus safer. Chief Lewis responded having been with the NUPD for four months he has engaged the University administration with respective strategic planning and a resource staffing allocation or adjustment. We expect to engage a staffing study within the next month and it would be premature for him to suggest that we need more police. Quite frankly he is not sure if we need more police or more security officers or a combination thereof. The administration has been fully engaging and he expects to have an answer within the next three months. Alderman Newman wanted to comment on the strong-arm robberies. Whenever we have a robbery of any person in Evanston it is extremely disappointing. He just wants to remind the University just so we can all be clear as to the City's commitment, we have on a per capita basis among suburbs without question the largest police force going south, going west and going north. We have expanded it in recent years and spend over $20,000,000 a year on our police force. $16,000,000 in our General Fund and over $3,000,000 a year plus on our Pension Fund and that does not even include what we've spent on capital improvements for our police department, squad cars including everything else which is very expensive. One of the things that we asked for when we expanded the jurisdiction for the University police, it was our idea not the University's idea but the University did cooperate in, putting foot patrols in effect in the downtown area. When you mention adding more police he asked the Police Chief for information on law enforcement employees, the University of Chicago which has roughly the same amount of students as the Evanston campus has 153 employees including 63 sworn and over 70 part-timers on their police force for a student body of 13,000. The Northwestern campus has 31 employees including approximately 24 sworn, substantially less. One of his concerns is his understanding in a typical HSC Minutes 11 3'03 Page 2. shift of the Northwestern police there are roughly two to four officers on a shift, the question being with the big campus and Clark Street and everything else, whether or not the amount of resources and the changes we have made, even on the jurisdiction. is nearly enough to deal with some of the things that need to be done. He would like to make it very clear there is no doubt in his mind that the University, with the personnel that it has, has been making an effort without any question. On nights when there are parties you will see the Universq police out there which is greatly appreciated. There are other areas that he will get into later in terms of landlord tenant issues and some of the other issues we have out there. We have had great debate on this as hiring police officers is a very hard thing for us to do and even when we expanded in the 90's it was subject to debate. Mr. Sunshine said we have to be careful when we start comparing resources in term of people at one campus compared to another. Chicago has a whole medical complex, it has hospitals, a completely different environment with many more buildings and many more activities going on one campus. We have another whole entire campus than the Chicago campus the neighborhoods are different, and so forth. While Alderman Newman's point, which he thinks is a good one and we certainly appreciate it and understand it, he thinks the stark contrast between the numbers and size requires a little bit of explanation. Like a lot of things there are circumstances that will explain, sometimes what appears to be more disparaged. Mayor Morton wanted to express her appreciation to Chief Lewis and Chief Kaminski for coming tonight. The purpose is so that they could hear what was going on and the comments of the citizens so they could get together after hearing this first hand and come up with solutions to this problem. She does not expect anyone would expect them to come up with a solution tonight because tonight they will be hearing what we have heard before from citizens and the community who have expressed their concerns. The Northwestern Chief has only been here four months and has probably inherited some problems, but we also know that our Chief Kaminski has been working diligently, added people and already done a lot. It may not be apparent to those of us who are here tonight but it may be apparent of those who are keeping a record of the problems we are having in the community and the amount of arrests which she does keep an accounting of. She would like to personally thank you for accepting this invitation and she is sure after you hear from our Chief and they have an opportunity to take what we have said and have faith they will come up with some solution and at some point come back to us and then tell us what they think we should do. Alderman Feldman said in his discussion with Vice President Sunshine it was very clear that a short meeting such as this would not solve this problem, that we hope to get off to a good start and a good dialogue exchanging views and ideas, establishing what the University and the City are doing now, what we have done in the past, why that is not working altogether, and what we as two institutions including the two police forces can do to remedy the situation because it is an Important one. Dr. Banis said he appreciates the opportunity to meet with you and is sorry it is under these circumstances. He wishes it was a topic more positive. We have a chronic problem with Northwestern students and we have a chronic problem with students across the country. Some of these problems are related to public health issues and that is abusive drinking. He would like to talk about a very brief history, he came into this position two years when Alderman Kent called a meeting. At that meeting he brought some of his staff and some of our student leaders. Judy Aiello, Jim Wolinski, and a number of citizens from Alderman Kent's neighborhood were at that meeting. As he recalls they confronted the issues pretty frankly and talked about all kinds of issues, students moving in and out of the neighborhood, trashing, the loud parties, and the disruptive behavior. From that meeting we did come up with some interim items we were going to address, such as putting dumpsters to help with the trash problem. Students said we don't know how to be citizens in a community this is our first time living on our own. We then held joint workshops with City officials to put together a lot of educational materials and workshops and we got ready for the following fall, a year ago. It didn't have much of an Impact. Alderman Kent may recall that he wrote to him after we got off again to another shaky start and he requested that University police be allowed into his district and you agreed, at least on a trial basis to see what we could do to confront some of these problems. We tried it for one weekend and a second and third weekend and before we knew it we had an agreement that went most of the year. Dr. Banis said he was very pleased when the City granted University police jurisdiction. Up until that time his office had little sway over students off campus behavior. To support University police, once extended jurisdiction was granted, we had a number of things going on at the University. He had a task force in place to review the judicial code of conduct for students, which began more than year ago just about the time jurisdiction was extended for University police. We were also working on a new civility and non -violence policy and we decided to extend the code of student conduct off compass which is very rare for institutions to do. We wanted to do that for several reasons, one to support University police in their efforts, secondly to help increase the safety and security of our own students, and in addition we're very concerned with the chronic problems that many of the neighbors have faced. By extending our code of student conduct being congruent with police jurisdiction we then had an opportunity and the leverage to take some action, and we have been doing that. We changed policy, we changed some practices and procedures and as Mr. Sunshine just said he thinks they're beginning to work. They've only been in place since September 19''. To give you a sense of the kinds of internal actions going on at the University, according to our numbers we have 3,282 living off campus. So far 146 have been cited for noise or drinking violations. More than 90% of those 146 have already been HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 3. processed through our code of student conduct. To give you sample of some of the sanctions that have taken place, there were 9 warnings before September 19t' when the new policies went into effect. But in total 11 wamings. 71 cases of underage drinking catat cns, we put 91 students on disciplinary probation, we did not put some on disciplinary probation but we are asking that they go into alcohol education programs. 12 had formal warnings and 10 hours of community services. We have 1 on deferred disciplinary probation with a formal warning, 1 in housing probation that means another violation and these two pecp,e are out of University housing. We have 8 more going to Prime for life which is a alcohol education program put on by University police. We have 3 stated to go through formal conduct board reviews, and so far 2 suspensions. There is a question about wttat happens when a student is cited. When we receive a police report from University police on Monday morning that goes to a small group of staff members who evaluate it and determine what code of student conduct item has violated. The student is then called in for a meeting to clarify the facts. Depending on the seriousness of the violation administrative sanction may be imposed which must be accepted by the student. if the student does not accept the administrative sanction then it goes to the Review Board which consists of 6 student and 3 faculty or staff members. The Review Board's decision is binding and final. What are some of the possible sanctions, he has already mentioned a formal warning with added options such as community service, alcohol education and deferred probation, alcohol education classes probation for a specified period of time, probation with mandatory and alcohol screening, probation and medical treatment, medical leave requiring medical clearance to return and that usually means permanent probation as long as they're a University student, suspension for at least one quarter but no more than a year, exclusion from the University forever, or a student may just permanently just withdraw from the University. There is some question about how much information we can reveal. He needs to talk with you about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, otherwise known as FERPA. Two years ago Congress amended FERPA provisions to allow colleges and universities to inform parents of underage students who have a drinking violation and we have been doing that now for 2 years. He could also say that one of the conundrums for us in dealing with student disciplinary cases is that all student records, their academic records, counseling records, medical retards, and their disciplinary records are confidential. Just as your high school cannot release information about an individual student the University is bound under FERPA to protect confidentiality of student records, For example, if you were to ask the disposition of a single case he could not release that to you. Alderman Newman asked Dr_ Banis, without releasing specific names, whether or not he has already or he could in the future release general statistics to be published, perhaps in the Daily Northwestern, as to what type of sanctions are being assessed in group categories. Dr. Banis said that is a good question and we do have a plan in the future to release general information but we have to allow a certain period of time to pass we don't want certain data to be associated with specific individuals. If we release it too quickly many of our students would be familiar with the incident. Alderman Newman said in terms of the discipline just referred to, none of that information except if somebody was to talk student to student, is really not out in the general public and there is a plan, once the time goes by or you are willing to somehow get that statistical information out so that the entire student body can be aware of sanctions that may be imposed. Dr. Banis said that is correct. which Alderman Newman thought is very good, as it will happen in the future. Dr. Banis remarked that one of the comments he heard from our friends in the community is that the University is pushing the parties off campus because we're a dry campus. That really deserves a response, Northwestern is not a dry campus. Students 21 and over may consume alcohol in the rooms and at approved University events. The University routinely sponsors bar nights and we have 4 fraternities, which are still considered wet fraternities. Here's the issue, in 1987 a Fraternity Insurance Purchasing Corporation Group Incorporated came into existence expressly to confront the issue of high risk and abusive drinking and Greek organizations. Their liability insurance was skyrocketing and as you may remember from some litigation of that era we had a number of student deaths in fraternities associated with high risk drinking. Fraternities at the national level voluntarily stopped parties with alcohol and then the National Pan Athletic Group followed suit. The national fraternities not Northwestern started the dry movement. Of course, we support it because we're dealing with a national health problem with abusive drinking. Four years ago the sororities at Northwestern voted not to attend any wet functions with fraternities, He has some suggestions that we have seen assist the universities and communities elsewhere around the country. He has previously suggested that the fine of 575 for alcohol violations was far too low. If you want to put some teeth into a fine, double it or more. Secondly, If more students were required to appear before a hearing officer it would at least allow the violator to learn more from the process as having violated a City code. If officers could be instructed to issues the appearance in court instead of a fine for certain violations would certainly create an inconvenience for the student and he thinks would be a much better sanction. Tucson, Arizona has done something he thinks is worth our investigating. They have a red tag program for houses which are repeat offenders and consistently have loud parties. On the third visit the house is considered a public nuisance and a red tag is stapled to the house. Dr. Banis' colleagues at the University thought these students might be wearing that as HSC Minutes 1113103 Page 4. a red badge of courage that the opposite is happening. It is proven to be a very effective deterrent and is having quite a good impact When you are a!! in favor of imposing community service as a sanction that can be levied when particular vie.abons occur especially those involving the defacing or damage of property, we think some kind of restitution or some kind of report of justice might be in order, but that would require the City and the University collaborating pretty closely. Fifth item, the administrative julges could be more uniformly stricter in irroosing fines and reinforcing with students the University disciplinary system so that the University disciplinary system can be more effective. Some communities have established a keg -tracking program where liquor stores will assign a speafic keg label to the purchases, and if under aged students are caught tapping that keg the person who purchased the keg will be cited for serving minors. These are just a few suggesticrzs. We can probably come up with many, rrany more. Dr. Banis sad he wants to leave you wrath a very clear message that we have altered our internal policies and procedures, we're dealing with a chronic problem as a problem that is national in scope and said he is going to risk saying something. He knows its bad in the neighborhoods and he would not want to be living in the neighborhoods after reading the reports he has seen from his police department and the Evanston Police Department. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but we think we're making a difference and its going to take a while for us to chip away at this chronic problem. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Dr. Banis when he said he knows its bad in the neighborhood, what neighborhood was he alluding to. Dr. Banis responded, primarily Fireman's Park, to which Alderman Newman added Gaffield, Maple, Hamlin, Pratt, Simpson, from Sherman to Ridge. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Dr. Banis what kind of reports he was getting about the neighborhood Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted Dr. Banis said he was taking a risk stating he knows that it is bad in the neighborhoods and based on the reports he is getting from the his police department he would not want to live in this neighborhood here. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said maybe there is something going on that he did not know about. He knows what he's talking about in terms of the activities but he's trying to understand the details given that history what then has been the policy given your understanding that it is so bad. He does not understand why we are now trying to address that if your sense is that it is that bad. What he is trying to get in an understanding of where we have been and where we are trying to go. Dr. Banis responded where we have been is the University has not had jurisdiction in the neighborhoods and our code of student conduct did not extend off campus. When expanded jurisdiction was given to the University police department we altered our policy and our judicial code to some degree and put new procedures in place to support the work of University and City police in the neighborhoods and believe that is beginning to make a difference. We've had these procedures in place for only a month and a half, the numbers look promising but we are concerned about the quality of life so his comment was probably not one to put up with the low quality of life that 300 or 400 students or anyone else is next door having a party until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he was just dealing with the kind of policy given that kind of objective of what's been going on in the neighborhood. It seems to him that the policy has driven the effort to provide the necessary security that has not acknowiedged that, in fact then going forward we have talked about the theory of approach. But again, the discussion earlier when Alderman Newman made the comparison of the University of Chicago and Northwestern the response was that these are not similar institutions in terms of needs. You've described a situation that seems to merit the infusion of much more resource to improve the quality that you say you wouldn't even want to put up with. He's just trying to understand where have we been, where are we going, and how much and what kind of resources are we ready to put in to trouble shoot all that Dr, Banis did not think that was a fair interpretation of what he was trying to say and wanted to try it again. We were hamstrung in terms of trying to be effective and trying to manage a chronic problem involving student conduct off campus because we did not have access to the neighborhoods, University police did not have access and our code of student conduct did not go into the community. As of a month and a half ago we now have those two changes and those two resources in place and his sincere hope is that its going to make the difference in resolving this chronic problem. Its too early to tell but the early data is suggesting its beginning to work. Alderman Newman wanted to clear up something factual and asked Chief Kaminski if the University had jurisdiction in the e Ward for many years up until a few years ago the time when a Skokie judge threw out a ticket that was written and then it was decided that the City Council had to formally give them jurisdiction. Throughout he 90's, it might have been In 2000 or 2001,your police officers had jurisdiction as they were on Greenbay Road and Noyes writing tickets, which he knows because he got a ticket there. What happened was the judge In Skokie did an interpretation and there was about a two year period where it was actually recognized that the University police did not have jurisdiction and for all those years prior to that judge the University police was out in that neighborhood all the way to Greenbay Road. Mr. Sunshine wanted to emphasize one point for Alderman Jean -Baptiste, that the key that is new to what is being brought to the table is the expansion of the jurisdiction of the code of conduct. He does not think Dr. Banis was talking HSC Minutes 1 1l3103 Page S. about whether our police officers were going into other jurisdictions some years and gave citations that would put students into the Administrative Hearing Judge process with some of Vie limitations.. The new thing is that his University process for the code of conduct is now applicable to those students. Up until a couple of months ago they would not subject any disciplinary process as opposed to the students on campus for violations to the code of conduct. When you talk about resources being brought to the table now the whole student affairs apparatus, all of the staff that Dr. Banis talked about, the hearing process, the investigative process, the calling cf the students in, the calling of the parents if its warranted, has engaged a whole slew of University personnel. Up until a month and a half ago we were not in the process at all because the students affairs code of conduct process wasn't app6caole. A substantial change that the University brought to the table in terms of potential impact, in terms of deterrence and in terms of resources by additional professional staff being directed toward the problem. Alderman Newman said re agreed with that Alderman Kent wanted to add he has a lot of respect for Dr, Banis. We have talked a lot over the years and he keeps hearing people say that it was a jurisdiction thing and appreciates the way Dr. Banis went around that. Long before Northwestern police became aware we did have jurisdcton there. We can go back 10, 12, 13 years ago where this all started with two large party houses and criminal activity, But it was still based on under aged drinking, loud noises, and things of that nature. Then we came up to more recent times and the reason for that was, which he has told to every constituent that has called him and understood or every constituent that has called him and been mad at him, it originated here at Human Services. The reason they were banned at that time was because he had deep belief there was a double standard going on between Northwestern patrols when they come into contact with Northwestern students. We do not need to go into how he got that belief, that was his belief. Going back to a huge party that went on at Fireman's Park when all of us sat down in this very room because there was more activity on the criminal edges from vandalism, vandalizing cars, the breaking of flower pots, one could ride down the street and see 3 or 4 Northwester students urinating right on the parkway. He sat down at this table with a lot of the concerned neighbors and began to hash out some these problems. As far as the code of conduct is concerned, unless he misunderstood, when we sat at this table some of the ideas came from the residents who had to Inre with this because at that very time we were told that basically Northwester couldn't do certain things. This was fast approaching the homecoming game last year and we noticed for the first time ever, due to Dr. Banis and your staff, Northwestern actually came out with flyers. He knows our police department and Northwestern police went to specific addresses that were involved, and we do have a list of those addresses and keep those addresses. Alderman Kent said he's not trying to tear this down he just wants everybody to be on the same page. Its not as though you weren't allowed to come in for no reason at all, there were some very serious reasons that had to be hashed ouL Where we are today as far as things going on, when you talk about under age drinking he thinks that is very serious, when you talk about parties going on until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m, he thinks that's also very serious. Like some of the other Aldermen he rides with the patrol cars, he rides with the beat officers and there are certain things you come to appreciate when you walk into one of those parties with our officer and a Northwestern patrol officer. The networking that goes on can be absolutely amazing and can limit some of the things we have to go through. What he would like hear, which he has not yet heard, when there is criminal activity involved, at least in his mind, he would separate that from the college under age drinking and loud partying, etc., etc. He can't separate it from the assaults that go on in the neighborhood. When those kinds of charges are brought up, do you deal with those any differently than under aged drinking or liquor in a house. His feeling is if there is criminal activity out here then the University hasn't done all it can do, until they've removed that student from our community and your school because you're better than that and _ we're better than that as well. That's what he has not heard from you, and he's specifica;ly referring to downright very bad behavior that they need to take that kind of behavior home. Its not the same as the behavior that we're talking about that has been continuous, the partying behavior, the not living in a community before, the not understanding how to be a good neighbor. What we are witnessing more than ever and you had mentioned to students nationwide, but what most universities he would say are witnessing is more criminal activity from their students that needs to be addressed and not held on a back burner. Dr. Banis said to answer to Alderman Kent s question, are students being arrested for this criminal behavior assuming_ — they're students_ Alderman Kent added, he's assuming they are being arrested. Dr. Banis then said the short answer is they will face both criminal charges as well as University conduct charges. Alderman Kent said that doesn't necessarily mean it may result they many be expelled from the school it might result in them being to resurrect themselves of their character, unless he misunderstood as he is just trying to find out as he is very concerned about the criminal behavior. Anywhere else in the City of Evanston we would have them locked up. Alderman Kent was asked what's keeping him from locking them up. Alderman Kent cited a good example without giving names an incident happened not too long ago, it dealt with a football player where the Evanston and Northwestern police were there. This gentleman was locked up and was then released to Northwestern football players, he does not know whether the coach was ever involved or what the relationship is that goes on there, but when you're talking about intimidation, assault and that type of behavior, yes he's locked up but isn't there a greater responsibility from the community. Why do you need that here, can you empty your burden and empty our burden at the same time, those gentlemen should be gone. Alderman Kent was told they will be facing a review soon. HSC Minutes 1 I/3/03 Page G. Mr. Sunshine said under the statute Dr. Banis was talking about we can't be exclusive about this particular situation. Our police will file criminal charges in conjunction with the Evanston police and the individual goes through the University code of conduct process. Are there any guarantees in that process. there are no guarantees in that process. Are there any guarantees in the criminal court system. there are no guarantees. He will respectfulry suggest to you as he has seen this happen, if you don't follow a prescribed process the alleged perpetrator will have a'1 kinds of grounds through the legal process, external to the University, to get out from underneath, he's coming to serious accusations. You have to have a prescribed process, you have to follow the process it leads where it leads. If you don't then you're leaving yourself wide open to all kinds of problems. The court has rules, legitimate claims on the part of a3eaed perpetrators that their rights, and so forth, were violated. This is not a new concept, we all understand it and we have the same issue that the courts have. What finally keeps the courts out of the quasi-judicial code of conduct light typically has been the university's adherence to its policies. If you don't then it will send you down to the path where you did not want to go. Alderman Kent said what he wants to get to is the point where we stop talking about the same problems because there are new problems now in replying with the same old problems that we have never solved before. He does think the code of conduct will probably help. By the same token he's talking about something that's not alleged or fictitious but something that happened to a resident of Evanston and any other way than that gentleman going back home to leave this community with the same problems even if he or she is expelled from the University. What he is trying to do is find some type of closure and make sure you understand there are two types of problems that we are abused with. Dr. Banis wanted to close by thanking the committee for giving them an opportunity to visflL He said it pains him that the behavior of a relatively few students is tarnishing the good work of thousands of our students. We have bright gifted students which you know what kind of community service work they're doing in Evanston and elsewhere, the kind of money they're raising for Evanston charities and agencies and the kind of volunteer work they're doing. This conversation really seems unbalanced and he would have to say that generally speaking we have terrific students, most get in no trouble whatsoever, a third of them don't even touch alcohol, but a small percentage of our population is a tarnish on the entire institution. We are dealing with this the best we can and as quickly as we can. Alderman Feldman thanked Vice President Sunshine, Dr. Banis, and Chief Lewis and said we do not tarnish the good name and reputation of the wonderful students that have been a part of our community for a long, long time. We know it's a few but those few have caused a disproportionate discomfort in the community that you refer to. (At this time Alderman Feldman called upon those who signed up to speak before this committee.) Judy Fiske, 2319 Sherman - Has lived on that block for 30 years ever since she was a student at Northwestern. She has talked to this committee before and is concerned because the University and City of Evanston policing. She knows what she Is getting when a City of Evanston police car drives down her street, she's not sure what she's getting when a Northwestern police car drives down her street. Neighborhood residents even though we have problems with party houses and student vandalism that has gone every single year that she has lived on that block, the concern is who does the University represent when they send their police out into the neighborhood. She does not any other neighborhood in the City of Evanston that has two police departments covering them but knows her neighbors feel very uncomfortable about this. On Friday night it was Halloween and the kids on the block were talking about getting ready for Halloween but the adults were talking about was oh my God its Friday night and its Halloween and we better get ready for the kids who live across the street in rental housing. Sure enough there was a huge party with tons of drunken kids pouring out onto the street that basically trashed her whole block, All the Halloween decorations put on the porches were all smashed and the next morning it looked as though a tomado hit the block. She understands this is a complicated problem but what that all boils down to is respect and she does not see much of a change in the respect of kids from the University in her neighborhood. She likes University kids and has a good relationship with them, but when they get to be a group it turns into something else. In the past year, on weekends when the weather is warm, we have gone through a very, very difficult time. Looking out the window one day she saw a group of boys urinating on the neighbor's front porch who thought it was hysterically funny to be doing that Ms. Fiske said she yelled out the window to them to cut it out and they responded back to her saying they were really sorry and went on heir way. This incident was an example of the behavior which is what we're all concerned about, how we reach these kids to instill in them a sense of respect for the neighborhood. She would encourage the University administration to show some more respect to the neighborhood themselves through the communications they have with their students and with the neighbors. She personally has never received anything from the University talking about student parties or actions the University was going to be taking to try to make things in the neighborhoods better. One last reference to Halloween last week, when the party across the street was going on and hundreds of kids were pouring out it was like you wondered how so many people could fit into such a small space, she decided to stand outside. She stood outside for an hour between midnight and 1:00 a.m. to see how many Northwestern police cars went by. Most people on the block were up and she knows they were calling the police, not one Northwestern police car came down this block, she stood there for an hour on this cold night and not one Northwestern police car came by. The reference to the tagging of problem houses, she's a realtor by trade and would not want to see that We're having enough problems in the neighborhood just trying to keep our heads above water. This is a neighborhood where people have lived here for 50 and 60 years, a neighborhood where people stay as they love the H5C Minutes 11/3103 Page 7. neighborhood and she wouldn't want to see a red tag on any house there she would rather walk up and talk to the kids and try to establish some rapport with them the problem we're having most recently is when you try to talk to the kids you get a kind of hostility back that makes it frightening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Junad Rizki, 2784 Sheridan Road - Back in 1997 Evanston had a peak crime rate that was higher than Chicago's which he brought before the City Council. Crime is very high here, crime has dropped but how it dropped is another matter. He's been looking at the police records, almost 4,300 people have been arrested in many years here. The police arrested over 720 juveniles in this town in 2001 for various incidents. Some of these kids are high school students. He thinks the police have an outreach program with 20 high school students in it but it had some incidents of crime. Crime is a big problem in this community that he feels the Council doesn't address well because we have such a large amount of crime the incidents with these Northwestern students are being sort of dropped. He was at the meeting when the City signed the agreement with Northwestern. He strongly opposed it, there was a benefit to it obviously that we get some more policing but as Alderman Kent said we have two types of police officers, one with real responsibility to Northwestern, one with responsibility to the City. All the Aldermen agreed to this and signed but it is really not in the public interest to have done this, but we did it so in a way you're responsible for that problem because if these students are probably getting away with crimes because they're being dealt with by the Northwestern police maybe not the City police, in his opinion the City police are probably overwhelmed with the problems of this community and its not just around that campus. In one police report the police wanted to shut down 29 drug houses in this town so we have problems here that people don't want to deal with. This Council should also not deal with Human Service Committee meetings but deal with the police as a separate committee meeting and deal with policing issues because he thinks we have that much of a problem here. Finally, he's not a big proponent that Northwestern pays taxes but if Northwestern wants police officers we ought to let Northwestern pay for those officers exclusively, not a fee, not taxes to the City but either pay for a police outpost that's run with Evanston police not Northwestern officers, they're responsible to deal with crime. He does not understand why a Northwestern police officer can come into his neighborhood and act like he's an Evanston police officer that really troubles him. He believes every Council member has a responsibility to realty know what's going on here and he believes members of the Council really don't want to have a real discussion on crime, they really don't want to know what's going on here and they don't want to deal with it and its not just in this neighborhood of Northwestern its throughout the City. Daniel Gamfson, 1228 Simpson Street - He is here with two hats on. He has lived across the street for decades and has been a member of the Northwestern faculty since 1966, For most of those years has been involved with UHAS, which is the University Hearing Appeals System. He learns about a lot of things that happen on campus that shouldn't happen and is also aware of things that happen off campus. This year, 2003, the University took an unprecedented and almost unparalleled step in assuming a role in patrolling off campus and dealing with their off campus behavior on campus through their judicial and appeals system. This is every significant and he thinks most of the people in this room appreciate and support that move. There are other things that he believes the City can do to drop the other shoe. Those of us who have lived near Northwestern know that a disproportionate amount of trouble comes out of houses that are owned by absentee landlords, many of them living out of state, many of them living outside the City, who do not supervise the property they rent. These properties tend to be hot spots where violations occur of especially alcohol abuse and loud parties and things like that. One of the things the City can do is to Identify these properties which are under managed. His joke is they all have one of three names, either professor, coach, or reverend. These absentees need to be brought to justice for maintaining disorderly properties. He respectfully disagrees with Judy Fiske, who is his friend in all things, but he does believe that a significant part of the problem can be answered by cracking down on the animal houses we have in the vicinity of Northwestern. He certainly looks forward to a time when we begin to make this move. He lives a few feet from a house inhabited by football players which has been a subject of constant complaints and calls for service, it happens also to be a place where the two Northwestern football players live who very recently attempted to invade a home, also in our neighborhood. That sort of thing is something that we as the City can do something about. Alderman Newman asked that for the benefit of Mr. Garrison and the other neighbors in attendance, Chief Kaminski tell - he's doing with the various addresses of disorderly houses. Chief Kaminski said, as you all know we have previously had _=_= a nuisance house ordinance that we worked on with Alderman Kent about how to get into the houses that were talked about. The Council then passed a new ordinance last year called the Nuisance Premise Ordinance which now gives us a lot more ability to go after the landlords of certain houses that are nuisance premises. Since the beginning of the year we've identified 6 locations and also have 6 locations identified as nuisance premises. If you get classified as a nuisance premises you have to fulfil a definition, that means we've been there and cited this premise at least twice. We have 6 locations that we're looking at and once you get that designation they are then required within 30 days to come to Chief Kaminski s office and show a plan on how to abate the nuisance. We discuss what some of those remedies are, some of the strategies and then they have to submit to the Chief in writing after another 30-day period. Currently we are in the process of going after 6 places, to date he has already met with 3 and their plans are due within 30 days and soon he'll meet with others. Alderman Newman added all the addresses are In this neighborhood, they are Garnet, Simpson. Hamlin, Ridge, Ridge, Hamlin. -- HSC Minutes 11/3/03 Page 8. Alderman Feldman asked the Chief if any of those nuisance houses fail to comply with the requirements of the law, what options are available to you or to the City. Chief Kaminski asked if they don't complete the plan or they complete the plan and the plan doesn't work we will then go out and cite them under this ordinance and bring them to Administrative Adjudication where the fines can go up to 5750.00. We continue to look at those cites and continue this list as an ongoing list. Alderman Newman asked if that list is generated just from the City of Evanston complaints or is both University police. Chief Kaminski said we work with the University police and our officers name the properties that we see together. We identify them, we look at the data on a weekly basis, we have a crime analyst who goes through all the reports that we get from the University and from our staff and look at it in a methodical way and approach like we have done in the past looking at the problems, trying to identify the problem locations and sources and then try to correct that source of the problem. Alderman Newman added and then you are following up on each one of these addresses with inspections by Jim Wolinski's department Alderman Feldman asked if that is $750.00 per incident? Chief Kaminski said it is every time we issue a citation. The owners he has called so far have been very cooperative and are very concerned about some of the issues that are occurring, they are willing to cooperate and going to take corrective actions. Certainly they do not want to be a source of complaints in the neighborhood. The Chief said he thinks this is an effective tool and has a lot of potential for landlords. Mr. Garrison wished to make one final comment, that a couple of years ago Jim Wotinski was talking about requiring a permit for people who rent to multiple tenants. He never heard that this was proposed, it seemed at the time and still seems to him to be a very good idea. People who are providing housing for multiple under age residents should bear a part of the expense of the patrolling and the law enforcement for those people. If we had a renting permit we would have one more instrument to add to what we already have to come down on landlords who are the hosts to perpetual and continual violations. He hopes you are including in that litter, parking on sidewalks, and parking on lawns. As you know, since he keep records on this starting 1996, he can give you a list of places where there have been places that have dozens and dozens of violations in each one of those categories. He wonders if those people are also being cited. Chief Kaminski said the ordinance is very broad and encompasses a lot of violations. Margaret Ronan, 2048 Sherman Avenue - She also did a little investigating talking to some of the girls that live in a house on her street. You say the fine is up to $750.00, these girls are each paying $500.00 a month per room, these apartments have 3 or 4 bedrooms, then there are 2 or 3 apartments in the building. These landlords are getting $5,000.00 a month from these students. You could go to the maximum after you say a 60 day waiting period then to get another citation and the fine may go up to $750.00. She heard it was written $200.00 to $750.00. Taking In $5,000.00 a month rent this really isn't going to hurt the landlords. She likes Mr. Garrison's Idea of a permit so that we know who is renting and they can actually have some sort of outline of what's acceptable conduct in the community. The other issue is she knows we can't compare universities but she happened to speak to Bob Wachowski of DePaul University who was kind enough to explain how they use their patrols at DePaul. They have a total of 50 officers between the main campus and the Lincoln Park campus and said they have 30 officers on duty, they rotate shifts, everybody comes in every half an hour, they have an overlap and the dispatcher stays an hour later. Their shift changes at 11:00 and the parties just get going around 11:00 p.m., and are still going on at 3.00 a.m. If we have people coming in at 11:00 p.m. they're not going to realize what was going on earlier in the evening. Mr. Wachowski said continuity and overlap was very important and they noticed a big difference when they staggered officers starting time. Mr. Wachowski also said they have something called a Community Policing Committee and meet either weekly or monthly depending on how active things are, what that meant is any information they get calls on at the DePaul University they meet with the community organizations that also deals with the police department and they meet and share information about specific cite problems. She thought this was a very good idea. Loyola University also has a minimum of 8 officers every night at their campus and both universities have an additional 3 part-time people that do foot patrols. The other issue is she heard that 142 citations were given, she can stand at her comer at Sherman and Simpson with a citation book and get that number of citations written easily in a weekend if not one night She was very surprised at that low number of citations because when she called the University and complained they sent someone then the person and she had to call again. She asked if they keep a note of the calls because this is a trouble spot and they told her they don't keep records of calls which she was surprised to hear because if there are three parties going on on her street most likely those three parties *if continue to be going on. She did not know if the University does keep records and if they could share those with the police department so we do have glorified nuisance residences your talking about She is now going to be calling the City she is not going to call the University police any. She sees them but all you do is see kids walk with their beer, they throw cups in the grass answer their cell phone and move a block away. She hopes we can work a little better with but the nuisance ordinance sounds too slow and she is sfill not quite sure what constitutes a citation and the idea of a $200.00 to $750.00 fine simply means the cost of them doing business. Jessica Donnelly, 906 Hamlin - It was her home at 906 Hamlin that was attacked. First and foremost she wanted to thank her neighbors that have come to all these meetings with their hearts open and full hopes of the notion that as a community not only do we matter but we want to help make it better, Given what we're living under she thinks that's pretty amazing. Thank you to my neighbors, and thank you to Northwestern because she personally has to say it Is gratifying to know not only have they come to the table tonight but and they've been gracious. Nobody wants that to happen to any HSC Minutes 11/3/03 Page 9. neighbor or to anybody in your community but there isn't a person in this room who would feet differently about their home and their neighbors and the experience that occurred in her home. It was a month ago tonight that the incident happened, it isn't an isolated incident, it is becoming a larger part of a bigger crot3em which she is sorry tonight you are not able to hear all the stories heard at the last Council meeting because as horrifying as they are they truly tell the point that everyone in our community is trying to make. She spent hours on tn,s and goes to court next Monday to address this She has met a lot with the State's Attorneys and an overzealous State's Attorney said if only he punched you or something we'd know where to go with this. She does not have great hope that in the legal system a tremendous lesson is going to be learned from this. Everybody is doing everything they can, Evanston police have been unbelievably supportive and helpful in giving her information, helping follow leads and understand how to better handle this. The University has helped her greatly in understanding haw they process these things. Ms. Donnelly said she has two questions to ask which may be considered for future reference. tf there is an incident that involves a full scholarship student who is living off campus she thinks there should be a way for the University to deal, even if by force, to move them back onto campus. She thinks that would be a consideration you could make because in her particular circumstance one of those students and the aggressor as it were is a full scholarship student. She is not the judge and jury nor is she justice or does she know what's going to happen with that young man but she would like to know that he is not living two blocks from her anymore and as long as you have been gracious enough and given him the confidence in your support she would like to know that something is going to happen. She is av+rare there are a lot of disciplinary actions that may or may not happen and she does not pretend to project what she thinks should happen which is not her place. She thinks there are instances with students because it turns out that student, in particular and some of the football players, have been cited before and there is no record of those citations. We talked about this in a meeting with the President of the University where she was given information about meetings that those students have specifically been identified as problems. Her question would be with all of these enthusiastic and wonderful community members that really do want to support the students. We really do want the students to feel like they are our neighbors and we want to feel like they are our neighbors. Most of the students on her block are angry at her because a lot of their houses have been identified as problem houses and that has nothing to do with her. They had been served citations prior to the incident. The only student that made an effort in showing any concern or any reaction to this incident was a student that graduated last and came back for homecoming from New York. He must have come to her home six times because we were out of town because she does not like to be home on weekends any more. He came by to tell us just how sick he was about this and how horrified he was, which to her is exactly who a Northwestern student is. He represents to her what the majority of the Northwestern students are. if the students are having problems coming to the school never having lived away from home isn't there a way we can together form a committee that isn't about desperate and diabolic situations all the time, but a way the community can assist the University in becoming the University that is different than the all the other ones that are having the problems that you identified in our meeting. You indicated criminal activity is becoming a problem for all universities and it seems to her that would be a banner of honor that would not easily be achieved but possibly achieved because there are the resources in her neighborhood and her community. She would like to say that the greatest sadness for her in this is apart from her child's fear of her home which she is doing everything to massage, so many neighbors she talked to that had great plans for their homes and families in the Firemen's Park district are thinking about moving and if you lose one of those families you have lost such energy and such an incredible opportunity to build because they're afraid and nobody should have to live like this anywhere. She knows we all have reasons, neighborhoods all have problems that everybody expects but she is song to say after the last City Council meeting she does not think many of her neighbors felt like they were heard, that you understand the trauma, the fear, but more Importantly they want to help improve it and she thinks everyone of them are here tonight. Thank you Jane Evans for your organization, thank you City Council for attending this matter and really thank you Northwestern for at least showing marked changes that you're trying to support the change and now consider how we can help you do because she does not want any other family to have face any of this. It isn't that far away from any of her neighbors when drunk kids are looking for party houses and they stumble into our houses and they're at that point where they don't know where they are we don't know who they are, something disastrous is going to happen. She will say in New York she felt very calm when skinny young man tried to mug her after a six foot seven, 310-pound man tried to come after her. Jane Evans - They came to the City Council meeting very disenfranchised by Northwestern and left that meeting feeling even more disenfranchised by our City Council, She wants to go an record applauding Northwestern for what they are trying to do. Dr. Banis, she has to tell you for the first time in the past 15 years she has lived in her house she feels that someone is listening. When you said you too would feel uncomfortable or bad if this was your neighborhood we did know what you meant and we appreciate the fact that you heard us. For us what's important is that this conversation continues that we become partners in this problem. She has children that are college students at different universities and clearly felt since September that Northwestern police were not actualizing what we needed in our community. She now understands why, if there are two or four of them there are enough parties happening on Gaffield to take the whole force away for that particular night and thinks all of us went by the guise of the flyers that have been going around for 4 years, "Call Northwestern This is What You're Supposed To Do". The problem has been clearly there are not enough police, maybe 150 isn't the issue, something has to be changed with the amount of police we have enforcing our community. its not the Evanston police because they are exemplary, when you call they come. The problem we all have is we don't want to be calling the Evanston police to deal with this issue. There are much more important issues in this community that HSC Minutes 11/3/03 Page 10. they should be taking care of then people urinating on her front porch. Secondly, she thinks it's very important that we look at these party houses. She knows the Freedom of lnformanon Act but if a kid is in a house that has been labeled a nuisance class that's a penalty flag to call them in and say do you realize what house you're living in and what the penalties are going to be. Landlords have lived around her for 15 years and 5750.00 is not going to doing a dam thing. She stood out at 3:00 a.m. ready to sign the citation for the ordinance to get a student taken off the street and put into our court system and they laugh at the S75.00 fine and laugh in the face of the police. Somehow we have to find a way it be more important. She too has Northwestern students that are lifelong friends with her family and she too loves where she lives, but in the last 15 years she has to say it feels worse than it ever has before. There's an entitlement issue that is just as prevalent with the generation and thinks we have to contend with and we want to partner in and maybe if it is a face to face. Quite frankly now it is the students that are leaving the party house at 4:00 a.m. and walking back to their dormitories. She can honestly say that she does not believe when they get into their dorm they are nearly as loud as they when they're walking down her street because they know those people and they know they need to be accountable. Somehow we have to make students accountable within our neighborhood. Linda Lewandowski - Thinks what she wanted to say was how disturbing the City Council meeting was several weeks ago because there seemed to be no historical memory of this problem and how long its been going on. She and Ms. Evans have been neighbors for years and 12, 13 years ago wound up after being outside at 3:00 a.m. signing several citations. They were able to take 8 or 12 kids to court she had her son, who is now 15 years old, in her arms in the courtroom and the judge was very helpful with the students and was very clear with the landlords so that our neighborhood got a little quieter for a bit. This problem has been going on for a very long and there is part of her that says why did it take so long for Northwestern to get involved. Certainly we all welcome your new measures and she thinks that's wonderful but the issues are the parties that are emptying out are actually occurring an the streets. Students are very obnoxious when they're drunk when you talk to them. What she would urge is that we need more patrols, signs that mean something to them and $75.00 doesn't do it. A lot of this belongs in the families and somehow or other we have to teach our young adults to be more respectful to the authority figures they come into contact with. It is a warm weather problem and will quiet down now and will again emerge as a problem in April or May when the weather is warm. She would urge stronger fines and more patrols. There isn't any reason why we can't police in that Fireman's neighborhood Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights until 3:00 a.m. if we're going be able to coexist. We appreciate the meeting tonight and appreciate Northwestern taking whatever action it can take and trying to take this seriously. Patricia English, 1923 Garnet Place — Its something very therapeutic about being able to get your voice across when you have suffered as she has over the last few years. She has lived at 1923 Garnet Place since 1979 and that was the second time. She raised four children there, they grew up, went to college, married, and thankfully are on their own at this point. She has seen a tremendous decline in her neighborhood and has seen a neighborhood in transition. It is no longer in transition that transition has occurred and we are now a neighborhood on Garnet Place where there are probably more student housing than any other type housing. For the past couple of years she has noted that the partying at Northwestern began a week to a week and a half prior to the beginning of school. This is a change and a change that is causing us a great deal of trouble. There is increased rudeness, intimidation, and increased vandalism. She has had her flowers destroyed, had markings on her property, and has suffered all matter of incidents due to the students living on her street. She is very, very concerned about overcrowding and for this she takes the City of Evanston to task. She has talked to the City Manager, she has talked to his assistant, to Mr. Wolinski, to Arthur Alterson, she cornered Aldermen on the soccer field of her granddaughter's games, she talks to whoever will listen to her. When she looks at her tax bill and its over S8,000 per year and she looks at the lack of services she's very, very upset. She sees individuals who are living at homes who have more than the minimum number of students living in a place and they are unrelated. When you call the City she can't get a straight answer as to what that minimum number of students is. There is illegal parking and would ask anybody in here to go down the alley between Ridge and Foster and look at what's happening in the back yards, parking in the back yards all kinds of ways, anyway you can to pack cars in that neighborhood. She does not believe there is another alley like this in ail of Evanston. This is because absentee landlords are packing the homes with as many bodies as they can get in so that they can get these absorbent rents. They are no where to be found. She is cited by the City, Mrs. English you need to have another light bulb, Mrs. English I think you need a lock on your window, nonsense stuff like that. If you look at her property she thinks she has one of the nicest if not the nicest house on the block. Then 1 see the absentee landlord's houses with siding missing, holes in windows, horrible, deplorable conditions and nothing is being done. For this the City of Evanston, I hold you chargeable. Some improvement has been noted in the last couple of years. A sofa was placed outside one of the houses next to her and that sofa stayed on the curb for over 3 weeks. Intimidation, last year students brought an old stereo outside and beat it with a baseball bat right in the parkway as she watched, it was almost as if to say I dare you to speak against it. She knows Catherine at Northwestem and has talked to her numerous times. In the last year or so they put dumpsters out that was some improvement, they sent flyers about what can be done about the noise and so forth, but let her tell you the improvements have not kept pace with the decline in student civility or the increase in student drinking. She thanks you for listening to her and is so glad to have this forum because something has to be done. Now that her children are gone, she and her husband and are looking at perhaps relocating. She has worked hard, she served on the zoning Board for 10 years, and served on numerous other organizations and boards but they are considering leaving, as are some of the newer residents because of what is HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 11. happening. She has nothing against Northwestern students, she is the parent of a Northwestern graduate, but a few students make it bad for all. Alderman Feldman asked the committee if there is anything they would like to say with the idea that this is not the end of this discussion. VSle are going to have another meeting and would like to see a refined agenda made up as a result of the testimony heard tonight, and the discussion we are going to have tonight taking into consideration Northwestern's initiatives and their perspectives. Alderman Newman thought we have a comprehensive approach and its already beginning. The main problem we have is if we continue to lose single family homeowners with children, there a lot of these families in the Firemen's Park area and are still some on Garnet. If we lose them then these neighborhoods truly go the other way. People here tonight do a lot of work on their gardens and a lot of work maintaining their properties so we can all be proud of them. When they have these properties next to them or cars in the back yards and everything else it devalues their property. There is definitely a resource problem here and its in a number of areas. It's in our ability to maintain inspections. Proving over occupancy is not an easy thing to do. There are all types of games being played by the landlord and by people in the building to try to disguise the number of people living in each unit, so we need cooperation to get this done on the over occupancy issue. He believes this is an area that the University can help us with. In terms of the approach we need to have regular inspections, we need to have eyes and ears of people in the neighborhood reporting the violations. What happens to people who come to our Administrative Adjudication for under aged drinking and don't show up when we write the tickets. There are all types of things that we can cooperate on. There was one incident where in one night our police caught 10 students with fake t.D.s in a bar in this town. What's happening to those 10 people? What about the resources in terms of the amount of police in the neighborhood, foot patrols in some of these areas in the times that we know. We know from September 15°' until the end of October when its still warm you're going to have plenty of activity and there needs to be more resources out there. He would like to be able to have the opportunity to discuss this with the University. He appreciates very much the high level delegation we have here tonight and he sincerely believes we have to work with the Northwestern police, its additional resources at a non City expense and we need to appreciate the fact that they instituted this disciplinary action for off campus and see how that works and hold their feet to the fire and continue to get communication and be sure that gets out there. He's sure there are other things we can be doing with the Building Department. There's one rezoning we need to do which is another example of City down zoning. We need to down zone west to Sherman Avenue not to allow anymore multi family buildings to go into this neighborhood. Currently the entire neighborhood going west of Sherman and on to Gaffield and on to Maple and Simpson is zoned R-5 and what you see happening is a number of four flats that means 12 people can be in a building legally, so we need to stop the expansion of multi family and promote single family. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would suggest, since this committee meets only once a month and sometimes not even then because with different priorities different things may come up, we set up a task force made up of representatives from the University, from the City, and from the neighborhood to manage the process of rectifying these problems. There are some good things happening but we need an ongoing process that can monitor and push forward whatever we have decided here, whatever the University is doing and get the engagement of the neighbors in that process on an ongoing process. Maybe we should also get some students representation. The momentum will continue to push this forward. Alderman Newman said as long as we have the neighbors in the room he would like to appoint a subcommittee of the committee and have that meeting take place outside a formal committee meeting and try to work through some of these issues. Alderman Newman volunteered and thought Alderman Kent would also volunteer. Alderman Tisdahl thought she should also be a member of that committee. Alderman Feldman noted we have two members of this committee and Alderman Kent which sounds like the nucleus of a good committee if Northwestern would consider appointing a representative delegation and the neighbors can have 2 or 3 representatives. Alderman Newman remarked a task force went on in this neighborhood for years in the mid 90's. Alderman Feldman said he had assurance from the Vice President that this has a high priority and is sure he would select high level decision -makers people that are capable of influencing policy and establishing policy to be part of that committee. Alderman Newman asked that every member who signed up and anybody else who's here and didn't address this committee be invited to these meetings. Alderman Feldman added the meetings will be held openly for full citizen participation. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste also added there are student representatives here and thinks it would be a good thing for them to have some representation. Mayor Morton asked Alderman Feldman to be more specific as to what would be the role of this committee and her reasons for asking that is because we haven't yet given the two police Chiefs the opportunity to give us some solutions. Alderman Feldman said it was also the Aldermen's purpose to have the both Chiefs as part of this committee. Mayor Morton said she has been listening to this discussion and has a lot of experience because everybody here knows where she has been and knows the problems we've had. You're not going to solve this problem until you get an those landlords, until we at the City begin to make some rules concerning housing that will force us to put some restrictions on these landlords. To her it's no problem if we have the University police, or our own police go in and cite these problems. What does the landlord do about it, does he come and tell those kids, okay pack your things, you're out of here. We're letting HSC Minutes 1113103 Page 12. them get away with murder. The reason she's saying this is she thinks we have to work with these landlords is she knows that the Police Chief has been there because she's been there with him. We have to call these landlords in, sit them at a table, bring in neighbors to sit .Ntn them and talk about these problems and ask them face to face, what are you going to do about this. She is sure members of the community will be very happy as a group to get together and say we want to talk to these landlords too, to bnng a solution to this problem. We could try all tnese other things that we want to try but it will not happen until the person wno is getting the money has to stand up to something that we as a City will support. One of the most disappointing things she's seen is how these young folks act and doing and saying ugly things. That upset her so she went to the Chief Judge on Old Orchard Road to ask why he doesn't fine these kids for what they have done and also for their disrespect to our police officers She was informed that unless a police officer is hurt there is nothing that can be done. Since that is me way the law is which we have no control over then we have to use those things that we can use. She guarantees you when if we get those landlords, she does not care where they live, if we make some laws here that we have all of thrs and these houses can be vacated and we do it, she knows we can do it, she's seen it done. When the landlords find that their community people are going to call the shots and the City is going to use its resources to do something about it she guarantees you they will get those people out of those places. Why should a landlord let a group of 18, 19-year-old kids come in and live in their property and disrupt the City? Why wouldn't they think that they have to bring some controls over these children, these are children, these are not adults and we are supposed to do something about it. Alderman Rainey said, as you well know for years she has been advocating for licensing landlords and the Mayor and she troth agree on that. Every time this comes up the reputable landlords come to City Hall and fight it tooth and nail and get the ears of their Aldermen and they are told on every occasion licensing landlords will not in any way affect the responsible landlords in this town. What it will do is it will allow us to deny the right to rent for those units, one, out of compliance, and two, have code violations, overcrowding, whatever. It is absolutely a sure-fire way to deal with the problem. We in the minority of communities do not have licensing. Many, many communities In the State of Illinois have licensing. It is not going to hurt the good guys, its only going to affect the pockets of the bad guys. She encourages the task force that was put together here tonight to have that as the number one item on your agenda because until we get rid of the problem people in the neighborhood who are living in the problem buildings you are going to continue having problems. Alderman Feldman asked that a date be decided on for the subcommittee task force to meet. November 17°i was the date chosen for the meeting. Alderman Feldman thanked everyone for their contribution to tonight's discussion. At this point 9.05 p.m. Alderman Feldman called for a short recess. The meeting resumed at 9;12 p.m. IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE OCTOBER 2003 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Jean-Baotlste. Motion to approve the October 2003 Township monthly bills was unanimously approved 15.01. V. CONSIDERATION OF THE FY03 ANNUAL AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Jean -Baptiste motioned for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion to approve the Annual Audit of Evanston Township was unanimously approved f5-01. Alderman Rainey commented this is such an important document there should be some discussion on it Alderman Feldman called upon Irwin Lyons, Township Auditor. Mr. Lyons with Miller, Cooper and Company, said they completed the audit. You have the financial statement which has an unqualified opinion which is the highest level of assurance we can give as the auditors on the statement The Township has implemented the new recording standards that changed the format of the report on the basis of accounting and there is a Manager's Discussion Analysis letter that is now required in the front of the audit that is a summary of the financial activities. The format of the statements have changed somewhat with the new standards. The footnotes to the report go on for a number of pages and disclose the accounting policies of the Township and provide a lot of detail information for various account balances, this is a quick overview of the statements. Alderman Tisdahl said you recommend the Township review the Tax Levy Ordinance and consider increasing the amount to be raised by taxation. How much of an increase are you are you considering. Mr. Lyons said they are just saying to evaluate it, but the Township is under tax caps and the City isn't. Under tax caps you are limited to a percentage increase but if you don't ask for any new dollars then you lose the ability for any new property coming on the roles so you can't go back and get that unless you go through a referendum. We're not pointing out a number but just to look at not losing that amount because when the Township was cut back and couldn't increase when the County was late in payments there wasn't enough cash to keep paying bills, because the County was a couple of months of late. There were some financial HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 13. problems so what we're saying is to look at that and evaluate what Fund Balance would be comfortable and then look at moving toward that or keeping it at that amount its not just to increase the taxes otherwise your rate goes down and under the tax cap you lose that ability on the new property. Alderman Bernstein said he thought you could expand the basis under which your base point is set on increasing such valuation when new properties come on or when properties come off of TIF. You're saying that you're capped for levy amounts. Mr. Lyons responded, no, you have to ask for the extra dollars. Alderman Bernstein said then you are suggesting that we have a cap and the increase under the cap is 5% or the rate of inflation whatever is less and that we ask for more dollars so that we can capture additional dollars when the tax base is spread. He thought we actually added those properties and they weren't set off against the existing cap. His understanding was it expanded the cap and expanded the basis. Mr. Lyons said it does if you ask for the additional dollars, if you only ask to leave the levy the same then the rate just drops down and you lose the ability of the new property. Alderman Bernstein said he understood what Mr. Lyons was saying, you can expand the levy an amount not to exceed revenue capping and you can levy for those dollars. His question is, isn't it a fact after those dollars in advance you then expand to that cap. Mr. Lyons said the way if works is lets say the cap is 2%, if you don't ask for anything and new property comes on the rate just drops down and you'll get the lower amount that you asked for. The property goes an the tax roles but what ends up happening is you now have a larger base on the same dollar so the rates drop down and you don't get any more dollars into the Township. Alderman Bernstein asked if the school board works the same way, and was told that it does. Mr. Lyons said any non - home rule works that way which is why we have the point in here because in past years it went down until there were financial problems. From a theoretical standpoint you could say if we don't need the money this year lets not ask for it but if we need the money next year under the caps you can't get it then when you need it. if you have a slow progression and take advantage of that you'd be in better financial shape for a longer period of time. Alderman Bernstein said we used to bank money and before the current Supervisor was in office there was a big debate about the kind of reserve to have and that's where those dollars would go. Alderman Bernstein thanked Mr. Lyons for his explanation as he said he misunderstood that for many years. Mr. Lyons said you ask for the additional dollars otherwise you lose it at that point and the year that it comes on if you don't take advantage of it its gone unless you would have a referendum. Alderman Newman referred to page 12 of the audit where it indicates that there was $135,000 deficit last year, expenditures exceeded revenues, which is a concern and needs to be addressed. His concern is on Page 34 under Budget and Expenditure there are a number of expenditures that exceeded the budget that we approved last year. He's not suggesting anything but he thinks we need an explanation of page 34. He realizes we do not have the time to do this tonight and he would like to give the Supervisor and staff the chance to talk to us about some of these categories, Office Supplies $10,000 budgeted and $21,047 spent, Contract Services $21,000 budgeted $73,684 spent, and overall these administrative expenditures succeeded the budget by almost $100,000, He thinks we need to get an understanding of what's going on on that front and he would ask if that can be done at the next meeting, Mr. Lyons said on page 35 where you have the total budget amount the total didn't exceed the budget as you can transfer some amounts and the overall budget balances. Alderman Newman said it is a bit disconcerting as we approve a budget and it says $10.000 for Office Supplies and the amount spent if over $21,000. He added, didn't the Fund balance on page 12, to which Mr. Lyons responded it may have been budgeted for the deficit. Alderman Newman said if we did he would like to a little more information on that. Alderman Feldman had a question with reference to the Auditor's Report regarding Prior Year Comments Repeated, if there is any problem getting how some of these suggestions were handled. Ms. Vance said they are working on them. Alderman Feldman said he is especially interested in Number 7, the Assessor's office uses a different compensated absence policy than the Township and the Assessor's policy is not formally documented. Alderman Feldman asked if anyone from the Assessor's office was present and was informed no one was present. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry to have somebody respond to this so that it can be cleared up. VI. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 69-R-03 AUTHORIZING AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF EVANSTON AND EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE PROVISION OF EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE SERVICES Alderman Feldman commented this was the same agreement we had last year. Alderman .lean -Baptiste moved approval. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion to consider Resolution 69-R-03 authorizina an Intergovernmental Agreement between the City of Evanston and Evanston Township for the provision of Ememencv Assistance Services. unanimously aonroved 15-01. VIi. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski said they had one complaint, and at this point there are two pending and one completed. Alderman Tisdahl motioned acceotance of the report. seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously accepted f5-01. HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 14. VIIL CONSIDERATION OF A REFERENCE TO PLACE VIDEO CAMERAS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MAIN AND DODGE Alderman Feldman noted we have the issue with respect to the camera on the corner of Main and Dodge that came about as a result of an action taken by the CDBG Committee tabling the request of certain members of the community to place a video camera at the intersection of Main and Dodge. Alderman Newman said this was his reference and wanted to make it clear what his reference is. The CD Committee tabled a request to fund a camera. He views the CDBG Committee as an important committee but essentially what they do is decide how the 2.7 million, or whatever the figure is, is going to be applied and what programs are going to be funded. It doesn't mean that there's a proposal for a camera or police equipment and the only way it gets funded is through CD type of funding. What he intended was. whi'e he considers it to be perfectly appropriate, to discuss the issues at Main and Dodge as part of this discussion and realty intended in part for us to try to come up with a policy on this. There are some people who don't want to use surveillance cameras at all for various reasons that the have. We need some type of Citywide policy if we're going to use them as a tool and how we're going to get to that decision which is what he wanted to discuss. He did not want what he said. in any way, to say that as part of this discussion is the issues of Main and Dodge because that was a catalyst for the reference that would also be discussed. It wasn't just to say we're going to decide about Main and Dodge and not say anything else about cameras. Alderman Feldman said he assumed that citizen participation will include comments both about the potential Citywide policy and the placement of cameras. A total of 11 people wished to speak and he would limit the time for each speaker to 5 minutes, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested limiting it to 3 minutes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said as he understands it we'll have citizens comments and our discussion will be on policy, how do we make the determination as to whether a camera ought to be placed at a specific location in the City of Evanston. Alderman Newman said he would like to develop a policy but thinks before we hear from the speakers we should hear from the Chief as to the cameras that have already put up and how that happened so that the speakers can also get some background as to how we use cameras in Evanston. Chief Kaminski thought everybody pretty much knows his philosophy about policing, we try to work very hard to engage the community to build partnerships as a primary foundation for any type of policing we do. Building strong partnerships with the community is by far the most effective way to reduce any kinds of neighborhood problems. He has attended many of your meetings and that is the premise that we build from. The most important ingredient as an active group is truly to solve the neighborhood issues. When we all come to the table to discuss those problems and issues we often come with a little tool box and in that tool box there may be other things that might be useful for us to use in developing strategies. We might come up with such things as lighting, locks, maybe some fencing. We're done things about trimming back trees, we've developed ordinances, signage's, we've looked at cul-de-sacs and looked at bumps and humps, all kinds of devices to try to deal with issues. There are all kinds of innovative things out there that we come to table with to use as tools as part of the strategy. Cameras is one of those strategies they started years and years ago when we first thought about them to help us deal with crime and neighborhood issues. We've dealt with them in two wards already in Alderman Rainey's Ward and Alderman Kent's Ward. We worked with the neighborhood groups In both of those wards and talked about problems and issues and one strategy we came up with to try to use was a neighborhood camera. There are two different applications, the one we have at Howard and Custer is basically commercial and then moving over to Simpson and Dewey is a different type of comer. The way we started using them was talking with the neighborhood groups to try to impact on crime in neighborhoods and if these were an effective tool. He'll leave it up to the Aldermen to comment whether or not they felt it was effective. He thinks in bath situations it helped as a catalyst to try to deal with the problems that we've had in the neighborhoods. That's how the whole Idea of cameras, which is just another tool that we came up with to deal with in the neighborhoods. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there are different views as to whether or not you have specifically proposed the camera at Main and Dodge, that is you as the Chief as opposed to that being driven by community request_ Chief Kaminski said every option that we've had for the camera to date has been a collective agreement between what the community feels is a good tool for that neighborhood. He comes with a toolbox and there are a lot of tools that he'll offer, if the community feels comfortable with that tool he will support it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if he feels seeking to ascertain where the community stands on this particular issue. Chief Kaminski said particularly the Main and Dodge community feels this is one strategy they feel comfortable trying at that location to deal with the issues and concerns that they have. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if that's the community's proposal then you will support it, to which Chief Kaminski responded, that is correct. Alderman Newman said he was just trying to get an idea of what happened here, he thought CD had a proposal from somebody asking for $21,000. Alderman Bernstein said they had a meeting attended by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, himself and several neighbors at which there was a request for a camera at Main and Dodge and he suggested with respect to the CD dollars that it would be more appropriate if it came from the Police Chief as it had twice before. That was followed by the group going to the Police Chief for his okay, the Chief was not at the CD meeting. This came on a request of the HSC Minutes 1 1 3 03 Page I5. Police Department. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if that was as a result of his discussion with some community residents, to which the Chief said that was correct. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked it at that time were there 5 community residents, not 80 residents not 100 residents, d was 4 or 5 that you met with, correct. Chief Kaminski said he understood there was a meen!7g, representatives were there and as the Alderman said this money was available. The talk about the camera was if I would put their request forward to look at CDBG as a possible source as this extra money was available that needed to be expended during this year. and if that could be applied there. That is why he talked to Sally Lufkin and she said it was available and put the proposal together to let the CDBG Committee decide. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said as the sequence holds out Alderman Bernstein and he went to a meeting where there were 4 other community residents and those residents came and requested that the Chief put forward that proposal, which the Chief said was correct. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then you were not confronted with a petition of 100, 20, 30. and you have not ascertained whether there is an overwhelming majority of the community that is requesting that, you just went to put forward the proposal as you were requested by these individuals. Chief Kaminski said at the time he thought this was the consensus of the community as the messages he got were this had been discussed at many of the community meetings and we had looked for other sources to get it through some of the businesses there. They even looked at one of the 7-11 Corporate's to try to get a camera there. There were a lot of ways that everybody was thinking to get it. Right or wrong he thought there was consensus and the message to him was move forward and that this money was there. If there is not, it certainly was not his intent not to see that there was consensus because for every one of these we have done so far there has been that kind of commitment from the neighborhood group. Alderman Bernstein said the potential camera at this specific site has been on the table in the discussions for years from the time Alderman Feldman removed the telephone from in front of the 7-11. He's philosophically opposed to cameras, he agrees that they're a good tool and voted for the first two in large part because he thought there was consensus. From the community meeting he was led to believe that there was in fact consensus and he felt if there was consensus of the citizens of the community he would support it. He does not like them, but he would support it. When we got to CD it occurred to him that there may not be consensus for this specific camera. Going back to the policy issue we were presented petitions on which there were numerous signatures some of which were actually from people who live in the neighborhood that would be impacted by a camera at Main and Dodge. Many, however, bear no relationship to that comer other than the fact that perhaps they work at the Walgreen's or they play at Crown Center. As a policy discussion he would like begin to talk in terms of using as an analogy speed bumps. If the community wants surveys, in favor by a majority, of speed humps on a particular block, we will vote the speed humps for them. The policy issue that we have to discuss is what radius around a given location we should survey to determine those that are most seriously impacted by the presence of this camera. The question becomes whether its security or surveillance. Philosophically he's against these things, yet he knows they work because he has seen the crime move on. He does not believe they eliminate crime he thinks they just move it. Some of the concerns that have been expressed here and that if we take the crime off a bright tit comer it will go in back into the alleys or the parking lots where it would be more egregious than if were people could understand what's happening. As an example, if the people on 800, 900 on Dodge and east and west for a block or two on Main Street and in the perimeter streets around there want those cameras there he would vote for it. The only reason he moved to table it on CD, those funds are still available. If we can get some kind of a survey we have the demographic set up the Traffic Department is very good about surveying communities in a fairly quick fashion with respect to speed humps. That's all he would like to suggest is that we do make sure this is a partnership with citizens and a cooperative effort and not something thaCs foisted a smaller group against a larger group. He's not saying whether or not they work because he has had lengthy discussions with the Chief and he believes in them as one tool. Alderman Feldman said the one thing he heard tonight that speaks toward any kind of formation of a policy and we may not restrict this or indeed adopt it at all, has to do with the use of cameras as a result of a general consensus around the area by the community as a potential tool in dealing with community issues. You've indicated you're wilting to use consensus to get your vote to support a camera anyplace if in fact the majority of the people, or however we figure it out, are in favor of that What he wants the committee to consider is that the totality of the policy, is what this committee will recommend and that the final determinate of the use of cameras in the City of Evanston will be determined by a general consensus within the area surrounding the point of installation of a camera. Alderman Newman thought if you're going to have a camera there needs to be a survey within a two or three block area, very close to all the immediate home owners, rental units, everybody who lives in that area. We only notify the property owner of a rental building but we need to notify all the people that live in the building if there are rental buildings. To have a camera you need 75% support of the immediate neighborhood and the way it should work is first there should be some type of neighborhood meeting on the subject on the problems of the neighborhood. If the Police Chief recommends as a potential solution, which helshe may or may not do, if he puts on the table that a camera may be something that will improve the neighborhood then at that point we should do a survey with a letter from the Chief to these people as part of the survey that gives the background in a brief paragraph on the use of cameras in Evanston and what he feels will be the impact assuming he recommended it would be positive. Obviously the Chief thought that a camera may be helpful over there. Chief Kaminski said this was something they talked about in strategy sessions for years that we wanted to try. Alderman Newman said even if there was a small group on this he sees the Chiefs concern. He thinks whenever we put HSC :Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 16. out a camera there needs to be a strong consensus of the people who really are around that neighborhood who are most impacted by the problem that is there. We should start despite what we have with the Main and Dodge neighborhood and send out a letter. Alderman Feldman said if it's the committee's agreement that cameras will only be placed in areas where we feel we have a clear consensus of people that desire a camera along with a documented history of difficulty in an area. Considenng a site as a concern of the committee are we saying that we will support the placing of a camera as a tool as recommended by the Chief if a certain percentage of people are polled and indicate that they want a camera. Alderman Feldman asked if that is the committee's wish? Alderman Bernstein was in agreement. Alderman Tisdahl said that would work for her. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought that if you do have a consensus he does not see imposing a different wish on the community but thinks that cameras cannot be viewed as speed humps. Consideration would be after we had the consensus. Alderman Feldman said the next discussion would be, if in fact we do indicate that a majority of the people should be polled and a consensus determined. He would like that proportion, 75%. described as being the one that we're going to use. He asked Alderman Newman why he used the proportion of 75% to which Alderman Newman responded because of what you're doing and the issue of surveillance, people have different views on what it means to a neighborhood to have a surveillance camera up there. People can then question d there is a stigma attached to the neighborhood. He happens to feel cameras are and can be an effective tool, just one of many, it is not the problem solver, but we're using it in Evanston and since we're using it we've legitimized it. Everybody who wants to speak tonight doesn't want the crime at Main and Dodge that is there, they want a response. What the disagreement is over is this as a tool and if this tool in any neighborhood doesn't have a very strong consensus it shouldn't be there. If it turns out in this neighborhood we do the survey and this tool isn't used then there has to be other things that we do and we have to continue a focus here of trying to respond to the concerns and complaints here. In terms of having these neighbors get into a debate we need to find out what the actual view is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to make it crystal clear that he does not support cameras as a tool to abate problems that we have among our citizens here_ He does understand that cameras may be useful if you have a focus project where you're seeking to identity particular activities in tht, area, if there is a particular conspiracy, so he supports that as a mobile tool to use in particular instances. As a permanent tool for police surveillance of particular location he disagrees with that. He would not be part of the discussion if the Chief decides to use a camera for surveillance of a particular activity, a mobile camera and such, that's a police decision. In terms of the way he would want to be in a position to consider the placement of a permanent camera, if 100% of the citizens come and say that is what they want he would not have the power to stand in their way but he will dissent on that issue on a consistent basis. It's a very high threshold of interest by the community that would lead him to say he accepts that as a tool for a particular Iocation on a permanent basis. Alderman Feldman asked if anybody has ever considered this camera to be a permanent thing in terms of being there forever, he can't image that. Chief Kaminski said they never set any time limits on the other cameras, they put them up, they've done some things, and we've never got to that point with them saying when do they come down. Probably we'll took at that in the future. Alderman Feldman said but there's nothing to suggest that they can't come down. Chief Kaminski said they can come down and we can relocate them if we wanted to. Alderman Feldman thought Alderman Jean-Saptiste's analysis has to do with the fad that its specifically designed to be put there to solve a given very specific investigative problem. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it would be used as a mobile camera in one of his trucks or cars and there's a focus time period for the investigation, but with these cameras put up at Custer and Howard and Simpson and Dewey there was no thought of taking them down after any given period of time. Any policy that looks toward the future should integrate that as a time period. These cameras were put up at these places, there were televisions to monitor what's going on and that was the extent of it. Alderman Feldman said although he understood Alderman Jean -Baptiste to say that he would always dissent but he would not stand in the way if the community indicated that it wanted that he indicated 100% and he does not how there could be 100%. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that's unreasonable as a policy but he is just saying that's how he feels about it Alderman Feldman said we're trying to establish a policy under which you could always descent but you indicate that you would not stand in the way if a super majority of a community decided in your view whether rightly or wrongly that they wanted a camera. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is suggesting that policy we are talking about view mobile cameras as the Chief has utilized to troubleshoot specific things that are going on as opposed to permanent fixtures that citizens who may be going to the soft ball games at Robert Crown would be filmed, summer after summer, those who have gone to Dr. Hill's Clinic, or to any of the other places at that intersection. Those who live adjacent to that area would be subject to that kind of surveillance on a consistent basis. In a sense he's really modifying that proposed policy should be one that is focused around a specific investigation and that there be mobile cameras utilized as opposed to permanent Fixtures. Chief Kaminski said if they are doing investigative work we probably wouldn't be here. We have techniques where we've done surveillance operations in reference to narcotics and gangs and things that is covert surveillance. This is open, everybody knows the camera is there. Alderman Newman said obviously if there was a robbery after 12:00 a.m. where somebody by themselves on the Metra platform was approached and robbed. To him that's a great place to have a camera to protect people late at night It might not be the place where we're willing to invest $21,000 so what will happen here even if there's a request by the HSC :Minutes 1 113,'03 Page 17, community were you get 75%, the Council is still going to have to vote funds for that camera. Even if there's a request its not an automatic that you get the camera, the community requests it then it goes to the Council and the Council's going to debate like on any other capdal item whether we spend $21,000, Maybe we'd spend it at Main and Dodge and maybe we wouldn't spend it on the Metra. Alderman Bernstein said he draws a distinction between what you're talking about, which he considers covert surveillance and he's in favor of that. We've had good impacts with drug runners and busted a lot of people doing that in large part because of the covert camera. What we're talking about now is a tool which hangs on a permanent basis and records the traffic in a particular area as a method by which people become aware that is there and they disburse. they no longer do any criminal activity. One of his concerns is that then when the criminals disburse only the law-abiding people are left with the banner in the sky advertising the quality of that particular corner as it relates to the crime, To him these are different situations. This tool unfortunately can be abused and he is looking at it in a greater context than Evanston. We voted to repeal the Patriot's Act. Information gathered from this particular camera can be made available Is he paranoid, perhaps, but he was of the generation brought up by 1984 and its here. He knows two Aldermen spoke very highly in favor of the security/surveillance cameras and Alderman Kent said if we didn't want it there he has plenty of places in his ward. He thinks Alderman Newman made the same statement, he can't make that statement. The presence of a fixed camera frightens him, philosophically. Again, if people are worried to live in that kind of an environment in a particular area he would grudgingly go along with it as he has once before. This is a residential area and there's a difference of opinion as to what that camera in the sky does and means. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would support Alderman Newman's example of the Metra station but in a residential neighborhood he would rather that have community policing. Alderman Newman said sometimes there's going to be residentiallcommercial sometimes there's going to be commercial. What would we call Dodge and Church near the high school? Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there's residential and there's commercial. Alderman Tisdahl said some high schools have cameras and we passed some policy that was so incredibly prohibitive that at one point we needed to see something and weren't allowed to by our policy. It is perfectly possible to come up with a policy that Alderman Bernstein might feel better about it Alderman Newman noted there are certain topics that we can address and everybody agrees that we should ask the Chief for a response that includes cameras and a response that doesn't Include cameras, at Main and Dodge. In the interim we have cameras in Evanston already. He would suggest that we do the survey of a two or three block area as opposed to having the debate because if the survey doesn't come back supporting the cameras we're not doing the camera, if we adopt that as a policy. Alderman Feldman asked if he wants to bypass all of the argument and debate for the decision regarding what the policy is and then poll a given circumference around Main and Dodge. Alderman Newman said the determining factor for whether or not we will even support the idea of considering spending funds is we have to get that survey back. Tonight we might have 20 speakers but there might be 300 people in the survey. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Newman if he remembers saying he would suggest that there be a community wide meeting where there is some discussion as to whether or not that is the tool that the community believes it ought use to police their neighborhood and from that discussion would come the survey if the need was expressed. He thinks the discussion is very important in establishing this issue just because somebody comes forward to say we need a camera in that intersection does not mean so that the next we survey people we go forward. That's to ascertain a real need. Alderman Feldman said the problem with that is it becomes a race to see how many people can get how many people out at any give meeting, whatever the distribution is pro and con it would not be same as if you polled people outside of a meeting process that says yes or no. Anybody that wants to with a minimum number of signatures can get the City to poll whether or not you want your survey. What you have to prove is there is significant interest whether its justified or not and that signification interest is the deference that we make to all citizens, we can start out as a minority and wind up being a majority and visa verse. If we have a respectable number of people and both cases here this is not an insignificant number of people involved in this issue, the audience testified to that already. It warrants a survey and you're placing a very high standard on that survey. There isn't any way that the City makes a decision that uses a survey that has that high a standard, none. Speed bumps are usually based on a simple majority. If we set this up as 75% that is unprecedented but if the issues warrant and the Committee seems to feel that it does than that's what we recommend to the Council. We have had meetings already on both sides, all of which have been inconclusive. If we do decide to do this we go straight with this particular group because its been in existence for a long time and the question has hung over the community for a long time that we determine the circumference around the area and survey. The survey would be the kind that you have a prepaid post card in it that you mail back. It will come from the Chief of Police with the help of Jay Terry's Human Services Department_ We have to decide on the limits of time, when its going to go out, when we'll count the votes, how long we're going to wait for the return, etc., etc., and then decide. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the process is not objectionable as such but he thinks even when we do traffic calming devices usually they have meetings to consider different options. In some situations its not but other situations is why there are preliminary meetings to consider what other options are available to the community addressing problems. HSC Minutes 11/3/03 Page 18. Alderman Feldman said it's a lot easier to deal with a single block than it is to deal with literally hundreds of people that are affected by this, you're saying to call a meeting that may or may not bring 40 to 50 people out. What does that tell you, it depends an who comes. The next night you might have a different answer. the following night you might have yet a different answer. Alderman Newman said he is not sure we need to have the debate, what the issue for us in the discussions was there was a question as to whether there was a consensus for the cameras. Some people have said there, is we clearly have something that indicates there is not. We have a situation here where the Chief of Police actually asked an important committee of the City for money for this In his view if there truly is only opposition or mostly opposition at that intersection among the residents that would be bom out and if it does come back positive its not the end of the process for all the people who are opposed to cameras. At some point there is going to be a vote for money and Aldermen are going be opposed to it and Aldermen are going to possibly vote against it and at that point in time we can have the people who stilt don't want us to file the survey come back again. All we're finding out tonight is we're solving a dispute as to what the consensus is there. We should also have the people who are all here tonight meet with the Chief and the Chief should come back to us with recommendations for with the camera and without camera because we still want to solve the problems there. Alderman Newman said he did not want to frustrate anybody but was not sure we have to go into another 45 minutes now. Harvey Millman - Lives about four doors from the corner of Dodge and Main. He recently learned about the proposal to install a camera at the comer. He has attended the recent Community Development Block Grand meeting and talked to both Karen Bond and Mimi Peterson about the proposal. He attended the meeting arranged by Alderman Rainey to visit the Howard and Custer Police Outpost and see the camera installation and learn about its capabilities. He originally signed a petition in favor of the camera installation. After teaming more about the camera and the background of the proposal he changed his mind and signed a second petition opposing the installation. He is here tonight to ask who benefits from a camera at Dodge and Main? He hopes some answers to this question will help to clarify this issue. First question, will the businesses at Main and Dodge benefit? Many of them feel that the camera gives the perception that ours is risky high crime neighborhood and fear that this perception will decrease their business. The few businesses that favor the installation see this as a way to avoid having to invest in security measures that they would otherwise have to pay for. Second, will local homeowners benefit? The perception that ours is a risky high crime neighborhood as a result of installing the camera will reduce property values. The installation of the camera will not reduce any crime in the neighborhood it will simply move the activity elsewhere in the neighborhood out of camera range. The camera has range and capability to observe private residences near the comer. If this occurs it is an invasion of privacy. Finally, does the City benefit_ The police department need not provide manpower to address a problem. Incidentally, statistics lend to support that the problem may not be as large as it has been presented by some factions. The camera is an easy solution and because it simply moves the people off the comer it is a false solution. The City faces potential legal action if local residents' privacy is being violated. Finally, the City avoids having to address more difficult Issues such as the social basis for the perceived problems or requiring that the businesses involved take responsibility for controlling the activities that occur on their property. He would like to compliment the committee on their deliberations tonight, as he was very heartened to hear how this policy is going. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Millman what his perception is what we can require of a business in terms of security because he does not think we can make a private business like the 7-11 at Main and Dodge hire a security officer. What you were saying is we should be doing to make the businesses address the problem. He just wants to be clear on what Mr. Millman thinks we can do. We can lobby them, we can talk to them, we can ask them and plead with them in some cases. Mr. Millman said the Laundry World parking lot was tit brilliantly up until 11:00 p.m. Somebody convinced them or they saw it was in their own best interest to extend those lights. He thinks it is an education issue rather than a legislative issue, Judy Jager, 1002 Florence — She lives across Crown Park from the intersection of Dodge and Main. Last week she spoke to the City Council and made reference to some of the statistics that the previous speaker was referring to. The reason she wanted to speak tonight is she is getting concerned that because there are different opinions about whether we should have a camera its beginning to get some momentum about there's no problem or the problem Isn't as bad. In fact, Alderman Jean -Baptiste, last week you said at City Council that you don't think its that serious. That makes her very concerned. The statistics in question are not her opinion and your opinion about whether it's a serious problem is not the thing in question. 185 times between September 02 and September 03 citizens, residents like us, made phone calls to the police about something going on at that intersection, not traffic other kinds of things. Those people called to get help and she really thinks it's a very sad thing to minimize citizens' wishes for safety. She does not think there's room for any of that in what we're trying to do here. That's not a high -density area, its single-family homes. It's not a huge shopping area, 185 calls in 12 months comes out to 15 calls a month on average or every other day. To her, every other day seems like we've got a problem and if we don't get a camera we do need more police presence of some sort for that intersection and its up to you Aldermen to give us leadership to provide that so that we can have a safe neighborhood. HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 19. Alderman .lean -Baptiste asked Ms. Jager how many blocks is she away from there. Ms. Jager asked why does that keep coming up, you live further away from the area that she does and so does Alderman Bernstein. Every time we discuss this she has to answer how far away she lives. She can stand on ner back porch and watch everything that's going on on the corner. She goes there to buy milk and doesn't know if you do and asked if we should talk about that all night. Ms Jager said Alderman Jean -Baptiste is going to Ge her Alderman next year and we should start getting along. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said again because we're trying to move to a policy pos,t,on its important that we get some kind of sense as to those who are the main components, how far away do they live. Ms. Jager said that's why she thinks this post card mailing is great. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his position is not tnat it is not serious whatever people perceive to be happening in the area but that it was not sE.nous enough for us to post a permanent camera. He advocates that communities identify the issues work along with police to address problems that exist up to an including direct interaction with those young people who we perceive to be committing whatever the infractions are and that's how we've used our work in other areas and that's the methodology that he thinks will help resolve issues, perhaps more permanently, a camera that only moves the problem around. He's not at all minimizing your concern for safety he is just suggesting that we have different approaches. Alderman Feldman said he loved that interchange but what he doesn't want to do is to have committee refute. People can come here and tell us what they feel they're entitled to that whether or not we agree. Emma Harmon - Watched the City Council an TV last week and responded to the issue of security cameras on Main and Dodge. She sympathizes with all the residents there but all of us want to be safe. Take a walk or ride by Foster and Jackson and see the guys and girls hanging out from 11 or 12 o'clock in the afternoon until nighttime. Kids waiting on the comer in the afternoon to get on the bus scared to get on the bus. Neighbors, older people are afraid to come out of the house. They have set one person's garage on fire, a neighbor's fence on fire, they block the street with their beepers and people come to pick up the drugs. It's a bad area. She thinks Alderman Feldman said at the City Council meeting that he never had another group other than this groug come before City Council regarding this issue. She thought she was going to the source, she got homeowners in the 5 Ward and we met with Chief Kaminski for at least six months begging for cameras at Jackson and Foster and in front of the high school, All the drugs that is going on down Dodge and Church Street and those kids have to go through that. Is anybody thinking about a camera there, does anybody know they sell drugs there? Let us all be safe, if we can't have the cameras let us have something else. What about that truck that has the camera does it go in every neighborhood? What is going on, let us all be safe, you want to be safe, and I want to be safe. OickeYe Fonda - Her neighborhood is directly north and east of this neighborhood. If there are cameras it moves the problem that maybe our neighborhood absorbs it. That's not the reason that she cam tonight. She's not in support of cameras for a couple of reasons but primarily she thinks that the work that we've done in our neighborhood with the community policing and the collaborative efforts that we've made with the community police have made a major difference with problems in our neighborhood. She thinks that particularly now with the Y.Q.U. youth workers on the street who are working directly with kids that have been identified as problems and with their families its made a big difference. With all due respect to her neighbors who are in that immediate area, who do support cameras, she thinks is a misdirection of funds that she thinks can be used in much more productive ways and we have had the experience of doing that. That's basically what her perception is of this proposal and she thinks it sets a dangerous precedent to put cameras in particular neighborhoods such as that one. Alderman Newman wanted to ask the Chief a question about a complaint being raised by Ms. Harmon. The last two speakers raised an interesting point that he has a question about, it seems to him with these cameras you have these magnets of commercial establishments that attract hanging out. Maybe we agree or disagree but at Church and Dodge the candy store there attracts hanging out where we've had terrible things happen. in this case we have a 7-11 and he does not know what we've had in the other cases in Alderman Rainey's Ward. Are the other cameras near these types of places in terms of where they're located and has the experience of installing the camera been that we just move to hanging out around the comer into a residential neighborhood or has it acted somehow to disperse that magnet that attract nuisance at a store as a hanging out place. Chief Kaminski said at Howard and Custer we saw more moving out to Howard and Elmwood there was more activity there. Howard and Custer had some displacement by doing some other things there that worked out. By Dewey and Simpson he thinks we cleared up that area. Alderman Newman asked if there Is commercial there, that's right next to Ramey's to which Chief Kaminski said Ramey's is a little further west and we see more hanging out over there, much more at Ramey's. We have worked with businesses and some of them are very Now - good about putting in cameras as we talked to them about that as a tool. For example, the Church Maple Complex, one -_ of the big areas we were concerned about in the downtown area with kids coming out at certain times we can't watch everything. We talked to them and at their own cost they put 14 or 16 cameras all around the perimeter of the complex and have a few monitors to hold down that area. The building across the street from them also has some cameras, in fact they had a robbery in the downtown area a couple weeks ago and we picked it up on the camera so that application did help us. One of the issues we have in the downtown area by the Taco Bell was complaints of a lot of people hanging out M there and he suggested getting a small camera. The cost of the camera itself is very inexpensive what's very expensive is HSC Minutes 1 tt3103 Page 20. getting the wire from the camera to someplace to record. In many ways you have to trench under ground to get to a source where you can actually record with the camera. The camera at Howard and Custer was a very inexpensive application because we ran it off the roof of the police outpost right down the block. The camera on Simpson and Dewey was much more costly because we had to run a wire and trench it all the way to the Fleetwood Center to be recorded. The big expense is the wire extension because we don't yet have the technology to microwave them and there is a lot of interference. At Main and Dodge we did try to go through 7-11 they have a program for exterior cameras with their businesses and we did try to seek that funding through them but we were not successful. The man across the street, who has the Township office and others. put cameras on the exterior of his building to monitor the parking lot and along each side. Those were at the owner's expense so some of the owners think it's a good tool and will absorb the cost themselves. Alderman Newman would like to know if that 7-11 is a special or permitted use. Mimi Peterson - She also was at the Council last week and was glad to hear you are having a policy discussion on the camera. She thinks there has been some gross mischaractem7ation of the events that have occurred and she would like you to know that she is not here as proponent for a camera. She is here because for 7 years we had been working with the police department to resolve the issues that have become worse every year. We can sit and talk about calls for one year that is very, very, very narrow. That is narrowed to that specific intersection which excludes many, many of the other issues that occur Just south, just north, just east, just west, all that at that specific intersection its unfair to say that the issue is not as big as people say that it is. She is not a proponent for the camera, she wants police services. We have been told repeatedly those police services are not coming, that we don't have money for those police services. She would much prefer to have police services increased visibility present in the neighborhood, People are not safe, people do not feel safe, people are intimidated, people cannot go Into the parking lot at any one of those 3 comers depending upon the hour that you go without feeling intimidated, being harassed. Because we have been repeatedly told that there will not be police services that are going to be enhanced, the long discussions we have had regarding camera views were discussed because they're being used by the Chief of Police who feels that they are being effective in the areas that they have been implanted and we found that as an alternative and as a second choice as the next best thing that we would support is the Chief in his desire to use those cameras. She knows the Chief has been very wishy washy about whether or not he feels that this issue is being brought by you or being brought by her and she has to say she is a graduate of the Citizens Police Academy, she is a member of the Citizens Police Advisory Board, she has been working with Chief Kaminski, she is a founder of the neighborhood group around Town Park area. We ext6nded our discussion to the newly formed group of the West Town Park Neighbors and included them and brought them in on the discussions about what to do about these issues that are prevalent in our neighborhood. She is not here to say that there is a consensus in the neighborhood regarding the camera, she is here to say to you that our neighborhood needs police services, we need enhanced protection and visibility. We're tired of asking for it, we're tired of going to meetings, we're tired of meeting with Chief Kaminski, we're tired of working with our beat officers of which there are diminishing numbers. This is a very serious issue. It hasn't changed in 7 years. It has gotten worse. We need responsiveness we don't need more meetings, we don't need continued discussions. Frankly it is very interesting to listen to discussions this evening relating to redistricting and relating to issues having to do with parties and unruly behavior in other neighborhoods in Evanston and listen to people talk about the need to feel safe. We need to not be harassed in our own neighborhood, we need not to be intimidated in our own neighborhood. She does not think that we are going to be doing post card surveys asking them if they would like to have intense services. She thinks she has articulated her concerns very well and would like to just clarify that the small meeting that you discussed where upon we met with block captains who represent blocks of Crown Park neighbors, a small meeting of block captains to represent neighborhoods. That's the meeting to which you're referring 5 or 6 people attended. Michael Phillips - Lives on the 1400 block of Greenleaf and thinks we're walking a very tight line and a slippery slope between security and surveillance and accepting cameras and the neighborhood Being here for the meeting concerning the students actions at Northwestern he would have thought they would have been crying for cameras in their neighborhood but that wasn't the case. He thinks a lot of the issues surrounding, as he does not what all of them are, he goes to that intersection a lot He goes to the Walgreen's, to the 7-11, to the eateries in those area and does not feel threatened but maybe that's just him. As those complaints come in from day to day are those complaints about gathering, actual intimidation of someone saying something to someone, are there robberies, burglaries, and so forth, that are happening in that area such that the citizens of that area need to be concerned. He is just concerned about the idea of, as Alderman Bernstein suggested in 1984 1n A Brave New World, that we at some point are trying to feel secure because we're watching our entire community but our neighbors don't know each other. The community doesn't know each other they're not talking to one another. Whether or not some of the issues surrounding the problems within a particular neighborhood are being done by your neighbors or your neighbors sons, their husbands, uncles, grandfathers, whoever it happened to be, community groups get together and address issues. Its going to be people addressing people rather than thinking electronically we can solve our community issues and we get real comfortable with trying to say lets just turn on a camera and watch everybody. He does not want to be on camera and thinks we have to be very careful. The other thing is that he does not think the CD Block Grant money should be used for this it is a policing and criminal issue and the Council should look at as policing money and comes out of the police budget The money for the CD Block Grant fund should be used for all of the organizations coming to try to help individuals and groups. HSC Minutes I I.'3�rO3 Pace 21. Judy Westbrook - She could partially answer Alderman Newman's question about people in the vicinity and had a chart showing where the proposed camera is to be and the houses in area where they were actually able to talk to people. They went around with petitions both in favor of the camera and opposed to the camera. The chart showed the houses that were in favor and those that were opposed to time camera at Main and Dodge. Ms. Westbrook said she lives at 1924 Lee Street a block and a half from this intersection. She is philosophically and practically for practical reasons opposed to this camera. Also, with her husband she is watch coordinator of the West Crown Park Neighbors. Along with several other people in this neighborhood, Karen Bond and also a few neighbors she met tonight that are in this area but just outside of their direct watch group. We have a few concerns about the camera. One of her neighbors was kind enough to draw up a letter about the fact that he feels that when you put up a surveillance camera this is kind of an announcement to people who come through the neighborhood that this is a bad neighborhood and they should watch out. We who live in this neighborhood do go to this comer and shop and eat and she walks there alone and although she is aware there is some crime in the neighborhood and our watch group has become active against that crime in a number of ways, does not feel fearful or threatened going to that comer. We feel if there is S21,000 to use there could be better ways to spend this money that would address the problems and perhaps get a little bit at the root of the problem. Things that have been suggested by neighbors in this area are, they would like to have more outreach workers in the area for young people that are at risk, they would like to have more programs at Crown Center that would be available directly to children in this area and also to teenagers that are at risk. She has become aware that there are some programs that have become very successful, both sports and recreation programs after school and community service programs and these seem to be really making a difference in various neighborhoods, but she doesn't believe there are any of those programs now associated with Crown Center. If this $21,000 is available we feel that we could address the problems that we see in the neighborhood by putting it toward a positive use. She would just like to mention of the calls for service in the past year there are actually a total of 260, and B5 of those were traffic related calls. We have been asking for a new stop light at Main and Dodge for over 5 years and feel if there was a better stop fight that intersection then there wouldn't be so many traffic accidents and the police could be solving crimes rather than writing traffic reports. We would like to see better lighting in the area, they would like to see better parking signs so that there were areas that were clear as it would make it visibility easier for those people on sidewalks and those people in cars. Up until this evening there are many in this neighborhood who have felt that the people who were opposed to this camera at Main and Dodge were being steam rolled by those who were. We didn't always feel included in meetings and discussions and so we have tried to rectify that by coming tonight and speaking before you. In this neighborhood there is total of 84 people opposed to this camera and 20 people in favor of the camera all within a 2-block area of that intersection. Joan Nlckman - Lives in the 1600 block on Main and would like to first comment that she does not understand why she does not get notification of meetings when they had the plan for building Walgreen's she had to leam about it though word of mouth and she's just two blocks away from the comer. It's the same situation she learned by chance about the camera being installed there. She was raised under surveillance in that at the time she was growing up here in Evanston she couldn't go anywhere without somebody knowing what she was doing and without that information getting back to her parents and there were no telephones. We could not do anything without somebody knowing, so surveillance has been a part of her life. Purchasing a home is a major life decision and a lot of thought and research goes into the process. By the way this way this is the first she has ever written a speech to talk before this group and she has been coming to these kinds of meetings since the 60's. Once you are in your home and have a sense of control over your life and your surroundings. The years go by and suddenly you realize 20 years have passed and think the next 20 years will be similar. Life is about change and you expect the neighborhoods to change through a natural transition, new neighbors, home improvements, trees cut down or planted, nothing out of the ordinary. Then you learn that Walgreen's Drug Store will be build at Main and Dodge just 2 blocks from your home. Experience has taugnt her that when she learns about a major plan like that it's a done deal. She was not happy with the decision but felt complaining was a waste of time since several meetings had been held that she did not know about She had to wait and see what impact the store would have on the area. Well here we are again tonight She no longer feels that she is in control of her surroundings. The neighborhood was and still is quiet and peaceful with a minimal crime and she's talking about 20 years. Yes, she checked the statistics with the police department prior to her move and she called the Chief of Police to get that information, Chief Logan. As a result of building Walgreen's when she had no input she now leamed there is a need for a surveillance camera at that location. She is not naive and she is up with the times and technology and some people think someone in her age demographic is on the cutting edge of it Technology is here to stay and it can be very good and it can also be very bad. Crime is everywhere and it is better to control it than let it get out of hand. A surveillance camera can be an asset but not the type that is planned for purchase. To have a stabilized camera that would not be actively monitored is hazardous for the surrounding community. It will simply push the crime away from the camera into the neighborhoods rendering the camera useless. In her opinion that's defeating the purpose. Crimes caught on tape that would be dealt with after the fact, and that's providing the tapes are reviewed on a timely basis, are not effective. She does not feel that a person would be assigned to watch video tapes for it is not an effective use of time and it would also create a backlog for reviewing the tapes. She would rather take a proactive approach and purchase the type of camera that can be moved from location to location and one that is simultaneously monitored by the police. The camera can be used in all parts of Evanston for crime that occurs in all parts of Evanston. Catch the criminals while they are committing the crimes. The HSC Minutes 1 1/3,'03 Page 22. victims of the crime would appreciate it. This type of case would have a better chance of a positive outcome in court, in other words the person wold be convicte-d Tnts technology has the ability to greatly reduce crime. The best outcome is that the criminals will move out of Evanston and not an unmonitored area in Evanston. No one wants to live with crime taut we don't want to be labeled as a high crime area simply because the powers that be decided it is a high crime area and that needs to be monitored. Eileen "four, 928 Dodge - Leamec of -:s camera issue when Karen rang her doorbell and asked them to sign the petition. She asked for what and Karen went on to explain where this camera was going to be and what it was going to do and what they decide it should do. She laves at 928 Dodge on the side street and was informed that her door would be under the camera, everyone that comes to her house would be on the camera, their hcense plates, etc. etc. She is against the camera, if you take a survey her answer is no camera in that neighborhood, police surveillance or police watch is good. Lastly, she has a suggestion for tree 521,000, lets get a job fair or two job fairs at Crown Park and get these young people employed. Get the big businesses to come to Crown Park and do a job fair, sponsor it to get these young people employed. Alderman Newman remarked that the Mayor sent out a letter to 1,200 businesses inviting them to a job fair, 6 responded. He asked if the Chief could tell us about this proposed camera. Is what Ms. Latour just said that the camera will survey the doors of private residences. Ms. Latour thinks if that camera goes up it will be right in front of her door, is the proposed camera, if it went up there, going to go by her door? Chief Kaminski said, no, the cameras we have now, at Howard and Custer and Simpson and Dewey, view open areas they hit the streets and public areas. The don't go on people's private property. They look down the streets in the areas. The Chief was asked how far down the streets do they go to which the Chief responded, we have different cameras at different radiuses and don't shoot them down that far. For that application it would be a short distance and would be kind of a circular motion at the intersection. The capability is you wanted an individual to look at it we could zoom it down at which point we want but we don't do that. Alderman Newman said, on this point, if we do a survey before we do the survey we have to be very clear on it and it has to be defined by the Chief as to where the viewing area will be. We could put out a survey and if people are told their front door is going to be viewed you can be sure those people are going to vote no. Part of what we have here tonight may or may not be accurate because based on the information that the survey person delivered. He would assume that anybody who didn't want their door to be viewed would be opposed so what we have to clear on is if we put out a letter that facnuatty describes the viewing area so that people know what they're approving or disapproving. We should do whatever we can not to have private residences within view. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said obviously part of the concern is if a camera has the ability to zoom in at different residences as the Chief said that's a threat to privacy as well. Alderman Newman is right, any policy has to be very limited but if the camera has that kind of capability, to which Alderman Newman interjected but we're not going to zoom in. Alderman Jean -Baptista said this is why this has ail kinds of problems because you're dealing with a situation that has that kind of capability and if there is to be such a policy those who We near by have to wait on that decision because its insignificant what kind of capability the camera has for those who live far away. For those who live nearby whether you tell them this camera is just going to look at a small circle d that camera has the capability of zooming in all over the place people don't want to be subjected to that. He thinks the debate is more attention, people action. Alderman Newman said his concem is that the people who will be able to respond will be able to respond based on accurate information. Otherwise whatever we send out will not mean anything. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said accurate information would also include that this camera has the capability of zooming. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he trusts our Police Chief, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded the issue is not whether or not he trusts the Chief he has differences with him about a lot of issues but he respects the work that he does. The issue is not whether he respects the Chief it is what is that tool that we bring into our lives and what potential does it have any how destructive is it to people's lives. Alderman Newman asked if we have the ability to try to prevent any type of abuse like that or as least try. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not saying we do not have the capability all he is saying is those are the things that we all have to balance out. Alderman Feldman remarked tapes can be inspected at any time by citizens under the Freedom of Information Act. There is no way that we as a community can accept the cameras going on without the ability of counsel or anybody else to monitor those tapes. Once they're set they can't be adjusted but there is nobody there monitoring with controls, they're just left alone. The capacity for evil is always there in anything. The minute you put a badge on somebody and give them a gun it's possible that things happen, but there also has to be some kind of trust as well. Karen Bond - She had understood that she did not have a time limit on what she wished to present and felt hamstrung that she was confined to 3 minutes because she had talked to so many people in the neighborhood and was charged to tell you what they are sending to and apparently she will not be able to do that. First of all, Alderman Newman, you and she need to have probably a one on one about the conversation or comments made about you don't mind having a camera film you or your house. She really wants to emphasize the point that it is very important to be aware of that filming by the majority establishment of the minority establishment is (rocked with the possibility of problems and that's HSC lrtinuies 11 /3.103 Page 23. what we're talking about here. Alderman Newman asked if this is now a race issue, as this is directed to him personally, keep him out of it and direct your comments to the committee. What does he have to do with this? Ms. Bond said it was based on his comments. Alderman Feldmar, interjected that Ms. Bond has a lot to say about this issue and if it can be done without personalities he'd appreciate that. Ms. Bond said she didn't mean to apply personalities she just wanted to say that of the majority community sets out either intentionally or unintentionally to set up some sort of surveillance of a minority in any country Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, it has never worked out well for that minority community and she suggests that we take a lesson from history in this small town of Evanston. On that note, Ms. Bond said she would like to read very quickly what some of you have already read: The subjects of this surveillance camera who are currently being taped by the Evanston police department are almost 100% young African American males. This is problematic in a town with majority white population such as Evanston where most certainly there is criminal activity in the white neighborhoods. These African American youths are already at risk and this 24 hour day surveillance in their own neighborhoods could have a devastating affect on their psychological health. One message that these cameras may be sending to our African American youth is that are expected to engage in criminal activity and that the City of Evanston plans to catch them when they live down to the City's expectations of them. West Side commentary on the City government's opinion African American youth. The other issue she really wanted to address is that she proposes you add to the discussion that you had earlier first before you do any survey or anything in terms of these cameras she thinks there should be a presentation and a proposal made by the police department that includes a record of what' s been tried first. Here are all the things that we tried to do and we are at our wits end, we've done step 1, step 2, step 3, step 20 and this is why we're asking for the camera. Secondly, a crime statistics analysis that tells you background on why this camera is needed. In that light if we look at the stats that are in that neighborhood 260 in the last year, if we exclude traffic which is 85, is 175 total calls, that's 15 calls a month, 3.4 calls a week and 68 of them are disorderly disturbance. If we look at drug activity there were 8 calls, 7 were unfounded, 1 police report was written on drug activity on that corner, 2 assaults, 1 battery, things of that nature In a year's time on that comer. Talking about solutions, we met the Chief and she made all kinds of solutions, she talked to Officer Pettino, their community policeman for many, many, many hours in meetings and off fine. The 7-11 when he said he couldn't afford a camera we said get a fake camera. Why aren't we letting 7-11 get a cheap fake camera and observe the situation for 6 months or even 3 months and see what effect that has. That beats spending $21,000 of our communitys money especially if it works as a deterrent. At the meeting she attended he agreed that the fake camera was definitely a possibility and also agreed that a security guard on Friday and Saturday nights was also a possibility, Both of those plans went haywire. What else could we have done, what has been done in terms of these problems. She has called repeatedly, she has talked to Officer Pettino repeatedly, she talked to Chief Kaminski in meetings. The one thing we need is enforcement of curfew. That would work a miracle. These kids who are hanging out, they are kids, we don't have a situation out there may be she does not know, maybe at Howard and Custer there are older people, but in our neighborhood they're literally 18 and under, they're kids. She has called the police saying, its 12:00 at night and there are kids out, can you do something. Just enforce laws that we already have, it goes back to the Patriot Act, maybe you wouldn't have so many problems with our rights being infringed upon if we had enforced laws that were already on the books federally and likewise in this City lets explore all the options before we go to the extreme. In terms of the loud car stereos, we talked about that, because we read reports that if you address loud car stereos in certain types of neighborhood its probably leading into another issue. They said they don't know what to do, and she said why don't you park across the street because if they see you coming they'll turn it down. Park off the street for a 3 month period of time assign someone when you're not having other priorities to park off the street and there are only about 10 people in our neighborhood who do this, we see their cars. Let's see how that works for 3 months, that didn't happen. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice called loud car stereos has a comprehensive form in the back that analyze all the strategies that they have used in neighborhoods like ours by police departments, some types of signage, all kinds of things. She gave this to Officer Pettino in August 2002 and she also gave it to Chief Kaminski at one of their meetings. She followed up with 4 to 5 times, finally she just said in April of 2003 how about this just circle the strategies that you can use in our neighborhood and mark out those that you don't want, please fill out of the form in the back circle the ones and tell us what you can do for us. No response. Officer Pettino said he was going to write a letter to his commissioner and ask him if he could do that and that was the end of that topic in April. Ms. Bond did want to point out that Mimi was on television today and said that our neighborhood was basically an intolerable pit of crime. Ms. Bond said she was embarrassed and mortified by that. She has owned property in that neighborhood since 1980. She has business associates in Chicago who saw that broadcast and they now think less of her, she has to go into meetings with these people when they think she lives in some kind of terminal hellhole. It's not true and she does not appreciate being slandered in that way. Mimi lives almost a half mile away from that corner, consider that in your deliberations. In our neighborhood association we have talked many times that this is more about her future desire to be an alderman than it is about what will work in that neighborhood. She wants to make a splash on television or whatever for her own purposes. She told the neighbors many of whom changed their mind after they talked with us HSC Minutes 1 1/3l03 Page 24. because about 20 of them said Mimi came by and said you don't get any police support now, you're not going to get it we've already tried and you're not going to get police support, the camera is the only thing that you will ever be offered for this comer and if you turn down the camera you're just going to be left with nothing. Ms. Bond said when she explained to them that we're paying green money, hot dollars in property taxes and that we are going to move to make sure that we get our money's worth, they thought that makes more sense Kids came out with their parents and we would talk about how nice it would be nice if Crown Center in this neighborhood was the same as Fleetwood Jordain is for that neighborhood. You have to pay $60 an hour to rent the tasketball court at Crown Center, that's the only way you can play basketball there. Fleetwood has an afternoon drop in Grogram to play basketball. Fleetwood has what they call the lounge from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. to keep kids off the street Its free, its supervised recreation, games, whatever their interests are. We think if you take the $21,000 that you can find in this committee and then add it to the $21,000 to the CDBG Board obviously has. Alderman Rainey said they had it left over from the year, it's available for our community. That's $42,000, we could put a computer lab in Crown Center, it boggles her mind what we could do with that kind of money for the people in the neighborhood. She personally had a neighbor tell her it would change her child's life if there was a computer available for her after school. She cannot get on the bus and go to downtown Evanston and use the computer for half an hour and get kicked off. She goes to a neighbor's house and uses their computer because that's the only way she can pass her classes at school. Do you know how many computer geniuses might be in those people who are standing on the comer, are we ever going to do anything about this, do we care, we have to be proactive about this and she thinks if we look at what has happened, what the solutions are, what solutions have been tried, we have all these steps that we haven't gone through and we're talking about cameras. That's a last resort and we're barely out of the starting gate with this issue. Alderman Newman said as he understands it the camera at Dewey and Simpson was requested by the 51" Ward Alderman and it has the support of that neighborhood there. Alderman Jean -Batiste said in defense of Officer Pettino he did manage to pull together a proposal for consideration around the loud stereo issues. He is just letting you know that some of your influence and suggestions have been taken. Ms. Bonds said she commends Office Pettino for doing that after a year of bugging he did come up with that, the one Sound Ordinance says if a stereo can be heard within 25 feet it is actionable. However, if he had read the report that she had been trying get him to read for a year it says in that report, noise ordinances stand-alone or noise voidances don't work. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said perhaps he does not have the level of understanding that you have on that issue but he has taken some steps. That's a motion we can all try to incorporate in order to try to rectify some of the problems at that intersection and in the neighborhood itself. Alderman Feldman asked Alderman Newman if there is another direction we want to go in. Alderman Newman said we need some policy guidelines on the use of the tape and some of the issues that were raised here. If we think we have a camera that our department is going to zoom in on people and even if we tell them that's prohibited and they'll be released from working with the City if they do that, if we think that's going to happen in his view we have a lack of trust with the department, then we shouldn't use any cameras. We have to decide whether or not we feel that these camera can be used the way they're intended without abuses because we're getting into that issue here that's what he's hearing, maybe he has it wrong, that the police cannot be trusted not to abuse the use of these cameras. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would like to clarify that for Alderman Newman. The issues we have been discussing for some time are issues of profession. People talk about camera that equals a difficult perception. He said if we have a camera that has a potential to zoom in on people and that doesn't mean that people are going to sit there and zoom at Karen's door or anybody else's door, but if it has the potential to do that it creates a perception that there is this intrusive piece of machinery that may or may not be abused. Don't go that far, when you go that far it steals the issue, what we were talking about is what is best for the community and he thinks that discussion needs to continue and hopefully the kind of attention that we bring to bear on this community can translate into some good things down the line. We can begin to look at issues that have been raised here such as Jackson and Foster that has no presence of police, where there are drugs and other things going in. We need to hear what kind of perception that people have and try to figure out if the Chief doesn't have enough of a force to contend with that then to him we're lagging behind the police needs in the community and we need to look at that budget He would suggest that we come back to this. Alderman Newman said his point was, what Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the perception, is we need to know, and as Alderman Feldman pointed out about the tapes being available, whether or not there is credibility to that idea. If there is not and if we do have a way where we can put cameras into effect where we can do the best we can and have a very strong policy against abuses then the people in the area need to know what type of safeguards we're going to go put into effect as opposed to thinking when they hear about this that its going to be at their door. Alderman Newman thought the Chief needs to come back to us at least to address and evaluate the issues put forward here tonight at Main and Dodge and what other than the camera or with the camera can be done. A citizen in the audience asked if this issue will be referred to any other committee or will it remain here. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it HSC Minutes 1 1/3/03 Page 25. will remain here for discussion of policy. Alderman Feldman said this item will be put on the Human Services Committee . agenda for another meeting he will talk to Chief Kaminski and Mr. Terry regarding this. Alderman Feldman thanked everyone for their comments and presence at this meeting. XI. CONSIDERATION OF SELECTING A DATE FOR A PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER AN AMENDMENT FOR AN INDOOR CLEAN AIR ORDINANCE Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry what the Human Service Committee calendar looks like. Mr. Terry said our next meeting is Monday, December 1st, the tentative plan for that meeting was to get into a full discussion for the renovation of the Crown Center and the December Human Service meeting would be at the Crown Center. As of now there is nothing on December B"', and it probably is not advisable to do it on December 22"4 or 297' given the holidays. Alderman Feldman said it would have to be in January. Alderman Newman asked if this is going to be a public hearing on the organizations proposed amendment to our ordinance. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste said we need to look at postponing this beyond the budget meetings in January and February and does not think March is too late for us to consider this public hearing. Dr. Catherine Counard, a physician, said she lives here and has sat through this whole meeting waiting for this issue. We have asked this committee to address this September 2`°, and it was postponed until October 20"', now you're talking about postponing it until March. Alderman Newman said we can do nothing with this, if we chose to, instead we're having a public hearing. When you say it was delayed he was the Chairman of the committee during that time and we had full agendas it wasn't as if it was delayed, there was the expectation that somehow we were going to do something with it because you and your organization wanted us to. When you said it was delayed he does not know what that means, we have an agenda and we're doing the best we can. From the audience Dr. Simon said Alderman Newman was being extremely rude. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had only suggested March based on the other items that are priorities but we should take into consideration the concerns you have put on the table. We don't smoke on this committee and thinks you would find support for the proposal, its just how do we schedule it; a public hearing implies 3 or 4 hours of discussion, community participation, etc. Dr. Simon asked doesn't it make any difference that they passed an ordinance in Skokie and they are considering an ordinance in Wilmette, doesn't Evanston care about being involved. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we are not talking about substantively whether we support it or not we're only talking about trying to give it the time that is necessary and required for the community to come out and participate, which means 3 or 4 hours. We start at 7:00 p.m. and we may end at 10:00 p.m. or later, that's all we are talking about so don't get worked up over this. We just started a redistricting process that we have been going through for some time, we have a budget that must be addressed fairly quickly, we have the holidays coming up and we trying to do what is practical not throwing out your issue. At this point in time that is all Alderman Newman is talking about, its not any disregard regarding your hearing, its trying to prioritize the issues which is why he suggested, and thinks it is reasonable, to be able to schedule this in March. Between now and February we may not be able to schedule it and really make it happen. Dr. Counard said they were just concerned because we had brought a petition forward and were expecting to have it addressed September 2"°, then October 2e, and now tonight you set a date that will be in March, welcome to your government in action. Alderman Feldman said it is not as if there aren't things of great urgency and substance on the calendar. Skokie or Wilmette never came here and said we have to catch up with you, with all the social services that we offer, the homeless shelter, the recreation for senior citizens, etc., so what Skokie or Wilmette does doesn't make any difference, to which Dr. Simon interjected, yes it does. Alderman Feldman went on to say the justice and urgency of the issue, the need to protect peoples health that determines it not whether Skokie, Wilmette, or Highland Park does it. It has nothing to do with it, it has to do with this community. It doesn't validate the issue because they do it, to which Dr. Simon said, no, but if we do it as a unit as a community its more powerful. Aldermen Feldman said that may be your perception but they haven't come to us, nobody has come to us from Wilmette and said let's have a joint approach to this. The first time he heard that anything we do must be either integrated or interdependent upon Skokie and Wilmette was just 2 minutes ago when you raised the concept. Dr. Simon, no, he said that's why it's a pertinent issue for us to participate in the larger community now. Alderman Feldman said you did not say that, what you said was doesn't it make any difference to you that Skokie and Wilmette are doing it, and no it doesn't make any difference. Alderman Newman said everybody has different opinions on this and what we could do that we're not doing tonight, we could can have a full two hour debate on whether or not we have a public hearing because a public hearing is a tremendous investment of our Ume and our resources. By setting a public hearing we are acknowledging the seriousness and the importance of this issue. This is a very significant health issue and on the other hand there are people who have very large investments in our community who are vehemently opposed to this ordinance, on top of which are a very big part of the economy of Evanston. This is a real serious issue. What he would say to the proponents here tonight, we can come back on December Vt and have an entire discussion on whether or not we even have a public hearing. We're short circuiting that we're saying lets have a public hearing right now. Lets have everybody in the community pro and con come out and let us know what they think about this. That's a step acknowledging the importance of this. We're trying to find a HSC Minutes 1113/03 Page 26. date for you and what he's hearing is, oh you've already delayed it two months. He does not mean to be tough about the fact that he's been here since 5:00 p.m. this evening but he's with you to set a date. You call it being rude; he calls it being responsive. ❑r. Simon remarked, you were extremely nude, to which Alderman responded that's your opinion and he has some thing to say about some of the comments you have made and would be glad to say them, but he will not say them here so lets set the date. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we have a lot of things going on, our life that begins probably at 6A0 a.m. every day, some 6 or 7 days a week, so if you come to push us around we are not going to be pushed around. Dr. Simon said are you willing to listen, we have been sitting here since 7:00, to which Alderman Jean - Baptiste interjected we are listening we want to set a public hearing but he can say right now we are not going to be pushed. Dr. Counard said, then lets do it. She's just saying our Community Health Advisory Board wanted to bring this forward to this committee and it was scheduled for September delayed until October and now again until March, Dan Ziegler contacted Alderman Newman about this. Alderman Jean Baptiste asked it this is the first time this was on the agenda to which Alderman Newman said he did get a call and he told Mr. Ziegler it would be on at the next meeting. Dr. Counard said it was put on the agenda when Alderman Newman was the Chair and then the Chair of the Community Health Advisory Board, Lou Rowitz, and also Don Ziegler, Vice Chair, both men met you and you did not feel that you were surprised. You had been told by Mr. Terry about this and that it would be on the agenda. Alderman Newman said this is a legislative committee and if there is going to be something that is put on the agenda of this committee it Is going to be approved by the Chair of this committee, so when you say it was on the agenda it was never on the agenda until the Chair of the committee, at that time, approved it being put on. Every agenda that is prepared is approved by the Chair and part of the legislative process, if you go to Washington, there might be issues that people want on the agenda that they might have to wait years to get them on. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he has an item or future consideration on the Human Services Agenda for use of a radio for a public information for about two years now and it has not made it on the agenda yet, so he does not think you should panic. Alderman Feldman said on March 1'a as the special order of business there will be a public hearing by this committee. Alderman Newman asked it there is any way to do it earlier than March 10, to which Alderman Feldman said the last meeting in February is the 231°, we will have the budget up until that point that will take up 2 and 3 meetings a week. Alderman Feldman thanked everyone for their attendance this evening. ix ADJOURMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 11:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trots V Department a Health and Human Services HSC Minutes 1113/03 Page 27. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBER ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: f. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED //JJLJNCIL M,�6 "COMMITTEE H M"p 4E jo Ce .2003 d�ar °bin r ?.00 Alderme reldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Newman Aldenha Doug G ,, Uf►l rnftker, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky • fop 1� 3ylvea ship of Evanston, Ann Carra, Mark Metz, David Hodgman, Richard r hip.rQ jK Shane, Evanston Recreation Board Members; (See Attached List of q A +irQ.� ��dees) Alderrnarl F Alderman Feldman called the meeti ,06 p.m,, and thanked the Recreation Board for having the Human Services Committee at the g to °n7�r at 7� Center and indicated that after finishing a few items of business he would Like to have the lobe o�� tour of the facility. He remarked how astonished he was to see the kind of traffic this building h rr a%t2k0 when the parking Is entirely filled. If. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTeS OF � 7.00 � j9F NegMBER 3, x003 The minutes of the November 3 2003 Mg FlN �aled and unanfmously approved f4-01. e Ill. CONSIDERATION OF NOVEMBR I e� SHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Newman moved for 2�S Tit b Jean- area � � Alderman Baptiste, Motion to approve the w November 2003Tonshl month) bINn►va acor'���sl a roved IV. RECOMMENDATION By THE p 3 nanlr� Mr TQ FOR THE ARTWORK TO BE 1NTALLED AT FIRE STATION 33 ijgl1C ART Alderman Feldman asked if any member rnrnittee was present at this meeting. Mr. Gaynor said there were no members present but he staffs of the P �' rl request is being brought forward to this committee to be proposed to the City Council. Alderman pig 0 Ltic � �pr any questions regarding this recommendation. Alderman Bernstein had an unrelated question and eld� finale" he heard anything about the Maple Street artist with respect to the return of our money. Alderman 13� keCl � ratted ( od a copy of the letter sent and wondered if there was any response to that. Mr. Gaynor said two mStei may` �;�;n one to the attorney representing the artist and the other to the artist. They received a return re ei lei �Q i 11 e0 Oy, not from the artist. Pt Alderman Feldman called for a vota to the atto pmmerydatfon to the City Council for the artwork to be Installed at Fire Station #33. Aldermana r4j the Od fora roval. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the committee would be able to seethe colors Jaah•g the �?5tt k, Alderman Feldman said in the future it would help if the committee is to vote on a piece of arty tli i f mething that would allow them have a better idea of the artwork. Alderman Feldman recall an the WOulld lixe 9 vote o► a rovat, motion unanimousty aooroved (ie-Ot. V. 19TH NORTH SHORE CENTURY Rip °tion fob 9)HCATION Alderman Newman commented that it look CO fiA responded very well to our meeting and made considerable efforts to respond to the neighbors. He Would4h Ill' that th jtj;cate to them that he appreciated their efforts and definitely 14 to comp' HSC 12/1/03-Page 1. wants them to keep it up. He has absolutely no complaints but the amount of effort they went to, to respond to the neighbors should be a model for everybody else who has events at the lakefront. He would like to communicate this personally to Ben Shapiro. Alderman Bernstein asked if we noticed the difference because of all their programs, was there better parking and less noise and wondered what Alderman Newman's constituents said. Alderman Newman said the constituents don't call when everything is great At this time, 7:15 p.m., the Human Services Committee and people from the audience were taken on a tour of the Robert Crown Confer. The tour took In the large ice rink, the studio ice rink, the lobby and snack area, the Center offices, wash rooms, changing rooms, gymnasium, day care rooms that are also arts and crafts rooms. The tour ended at 7.45 p.m. at which time the meeting resumed. VI. CONSIDERATION OF THE RECRATiON BOARD'S RECOMMENDATION FOR THE REDEVELOPMENT OF THE CROWN CENTER Alderman Feldman reconvened the meeting and called upon the people who signed up to speak regarding this issue. Richard Seaman, Crown CenterAdvlsory Board, thanked the committee for coming to Crown and hoped they were able to see the need for repair or replacement here at Crown. He proceeded to introduce the Board members present in the audience, Jerry Roseman, Mark Cassidy, Ben Rainey, and Roxanne Laux. The Advisory Board represents 17 neighborhood groups and organizations that use the facility and they are currently down three, Northwestern Hockey, Women's Hockey, and the Travel and House League. They conducted a survey of their own members and were informed that their summary was included in the Human Services Committee's packet. This is a five page document entitled "Crown Advisory Board Survey Summary and Survey Results". Rather than read through it he would like to run through some of the basic questions. Question #1 - Should Robert Crown Community center be repaired according to the engineering study? Question #2 - Should the Robert Crown Community Center be replaced? Question #3 - If it is rebuilt, should the center be rebuilt, as it is currently configures, with a full rink, studio rink, and gymnasium? Question #4 - Should a new center contain two full-size ice rinks? Question #5 - Should a new center contain two gymnasiums? Question #6. - Should the ice rinks and the community center be housed in separate buildings? Question #7 - What other facility enhancements would you like to see in the new center? For the committee's study and consideration Mr. Seaman brought up that he and the Advisory Board members are overwhelmingly in favor of a new center. Personally he feels the issues should be for calling for a referendum as opposed to home rule. He would like to see it go to a referendum, if possible, after the recommendations are heard. Alderman Newman wanted to try to be as respectful as he could to let Mr. Seaman know he's a very strong advocate in doing something with this building and spending significant money. If somebody was to ask him to be part of a process where everything we do is contingent on going out to a referendum he would be willing to spend almost none of his time on il. Its not because he does not like the referendum process, he likes it, but a referendum would place a tremendous burden on the City trying to deal with the rehabilitation issues of this building. What are we going to do, not rehab the building and have an on site building potentially if we don't pass the referendum which would substantially prolong the process. There is a much better alternative for people who may be unsatisfied if we go out and decide to do something significant and different with the Crown Center, it's called voting in the next election. When all the Aldermen run at the same time, a very good issue would be should we or shouldn't we spend money on Crown Center then everybody will get a chance to vote their Alderman in or out. Alderman Feldman thanked Mr. Seaman and said the committee and certainly the City appreciates the Board's efforts in this issue. Mr. Seaman added, if there any questions regarding their survey results, please give him a call. Alderman Bernstein noted Mr. Seaman mentioned that three groups are no longer a part of their organization, and asked why they left. Mr. Seaman said they haven't left so to speak, currently there is no Northwestern Hockey liaison person on the Board and we are hoping to fill that vacancy. The Travel or House person resigned and we're trying to get a replacement for that person. Also, we just had a resignation for personal reasons from the person from Women's Hockey. Thus they have three vacancies from the Advisory Board. Alderman Bernstein asked if those three organizations still utilize the facility and was told some do. Alderman Newman asked who are the other fourteen organizations? Mr. Seaman said they are the skating programs, the Canal Park Neighbors, the Crown Park Neighbors, speed skating, and hockey programs and other City organizations that use the center. Alderman Newman asked how many people are on the Board and do they all actively participate. He was told there are currently 14 people on the Board who are active HSC 12i1/03-Page 2. participants or represent organizations that use the center and their views are reflected in the center. Alderman Feldman asked if they meet with the Director once a month. Mr. Seaman said in October, December, January, March, and May they meet here as an Advisory Board on the second Tuesday of those months. The Director and Superintendent are welcome to attend the meetings; Mr. Lloyd represents them at the meetings. Chris Larsen, mother of a child who comes to Crown Center. Her son is disabled, he uses a wheelchair and is part of the Special Recreation Program of the City of Evanston. She is a homeowner and has lived here 2 years and plans to stay, before they moved here they lived at the same place for 15 years. The programs at the Special Rec office are terrific. Staff is wonderful but they are currently homeless. They do not have a place, she sees the hockey teams have a home here, and there are about 217 children who will participate in the Nutcracker. There are after school programs for Special Rec five afternoons and also a Saturday program and special weekend programs. They have over 400 children involved. Some of them come to the after school activities, for example Special Rec on Tuesdays is in Park School, Wednesdays at the Ecology Center, Thursdays they swim at the'Y', and Fridays they come here and use this little tiny room, the kitchen. You might want to come by and see all of the 15 kids crowded into this little tiny room. She thinks its great to think of providing room and space for the hockey team but if the teams are not Evanston residents that Is something that should be considered. The seniors have already gotten their own center and other communities northeast, northwest, Suburban DuPage County out in Addwn, have their own buildings for Special Recreation children where the children take all their classes or they can go to other centers for classes that are not offered at their center. As a parent she would like to see a home for the programs of children with special needs, maybe having a full-time Special Rec manager, which she believes will be happening soon. That person will have a homeroom and office, perhaps a wall where the kids from Special Rec can put up pictures and signs, right now they go from space, to space, to space. After the program ends the children are asked to leave, another other program has to come in. She has talked to other parents, most of them think the programs are great and would like the children to continue in the programs each year, but they would like them to have a permanent place. If the Crown Center is remodeled someone really needs to look into the accommodation issues, such as automatic doors, right now we have to hold the doors open for children in wheelchairs or other people. The parking is adequate. When the bathrooms were built they may have been ADA compliant but sometimes people with disabilities need someone to go into the washroom with them to help them and most of the bathroom stall doors are not wide enough. Her son uses the women's bathroom in this area, she guards the door and a staff member has to go in with him. If you're thinking of remodeling you should call in someone who knows about accessibility issues for disabled children. Someone would need to take a took at the bathrooms as they are right now. Her son has participated in, cooking, and swimming, even though he's in a wheelchair he can still participate in a lot of activities. Alderman Newman asked what is the role of this building in the Special Rec Program. Mr. Gaynor said there are programs that come, use the space and leave. Pdmandy we have two programs functioning in the area of this space. One is very specific where there's a number of disabled kids in a program that will be cooking or swimming at the "Y', as was previously described. The second part of our program for disabled is what we call inclusion, this is very sensitive and required by taw, This is where if the participant wants to ice skate, we have an individual on staff assess that person's abilities and then if necessary assigns one person, one on one, to have that person ice skate or whatever it may be that person wants to do, Under the law that is something that we feel is important to do. We have a very extensive program camps for the disabled, swimming, and other types of programs, in addition to that there is inclusion type assistance which we do for anybody who wants to get into the program. Alderman Newman said he is trying to understand the comment that the Special Rec program just has the kitchen, is there a group of Special Rec kids who are regularly using this building and what part of the program is here at Crown other than the one on one you stated. Mr. Domecker said the Special Rec program at Crown Center meets across the hall where they have special events, art classes, sometimes pottery classes with the kids that fall under the category of Special Rec. Those programs are vying for the same space that we use. Sometimes when there is an open hour of gym space we try to schedule Special Rec there and have an activity. Alderman Newman said, then there is no home base for Special Rec. Alderman Feldman asked if the reason they're in the kitchen is because space like this is used at that time or most of the time, he understands that most of the rooms are filled constantly. He was told they're in the kitchen because they cook. Ms. Larson said the kitchen is rather small and the wheelchairs can't get up to the sink, or get up to the stove and they are actually teaching them real skills. On Saturday there is fitness and bowling, the room is jammed packed and it usually is a smaller room down the hail. They could probably use a space in the gym but they're using a smaller room because that's all that they can get There seems to be some sort of a pecking order for getting into the space but she is not really sure why the City and the Recreation Department haven't worked out having the children who are disabled with special needs have their own adequate space. She has been told by staff members that the programs would grow, they would like to offer more programs but there is a limited amount of space. She does not know if there is a quota that they get one room per week, but it seems like the space given them is small. this means they have to go from center to center. HSC 12/1/03-Page 3. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the kids in the Special Rec program are from throughout the City, and was told they are. He asked if all the recreational centers participate, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, yes pretty much. Mr. Gaynor said this is a space issue and a balance between all the programs that are being offered we could increase Special Rec and decrease something else. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there were any kids turned away, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, right now there are wailing lists for most of our programs throughout the system at Chandler. FleerAood and Crown. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much of a demand do we have and what percentage of the kids are we able to serve for Special Rec. Mr. Gaynor said as we just mentioned if we were to open it up we probably could have another 20 % or 30% kids in this program. We turn kids away from our summer camps. Alderman Feldman asked if we turn Evanston residents away as well, and whether or not Evanston residents have a period of time when they're preferred, to which Mr. Gaynor said they have a priority time to sign up and be in the program, after that date passes they are also competing with others. Alderman Bernstein asked if we are only turning people away from Special Rec or do we turn people away from all of our programs. Mr. Gaynor said they're turned away from a lot of our programs. Alderman Bernstein asked if we transport the Special Rec kids or do they have to get themselves to the centers. Mr. Domecker responded, we transport both kids going to participate in the regular after school programs and kids in the special recreation program to centers for after school programs only. We don't transport anyone home, we just transport from the Evanston schools to the various community centers. Their parents are responsible for picking them up after the programs are over. Alderman Newman noted Chandler was built around 1980 and a point he wanted to make is that other than the Levy Center, which we are not opening up to general recreation programs, we haven't added any recreation space in at least 22 years. Regarding Special Recreation who knows what we were doing in the 1980's, obviously we want to be able to do a lot more in 2003. The answer to why we don't have a space for this program he thinks is probably because we did not anticipate it Chandler is very small and this is a program that has grown over the course of time and when looking at the space we have, we just don't have enough room. The fact is, there should be room for Special Recreation somewhere where they would have some type of home base. Alderman Feldman asked d during registration period you cut it off because a class is closed or because a program is filled, such as, aquatics camp. For example, if the registration is three weeks and two weeks after it opens up its closed. Mr. Gaynor said the most popular camps are the arts camp and the aquatics camp, they fill up, we close registration and that's it We then have a waiting list of 25 names. Alderman Feldman asked how many people are in the camp, to which Mr. Gaynor said about 100 a session. Alderman Feldman then asked if there are an additional 25% of applicants wanting to enroll on a regular basis. Mr. Gaynor said for the last 6 years, since he has been here, there is no question about that kind of a waiting list He is not going tell you that's every camp, every session, because in the summer there are more popular times in the day that fill up faster. Aquatics and arts camps are the best examples, also, our Pre School program always has a waiting list We have a Pre School room which is targeted only for Pre School during the day, its only used for other activities in the evening. Alderman Feldman asked if Chandler and other centers also have Pre School, and was told each center has that. Alderman Bernstein remarked the aquatic camp is at the lakefront and wondered why we can't accommodate another 25 kids. Mr. Gaynor responded the aquatics camp has canoeing, sailing, and water skiing, with both morning and afternoon sessions. We have just so much in the way of equipment to accommodate the campers Alderman Newman noted, using the Special Rec program as an example of one of the sources of information, as we get into this Crown issue does the Council have some type of comprehensive summary of what our programs are and how the lack of space was affecting those programs. For example, tonight we heard about Special Rec and that we could possibly be running a better program for possibly more kids, and he understands there is also a staffing issue, but we're on the facility's issue now. This is just one example. People on the Council will ask us what realty are our needs and if we were able to articulate and go program by program where kids are not getting into a camp, not because we don't have sailing equipment, because that's another issue. We should talk about asking for more equipment in order to get those kids in which is haw we could deal with that But in terms of the impact on Robert Crown Camp, if there is an inadequacy of the camp program that we're able to do because of the lack of space we will not be able to explain this to the rest of the Council. We shouldn't just limit the commentary to Crown, if we don't have enough room at Fleetwood Jourdain programs and there also is still an opportunity for providing recreational space and we should spell it out so we all understand as this is going to affect people when they look at the price tag. What are you getting for spending this amount of money, you are getting a better Special Rec program and space for the program and there might be 5 more examples. Alderman Feldman added there are 5 more examples this entire constituency group is asking for more space, Alderman Newman said there is a difference between a constituency group making that case and our Recreation Department telling kids are not getting into camp programs. He thinks this is a serious issue for us because these people might not have any other place to go for a camp for kids with special needs. We need something from our staff identifying how many kids are not getting into that program, what the problems are in that program and if there are other programs that additional facilities could help. Alderman Feldman said at this point we are talking about Evanston residents that have been turned away and need additional recreational facilities and space. HSC 12/1iO3-Page 4. William Mathews, a private citizen and lifelong resident of Evanston. He comes tonight wearing two hats. one hat is seeing Robert Crown buai and utrlaed the way it is. His first concern is that if X amount of millions of dollars was spent we would totally rebuild Robert Crown from the ground up and do whatever improvements are deemed necessary He just does not want d to be the same situation where we have a mutt purpose room, a gymnasium, and facilities that are appropriate for some things but inadequate for the demand that is in the community. He would think whatever you would build as far as exercise rooms, gymnasiums, special rec, day care. a:ry of that would be utilized to its fullest capacity ,f its built with quality, not where you would keep cutting comers here ?^-� ++' �H and we'd ��t 11 spend a lot of money but no one's using these faciWes because they're not adegJate. Rot aril facility when it was built but that was thirty some years ago and the demand is here in his friends and nelhbors that go to Skokie and Wilmette for programs, that the - Evanston He'd like to see his community merr`. - ,'a•. -+ Evanstor '.? Karate program for over 20 years and c' f :: '� `+e t-- � Ise of lack of space due to competi- use we don't have the space. V r a :=t ' •, is summer camps here first t• __:I are fhat ice was availabte which mr a • . r.= t, s ,�' ' s- -•'� . u,* ' what goes up in Robert' -ov- _ Alder - ,F., ..3; }M1 ' ..i r.... uudin.n 3 Singh _ _:": '. i .. c• will tX 0' Vve quest, i1 .,err rr, whate>` going tc isshare4 .,rZi,• �. nI' ,'^v` not think a, :i can no tinge. .,' �� +, r. j�ave, es not for w�i..., „rcre�ti, to pay for the s,_:r• yr- a sticky wicket, a O"Cult situation, that whatever you L ... T .: .., ;;tat it will be used. ivy Center, every r. Mathews would successful. You Mathews said the nt. His opinion is he cost of people OF wif e thought that view e money is spent he does ,+ein remarked people tell him they 1al facilities its for want of the ability Mr. Mathews said he still believes Roxanne L.aux, Figure Skating Representative on the Advisory Board. She is also an Evanston resident, her daughter is a figure skater and she herself is a figure skater. She speaks today representing her own opinions and also those of many of the figure skate community who could not be here today, there are few in the audience. We wanted to make sure that you knew that we have presented our opinions in the public comment sessions and she also has a presentation which has given to the Recreation Board and would like to give you the summary highlights of it. The figure skating community does not believe the current facility meets our needs even if was to be rebuilt to meet to meet code and to fur the problems of this building as is it would still not meet our needs. Both the on ice and the off Ice facilities are inadequate as we have a large enrolled program and its becoming increasingly more and more competitive. Despite the fact we would like to be able to use the building, optimally we cannot right now and continue to support what we need in the future to keep our program growing at the rate that its been growing, every one else has talked about the fact that this building provides a lot of different services to the community, unfortunately for figure skaters this is the only place in the community that we can figure skate there is no other place in Evanston for us to do that. We would like to see changes that are made to this building whether they rebuild the center or ideally build a new building that would be made to include the things that we need to support our program. What we would ideally like to see is more ice time available As you saw on this evening's tour there are a lot of people who use this ice non-stop. Hockey players, speed skaters, and figure skaters use this ice as well as recreational skating that takes place every day. What that means is that there is very little ice time. For figure skaters anywhere from B or 9 years old, once you get above age 10 you need a larger ice surface to be able to keep up with the fact that you are faster and the maneuvers you are doing are more complicated. That means the little kids can be on the studio rink but any bigger kids need to be on the main rink. We primarily use main rink ice time after school and then on Saturday morning. The evenings are devoted to hockey players, figure skaters also get only about 2 hours in the morning every day before school starts. That means we cannot start our program until a little later in the evening and can't have additional after school dates because the ice time is already used up so we have limits on the number of skaters we can accommodate. Figure skaters have to practice their skills, especially if they are competitive skaters they skate every single day. Many of them skate more than once a day, they skate before school and then skate again after school. Because there is a limit to how many are on the ice safely without having them running into each other with lethal weapons on their feet that means there is inadequate ice time for them. We limit most of the skating on the main rink to 26 people and both herself and Pat Harper, who is in the audience, monitor the ice after school. There are many, many sessions where we have to turn away multiple people because there are already 26 people on the ice. We would love to see additional ice space available and the only way that's realistic is to have 2 full size ice HSC 12/11ro3-Page 5. using it for hockey. He can't imagine hockey at the lagoon. to which Mr. Nauert said they actually do play hockey at the lagoon they play anywhere they can find ice to play on. Alderman Bernstein asked if these outdoor facilities are covered in some way, are there boards surrounding them, and was told there are boards. Alderman Bernstein went to say if it snows or rains then you are out of luck. Mr. Gaynor said large generators are needed to run the system, staff is needed, but a warming house is not required. It can be made elaborate or net it you have limited resources you put the boards in, put the ice on and that's it. If it snows sometimes you get the k4s to shovel. In Canada they have a lot of these where when it snows the parents get on the ice and shovel. Alderman Newman asked what is the length of time during the year that it is operational and was told you can pretty much run it from December through February and there may be some times when you get some softer ice but your generator have control systems. Alderman Newman said then you only have three months use of this. Mr. Gaynor said it is obviously much better than doing what we do in 4 or 5 private parks where we put water down and hopefully there is enough consistent below 20-degree weather to hold ice. Mr. Nauert said he talked to Watts earlier today and confirmed that they are only open from the first of December through the end of February. They'll tell you they will try to stretch A a little bit into March but the weather hasn't always cooperated with them. Sometimes they dose up. Alderman Feldman said Mr. Nauert mentioned there were others from his organization present and asked those in the audience to raise their hands and saw there were a number of members present. Mr. Nauert added the Travel Program is a growing program with over a 100 kids skating at this competitive level. In addition to that an equal number in the House Program, there are over 200 kids in the Travel and House Programs, Alderman Feldman noted there was a letter from the President of this organization, Geoff Harlow, in the committee packets. Mr. Harlow was in the audience and wished to say just a few words as he did not want o be redundant to what Mr. Nauert has said. Mr. Harlow said as far as the current ice situation at Robert Crown it truly is inadequate to meet the needs of three strong growing programs, the hockey community, the figure skating community, and the speed skating community. A couple of years ago we were quite frustrated in our ability to get any additional ice for practices and for game slots. We met with City staff and they were very forthcoming about giving us a schedule for the facility showing us pretty much each hour of the day other than when kids are in school this place is booked. His son, a high school sophomore our, will be here to practice at 9:50 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. tonight. Practices start here at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings and the figure skaters are here 6:00 a.m. every day. As far as ice is concerned for any of us to gain another organization has to lose. There is no ability to create additional ice here. He truly believes the second full size sheet of ice would find itself fully utilized within a very brief period of time. During the interim while our organizations ration up to use that full size sheet of ice he has no doubt that the City could generate a significant amount of revenue by renting it to other organizations while our organizations were growing to fill that ice. He knows for a fact Wilmette is paying as much as $375 an hour to go to Lake Forest College or to go the facility in Vernon Hills to buy ice time. This is not the Park District but the Hockey Association. We have had informal conversations with Wilmette and they indicated if you want to give them a contract they would commit to two years they're buying 40 hours a week in other facilities right now. Alderman Newman wanted to mention something about revenues, because this comes up a lot, if we made additional revenues on a new twilling it would stay in the building but if we built a building for $20,000,000 and didn't get any outside assistance such as grants, there would be a bill of $2,000.000 a year for 20 years. He's sure there are revenues that we are losing by not having more ice time but the ultimate thing for the City is when we build a new building if we went the route of $20,000,000 there wold be $2.000,000 a year in debt service. He's not saying we're at the point yet where were building a $20,000.000 building but is just giving you an idea of what it would cost. Mr. Harlow said its second that it would be self -funding but his point was that it would not be a situation where we build a second sheet and find the ice sitting unutilized. Alderman Newman said if there is a need we'll make additional money but that money is not going to pay our debt_ All the money from the ice ends up in the Crown operation and he's not saying that's not a good thing but it typically hasn't worked where the revenues have gone to pay debt service. Mr. Harlow said the ice is the biggest shortcoming In the current facility in addition to that without beating a dead horse that the locker rooms are inadequate, the security is inadequate, and there really are serious shortcomings here as far as meeting the needs of the organizations that are using this facility. Alderman Bernstein asked how many speed skaters and broom ball players there are. Mr. Domecker said there are 40 to 60 speed skaters and there are 6 BroomBall teams, with 10 players on a team. Bryan Proctor, did not wish to add anything more as the Hockey Board pretty much said it all. Alderman Feldman thanked everyone for their comments and attendance at tonight's meeting. The purpose of this meeting in addition to hearing the comments of the speakers was to listen to a presentation by the Recreation Board. The Recreation Board sent the committee a description of their study that included various recommendations. Ann Carra, President of the Evanston Recreation Board, introduced the other member of the Board. The Board's newest member Mark Metz, David Hodgman, Richard Marberry, and Mark Sloane. Ms. Carra thanked the committee for having them here tonight. She wanted to say publicly how rewarding it has been to work with the staff on this project HSC 1211103-Page 7. for the past few months. Last August the Human Services Committee directed them to conduct a study of users to review the current programming and facility needs of Robert Crown. They needed to find out haw the building and grounds met existing needs as well as how it would be able to meet the needs for the next 30 years. They were also interested in what additional programs and services the users wanted us to offer. They held 4 public meetings, on September 30" , October 70i. October 9-, and October 114`21, sent out over 3,000 questionnaires to registered users of Robert Crown, and had meetings wi•.h users groups such as SPAM, pre-school program, and Evanston Youth Hockey. In the report we've given the committee you will see the details and the results of our study. Tonight we'd like to outline the results of that. We have some key points that Mark Sloane will give you. Mark Sloane, said there 5 key points, 3 of which he will go into. The first you have heard throughout the night the need for a second sheet of ice. 71 % of the people that responded to the questionnaire stated that there was an extreme interest in an additional full ice rink beyond what we have right now. Also, at public meetings we heard from hockey, speed skating, figure skating, and many other people, ice. Ice, ice, that was the constant message we heard over and over again. In the conclusion as you have heard tonight we are at a serious disadvantage as the lack of available ice has forced many of the Evanston hockey teams to purchase ice time outside of the area. People are traveling to Buffalo Grove, Lincolnwood, Geneva, Fox Valley, and Bensonville, to get practice time that they need to perfect their skills at what they're doing. The second point, changing from to ice to gym, those of us that play basketball know that a rubber surface is not very good. We've had tom ankle injuries as a result of that. We've had FAM come to us and say they were kind of hesitant to be playing here even though they practice here but are hesitant to put their kids on this court because of the potential injuries that can happen with the material that is on the floor there. A wood floor makes sense for dance, for karate, for basketball. Those are comments we constantly heard and what was needed in that space. Thirdly, is mutti purpose space, again a space for childcare, a space for dance, and Pre School. You have an attachment from the architect, Andrew Madder, who did the survey for us, specifying there is enough demand for a Pre School program in the community to justify two more classrooms. We just don't have the space for it but we could fill two more classes of childcare here if we had the space. The children cannot be here all day. Torun an all day program separate sinks, refrigerators, cots and cot storage would be required by DCFS, which we do not have the space for. Alderman Newman noted even if we wanted to provide day care from somebody from 8:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. we could not do it because we don't have the facility. He asked if we are offering that type of day care program anywhere in the City. Mr. Domecker said Crown is the only facility in our department that currently has a Pre School program that is licensed by DCFS. Chandler does not have a licensed program they just have recreational programs there. Alderman Newman asked what's the most time somebody could have their child in the Crown program. Mr. Domecker said they can be here for 4 hours under our current license and as Mr. Sloane pointed out because of the number of accommodations where we don't have space for cots, the room sizes have to conform to certain standards, we need to have certain amenities, and we just have them here in this facility. Alderman Feldman asked if they can be here only for 4 hours are there two shifts of programs. Mr. Domecker said they do have two shifts but no one child is allowed to be in both shifts.. Alderman Newman said potentially if we had an all day child care program that we wanted to charge people who were high income a certain market rate and whereas we would also be able to charge another rate for lower income people who needed day care. That is something that has come up before this committee forever, the need for day care. It would be nice to be able to have the option somewhere within our recreation building to have an all day day care program. Mr. Gaynor said we have a market rate and also a scholarship program for those that qualify for either 25, 50, or 75% off which Is a cost to the department between $150,000 to $200,000 a year. That's not a budgeted number, it's a note in the budget, but its not in the budget. Alderman Newman said his reason for bringing this up is market rate day care is potentially a new and huge source of revenue. Mr. Terry noted before going further you might want to a separate analysis of that whole question because not all of the non -for profit child care centers are full right now. It's a fluctuating market that's driven by geography, it's driven by demographics of age blips. There are some years in which the systems are at capacity and there have been other years, some recent, in which not every center is full. Alderman Newman said the idea of us having the option of a full day care program is a very positive option to be able to have. Now we don't have the choice even if _� there is a market because we can't meet it for a number of reasons. Alderman Feldman inquired regarding the amount of money charged being called market price and asked if that is competitive with the market price of other Evanston private day care centers. Mr. Gaynor said we are somewhat lower in cost but did not have the actual figures at hand. Alderman Newman remarked he had two children, not full days, in the Pre School program at Chandler and it was half as much as another program in the area. Mr. Sloane had a fast quick comment on day care that they have already been notified by DCFS that there are three items that they brought to our attention right now that we need to fix in order to maintain our license with them. The first is that the men's toilet area used by the children is required to be locked from the gymnasium side at all times during the child care program so there is only one entrance into the men's room. The second item, a security buzzard is required to be HSC stitros-Page 8. at the main vestibule entrance area to prevent unmonitored access to the day care rooms to prevent security issues. The third item, is a third sink is required in the kitchen area as there is not enough room for hand washing and other things there. Those three items are going to need to be addressed immediately in this facility. Alderman Berstein asked if meals are served to these kids and is the third sink a slop sink or just for programs Mr. Gaynor said they provide snacks at the center. Alderman Bernstein said our sanitation department requires a wash sink, a rinse sink and a slop sink. Richard Mayberry, said in addition to the investigations we did that Mr. Sloane discussed, we also looked at support facilities which include the concession stands and a pro shop. We had over 60% of the people on our questionnaires interested in a reasonable concession stand where you can buy hot food, and drinks. He heard a couple people here this evening indicate you can't even get a cup of coffee in the moming when you come for early practices. In addition because we have a facility that is supported quite a bit by the ice component of it they would like to see a pro shop that would include sharpening facilities for the skates, rentals, upgraded equipment, and we could go to any levels we wanted to. At least some sort of a facility that people can come hereto get their equipment maintained. In addition to that the final note that we took a look at was the security issues and visibility. In the architectural study that we did it was clear, and as you can recall after walking around this building tonight, this building is dingy its not bright and not lit very well at all. 84°% of the people responding expressed comments about wanting additional lighting and additional security. As you can see we now have to come into the facility in two different ways. This hall does have a security camera but we don't have it manned because we do not have staff to do that and security is obviously an issue. Another issue is safety, a lot of the people responding to the questionnaires said the center is dirty and dark and the security is extremely weak. One person said she was hesitant to register her children in the facility because of that. There should be only one entrance to control the security aspects of the facility. Alderman Feldman said a number of years ago his kids were involved in the hockey program as well as the speed skating program and we wanted a pro shop even then. The question he has is whether or not a pro shop comes about as a result of somebody wanting to go into business or to supply that and feeling that they could make money here and the same with the concession stand. Evidently you're not able to get a private individual to come and open up a concession stand here. If we had a large facility, unless you're expecting the City to go into business, we would have the market that would enable a pro shop to exist, in terms of hockey equipment, speed skating equipment, tights, or items people wear. Mr. Domecker said the center used to have a pro shop but there became the issue of do you have the dance programs or do you have the pro shop and at the time at the residents request we moved out the pro shop and turned it into a dance studio which is where the dance studio is today. Alderman Feldman asked if it was self sustaining, to which Mr. Domecker responded, at the time it was. Alderman Feldman then asked about a concession stand. Mr. Marbeny said he thought the Recreation Department could find an individual or a corporation or somebody to come in and offer those facilities. We do license with other vendors as with the lakefront concessions during the summer. Mr. Gaynor commented that Is a very difficult process if the City Council were to say build a new facility, part of the process is to a request for a proposal to synchronize with the actual planning of the facility to see who would come in and provide for the concessions. You then negotiate an agreement with them. A good example is in a previous position that he held, he built a baseball stadium where they put out a request for a proposal. They provided electric and the other utilities to the area, it was then up to whoever received the award of that to come in, put in the stainless steel, put in the cookers, put in whatever else at their cost Part of the consideration back to the City was decreased based on the investment and the time of the agreement for that particular concession. As for the pro shop, it's the same kind of situation but not quite as expensive because they're not banging in the type of cookware and fryers or whatever is needed, but we still would put it out as a request for proposal to a sporting goods store or someone like that and they probably could bid and run it on a consignment basis. In his opinion the primary need would be for laces, sharpening, maybe skate rental. Alderman Jean - Baptiste thought we should look at other facilities to see whether they have a pro shop and how they're operated. A woman from the audience said has been to every rink in the Chicagoland area and every one has a concession, that is a given. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if we could get that information it would help us. David Hodgman, said his part moves into trying to define the alternatives that we have and the Board has tried to identify four different ways of approaching the problems presented by the study that was done by A. Epstein and Sons. Also to try to address the concerns that have been so eloquently expressed to us at all of the meetings we attended and those you have certainly heard about tonight. One altemative is to renovate the existing facility as the study that was done by Epstein and Sons with some additional input from staff indicates would run about $7,000,000, To do that we would basically have the same facility we have now but would extend it by doing a lot of infrastructure, corrections, and the major change in the facility would be to move the office so that, hopefully, security would be addressed. Other than that we would essentially have the same facility. A second alternative, which has not been studied, would be to renovate and expand this facility with probably the principal focus of the expansion be to add a second full sheet of ice that we heard about and also possibly adding a gymnasium with bleacher seating, more multi purpose moms, a South Branch library and additional support space. A third alternative would be to simply replicate with a new building the existing building, which was one of the things that the Epstein study addressed and was our understanding would cost approximately HSG 12111l03-Page 9. „i $18,000,000 and would once again essentially recreate the existing space, it would not in particular add another ice surface. The last alternative, we thought we should explore ,is new construction with the expanded space and the expanded pragrammang capabilities. This would probably be of a building approximately 111,000 square feet and would include everything that we have in this Crown Center except for the studio ice rink but would have the second full sheet of ice, additional gymnasium with bleacher seating, multi purpose rooms, Branch Library, and support space. Of those four alternatives two have been studied to the point that we have some cost estimates, two have not. Before Ms. Carra talks about how we might proceed. the Recreation Board wanted to express some of its own sentiments. He does not think we can be as eloquent as the people you have heard who have expressed a lot of the same things. We do not believe that simply fixing this space or simply recreating this space is the answer. The information that we heard, and you heard, tonight makes it dear that this facility is realty no longer appropriate for its original purpose much less the evolving needs of the Evanston community. We fear that the trend to leave Crown for newer or better facilities in the surrounding communities will only accelerate even if we fix this building or recreate this building. We believe that Evanston deserves a state of the art facility that would provide for existing and importantly expanded programming. A City like Evanston should not be, and cannot afford to be, embarrassed by comparison to the recreational amenities of our neighbors. Since it is clear that a significant investment will be required, in any event, just to continue Crown at a minimum at its existing condition, we believe that it would be wiser to invest that money to use it as a down payment for a new, modem building which better addresses our community needs. And, we believe this is a pressing need for the community and deserves priority for implement and funding. Ms. Cana, said we have a recommendation tonight that has two parts, First, we would hope that you create a subcommittee including members of your committee and the Recreation Board and special youth organizations in the area and residents to provide input on the design process. The second part is that we would hope to request staff to issue an RFP for architectural services to develop conceptual site plans and cost estimates for the two options that Mr. Hodgman mentioned. The first option being renovating the existing facility with program expansion which means another full ice rink, a gymnasium with bleacher seating, mutti purpose rooms. South Branch Library, and support spaces. The second option that we would hope you would send out an RFP for the architect services to examine would be building new construction with expanded programming that would be an additional 50,000 square feet, an additional full ice rink, gymnasium with bleacher seating, multi purpose rooms, Branch Library, and support spaces. Those are our recommendations, first, to create a subcommittee, and second, to send out an RFP to look at those two options the renovation with expanded programming and new the construction. We appreciate your time and will answer any questions you may have. Alderman Newman said he very much appreciates the amount of time and effort that went into this report because it is extremely helpful and puts us much further ahead of where we started. We started with the question of whether or not we should be doing a rehab for approximately S7,000,000 and at the time were talking about recreating this space for $14,000,000. Those were the basic options. To get to the second option which he would not limit to $14,000,000, because that was to rebuild the same program, what you have to do is rule out option number one if we're going down this mad as we can't get to the end of this road and have somebody say to us you could just be rehabbing a building. We have to recognize rehabbing the building is almost a ridiculous option because rehabbing a building that was built when women's programs did not even exist would just be perpetuating inadequacy. Before you get to your subcommittee, which he thinks is more interested in a bigger building because if we were rehabbing we wouldn't need anything, all we'd be doing was just redoing this building, To do a building that is needed is a tremendous financial challenge and he wants you to understand and knows just looking down the road you supported the building to the south. Many people on the Recreation Board supported the building on the south and he knows at times he was harsh about this but the reason he wanted that project out, and he does not care if its in the minutes, was because he was looking down the road and knew that as a City we would never be able to do both. We would never be able to get to the needs of this building which he already knew had a lot of problems, and if anybody wants to understand that just spend some time with our Finance director. To him the greater priority, and the sensible priority, always has been to meet the needs of the community and deal with the fact that we have a building that is falling apart and we need new programming in this building. You can't do that on $7,000,000 or on $14,000,000, you probably need close to S20,000,000 maybe more. He does not in way want to denigrate your efforts to the building on the south because he appreciates everybody's support. He is just telling you at the time he could not because he was very concerned about getting this building done the right way. Having said that and getting it out of the way, you're doing a great job and he thinks at some point we need to discuss this $7,000,000 option because if we're not unified on the issue then we realty need to put much more than $7,000,000 into this building and we're going to waste a lot of people's time. Alderman Feldman said he has never heard a soul say that we don't need a bigger and better Robert Crown. What he has heard is people saying we can't afford it Clearly what we heard tonight is a very articulate, eloquent demonstration of that need. His personal feeling is he is in favor of the highest aspirations that we could have, which is to make this center meet the needs of the community with a brand new larger building. He does not think there is anything more HSG 12/1103-Rage 10. Important in terms of physical things that this City could do ng~t nmy than this. You look outside and you see all the cars in the lot this is a Citywide facility very much like the indoor cemparwn to James Park .lames Park is a Citywide facility and this is an indoor equivalent of it It brings all different coristituencoes and all drfferent needs. He does not see anything more important this City can do than to meet the needs as expressed here. By ;rye way, he listened to all of this and knows full well that everybody un:�erstands no matter what building we build, if we b0d another one will we ever be able to insure that there won't be 10 or 20% of the people that apply for a prograrn opt out because it just means that our programs are expanded and if Lhey are better more people will want to be in there Its not like we always have to say we can never have a waiting list but we certainty have an obligation to create facilities that meet the needs of this community now and in the foreseeable future, not for posterity. He thinks the kind of thirg treat has been demonstrated here is exactly the road we should be on. He's ready to have the debate and discussion about eliminating, without question, pouring money into this facility and he is also willing to have a discussion about wtiether or not we should rebuild this facility making it nicer but as we have heard totally inadequate to meet the needs of the community, just a nice inadequate building. He wanted to have that discussion as well. Once those discussions take place and if they're resolved the way he hopes they are, we can go on from there. He has no idea where the money is coming from and thinks that's a task we really have to deal with as this is a community debate and a community discussion. One of the things that makes him hopeful is because of the constituency spreading out all over the City he believes that discussion will take place all over the City. Also, he does not think it will happen without amazing community and constituency resolve. Its not going to be presented to anybody on a platter, its going to take a lot of work mobilizing the political will to do this job, but he thinks it's a work worth doing and does not think there is a better present we can make to the young people, the older people, and the people that need this facility. There is no better gift we can give to the future of Evanston than this facility as we envision it. If it comes out meeting the needs of all the constituencies that we have, and more, as well as what we did with the Levy Center that will be something to be very proud of.. Our task now is to realty deal with whether we can in good conscience support anything other than a new building. Alderman Bernstein did not think anybody in the City doesn't think Evanston is entitled to and worthy of a state of the art facility. His concern as the representative of people who live in this immediate area is he's not only worried where the money is coming from, he's worried where the space is coming from. We're now over parked for the size of our facility. You're talking about adding another 50.000 square feet and in order to do that you talking about taking away our existing open fields here. To continue to operate in here we figure we can build another facility then we have almost double the area going from 61,000 to 111.000 square feet. His guess is we're going have to more than double the parking area in order to accommodate all these new people who will now be able find programmatic needs met in this building. Where and to what end, you're talking about James Park impacting a couple of different areas, this is in the middle of a residential area which is already conflicted by the numbers of people who come here on a regular basis. He has never heard any problems from his constituency, it might be Alderman Feldman's constituency on the south side of Main Street from people coming outside and being loud at 2:30 or 3:30 a,m., they're adults, they probably act like the kids coming out of a facility. Several years ago when this first came up he said this space wasn't big enough. He walked around and through the Webber Center and was drooling at what a wonderful facility it is. In his opinion there isn't enough space on this ground to build that kind of facility because what you will succeed in doing is destroying this facility and taking away all the green that we have here without replacing it Historically we had a wonderful skate park to the exclusion of a basketball court. The skate park is now gone and we still don't have a basketball court. There are trade offs. He absolutely agrees that to rebuild an antiquated facility makes no sense. To rebuild a 61,000 square foot facility is ridiculous. We have 700+ kids skating, and there is definitely a need for a second iCe rink. There is definitely a need for programmatic space maybe somewhere else, he keeps thinking about a building we have on Oakton Street that could house a gymnasium and have staff that could provide the support.. We're talking pie in the sky talking about where we'll come up with the $20,000,000 plus and he's thinking we can replicate the parking and we'll go up at a cost of $30,000 a space. We can do that but we're still in a midst of a residential community which doesn't necessarily want to stand for the entire community's recreational needs, which is a real concern he has for this project and has talked about that for the last two and half or three years. Thats something he needs to discuss. We need space somewhere else and would like to investigate the possibility of utilizing the Recycling Center. We had a problem with that it did not work far the Levy Center but this facility has plenty of parking and it has the space. What do we have here, he likes to think outside this particular box because he thinks this is a finite box and does not think its big enough for the type of facility that we're entitled to. In your report you talked about Builders Square, this report is a bit old because we have already given away $1,500,000 over time to bring in a new economic engine to Builders Square, that's now gone its not our land. Anything that we build, that's not off the tax rolls, has to come off the tax rolls. Are we willing to put this property up for sale and have a developer come and put up condos and town homes and things of that sort He's concerned where the money Is coming from. You talk about $20,000,000, that's $2,000,000 a year for 20 years. Our recreation budget has increased, now we're spending about $3.500,000. Its probably well worth that but he's concemed before we start with a task force we have to determine if we can afford to lose this space out here. Your report says you don't have enough space and his knowledge is its not big enough for a football field, it's really not even a big space for a soccer field over here. Where do these people go, AYSO can go somewhere else but there aren't places for therm to go. We just went into a cooperative HSC 12/1/03-Page 11. venture with Skokie to construct those additional spaces, it just began to be operational, but he does not know if that is going to offset the need. How many people are we displacing here from the soft ball games, tennis tournaments, and things of that sort When we throw away the green space for a new building and then replicate the green space over here will we ever get it back. He is very concerned about what's becoming a concrete Evanston, something he can't live with. From staff, he would like to know the unduplicated numbers that use this building, he's already heard 700 kids from ice skating programs, that a lot of kids, and we're not serving their needs now. How many others use this building, he knows we only have an open gym here on Sunday, that' not enough, we need a place for kids to be and does not think we can get all of those apples into one basket on this lot. Perhaps you could increase the size a bit and put the second sheet of ice in this building and dedicate it to an ice rink, make it a state of the art facility and then see how much facility we need in another location. We will have some economy of scale if we build a bigger budding on one tot rather than going to two different places, but he does not think its going to lit on this lot. A couple of years when this came up he went and paced off the Webber Center, he went out to Elgin to the Taylor Y' a state of the art facility and looked around size wise. You need a lot of space, you need a lot of attendant parking to accommodate the needs of the type of facility you're talking about here, and does not think that's here, you will not do anything more than destroy this community and still you may not satisfy the needs. Alderman Newman said in all due respect he thinks the way Alderman Bernstein is looking at this situation right now is not the right way to look at it and he would like to explain why. He's already at Part 2, the first issue to figure out is whether It is worthwhile to spend $7,000,000 on this building for another 14 or 15 years. This building has needs, the security situation here is atrocious. Would it be a prudent financial investment to keep this building pretty much the way It Is, and we don't even get to your neighbors. He suggests it would be very similar to the Soldiers Field analogy. Before they redid Soldier's Field there were two or three major rehabilitation's that cost multi millions of dollars and they kept redoing things to find out all the rehabs were a waste of money. They finally junked the rehabs and built pretty much a brand new building. If we were to put S7,000,000 into this building, he can't imagine a bigger waste of money because structurally so much that has to be done. He would never vote for $7,000,000 for this building, forget about your neighbors because this building is here right now. We spent $3,00,000 or S,4,000,000 without the Levy center, to turn James Park Into what we have which is great Here even after spending $7.000,000 there's no space for a women's locker room, What he is saying is Alderman Bemstein is on Step 2, Step 1, is what do you do with this building in its current structural shape. As a community we are either going to spend the $7,000,000 here with all the future problems or we're going to go on to something different Where something different is in the amount of the cost that are the second and third questions but we have to get by how we stand with the S7,000,000. When you talk about your neighbors if you're in favor of doing the $7,000,000 here, he's opposed to doing to that because he does not think we would get enough years of use and you would have a completely inadequate building that you spent $7,000,01DD on. Alderman Bernstein's response to Alderman Newman was maybe he wasn't listening to himself as he does not think he said it makes sense to put $7,000,000 into a building that would be antiquated when it was reconstructed and he did not foreclose the possibility of somewhat extending the size of this building, We're talking about adding 50,000 square feet, Alderman Feldman interjecting depending how you do it without taking up more space. Alderman Bernstein said he did not know how you would do that and the question then becomes what the impact would be to this particular community. What he is trying to foreclose here is we have two recommendations, both of which we start a task force for and want to get the designers in here. He's not ready to go down that road because that Implies we're getting a new facility and he agrees with you that he does not want to build another $14,000,000 facility to replicate this facility. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said to him the difficulty is we are looking at this project in the context of cut backs and a very tight City budget. Approximately a year ago the proposal to build a southeast Evanston recreational center was put on the table and we not only rejected that proposal but we didn't even want to think about or further investigate it. We took the position that staff time could not be invested in even pursuing that option. Obviously the Epstein report gave us options that the majority of us would not want to support because in the final analysis whatever work would be done would reduce the total amount of space that we have here. Ws talked about the support system that would have to be put in place would reduce space and a number of things would not be done, such as a women's locker room. The set of proposals that came out of that report is not something he would support at this point. Ideally he thinks we need a new facility, we are in a period where everybody has looked at tightening their belts not only in the southeast Evanston proposal but also when there was the discussion about a branch library on the West Side of town. He knows that the new proposal Integrates that as one of the options to be included. We are not at a phase, in terms of the economic health of this City, for us to think that easily about investing S20,000,000 in a new facility. What he would like to see is some further Investigation into the revenues, what do we expect to bring in, what would a pro shop bring in as far as generating funds for the City, etc. What we should look at is if we build a new facility that services 25% more users what kind of revenue that would generate. We need to see if we can make this economically feasible before we are able to justify that idealism that we want, in his opinion, may not be feasible. We need to start thinking outside the box on this particular issue in this phase and that is whether or not we can get any local business participation looking at the models coming out these days, _ HSC 12I1iO3-Page 12. such as United Centers, Soldier's Field, etc., etc. Can we combine looking at the revenue with other sources of funding as well. We may be able to get some assistance through some elected officials in Congress, Jan Schakowsky, and our officials in Springfield. Until we have explored all of these sources of revenue and other options it would be very hard to convince anybody to vote for that kind of expenditure at this particular point in time. Everybody would vote for getting away from the Epstein proposal as right now he does not think that investment is worth it. However, he does not know because of it whether we can go forward and make such a major investment at this particular point in time. We may need to convince other members of the Counal as to the need for a new center and the presentations heard tonight will be very helpful to advance that argument but tnrnks we have to go further than that because he does not think we can justify it at this particular point in time. Ms. Cara said they would certainly support that outside the box funding creativity and we have stuck to the mortars and brick but not the funding piece yet. In response to Alderman Bernstein, we were pleased at every one of our community meetings that the neighbors participated and she personally feels that we have started a good relationship and wouldn't proceed without that. One of the things in getting architectural services involved is at least they helped her see things that she would not ordinarily see. We can go up as weal as out in terms of the building and the whole experience with the Levy Center was there were many months where we did have it at the Recycling site and then with a tot of brainstorming and creativity and expertise, that whole site was moved. That and creative ways of looking at the footprint are things that we as lay people may not be able to do on our own. We do need to take that step which would help us in all sorts of ways know what we're talking about and know what the possibilities are. Alderman Feldman said he agreed with that and thinks two of his colleagues have come to conclusions he's not sure he could come to based on the information he has. Maybe they have information that he does not have. For example, he does not know that the community that he represents, which is 100 feet away from here, objects in any shape or form to an expanded center. He has never heard anybody object, the only people that have ever tailed him about this have said, please support an expanded center. Secondly, he really is sensitive to your position regarding the preservation of this park, but does not know, and you do not know either, what kind of damage or design or what final space, or anything tftat Is really needed. We also don't know, and he is speaking to Alderman Jean -Baptiste, whether or not we can afford it, the issue is whether or not we want it enough to pay for it. But if, one, the community wants it and they want to help in the responsibility for it, two, you mentioned the question out of box thinking there may be grants available we've never even begun to discuss that issue, so we can't say we can't afford it or its unattainable until we discover that. As an example, when we wanted to build a performing arts center we had a group of people come in and study whether or not the community would support it, we found out that they wouldn't. We found that all the fundraising activities they could get and all the involvement of the private sector would not support this and then we knew that, up until that time we didn't know. Al[ he is suggesting is that this community deserves a very careful responsible approach to this and we can't afford to say its going to decimate the park, we don't know that and we can't afford to say the community is not willing to pay for it or there are no ways in which this is attainable. This is a goal worth working toward and included in that goal is all the values you express which is what effect its going to have on the neighborhood, we have to understand that we have to be willing to accept that. What effect will the additional parking have, are there ways around it, are there ways to solve the problems rather than saying no or saying we're not ready to really get into this. He would hope you would say I want something like this for the community and consistent with your awn values we need to raise some money for it in a way this community will accept. You call it decimated, you say its going to ruin this neighborhood. When he first moved to Evanston, Oakton School had the reputation of being the great school of the world, people said find a place near Oakton School. The property values were soaring because Oakton School was such a great school. Walking distance to Robert Crown is a great thing for our neighborhood, some people may have to drive but there are plenty of people that can walk to it and their kids can take advantage of being so close hey will be here all the time. This is a great thing for this community and the City, all he's saying is give it a change don't sink it before we've even discovered it. Lets go on with this and learn how we can do it not how we cannot do it. Alderman Nevrtnan said we spent $20,000,DD0 on the library and he remembers walking down the hall in the Civic Center when he almost got accosted by a member of the Library Board because he dared to want to spend money en an Evanston swimming pool. The way they looked at it was if you're spending it an recreation you're not spending it on the library. As he looks back at things he voted for all the library money. We spent $40,000,000 on the library and now the Internet comes which makes libraries in general a little less needed, although they're still very needed. Now people are discovering, for the last 20 years, we have the need for exercise and recreation, across the board. When they start talking about a running track that's not an investment in something that is not Important to the community, its something that people should have access to who maybe cannot afford to pay a club fee. To him, because of the importance of physical fitness, that's getting close to necessity and from his point of view he thinks is one of the ways we should be approaching this. He does not want to underscore the importance of the ice skating program because he loves this program and everything about is great for the City, but the way he wants to approach this is we may have a $20,000,000 need and perhaps that figure is low. He would not be going to the outside community saying we need $20,000,000 to fix up the ice HSC 1211103-Page 13. skating rink because we know we need the ice skating rink, what we should say is the City is going to find a way to find 510,000,000 and then there's another 510,OGO,000 out there. We have these special recreation programs, have heard the need of day care for people across the econom►c spectrum, we also have a need for a basketball court which there is a shortage of here. FAM has just expanded to a 62� grade program and their purpose is to get kids playing basketball. have contact with the coaches and have an all anaund good experience. They have 20 kids on a team at 6"` grade level, which means 14 kids won't play very much. in Evanston we have certain unmet recreational needs and there will not be too many chances for any other buildings in me next 20 or 30 years, this is it. What we should be looking for is what are our needs as a community to make our recreation program what it should be for the community, He does not consider some things for physical fitness for people who can't afford club fees to be a luxury, he considers that to be a necessity. If there was a new building that had some weight rooms and exercise equipment that would be a positive thing to have in recreation, but as we market this if we had to go to the City for $10.000,000 and get $10,000,000 someplace else to be able to provide more gym space for, example, a league that primanty is marketed to low income, minority kids even though its expanding into the entire community, that is a way we could get people in Springfield and Washington interested as opposed to going to them and saying we need money to expand our ice programs. We should look at this project as not just being about the Crown center as it exists today but we should look at it as an opportunity for what realty are the unmet necessity needs of Evanston recreation from an indoor perspective. If we go to a new building we should try to incorporate the needs as he thinks having the FAM program is a very attractive part of the program and the types of kids and coaches associated with that program. He thinks we can get some legislatures interested in working to try to get money and when they go to their other legislature colleagues that project becomes more important than funding an ice rink, which is also very important. This should be looked at as an opportunity to really look at our unmet recreational needs. He realizes this a tremendous financial challenge for us and if we don't have the i can, or I want, and we have to attitude on this project no matter what site its in then it will not happen. There was tremendous unity on the library project because we all felt that Evanston should have a great library, Evanston should also have great recreational facilities, facilities that are not just available to people who have money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said in terms of presentation he understands what Alderman Newman is saying but you realize this center doesn't realty cater to serving low or !r!—cdevmle income. Alderman Newman did not agree with that as he thinks this center does and this center can do a lot more, if there was a gym in this building that had spectator seating FAM would be playing games in this building every day. That program is not here because we heard that the gym floor is not safe and there is no spectator seating. If we build a new building we could have gym with spectator space so it could be used by FAM. Alderman Feldman said one of the reasons he's optmisbc about this, and he was never optimistic about the southeast Evanston recreational center, is this is a cross City supported institution, people come from all over to be at this center. That's why he thinks it has a chance, the other facility never had a chance not just because of budgetary reasons, but the ability to mobilize the entire City towards getting the money that we couldn't afford then and we can't afford now, wasn't there. There was just no reason why people from northwest Evanston would get involved in that, but here there is a reason that people who come here from all over the City want to work to get this done. He thinks a very big part of what we should do is to find out what possibilities there are to mitigate the City's cost for a building. We also have to know what we're talking about, we can't go to people to raise money unless we have some idea of what we're talking about which is why he is not sure what the design implications here were but asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he was talking about not exactly redesigning the building. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought Ms. Carra was saying we cannot know all that is possible unless we consult some experts. Alderman Feldman asked what exactly the proposal says, to which Mr. Gaynor said the proposal is basically to hire a consultant who has a conceptual design of the whole site and says if this facility stays up and the new facility would need to go somewhere else on site. We must then determine if we have to relocate a baseball Reid or if there is a better design for the entire site to be more effective in the layout of fields of the new facility, possibly not having to expand out as far because of the added square footage needed it may possibly go up instead of out. The fact that the space to the east isn't being utilized now and how could that be used. That was the idea behind hiring a consultant. When this whole thing started a couple of years ago, Alderman Bernstein made the motion to appropriate a couple hundred thousand dollars to do this study of which there is a hundred plus thousand left. The thought was to use that money to give a conceptual design, showing where ball fields, parking, etc. should be to get some idea before moving forward and also ever what the cost might be to give the amount information to the Council for them to consider whether or not to go forward, whether to have 2 gyms or 1 gym, or whatever. Alderman Bernstein said his initial reaction to the words that he read in the Recreation Board's presentation was you weren't talking about going up you were talking about placing the center somewhere else, and asked if this was correct or was it wrong. That's what you wrote here and that's what's been talked about for the last couple of years. He is certainly not trying to preclude anybody and wants to accommodate every need of every kid we have in this community, His concern is that its not all going to fit on this little box, maybe it would fit better if you went up but he is not foreclosing the possibility, he's not saying build an ice rink. The reason that Alderman Feldman thinks he would get more support Citywide is because the "have's" come to this building from Citywide. With due respect $600 for a pair of skates Is a lot HSC 12J1103-Page 14. of money, many of his constituents can't afford that He does not know if there are scholarships for that, but he does know that we were just in conversations with people in this community who say there aren't things for kids to do after school. Are we supporting those needs now, that's the part of his community he wants to support the need for. Without an open gymnasium, other than Sundays for 4, hours he does not think we're doing that nor does he think we're having to preclude kids with special needs. You're talking new building, he's saying potentially new buildings and thinking where we'd have some space. He does not know what's happening at the Recycling Center but he knows that's a nice piece of land that may accommodate some of our additional needs, maybe in combination as he did not foreclose the possibility of expanding this slightly. When talking about nearly doubling the size of the facility, a facility probably too big for the space that its sitting on based on the parking that he sees. We would like it to be all things to all people, we can't He saw that pengeos and Jeff Harlow are no longer in the business, they had ads on the boards in the ice rink. Maybe as a possibility we could bring them in a restored ice rink. He did want the money spent because we did not exactly know if the facility was falling down we had a report some years back that talked about a lack of structural stability in this building and at the time we talked about rebuilding or restoring the Crown we needed to know what was going on. That's what Epstein told us. When this discussion began last June he was talking about it in terms of a band aid approach he's not looking to in put $7,000,000 and he asked Epstein what needs we had for health and safety. This evening he saw things out here that frighten him and they do not have to do with the structure of this building but with the utilization of the building, Alderman Newman asked Alderman Bemstein if he wants to spend S3,000,000 instead to which Alderman Bernstein replied he did not know what we want to spend what he wants to ultimately do is accommodate the needs of everybody in this community that needs to be accommodated. He's been looking for a private company to bring a bowling alley into town. He supported a billiard hall downtown. He wants recreation for people that are willing and need to recreate, A walking track, absolutely, its no longer a luxury, it's a necessity and the world is coming to realize that. We know that because the "Y" just put in an unbelievable amount of money to get a brand new state of the art facility. The Evanston Athletic Club has invested an incredible amount of money because fitness is how people are going to prolong their lives. He wants to try to do that for the community, but if we say we're going to get Citywide support he does not know if that is necessarily so. He thinks we're going to drive some people out who can't afford to pay the freight, and he does not want to do that. Alderman Feldman noted the exact same thing was said about the library, and the same identical thing was said about the Levy Center. Alderman Bemstein responded what he heard was we built a beautiful facility and didn't have funds with which to buy books to put into the facility, does that make sense? The Levy Center had TIF funds there was a pocket to reach into. This is a different situation, if we want to commit our entire recreation budget $2,000,000 a year then we can spend $30,000,000 on new facilities. Alderman Newman interjected we would then have to close down all our other facilities, to which Alderman Bernstein responded, let's talk in terms of priorities. Alderman Newman said what he is frustrated by in this discussion is he thinks you're sending the wrong message to the community because it's almost like there's a choice to do nothing. Alderman Bemstein Interjected we can't not do anything because the building will fall down, Alderman Newman went on to say what the community has to understand is it to stay in this building for another 10 to 15 year we have to spend $7.000,000. The fact of the matter is professionals tell us we have to spend S7,000,000 to keep the building open in the areas that need to be addressed right now. The threshold question, forgetting about a new center, is are you going to put $7,000,000 into this building into these walls and would we be a responsible corporate authority using our home rule powers for the responsible decision not building anything new just to stay here for S7,000,000. He thinks that would be the most irresponsible thing we could do because we would be spending S7,000,000 to make a building usable that doesn't have anything to do with the needs of men, women, boys and girls in the year 2003. We can't even have a women's locker room here, the locker rooms now here are completely inadequate, there's not even enough space for special recreation and as we saw tonight to have the annual ice show all the props are piled up in the hallway. We're hearing the skaters have no place warm up, the center is dark and dingy, the bathroom are ridiculous and you're not going to fix them by putting in more money, The threshold question Is do we pour $7.000,000 into this building and we have to educate the community that to keep this building open that $7,000,000 investment would be the wrong investment for the people of Evanston. Alderman Bernstein said he would not at all disagree with that Alderman Newmar. added we can't even figure out the security for the day care, it doesn't work. if we all accept that the S7,000,000 in this building is the wrong investment, the wrong amount of money in the wrong building, then we have to do something new. Then as a Council, not just this committee, the first thing we have to decide is $7,000,000 won't work here and we then have a problem to solve. Are we going to close or keep this building or some equivalent open and then we have to go to something new, then the amount of money we spend is open to question will it be 10, 11, 14, or $20,000,000, also where this building will be. If the question is where is this building going to be, he thinks Crown Park is a good central location but it may not be in Crown Park but we're not even there yet The problem with this is please don't oppose the more expensive project because of site and leave us in a situation where we can't solve the problem. We have a problem to solve here and if we're not united in explaining to the community that this problem cannot be solved here in this building for S5,000,000 or $7,000,000 then we're never going to have a solution. We can't spend $7,000,000 to keep this building open for ,10 or 14 years its not on the table. This center is a necessity in Evanston its as basic as having the water plant or anything elr:e, its not a luxury you're not going to exist in this town with only the Fleetwood Jourdain and Chandler Centers. A decision is needed from the Council, if that 57,000,000 for HSC 1211103-Page 15. a rehab as recommended in June by Epstein is not the way to go we then have part of the problem solved, but we're not quite at the place the Recreation Board wants us to be at with the architect. We have to nail down the program that we need in a new building, whatever we have and anything additional, the gym, looking at a second rink, additional day care, special recreation, etc., the program that we all agree is a necessity for Evanston recreation. Then get it to the architect_ If there is not an agreement on what the program needs to be and he would like to find an agreement among this committee as to what we need as the basic program. Alderman Feldman said he would hope that we have a motion on this committee to recommend to the Council that we not consider investing $7.000,000 to rehab this building. Alderman Newman added as part two of this motion to form the committee that the Recreation Board is asking us to form to look at the study and recommend as a solution what we are going to do to replace this building. The solution for rehabbing this building, what do we need for Evanston recreation in terms of when we replace this building should we stand pat on the program here or do we actually really have all the needs of the Recreation Department considering this is probably our last chance. Do we need some additional program, what is that additional program and then we can start focusing on what that cost will be. Site is open to discussion, maybe Crown is on the list, because he's looking to solve the problems of Evanston recreation through this process and the crown Center. Alderman Bernstein said he would second that motion. He's not saying spend $7,000,000 to put this building into a condition where its inadequate, he never said that. When he talked to Epstein he said he wanted to keep it open to the extend that we can for the short term if it means a couple million for 10 years he thinks we have to spend it. Alderman Newman remarked that is not what he meant. Alderman Bernstein said right now we are also discussing the potential of a new Civic Center in which we can have day care, and fulfill other kinds of programmatic needs that may be better served in a location like ours. Alderman Newman asked why wouldn't you want to have day care programs right outside a gym where a kid could do so many things. Alderman Bemstein said as you may recall he was over ruled because he wanted to put the Levy Center, an Arts Center and the Civic Center where we now have all those new restaurants across from the movie theaters. His concern is and he absolutely agrees that he does not want to put $7,000,000 into this building, what he does not want to do is go the other way saying because we don't want to put $7,000,000 Into this building we have to knock it down. Alderman Feldman said to Alderman Bernstein, to him the only thing he is expressing are fears, to which Alderman Bernstein responded, no question. Alderman Feldman said if a case could be made to allay your fears would you then say that you could support it, to which Alderman Bernstein asked if in the 6 years he has been on this Council would anyone ever admit to seeing him being unreasonable. Alderman Feldman answered, never. Alderman Bernstein said he can be persuaded and all he can say is what he does not want to do is to trade off one for the other and that's the way he felt this discussion was going. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Bernstein what he meant by a trade off, to which Alderman Bernstein said he did not want to commit himself not to put 57,000,000 into this building but the only alternative theoretically is to start a subcommittee, hire architects to talk in terms of redesigning this space which he did not yet want to commit to. Alderman Newman clarified that what he said was this committee would not be site specific to this, to which Alderman Bemstein said he had no problem with that. Alderman Newman went on to say we need the building why should we be locked into this site, but lets not rule out this site, Alderman Bernstein said he's not ruling out this site, this is a site that we own, it may have other value, we own a site at 2100 Ridge Avenue it may have greater value than to which we're giving it now. _ Alderman Feldman directed the committee back to the motion being recommended to which Alderman Newman said Part 2 of his motion is to have the committee that the Recreation Board is recommending to look first and try to nail down where we really want to go with program needs, what we actually want as part of the solution here, is it a second Ice rink, a second gym, is it both, is it a room for special recreation and he thinks as a community we should have a home base for this group, and a library, to nail down a program that's supportable. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Alderman Newman wanted to add a second proposal that we also look elsewhere beyond the Robert Crown Center. Alderman Newman said he wants to be looking at what are the most pressing needs of Evanston recreation outside the current program that we should be looking at plus the basketball courts. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the proposal includes looking at existing facility renovation with expanded program and new construction with expanded program. New construction doesn't necessarily have to be at Robert Crown to which Alderman Feldman added if there was a site that's better and we find it Alderman Feldman asked if the motion could be phrased clearer. Alderman Newman said the subcommittee recommended to took at the existing facility renovation with an expanded program and wants that to say program needs of Evanston, not just program needs of the Rec Board. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said which could be well beyond what's also here, a multiple sports complex, to which Alderman Newman said he's not going there. Mr. Gaynor said that's a point of clarification that we asked for. One of the issues during the debate on southeast Evanston center was the needs of Evanston and it expanded into swimming pools, tracks, weight moms, etc. As he recalls when - you came and charged the Recreation Board you said focus basically on the services that are currently being provided at Crown Center which meant what's going in the gym, the ice rink, and the two multi purpose rooms. If you notice in the _ survey questions there was no mention of a swimming pool, we specifically focused on what this facility provided and is HSC 12i1103-Page 16, the space that's being provided enough to accommodate all the people who want to participate in those activities. You want to expand it to their needs, to which Alderman Newman said he's not looking to solve problems like a swimming pool, he's looking to solve a problem such as special recreation Alderman Jean-Bact ste said what Mr. Gaynor was saying was lets not go outside of what was proposed for this, let them further articulate the program needs versus the facility. Alderman Newman said where he is going is if we have space shortages for running camps and some activities that we're doing in Evanston perhaps there is a way we can somehow have this building contribute to those needs. There is a big difference between adding a swimming pool and adding something for special recreation and some of the camp needs in terms of dollars. His reason for bringing in those is the more problems we solve the more appeal the new building will have. Alderman Feldman wanted to refine that because if that's the case we could wind up with a building that covers the entire block so we know that's not what you mean. What we have to find, and he thinks we have it already, and we can find more, is needs of this community that are valuable that need to be met that represent our values that we want to incorporate in this facility, a lot of which are here already but are not being served as well as they should such as all day day care, facilities for disable kids, the FAM program, that's already in the building but are in need of expansion by expanding a facility. That's what we :"ant to do. Alderman Newman said that is exactly what he wants to look at in terms of programs he's not looking at getting into swimming pools Mr. Terry just wanted to again state his position that the market for all day care is very different from parts facility day care and to the extent he understands your goal of building a community consensus for this project. He thinks if the City announces that all of a sudden its going to get into the full day day care business you're going to engender a lot of opposition to this project that doesn't exist right now and would say that the day care part of this requires some very careful study. Alderman Feldman said he very much appreciated what Mr. Terry said and thought that input is absolutely necessary for us, but if somebody was to tell him that for some reason FAM didn't want to participate which is part of the dialogue that we would have to use in terms of establishing the program. If the subcommittee we had was for it and we believed 4 then of course that has to be taken into consideration. Nobody wants to build, one, a day care program that's not needed, or two a day care program that's going to compete with others that are established and may put them out of business. That's all part of the dialogue and that decision isn't made here, to Investigate the needs of the day care in the community is a legitimate dialogue which is what we're going to be doing, were not making any decisions. Alderman Newman added even on the half day we want to have the proper facility. Mr. Gaynor said when they were going through the expenence of the Levy Center there were people who asked what was the difference between a senior center and a recreation center for the general public. The Levy Center could be turned into a general public recreation center by tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. because they have multi purpose rooms. It doesn't have seating in the gymnasium so that would not accommodate what FAM it looking for. The Center was built generically. We could have all day, or half day, or quarter day, day care at the Levy Center because each room was built generically, there are multi purpose rooms where any kind of activity can take place without changing anything In the room, except the sign on the door, which be believes is the same kind of thing that would occur in a new facility as one of the options that was discussed. if you go to anew facility that was another 10 or 50,000 square feet the rooms must be built generically because things change and as was discussed the change when the Crown Center was originally built there probably wasn't women's or girt's hockey but now that's a very big program at the national level. If you're looking at the future you don't have a crystal ball you need to build facilities generically. Right now all we have is half day, or 4 hours, day care sessions and we have waiting lists, if we wanted to expand it a generic multi purpose room could accommodate it. That is more in the thinking when you go forward whether or not its all day care the big issues, you need one gym or two gyms, two ice surfaces or one ice surface, and are there other sites that would be better accommodations for these programs. Alderman Bernstein said a very good point was raised about how generic these rooms are, what happens within these rooms distinguishes the rooms. You can dance in this room or dance across the hall, the only physical change you have to make in this building is a wooden floor and a gymnasium. He suggested that that we could free up one room that was used by Lekotek that has now left the City of Evanston Civic Center and asked it there is a problem moving special recreation into that building, an area that was very accommodating for Lekotek. Mr. Terry said if the truth be told that one of the reasons Lekotek moved out, among many, was that the Civic Center is such a bad building for persons with disabilities in terms of wash room facilities and elevators and things like that. Mr. Gaynor added parking is another major Issue there. Ms. Carra wanted to separate a couple things, we spent three and a half months analyzing the needs. We've done this work, you folks are not as far along as we are, you're at the beginning of the talking process. Maybe we can help educate the rest of the Council, you don't need to recreate what we've spent three and a hail months doing, that information is here we've thoroughly analyzed current programs and future needs. Alderman Newman said but we haven't nailed down what exactly are those needs above what additional programs this building does now. Ms. Carra said she was not saying this is a laundry list we have to accept in full, she is just saying we've done that research. The point is how that research impacts a physical building and that's the place where we need help. You may not be there in a conversation or In a motion or anywhere else. We can't as lay people say this is what we need so this is what the building is going to look like which is why we requested the professional assistance. Alderman Feldman asked about the case for an expanded H5C 12/l/03-Page 17, building on a program need basis. A program need basis expands the building, we have general figures here, He asked what square footage this building would oe, and was told an additional 50,000 square feet Alderman Feldman said that would bring the square footage of 1 i 1.OX total square feet, to which Mr. Gaynor said a good portion of that was an additional 40% for the ice surface and another gymnasium. Alderman Feldman thought a would be good for the Council to have an additional program space allccabon of square footage that's added on to the building so the Council could see where the program is going to, increaseC space for special recreation, increased space for the gymnasium, etc., and add that space up and let us know what it is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it may very well be the amount of space articulated to, to which Alderman Feldman said but at least we will then know what is staying in there. Alderman Bernstein added you also have to accommodate an Olympic size ice skating rink rather than what we have now He knows we have 61,000 square feet of space here now, he does not know how it's donated and would like to see a schematic of that. Alderman Feldman said you know alreaddy wnat the expanded building will be, to which Alderman Bernstein said he would just like to know for his own sense how bog the gymnasium has to. When we talked about this he asked if an ice rink could be put In the Recycling Center as he does not how big that is relative to that. He would like to have an analysis of all of our physical holdings. We have a lot of buildings in this community some of which are fairly vacant and not being utilized well. We are renting a lot of space in the Civic Center and now has heard one office building and one expanded conference center is going in where Lekolek went out. We have space and some of these programs can handle them. Mr. Terry corrected him about Lekotek and maybe that's not good for a special recreation program. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought we are struggling with where do we go from here. Number one, in Alderman Newman's motion that we find that the $7,000.000 proposed in the Epstein report is not sufficient for us to do what we have to do. By sufficient he means that in Epstein's proposal, his budget report is not going to do for us what needs to be done. Why don't we vote on that and then talk about a next step to see if we can figure out what should be done next Alderman Feldman said the motion we have on this committee is to recommend to the Council that we not consider Investing $7.000,000 to rehab this building. Alderman Newman added part two of this motion would be to form the committee that the Recreation Board is asking us to form to look at the study and recommend as a solution what we are going to do to replace this building. The solution for rehabbing this building. what do we need for Evanston recreation in terms of when we replace this building should we stand pat on the program here or do we actually really have when you look at all the needs of the Recreation Department considering this LE Is probably our last chance to build a new recreation facility. Alderman Feldman agreed with that and recalled the motion. The motion was previously seconded by Alderman Bernstein and this time seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Hearing no further discussion relating to this motion Alderman Feldman called for a vote, motion unanimously Passed (4-01. Alderman Newman said if we initially go the Council in order to achieve the consensus on the Cound), the Council is going to need pretty much what we heard here tonight. He wished Alderman Tisdahl was present tonight because unless you go through this you may not react to it the same way. He thinks we have to have the same education and effort with the other 5 members of the Council because if we don't start this with the consensus or as close to the 9 as we can get we're going to have a problem later. When we did the library we had a consensus from the Council from the beginning that we needed that major expenditure. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why don't we direct a special session so the Recreation Board can do a formal presentation. Alderman Newman did not mean this has to be done dance. Alderman Bernstein thought the best force to your argument is the articulation of the people who came here, they put meat on the bones, and we've talked about everything we need to know. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we should invite those people who came here tonight to support the position. This needs to come back to us for a discussion of the next step. Ms. Carra asked what month we're talking about coming back and was told probably in January of 2004. Alderman Bernstein said we want to get this into the budget cycle and when we decide to do what we're going to do we want to put it on our Capital Improvements budget and determine what our priorities are. Alderman Newman's suggestion is whenever we talk to anybody about the program he would try to emphasize the part of the program that we have the best chance of getting Federal or State grant money for is not for the ice but for the hard basketball floor and some of the other things that we _� do. He would think the potential for the grant money is with the FAM aspect of the need for the gym. It`s a goal to try get a large amount of money from the State and Federal government, also looking to put together some private funding . tilts. Carra asked if it is suggested that these funding ideas be part of their presentation. Alderman Feldman said the goal in any presentation to the Council would have to include any expansion of vistas for fundraising not just laying it at the door of the Council Whether they're identified or not as far as he's concerned is premature, what you can do is indicate the possibilities which is important. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed with Alderman Feldman but thought the Recreation Board has a particularly broad view of recreation in Evanston and we need your counsel in bringing it to the entire Council to share with us your perspective, your needs, and to argue that the $7,000,000 cannot go far enough to do what needs to be done. He does not think the other members of the Council have looked at the Epstein report so you need to share HSC 12/1103-Page 18. with people what that report is talking about and then to explore how some of the different ways this funding might be achieved. Alderman Newman said you have heard a I,ttle negativity when it comes to the numbers and what the Recreation Board needs to do is spend a little time with our Finance Director just to find out what this means, what our needs are and what we're thinking about because we go into meetings where we have many, many, many needs for things all over the City. We also have that final tax bill. It would be helpful when you talk to other members of the Council and the community to have a better understanding of what it means to our budget and what our other needs are on the capital side, how much we spend a year. if you can set up a session to talk about where this money is going to come from because the Finance Director will have to be included in this. Alderman Feldman said a far as he's concemed the Recreation Board represents the people of this community who are the ones that will have to pay for this one way or another. If nobody wants it it will not happen, but if the people want it they're going to get it. The Recreation Board mitigates their consciousness of money without first finding out whether or not there is any willingness on the part of the community to want this project and to expand their horizons. He does not in any way want to diminish this, but the issues the community will decide on is not whether the Recreation Board decides if the City of Evanston is in great need of many other things, therefore what do we do is not the issue. Alderman Newman said there are boards and commissions that have aspirations all over the City and they leave it to the Council to figure out how to pay for it. If figuring out how to pay for this is the great challenge of the project we're all in that together because we all recognize the need for this. It's not just our problem to figure out how to pay for this and it's not just our responsibility to educate the community on our financial ability. Alderman Feldman remarked that is what he said at the very beginning, its not going to happen unless everybody wants it to happen. There are a lot of things that we can we can't do, as Alderman Bernstein said we can't be all things to all people which is certainly true, but we can't stop growing, we can't stop improving, we can't stop aspiring, and we can't stop being a community that develops itself and increases the things that it offers to the citizens as they demand them and need them because all the other communities are doing that or a lot of them are doing it and we have to do that too. We have to keep on thinking the impossible, we have to keep on thinking out of the box and ways to grow. We did that with James Park, with the library, with downtown, the Levy Center, when people said you shouldn't do it you can't do it, and you can't afford it. Without that aspiration, if we just say we can't afford it and we're not doing it, the games over, and we won't meet the needs of people. Alderman Feldman said he wants a special meeting in January for the City Council to meet with the entire Recreation Board and everything that the Human Services Committee received tonight will go out to the full Council to present our recommendations. Mr. Gaynor wanted to clarify that the motion made tonight by the Human Services Committee will be submitted to the special Council meeting in January. Alderman Feldman added along with all of the material and citizen comments and hopes the people who came out tonight will attend that meeting. He hates to say it but this will require this and many more meetings to get things started. VII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimousty adjourned at 10:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trots , Department and Human Services HSC 12/1/03-Page 19, MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: I. CALL TO ORDER/ DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - March 1, 2004 Civic Center - Council Chambers 7:00 P.M. PUBLIC HEARING - INDOOR CLEAN AiR Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Tisdahl Kathleen Brenniman, Harvey Saver, Nancy Flowers, Doug Gaynor, Carla Bush, Erin Huebert. Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Alderman Rainey, Alderman Wynne, Alderman Moran, Sylvester Hilliard, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor's Office) Alderman Bernstein Alderman Bernstein called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m. and welcomed all those in attendance. He announced there was one order of business on the agenda, the acceptance of the Township bills for the month of February 2004. Alderman Bernstein said he has been advised that the Assessor will attend after 8:00 p.m. with some responses to questions asked of her at the February 23. 2004 City Council meeting. Alderman Bernstein called for a motion to accept the February 2004 Township bills, motion for acceptance moved by Alderman Feldman, seconded bit Alderman Jean -Baptiste. There being no further questions or discussion, the Township February 2004 bills were accepted 4.0 (Alderman Newman was not present at this timo.1 11. PUBLIC HEARING Alderman Bernstein noted there are 63 speakers signed up for this evening and the intent of this hearing is to hear from everybody who wished to give testimony in this cause. Therefore, he would ask if one's comments are similar to those of someone who has preceded you please make that notation and try to be succinct. If you can try to add something to what has previously been said. This is a Public Hearing, there will not be any discussion by the Council. What will be done is the Council will take all the testimony heard here this evening including the written testimony received, and place it on the Human Services Committee next agenda where the results of this hearing will be discussed to make a determination with respect to the cause or action the Council wishes to take. Alderman Bernstein went on to say we're here because of the Evanston Community Health Advisory Committee who, in March of last year, conducted a public hearing and following their acceptance of facts and statements with respect to scientific and economic facts they voted unanimously to propose to the City Council that they pass a Clean Indoor Air Act which would prohibit smoking in all public buildings. That vote was taken in June of 2003. it was then placed on the City Council agenda. We had some consternation's from people because it wasn't coming quickly enough, which is regrettable, but we have to go through a lot of phases. Its not a question of priority or importance because this obviously is a very important situation that we're dealing with tonight. Alderman Feldman made a point of order that he would like Alderman Bernstein to make it clear that this is a public hearing and there will be no decision making this evening. Alderman Bernstein noted he believed he had already noted that and thanked Alderman Feldman for the clarification. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to move to cut the comments to two and a half minutes as we may be here tong into the night and everybody may not get a chance to speak. With 63 people wanting to speak this will take a long time. Alderman Feldman said he was torn between the idea of allowing everybody to say what they have to say and us sitting here all night listening to reasons that have been slated before many times. He would appreciate it if there could be a band of people that have a spokesman and have it made clear what that number of people represents. Otherwise we will all be listening to the same thing over and over again. He must say, that doesn't help, it does help if we find new information. Without question that is what we're here for. If in fact each one of you presented a point and a position that was new, no matter how long it took, he thinks that would be worth listening to. Hearing the same thing over and over Page 1. again is not fair to us and not to fair to those in the auc e- e 7 ^.s is his thought on this issue and he does not know how this would be translated into the Chairman's ruling. Mayor Morton asked whether or not there would be an} ne,,rt in having our residents speak because they are the ones we are supposed to represent. AJderman Bernstein re —a -sec obviously there are residents who are impacted as well as there are employees of businesses, and our purpose �-ere ton�cht i5 to get those facts that we educe from whomever speaks or presents them to us. Alderman Newman agreed with the Mayor to an extent. PeW'e that have an Evanston connection should have a priority tonight. He is very_glad that whoever has come and fro-, -s-ere ever else has come, but those who work or live here should be given priority and we can see where we are a: 9-DO this evening in terms of what has been said. Alderman Bernstein asked Alderman Newman to make his sugges:cn eta the form of a motion. Alderman Newman moved that we aive speakers with an Evanston connection to either workinq or residina hare. a orlority to sneak and see where we are at 9:00 p.m. If the speakers are gettinq repetitive, we can then reassess the situation and if we have time for people who have come from other places to addresses us and we would be glad to hear them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste seconded the motion. Alderman Bernstein said he did not want to preclude anybody from speaking or the fact that they don't necessarily have a contact w4h Evanston. He agrees that we should give priority to people who do have contacts to Evanston, but the situation is :anger than the community of Evanston to the extent that people have something to say he thinks we are here to learn Tr,e motion to lake people with Evanston connections first, he thinks he can make that determination from the sign in srees Alderman Bernstein called for further conversation or discussion renardina Alderman Newman's motion, hearinq none he called for a vote on this motion to call Evanston connected people through residence and/or connected through commerce In some way. first, then evaluate at 9:00 p.m. where we are in the hearinq. Motion unanimously approved (5.0). Alderman Bernstein called upon Lou Rowitz, the Chair of I.he Evanston Community Health Advisory Committee, a committee that has been established to advise the City Counc:t. Alderman Bernstein wished to advise the rest of the speakers that he would like them to adhere to a three -minute Emit due to the large number of speakers. Dr. Louis Rowitz, Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and chairs the Evanston Community Health Advisory Board. He resides at 2720 Princeton Avenue in the 6" Ward and has lived in Evanston since 1973 in a smoke free house. A Crowing number of communities throughout the world are eliminating exposure to second hand tobacco smoke to protect workers and the general public. The Evanston Community Health Advisory Board (ECHAB) in an effort to understand the local impact of similar legislation in our City held a public hearing on May 22, 2003. Businesses, health professionals, and the general public were invited. Much has changed since 1989, there is now far more evidence in growing p::blic awareness. Based on testimony from the hearing and a complete review of the scientific and economic literature on :Pe issue, ECHAB voted unanimously on June 17, 2003 to recommend that the City Council amend our 1989 Indoor Clean Air Act Ordinance H-21-1, in order to eliminate smoking in all enclosed work places without compromise. The ECHAB is fulfilling its civic responsibility to promote health and protect workers and the general public. Ail workers deserve a safe, healthy, smoke free work place, He would now like to introduce Dr. Don Zeigler, Vice Chair of our committee wno vr'l provide a brief overview of the health and economic information we considered before making our recommendations to the City Council, Dr. Don Zeigler, Vice Chair of the Evanston Community Health Advisory Board, said he resides at 1430 Elmwood and has lived In Evanston since 1979. Dr. Zeigler said he xia be giving the summarizing and background why this recommendation is made and will preclude more comments from the general public as many of these statements that will be made will shorten the discussion. You need to hear why they came with this second resolution. Obviously a = growing number of communities, states, and nations are elimmnavng smoke. They ask these questions because they ME --- knew this was going to be a big issue. First, could Evanston :erally change its current ordinance, is there medical z research to justify a change, what might be the local impact of a sire ar legislation considering the economic impact, we're not in a vacuum. If there is public support for change, then what advise should the ECHAB give the City Council? Local communities are explicitly preempted, precluded and prohibited from passing a stronger ordinance than the state law unless a community had a local ordinance earlier than the Illinois Act of July 1, 1990. Could Evanston legally change this ordinance, yes, because we predated the 1990 state law by our ordinance of 1989. Only 20 communities including Evanston, Wilmette and Skokie, have the authority to improve tre�r clean indoor air laws because they had something on the books before the state and relatively weak law preempted everybody else. Second hand smoke, is it a significant health issue. Is there medical research to justify it. A fact about second hand smoke a lab reports contains over 4.000 chemicals, 200 are known toxins, 63 cause cancer. Several of these toxins are formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, acetone, methanol, hydrogen cyanide, and arsenic. The EPA our US Government Environmental Protection Agency says second hand smoke is a "Class A" carcinogen in a category with only 15 other substances like asbestos, radon, benzene, arsenic, and mustard gas, with no acceptable level of exposure. Second hand smoke is equivalent to smoking. If you are at a bar for 2 hours its like smoking 4 cigarettes, 2 hours in a non smoking section of a restaurant is like smoking a couple Page 2. cigarettes and living with a smoker. What are the health effects on adults, it's the 3" leading cause of preventable death in U S , causes 40,000 to 60,000 deaths a year, aggravates cystic fibrosis, asthma, and other lung diseases, and speeds heart disease. There is a growing body of evidence that environmental tobacco smoke exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the range of 20 to 50% and they contribute th,s to stroke. Restaurants with smoking can have 6 times the pollution of a busy highway Restaurant and bar workers have 3 to 6 times more exposure to second hand smoke. The non-smoking restaurant workers have a 50%6 higher risk of lung cancer than the general population. is there not the research to justify the change in our old weak law, yes, because second hand smoke ,s really like a toxic waste dump on fire if you look at a', :he toxins and carcinogens. The irony is the tobacco industry has convinced many in the hospitality industry to embrace expensive ventilation systems to avoid nonexistent tosses in business of going smoke -free. The expert field that set standards for ventilation in the United States is ASHRAE the American Society of Healing, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers. These experts in the field set standards that second hand smoke is a serious indoor air pollutant, the presence of second hand smoke is unacceptable for quality indoor air and ventilation does not adequately clear the air of secondhand smoke. Ventilation, spatial separation, or air cleaning can control environmental smoke if the bar or restaurant has tornado-like levels of airflow or more than 100,000 cubic feet per occupant. What might be the local impact of single legislation including the economic impact? Philip Morris has tried to convince the hospitality industry that smoke free premises would lead to lost profits. That's partly true, the hospitality industry doesn't lose, tobacco companies do. Philip Morris said in 1993 financial impact of smoking bans will be tremendous, 3 or 4 fewer cigarettes per day will reduce annual manufacture profits. Their profits are a billion dollars a year so they're providing our people here tonight %.nth misinformation to protect their profits. The hospitality sector studies showing negative economic impact of smoking, the ones who say its going to hurt business, none have been funded by a source clearly independent of the tobacco industry and none have used both objective measures or peer review of publications. Caldomia, in 1995 they were smoke free in their restaurants. In 1996 they went smoke free in their bars. Their taxable annual sales in the liquor licenses, non -beverage, beer and wine, all types of liquor have all gone up and are taxable. in California, the Department of Labor says employment in the hospitality industry continues to go up. California is now wonderful. it's clean. Cornell University has a prestigious hospitality center and in 2003 they looked at New York communities before the state ban. A study in their publication says despite the dire predictions of residual losses and job losses the hospitality industry does not suffer adverse economic consequences after smoke free regulations. Businessmen should welcome the opportunity to protect the health of their workers and patrons by going smoke free without losing business or revenue. in conclusion, from one international program policy makers can act to protect workers and patrons from toxins and second hand smoke confident in rejecting industry claims that there will be an adverse economic impact. The way we look at it is smoke free work places simply try to be objective and use the best science practices evidence faces. It looks like smoke free work places protect workers and the public from toxins and second hand smoke, provide more inviting environments who prefer or need clean air and encourage smokers to quit which is why the tobacco industry is concemed because they lose more customers. In California the lung cancer rate has gone down 20% in 12 years. Their Health Director says sweeping smoke free work place laws in California that eliminated smoking in most public places, restaurants and bars are a large part of this success. We want that success. Is there public support for change? Other communities nationwide, worldwide have gone smoke free, Wilmette. Ei Paso, Texas, Boston, many hospitality centers, tourism places. An Illinois public community representative poll shows most people from Illinois felt that local communities should be in control of our laws. We have control, we're not preempted. Most respondents are bothered when exposed by second hand smoke, three quarters felt that exposure is very hazardous to their health. Based on all this information what advise should we give to the City Council. We're the advisors to the City Council on public health. Your Community Advisory Board recommends unanimously that we change what we have on the books to eliminate second hand smoke at all enclosed work places without exception. Alderman Feldman asked if there would be questions after each speaker, to which Alderman Bernstein said that would be too cumbersome. However, it would be appropriate to allow questions to Dr. Zeigler. Alderman Feldman noted Dr. Zeigler mentioned that second hand smoke was considered a "Class A" carcinogen by the EPA and listed it along with 15 other carcinogens among those were arsenic and radon. Alderman Feldman asked what the rest of them are, to which Dr. Zeigler said, radon, asbestos, pyrene, ammonia, formaldehyde, and he could get the others for him. Alderman Bernstein said we have some of Dr. Zeigler's information in our packets and asked if Dr. Zeigler could reduce his presentation to paper for the committee to look at more closely. Alderman Feldman asked if the Advisory Board's position as stated by Dr. Zeigler is that second hand smoke is dangerous, a law passed by the City of Evanston that would require smoke free environments In public places and would not be in any way damaging economically to the City. Is that the position of the Advisory Board? Dr. Zeigler said they attempted to look at all the best medical information, journals, government studies, and also competent economic reports where objective measures were used like sales tax, sales receipts, employment, and not subjective measures like surveys and opinions. Alderman Feldman said it would have helped him a bit more if we would have had surveys conducted by cities rather than states. If one were to tell him that California chose no economic decline he could easily accept that, as a matter of fact he has no problem with any of them because he does not know a lot about it. To say that the City of Evanston, within its own economic sphere, is the same as the state of California and its economic sphere, to him is a little uncomfortable. Dr. Zeigler commented that the Page 3. statistics were on the state of California but the report from the Cornell Hospitality Journal was on indiv,di.;al communities to the state of New York and counties and communities that went smoke free before the whole state of New York went smoke free and they showed no economic loss. Aicerman Feldman asked if the committee could get that information, to which Dr. Zeigler said he had copies with nrn. At this point Alderman Bernstein announced he would begin to call upon those who signed up to speak at this hearing asked speakers to step up to the microphone. pronounce their name, indicate their address if they are an Evanston resident, restaurant owner, employee. etc., and lima their testimony to 3 minutes. Valerie Gruss, a Nurse Practitioner and Researcher. As a Nurse Practitioner with tar. Tessa Fisher and as a researcher with Rush University is also doing research in health care policy and practices. Her purpose today is to talk about her patients and Dr. Fisher's patients the majority of who are Evanston residents. Their Family Practice youngest patent is four weeks and the oldest is 100. so they have quite a span of residents. An example of where second hand smoke hits home with them is a few months ago, they had a 60 year old woman. Evanston resident, who came into their office for an upper respiratory infection, a non smoker, who has been a waitress all of her life. They sent her for a chest x-ray which came back suspicious, and they did a CT scan of her lungs and found she had chronic lung disease and emphysema. The woman is a non smoker and the only the explanation for this is she had been exposed to second hand smoke in her work environment for many, many years. Her prognosis is good and she is on inhalers. but she has a chronic lung disease that is most likely related to her every day exposure at work. Other things experienced in their practice is that many of their pediatric patients, because they have little lungs, the effect of second hand smoke is huge on them and they see more and more incidents of asthma, ear infections, and upper respiratory infections, everywhere in their pediatric population. She just wanted to give a few examples of their patients that are Evanston residents and the effects of second hand smoke on them. Marls Simon, lives In Evanston and works as a physician on Howard Street serving a generally poor population. He is here tonight to advocate for his patients, the working poor Evanston residents and other Evanston workers exposed to second hand smoke on their jobs. The poor do not have many choices about where they can work and many are restaurant workers. As we know second hand smoke is lethal showing 53,000 people die in the United Stales every year, with a proportion of these deaths right here in Evanston. The Evanston Aldermen on the Human Services Committee tonight have the opportunity to support efforts to protect Evanston workers from known carcinogens in the work places, or they can pass responsibility off to someone else, somewhere else, at the state level and Evanston workers will continue to be a part of the death statistics of a completely preventable cause of death. Claire Simon, has lived at 217 Kedixe for six years. She would like to read a fetter she sent to Alderman Feldman, the Alderman from her school. "Dear Alderman Feldman, i am a concerned 51h grader currently attending Pope John XXIII School. My mom, Dr. Catherine Counard, came to my school and talked to us about the harmful effects of smoking. We talked about the reasons people smoked and one of the reasons is that it makes them feet better. This isn't true because it might make them feet better at the time but later they will have other problems like getting sick and not having enough money to pay their bills. We leamed that 1.200 people die every day from smoking and chewing tobacco. The United States also wastes 5150,000,000.000 every year because people are sick from tobacco. What a huge waste of life and money, the money the United States spends to have people smoke could be used so that the homeless people have a place to live and food. it could also be used to make sure that people stay employed. The total amount of money people spend to smoke every year could be used for their own comfort with more heat in the winter or more furniture. My grandma has asthma so whenever she breathes smoke she starts coughing. She cannot go to certain stores and restaurants because they allow smoking. People say that if we ban smoking in public places it would be denying the smokers' rights because they have a right to smoke wherever they want, but don't the non-smokers have rights too? Don't we have a right not to have to smell like smoke? Don't we have a right to go to whatever restaurants we want and not have to breathe in other people's smoke? Don't the employees have a right to work in a clean and healthy work place? Don't we have a right to decide whether we want to smoke or not and if not, not have to endanger lives because other people want to smoke? We have rights too. Please consider our rights as well as the smokers' rights when you go to vote on March 1". Remember, we are not asking the smokers not to smoke, we are just asking them not to smoke around us. I know that you will vote for the right things. Gratefully, Claire Simon" Scott Anderson, Director of Marketing for the Clean Plate Club Restaurant Group. Clean Plate Club owns Davis Street Fish Market, Merfe's Bar-B-Q, and Pete Miller's Seafood and Prime Steak here in Evanston. At the Clean Plate Club each of our restaurants is committed to having tobacco and smoke free environments. We recognize that the majority of our customers do not want to breathe the air that comes from a smoking environment but we are also committed to giving people choice. When you step into a Clean Plate Club restaurant or any other restaurant in Evanston�- that does allow smoking you have a choice. You can be in an area for smoking which typically is limited to the bar only, or you can be in a smoke free area which is the majority of the restaurant. We go to great expense and effort to ensure that the choice is available by limiting smoking areas and by effectively ventilating the area in which you can smoke. If that choice is taken away we will lose customers, we will lose sales, our employees will lose income and seek jobs Page a. elsewhere, and the City of Evanston vAll lose revenue. The only way a restaurant can stay in business is by satisfying its customers, if the customers aren't satisfied they will go somewhere else. There are simply too many other choices out there for customers to waste treir time in places they are not satisfied. We've spent our entire working lives talking with customers and as near as we can te" this issue is arising not based on customers but outside sources. There are no customer or resident demands to chance smoking policies. We believe this whole issue is a solution looking for a problem. In the past we have talked w;th o Ir customers about their dining decisions as it relates to this issue. We have found that without equivocation we wfl! lose not only customers but or regular devoted customers to restaurants that do atlow smoking. He would like to speak a moment about their employees. A tyoicai restaurant employee is a person who needs flexible hours and often needs their days f-ee. Our employees are mothers kidding down two jobs, they are fathers who work nights so they can stay at home with kids in the daytime while mom works a day job, they are students who need to offset tuition expense by working nights or a day or two per week, they are people like himself who love this business of creating a tun and relaxing environment for friends and families together and spend time with one another. The Clean Plate employees about 125 people in downtown Evanston. If the smoking ban goes into effect, sales will decline and cost some jobs. So lets put it this Nay, the smoking ban will not create jobs it will cost lobs. A restaurant operates on very light margins, to see a drop in sales of 3 to 5% translates into a major tightening of the bell, meaning labor gets out and workers may lose their jobs. This weak economy also adds a burden without creating legislation that will drive away customers. If a restaurant see a drop in sales of say 10% it will not only be forced to cut labor hours but cut service as well, meaning the restaurant may dose at lunch or at a particular day of the week. It also becomes difficult to maintain the standard of service inside the restaurant because business owners cannot afford to employ as many staff as he/she might need. Consequently the business suffers because its not performing up to standards and will inevitably lose out to restaurants that can afford to staff properly, looking at our bar sales where we allow smoking and take into account a small percentage of diners vvtio stop in the bar before or after diner to smoke, the Clean Place Club feels strongly that banning smoking in our establishments would have a significant drop in sales that would far exceed a 10% range making it very difficult to operate at all. in 2003 the Clean Plate Club paid over 5300,000 in liquor tax alone, of that 5130,000 went to Evanston. This is not a pro or anti smoking issue, he does not smoke and most of their staff does not smoke. They are s family conscious business and try to create an environment where we feel comfortable taking our kids. Evanston has worked hard to develop its dining capital, the decision to ban smoking would cripple the dining industry. People come here from all over the north shore, northwest and Chicago area, he knows this because he does the marketing for the company and tracks where theyre coming from. He can guarantee if you ban smoking people will go where they can smoke. If you continue to allow smoking people will continue to have the choice on the quality of air they breathe. Dr. Edward Winslow, Chairman and Director of Preventive Cardiology at Evanston Northwestern Health Care Evanston Hospital. He represents the hospital medical staff who at their recent Executive Board meeting unanimously passed a resolution recommending to the committee that the hospital medical staff would ask you to support a clean air ordinance. He also represents the Amencan Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. As a cardiologist environmental tobacco smoke or second hand smoke is overwhelming. He will cite three studies and then fell some things about second hand smoke, but the most powerful study was done as an observational study in the town of Helena Montana. Helena has one hospital, it services the City of Helena and its surrounding communities. In 1999 Helena passed a smoke free ordinance that took place in 2000. Within a month of the time of the smoke free ordinance in Helena the number of admissions to the hospital for heart attack and sudden death dropped by 50%. The admission rate from surrounding communities where there was no smoke free ordinance stayed the same. That would have been an observation except that the course reversed the policy and within a month heart attack rate within the city of Helena Montana went back up to the pre smoke free ordinance level. The country of Greece did a large study looking at the effect of second hand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke on heart attack rate and sudden death rate and found that people who are non smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke had a one and a half times likely hood of dying of heart disease than of those people who are not exposed to second hand smoke. There are also data in animals and people that exposure to tobacco smoke changes in the way blood vessels react to stress and to other stimuli in that the exposure to tobacco smoke decreases blood vessels ability to dilate in the response to need. The American Heart Association expert panel has classified second hand smoke as the third leading cause of preventable heart disease in the United States. For these reasons he would ask the committee to pass a proposal of banning smoking in enclosed places because the health issues are so overwhelming and the data are so strong that environmental tobacco smoke causes heart disease and death, you cannot ignore them. Dr. Wllllam Maloney, practices at SG Frances Hospital, 355 Ridge. He wears three hats, his first is he is the President of the Medical Staff at St. Frances and represents the 500 physicians that practice there on a daily basis. Similar to their competitor to the north their Medical Executive Committee passed a resolution at their January meeting. That committee is representative of each of the various disciplines at the hospital, anesthesia, cardiology, and medicine, etc. The resolution was to support a clean air ordinance that would ban smoking in indoor work places. His second hat is that he is an emergency physician and on a daily basis sees patients effected by smoking or second hand smoke with heart disease, emphysema, cancer, but the one that bothers him is the people who do not have a say in the matter such as children who come In with asthma attacks because they have been exposed to second hand smoke and they do have Page 5. a say in their environment. His third hat is he is a resident of Wilmette, wnere as you know an ordinance was just passed fast year, he, his wife and children would be more likely to visit the wonderful restaurants of Evanston if you went smoke free. Dr. Kenneth Printen, a surgeon at both Evanston and St. Francis Hospitals. He gets the opportunity to take care of members of our community from one end to the other. The reason he is here tonight is because he is the president Elect of the State Medical Society, The 111 noes Medical Society for years has had very strong positions and policies that deal with opposition to smoking in close places so it should come as no surprise to anybody that as a President Elect of an organization that speaks not onty for physician advocacy but also for patient advocacy that he would speak very strong for banning and maintaining the ban on second hand smoke. Tobacco use and the diseases that it promotes are the single most preventable disease entity that v.e deal with as physicians. Smoking kills over 19,000 a year just in the state of Illinois. in the state of Illinois we spend S3,500,000,000 a year to take care of tobacco induced injuries. We spend this money on a disease entity and group of diseases that is largely preventable and we have hundreds of thousands of people who don't have any access to health care, 14 of the money that gets spent in this country to take care of tobacco related disease comes from Medicaid money. This is money for the poor people who can't get into the health care system any other way. He speaks to you to ask you to maintain this ban and strengthen it simply because it doesn't make any sense at all to promote a group of diseases when you have a bunch of people who can't even afford to get in the front door to take care of diseases that are easily taken rare of in many instances but they don't have the means, the means are being spent on a preventable disease. C. Margaret McClaskey, has lived In Evanston for 12 years and is an Independent medical ethics consultant. Before she speaks about this from an ethics perspective she would like to point out that the interviews done with guests at the restaurants as described earlier didn't include those of us who refuse to frequent those restaurants because they are not smoke free. It's a significant issue that you are missing the people who might come to your restaurant if you didn't have smoking. From an ethical perspective she would like to speak to a two things. The first is the number of employees, she recalls this happening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that went smoke free some 20 years ago. The fear tactics that frightened employees many of whom in the restaurant business do not have health insurance because they are not full time. We then expose those people to carcinogens then frighten them that they might lose their jobs because we are going to go smoke free and thus encourage them to testify at events like that. She thinks that's a highly unethical practice. The other thing has to do with us as a community and the importance of us ethically to stand up and not make the decision based on feared economics but to make a stand about a carcinogens that has been proven over and over again to destroy lives. It is a moral and important stance for a community to take to say we don't want this to continue to go on in our community. Gordon Ierke►, moved to Evanston in 1999 and lives In Alderman Jean-Baptiste's Ward. He chose to live in Evanston purposely because of the amenities it offers including the wide choice of restaurants. Also, because he believes that the City Council was concerned about the health and welfare of its citizens, and he still believes that, His wife is not a meat eater, and after much convincing that she could find something on Pete Miller's menu to eat, went there to eat dinner. She did find a fish to eat and he found a steak as they have a wonderful reputation for being a good steak place. Unfortunately they could not stand it because of the smoke smell in the restaurant. Even though they sat us in supposedly a smoke free place the air throughout the whole building smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and affected our meal. He is a member of the Clean Plate Club and will probably ask to hP removed from your mailing list until you change your policy or until the City changes it for you because he was not po:l :d about your policy and he will not go back into the restaurant until you do change it. BEE Alya Ahmed, a student at DePaul University and has worked in Evanston at the Clean Plate Club for the last 4 _ years. As a waitress she has been able to support herself through school waiting tables. She does not agree with the -- smoking ban and feels that it's going to directly affect the patronage at the restaurant. Also a strong community base like Evanston has allowed her the privilege and experience of meeting a lot of regulars and people, smokers and non- smokers, who have lived in Evanston. She has never heard from any of them about the smoking at the bar because we do offer a non-smoking dining room that has never been a hindrance. if anyone has ever been in the Davis Street Fish Market you probably know that on weekends it could very easily be an hour wait to get in to get a table. There have been many non smokers who have sat at the bar enjoyed their meals and the atmosphere and have never come up and complained at all about smoking. She also feels, as a student there is a certain culture that comes along with that and housing a huge university like Northwestern you obviously are surrounded by a bunch of students. Also over the last year s or two the extension of the sales of liquor at ail the bars in Evanston have been extended an hour and she feels that was implemented in order to promote business. However, she also sees as residents it may be a concern for you that on the -- week ends or during the week if you do ban smoking you're going to deal with a lot of congestion and a lot of people out on the street smoking cit all hours of the night and in order to keep Evanston clean you're going to have to clean up the -r_-- streets. — Alderman Bemstein noted that we haven't extended the liquor hour for all restaurants, only two at this point in time. Page 6. Dawn Betz, works at the Clean Plate Club Davis Street Fish Market. She has been there for 14 years and the only thing she has to add is her expenence having worked there for so long. She does not live in Evanston but feels as though she does. she shops here, she eats here, her kids go to school here and she has supported her family by working here for 14 years. She feels we shoulc be able to live in harmony with this, their restaurant has a completely non-smoking area. She is not a smoker and she does not feet offended that it has affected her. She does not go home smelling like smoke and does pass through the bar area. She stays in the dining room and feels customers have the option for either one. This is about having options for people instead of their only option being to leave the City of Evanston and go to the now very close neighboring new restaurants in Chicago instead of focusing on Evanston. She feels both can live together in harmony and support our restaurants in Evanston, C.Louise Brown, resident of Evanston for over 25 years. She lives at 212 Dewey and she stands for public health. Some of you have heard her say before that public health is what a society does to assure that people can be healthy. We know that an informed, concerned public has the right and the responsibility to speak out against unhealthy conditions. Going back 100 years to the sweat shops in the garment industry in New York when there were regulations set forth so people could be in healthy conditions, going further back to the coal miners with the black lung disease and regulations were set forth for them so that they could work in healthy environments, going back to lead free gasoline when there were regulations set forth that lead be out of gasoline, we didn't stop buying clothes, we didn't stop buying cars, but government had the responsibility and the right to do something so that people could be healthy. The question is not whether or not this is best for people, whether or not secondhand smoke kills, we know that. The question is who has the right and the responsibility to do something about it. You as elected officials have that right and responsibility, this is the twenty-first century, we're looking at a new problem. We're not looking at lead in gas anymore, we're not looking at sweat shops anymore, we're looking at people working in conditions and breathing in air that is extremely unhealthy and has been proven to be unhealthy. You have that right, you have that responsibility, second hand smoke kills. Bridget Gaughon, R.N., Manager of the Emergency Department of St. Francis Hospital. She has worked in the ER of St. Francis for over 20 years and taken care of untold numbers of Evanston residents who have cardiac respiratory problems as a result of primary and second hand smoke. Most particularly with children with asthma who come into the ER over the years has made an impact to the point that many of the children that reside in smoking homes become what we call repeaters because of their frequent visits to the ER. The cost of lost school days is priceless and probably will never be able to be made up which is pretty important. She also urges you to consider as far as financial considerations the lost work productivity of the employees that work in smoking institutions because of the exposure to second hand smoke. Karen Cronin, 811 Chicago Avenue. She urges that you support the ban for the all the reasons that have already been so well stated. Maureen Broom, 13 year Evanston resident in the 2"d Ward, she is also the General Manager of Pete Miller's Seafood and Prime Steak. She has been managing the restaurant for 6 years and has been the general manager for the last year. She is extremely concerned about this proposed smoking ban because of the effect it will have on our restaurant. Pete Miller's is one of the biggest and most popular establishments in Evanston. On an average Friday or Saturday night they have sales upward of $20,000 on each of those nights. If you vote yes to a smoking ban that will result in a 26% loss of business, over 55,000 on those weekend nights and well over $450,000 at the end of the year. Some people may not be sympathetic to businesses losing money over smoking but Pete Miller's will not only lose money we will also lose some of our dedicated employees and this is something we do not want to do. Furthermore, turnover in the restaurant business can be high. It takes a lot of work to find and train qualified employees. A smoking ban will force us to cut some of our devoted and intelligent employees that we've invested a lot of time and money on and who make Pete Miller's the one of a kind place that it is. She would also like to add that the charm of Pete Millers lies not only in the great food that we sewe but also in the unique atmosphere that surpasses any steak house in the city of Chicago. Pete's is a popular destination for many Chicagoans and Evanslonians alike because of our free live critically acclaimed jazz, our billiard room, our martinis, and our cigars. Our restaurant is a place where you can spend an evening out for dinner, with great friendly service, and entertainment. As you know, or maybe you don't, in Evanston nearly 70% of the restaurants are already smoke free. There are clearly plenty of options available to our residents who wish to eat in smoke free environments and its great that you have so many choices here in Evanston. There are so many outstanding restaurants and bars located here that again rival what Chicago has to offer. We are fortunate to thrive in a healthy, competitive environment. Evanston residents can choose to patronize any type of restaurant or bar that they would like to. She fears that passing this smoking ban will damage this business environment and Pete Miller's by ultimately driving customers away from our town and into Chicago. In one week's time we have compiled a list of 200 customers that would oppose the smoking ban and not come back to Pete Millers. Business decisions of whether or not to allow smoking should be left up to us because we know our customers best, we have already seen this work at so many smoke free restaurants in Evanston have worked hand in hand with Pete Miller's and other smoking establishments to accommodate a consistent customer base. If this ban is passed it will be the residents and businesses of Evanston that suffer as Page 7. business inevitably leaves our City to go elsewhere. Our downtown with all of these exceptional diverse restaurants will unfortunately begin to deteriorate. Alderman Bernstein commented that his. Broom mentioned a 26% reduction and asked if at some future date she could quantify that for this committee. Kim Conliss, she has been a server at Pete Miller's restaurant for 2 years. When her employer told her about the possible smoking ban she came here tonight to voice her concems as a restaurant employee because she is the one who is going to be affected most by this ban. She works in the smoking section at Pete Miller's in fact most of lime she asks to work there because she makes more money. She is afra,d if this ban passes those customers will go somewhere else to smoke and she will lose those tips. She does not work for a salary and her income depends entirely upon the volume of business at Pete Millers. The more people that come the more time they spend there whether or not they're smoking and the more tips she will make. Working at Pete Miller's is how she earns her living. She no longer lives at home, she has her own apartment, she goes to the University of Illinois Chicago and she pays her own tuition. These financial responsibilities are pretty high and working at Pete Miller's has made her able to sustain them. Being a cigar bar is part of the ambiance of Pete Millers, she knows this and she still chooses to work there. If she didn't want to deal with the smoke anymore she would find work somewhere else. She would also like to add that she still shows up to work every day and has not had to go to the doctor yet because of where she works. If she wanted to work in another section her employer would let her do so. When you make your decision on whether or not to ban smoking please remember that there are servers like her, cooks, hosts, and other restaurant employees whose lives depend on money that they make in these restaurants. Catherine Counard, she is a physician, has lived at 217 Kedize for 6 years and one of the leaders of Evanston Citizens for Clean indoor Air. Just for the record she wanted to mention that they submitted petitions to the City Council of over 700 signatures that they got in one afternoon in support of this ban. First she wanted to thank all of you City Council members for taking on this very important public health issue. By holding this hearing and placing a priority on the health of Evanston workers you have shown true courage. The progressive leadership, for which this town is known, the movement to eliminate second hand smoke from all indoor work places is sweeping the nation and Illinois. We know that second hand smoke kills and we know that all people should be protected from the effects of second hand smoke on the job. She does now know, however, who these smokers are that will supposedly leave Evanston in droves if we no longer attow second hand smoke to harm workers in our town. The opponents of this proposal would have you believe that Evanston will become a boarded up ghost town if we decide to protect the health of our workers. To portray smokers in this negative light does them disservice. She as a physician has cared for a lot of smokers over the years and she can count on one hand those who don't give a dam about anyone else and will blow smoke in your face. The smokers that she knows do care about other people, they don't want to hurt other people with their smoke and they don't want anyone else to become addicted. Just look at this town, it is a reflection of how much things have changed, how much we have learned in the 10 years that City Council last discussed this issue. Ten years ago only 2 people came out in support of eliminating second smoke from all work places. That is certainly not the case today. We know that every day in our community workers and patrons are being harmed by second hand smoke. You have the power and you have the responsibility to take a stance for social justice and ensure that all indoor work places are free the toxins of second hand smoke. Have no doubt that you are doing what is best for Evanston when you strengthen that clean indoor air ordinance by eliminating second hand smoke in all indoor work places. Ira Graham, has lived at 1018 Michigan Avenue for 42 years. As a member of the Evanston Lighthouse Rotary Club he has been asked in the absence of the General Secretary to read a letter that he sent to Don Zeigler, the Chairman of the Community Health Advisory Board. "Dear Don, Please be advised that Rotary International supports your efforts to improve the indoor air quality here in Evanston and we endorse your proposal to eliminate second hand tobacco smoke from all indoor places and work places. Good luck with your efforts. Signed, Ed Frudek" Rotary international has set the year 2005 its 100'�' Anniversary to end polio in every country in the world. It is therefore very appropriate for Rotary International to actively support this similar effort to prevent illness due to smoking here in Evanston. As a personal note he has been in the life insurance business for over 50 years an industry which recognizes the life threatening effect of smoking by increasing the cost of life and disability insurance. Second hand smoke can cause a positive urine test for Insurance applicants. His wife died of lung cancer 6 years ago, her physician Dr. Willard Frye stressed that at this time the best weapon against lung cancer is non-smoking, an ounce prevention being work a pound of cure. As a former trustee of Kendall College he is aware of the economics involved in restaurants. Smokers may drink more than non-smokers but they linger longer than non-smokers if you use this as a profit to table turnover. Furthermore, smoking even in restricted areas is a hazard for the wait staff as well as patrons in adjacent areas. The Nobel Laureate Milton Freedman preached that physicians do not have to be licensed because the market system would drive out the inferior practitioners. As a graduate of the University of Chicago Business School he humbly takes issue with Milton on this issue and he does not believe that we can wait until the market system forces restaurants and bars to voluntarily exclude smoking. Page 8. Tom Sullivan, 1300 Rosalie, has been an Evanston resident for 30 years and is here to support the ban on second band smoke. if the exercise of his `reedom and rights negatveiy affects the health and well being of someone else then those rights need to be reviewed He tninks we have precedence of that w,th our Police Department and his interest in driving 60 miles an hour down R!doe Avenue. Anything that affects the well being of others is not truly a freedom for us and he thinks we need to take a look at what the overall affect is on this. Leonard Lamkin, of 835 Ridge Avenue in the 9-" Ward. He does not eat at the Davis Street Fish Market because d he waits in the bar he goes home siK He loves ?a= and goes to the Jazz Showcase instead of Pete Miller's because its smoke free. He also likes to t:am out unfortunate}y there is not bowiing alley in Evanston and he goes to Wilmette, an old bowling alley, why, because 's smoke free. 1,Vby does he make these choices he has a lung disease, scardosis. He has never smoked. His doctors suggest this is because he hung out in bowling alleys, in jazz clubs and in blues dubs. We have a brand new blues club -n Evanston where they have one night that is smoke free, it still smells like hell when you're there. Recently he went to -reel a friend at Nevin's and was told he had to wait in the bar area where its smoky even though he wanted to eat in tre dining room. That's not good business. He is a customer of the restaurants of Evanston, he is a resident of Evanston, he raised Ks two boys in Evanston. For those restaurant owners who say this is an ordinance take a good look at him he spends his money where restaurants he visits respect his health. He would also like to remind City Council that 6 or 7 years we had an ordinance to make sure the stores of Evanston did not sell cigarettes to our children. At that tame vtie banned vending machines. There were a number of members of the City and a number of small businesses who claimed that if we got nd of the vending machines they would go out of business. The General Counsel was sitting here at that time and reminded the City Council that most of the vending machines were illegal, they were not paying fees to the City and we banned the vending machines. He does not know of any business that has gone out of business because we do compliance checks. He knows a number of businesses that should be put out of business because they continue to sell cigarettes to our children but we haven't done that. He would also like to talk about some other places that are smoke free. Ravinia went smoke free, that place is sold out every time there's a concert. Cominsky Park smoke free. Smoke free audiences work, the people want to live and go and shop we need clean air. People of Evanston think about who opposes these ordinances. Pete Miller's is not going to go away because we make it smoke free. Julianne Russell, Evanston resident, lives 1125 Washington Street and is a Nurse Practitioner Evanston Township High School in the School Based Health Center. She is speaking about the teenagers she treats every day in the High School Health Center. A number of them have asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Several of them work at Evanston restaurants that continue to allow smoking with the everyday risks of second hand smoke but these students don't see that, they have a choice. Jobs are very scarce right now and she believes that is why we have public health regulations to protect them. Dr. Donald Misch, the Director of the Northwestern University Health Service. He was an Evanston resident for 11 years and now lives in Wilmette. He does not want to belabor all the things that people have already said, what he would like to is address one particular issue that he thinks is inherent in a lot of what we discussed. One of the ways to finesse this problem is to suggest that smoke free areas solves the problem. The data is that is not true and for those of us who have been to Pete Miller's it is uncontrovertibly true that the smoke free areas are not smoke free. The tobacco industry approaches this problem in various ways and one of the ways is to suggest that amount of toxins that somebody inhales through second hand smoke is so tiny compared to what a smoker inhales that in fact its not an issue. It's irrelevant this is just a tiny dose of toxin and a tiny dose of toxin isn't all that dangerous. There a number of studies that address this question and he wanted to tell you about two because they are relevant to the question as to whether or not you really have a smoke free area in a restaurant that does have smokers. In these studies they took normal healthy young volunteers and they looked at two things. They looked at how platelets, parts in your blood that causes your blood to clog, are activated and they also looked at reactions of bloods of cells that line the coronary artery, these cells are very important in terms of getting blood to your heart. What they found is that when exposed to second hand smoke within 30 minutes the changes in those ce':s in the coronary arteries and the changes in platelets are identical to those with people who have smoked for years. This sounds counter intuitive and its not because smoking doesn't have long term chronic effects but one of the points that this raises is that some of the effects of smoking are very quick and they don't require tons of smoke. Once you saturate these things at a certain level the damage has already been done. What it suggests to him Is the notion that }vu can have a smoke free area of a restaurant, its indeed not true if there is smoke there at all its going to affect other people. Just to mention one other study, a study was done of smoking areas in airports and the data is the level outside the smoking areas is enormous and it probably doesn't protect many people. He just points this out as one more piece of evidence to suggest that the Council really doesn't have an opportunity to finesse this, you're either going to be smoke free or you're not. Jeff Keshyky, 1000 Grove. Smoking is bad, we know that, prohibition doesn't work it makes more problems. It makes problems where well go somewhere, well do it somehow else. We are a town of choice, we have 175 restaurants in this town, how many of these are bars. We do have choice to go into a place. He saw a couple go into a restaurant tonight, it was a little too smoky they left there and went to another restaurant with their children. Page 9. Bob Romaln, (former Alderman) 1108 Harvard Terrace. Being a heart attach survivor and being one of almost a half million asthmatics in the Metropolitan Chicago area you must understand where he comes from as far as his feelings about a ban on smoking in public places in this community. He and his wife have lived in this community since 1966. we've raised our children here, they've gone to the school systems here, we want this community to be the kind of place that we can all be proud would be a healthy community When we look at the number of restaurants that are already smoke free, over two thirds of the restaurants in this community are already smoke free, he thinks there is a message there. What is it the rest of the restaurants don't get? These other restaurants are absolutely surviving and doing very. very well. Some have very well known names, it isn't only Pete Millers. He's gone into Pete LUler's and had to leave there, he's gone into Tommy Nevin's and had to leave there. He loves the Davis Street Fish Market but he can't take it there anymore. He does not want to end up at St. Francis Hospital with another asthmatic attack. He can't leave home without carrying an inhaler with him, its no fun for either himself or his wife when they go out on a Friday or Saturday night. He understands the dilemma you face and the dilemma that people in this community face, but hopes you can find it within your policy and power to make this proposed ordinance come to be. Carolyn Read, 718 Hinman Avenue. She was trying to think of something new and original to say but did not come up with anything because people have come with remarkable things about supporting the ban on smoking, which she is here to do as well. You've had a tot of public health, medical, and restaurants speak, but she is here just being an Evanston resident. Along with other people she likes to go to Evanston restaurants and attend events in Evanston. Many of the those that have been noted tonight she does not attend purposely for the reason that she cannot escape their smoke regardless if they have smoke free areas. She hopes we can make some progress here in the field of public health and on behalf of people that go to restaurants that you support this. Rob Anthony, 718 Hinman Avenue. In difference to some of the comments earlier he is a community resident and not part of a larger organization dealing with this issue. He simply does not want to go to restaurants and inhale these carcinogens that's in second hand smoke. He won't repeat a lot of the issues brought up previously. He does want to add we as a community regulate vehicle emissions, asbestos, so many different substances that are the same substances that are in these cigarettes and being produced that he does not understand why we don't regulate this as well. There is no such thing as these ventilation systems, they have been proven not to work. What we're asking people to do instead is simply walk outside and have a cigarette, this is not a prohibition movement. The difference he sees tonight is there are two things being presented, one there are fears, and the second there is data. He has heard a lot of fears of businesses losing business because of this ban, but what he has seen in the presentation is that there are no economic downfalls with a smoking ban and ventilation systems don't work. We need to look at what the actual data represents not fears. Carol Kent, 1624 Crain Street. She thinks this issue is about choice and we all deserve to have a choice. Currently the way things are we do have a choice. If we don't want to go to a restaurant that has smoking, we don't have to there are plenty of other restaurants in Evanston that have voluntarily decided that they don't want to have smoking. A third of the adult population still smokes and it is unfair for those of you vtho are all concerned about the health issues to say that we are not allowed to have several places where we can go and enjoy a cigarette, a cup of coffee, a beer, and a sandwich. She is thinking about opening a coffee shop here in Evanston, with this current proposed ban she's having second thoughts. She thinks maybe she should go to Chicago. She wants to let you know that Wilmette has no smoking, Skokie has no smoking, some of those people who are smokers come to Evanston to eat in our restaurants. She agrees that there shouldn't be smoking in office buildings where people work, but thinks in the restaurants it's a long tradition and it's a choice that needs to remain the same. Marie Zykck, Director of Operations for Bar Louie. He's not hereto present facts he's just hereto quickly tell a story. in December of 2001 we opened up Bar Louis in Tempe, Arizona. As you may know Tempe went through a smoking ban in May of 2002 and he's here to present a few numbers for you. The four months span before the ban the store did an average of $29,000 a week. The four months after the ban the store did S19,000 a week, a drop of 339b. We dropped 25% the month right after the ban. In May of the next year the sales were down 48%Q from the May after that. In November we closed up. He can't say this is going to happen here but he wanted to present these numbers and let you know that in the 2n0 year that store lost $191,000 off the bottom line. He would like to leave you with two points, the point about California that was an increase, you can't leave California to live in the center of it, its a very big state, people can leave Evanston. The second is he would suggest that we look into research of how much gross in business these suburbs already gone through a smoking ban have seen in the years following and thinks that should be proof enough for you. Bill Gilmore, owner of Bill's Blues Bar a world class blues club located at 1029 Davis In downtown Evanston. He is also an Evanston resident and a Dewey School parent. If smoking is banned in his establishment you will beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever put him out of business. He is a non-smoker as well as an asthmatic who runs an average of 3 miles a day to medicate the affects of his asthma. If tobacco were to vanish from the planet tomorrow he Page 10. would have no remorse whatsoever. However, Bill's Blues Bar is just that. a blues bar, its not a health food restaurant, he hopes the name does not deceive anyone. He spent about 5250.000 to own a business in Evanston over 6 months ago. under the theory that some of the populous would be willing to spend money just to walk in the front door, to be willing to pay money for a cover charge, and then additional capital to pay for alcoholic beverages all the while listening to blues artists play wild music in a somewhat smoky and claustrophobic environment. This is not a business plan that gets you published in the Harvard Business Review. This is the etghth blues club established, five in Chicago and two in New York City. In 6 months those blues have become a major blues venue, we draw people not just from Evanston but from the entire metropolitan area. Our regular customers are largely over the age of 30 and a very substantial percentage we estimate between 50 and 75% are smokers. People over the age of 30 come to smoke for one reason, they are addicted. We have actually banned smoking on Sunday Folk Nights, he guesses it still smells. This is what our customers want on those nights just as the majority of our patrons on other nights wish the option to continue smoking. We've also banned pipe and cigar smoking on busy nights. If all smoking is banned at Bill's Blues, what will happen to this majority of our customer base? Will they just mildly go outside and puff away, we see this all the time outside of office building, stores, and even hospitals smoking in January blizzards, play downpours, and August heat waves. Of course, these people better abide by company rules and smoke when and where they're to:d or else. Fortunately for his customers, unfortunately for him, no other major blues venue in or out of Chicago bans smoking. Would his customers abandon him for something as trivial as being allowed to smoke when and where they want, yes they would, remember we're talking addiction here. Would he pick up enough dedicated non-smokers to recoup his losses, some but in his judgement not nearty enough. Since he spends 70 plus hours a week working in his business he would hope his judgement in this matter would be respected. He would like to end with a quote from American Life, H.L. Menken, although he had personal problems and was probably a smoker too, his observations tend to be right on the money. He said, "For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." Joel Fondell, Managing Operator of Le Peep Pancake House and Grill In Evanston as well as a parent and citizen of Evanston. Approximately 3 years ago he decided to change his restaurant from having a smoking section to become a smoke free establishment. After much deliberation and talking to his customers he decided on a business principle that it was more beneficial for him not to have smoking his establishment. It was a choice, and it was his choice based on what he heard from his customers. When he looked at the demographics of Evanston he found he was filling a niche there and there weren't any breakfast establishments that were smoke free, it also makes his job easier as he no longer had to separate the smokers from the non smokers. However, he is opposed to a complete ban of smoking being forced on other establishments. When he sees that over 70% of the Evanston restaurants are smoke free it tells him that the system of checks and balances established by supply and demand is working, Restaurateurs are filling the demand for both smokers and non-smokers based on who comes into their establishments. Believe him, the incredibly competitive restaurant business, the owners and managers are doing everything they can to appease their customers. Obviously there is a need for some of these restaurants to keep smoking sections until smoking itself is made illegal. If they weren't filling a demand by their customers they would have already changed. We can see how detrimental change within Skokie and Wilmette has been to their businesses. Business has dropped considerably, one establishment in particular Jack's now is no longer open 24 hours as this late night crowd has taken their business elsewhere where smoking is allowed. He fears if this legislation is passed tax dollars currently spent in Evanston will soon be in Chicago. Therefore he urges the City Council not to change existing policy on smoking. He sees it as being unnecessary to legislate that which is taking care of itself, he sees it as being a very risky experiment that could be even more of a tax burden being placed on the property and home owners of Evanston, and sees this as taking away from business owners and managers something that their customers already have, a choice. Ceci Vitale, the owner of the IHOP In Evanston. She has been working for [HOP for 30 years at that location and has owned it for 15 years. She's open 24 hours 7 days a week and has been feeding the Evanston community for 40 years. This will definitely take that away from her, 80% of her business at night are smokers. The Northwestern students, people going out drinking in bars, and this will be very detrimental to her business, it will probably cause her to close her restaurant at night. She doesn't want to do that. In all the years that she's been in this restaurant she has put in about 5250,000 and is in the process of needing to put another 5150,000 in very soon she will not possibly be able to do this if this forces her to close her midnight shift. She talked with a lot of her customers and is getting Jack's customers and Skokie's customers right now which has definitely increased her business, she does not want this to go away_ She is not a smoker, she is very healthy, her employees are fine, and she really believes this is because of non-smokers. She knows in New York there are problems people will say they're going to go out and have a cigarette and they won't come back. Its bad enough on her midnight shift that she does sometimes get people that go outside to smoke and then they won't come back. Please don't take this away from her as this can be very detrimental to her. Emlyn Thomas, Director of Operations for Cafd Concepts the Management. They awn and operate 10 restaurants in the Chicagoland area Including Caf6 Luciano here in Evanston. He's a non-smoker, they run a non-smoking restaurant and have been non-smoking since they opened 10 years ago. He is completely in support of a statewide ban of smoking in restaurants and completely supportive of b�nnipg the sale and manufacture of cigarettes, as you probably know because he' a restaurateur, but he is also in the industry of accommodation. We made the decision to be non-smoking Page 11. 10 years ago, we made a choice based on our customers. For those of you that want to talk data we have 40',o of our restaurants that are non-smoking, all of which rave nega:rre bar sales compared to the restaurants that allow smoking. We cannot sell as much as similar restaurants !n other towns where we have decided to allow smoking. The average restaurant in this country today makes less than a nickel on every dollar we take in. We don't make a lot of money in this business, we do it because we love it. If you ta•e away Lnat nickel we will go out of business, not all of us and certainly not the majority of us but some of us will. We con't live on an island. His restaurant in Evanston is less than a quarter mile from another city. People that come to us co,'e to us fo- a reason, they're not all Evanston residents but they all pay taxes here in Evanston when they dine with us. T ney al' come and spend money in our restaurants and if they can't smoke and if we were a non-smoking restauran: some of t rem will go someplace else, because it happens to us. Still after 10 years he hears complaints almost on a racy basis tiat people can't smoke. He's not in the business of being a policeman he chose to be in the hospitality bus ness its to:igh for us as it is, its going to get tougher, its not a good business climate, and all he is asking is that yoc; consider the fact that we are not on an island and there are other communities around us that will take our business. Its bad enough that restaurants fight amongst ourselves for every dollar that every consumer has but in this climate today it's difficult and he asks that you consider that. Steven Cin, part owner with Rohit Sahaspal of Tommy Nevin's Irish Pub. About 50% of his customer base are smokers, we do our best to try to accommodate both smokers and non-smokers because without one or the other we would not have a business. Smoking is a very se-pous problem in today's workplace and the whole environment. He asked Rohit, his partner and also his manager, r,ny don't you talk to the employees the people who it does effect and who you're trying to look out for to see what they have to say. With that he turned to his partner. Rohit Sahaspal, part owner with Steven Cin and Manager of Tommy Nevin's Irish Pub. As both an owner and manager it is his job to insure that both the welfare and best interest of his employees are best served. Many employees are aware of this meeting and they expressed to him not only verbally but in writing that a ban on smoking would be detrimental both to their economic well being as we�l as their social welfare. The fact is our business would be negatively affected. Our hard working employees know that tns means an immediate negative effect on their own economic welfare. Simply put the lifestyles that our employees worked so hard to maintain would be in peril. Our employees are by far the most important resources that we have and as such great pains have been taken to insure that our employees are treated with the utmost care, respect, and due diligence as possible. Prior to this meeting both managers and owners sat down with each employee to determine stance on this proposed ordinance. An overwhelming majority of these employees expressed to him a strong dissention of this ban. in closing we at Tommy Nevin's would like all of you to know that regardless of your stance on this proposed ban you are welcome here, in fact there are no strangers at our establishment merely friends that have not yet met. Peter Rodriguez, Managing Partner and General Manager of the Firehouse Grill. He is also a resident of the 6"` Ward, also a Lincolnwood Parent, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce as well. He is a restaurateur and a citizen here. If you haven't been downtown finding a restaurant is not hard. The competition is fierce and there are well over 130 restaurants in Evanston, 75% of them are smoke free. That's something to be proud of. However, that wasn't done through legislation it was done through people speaking with their dollars and speaking with their feet walking into businesses. That's what keeps them open. People ask him how it will affect his business, what's the future, its unknown. He knows it will affect it adversely. He does know t-e opened almost 4 years ago now and in the 4 years he has been there costs soared, property tax soars, parking lease soars, insurance goes up, labor goes up, cost of goods goes up, everything seems to go and he hasn't raised a single price in 4 years nor does he intend to. There comes a breaking point here and if sales go down he's going to have to lay people off and if it gets to that point he can't afford to send 25, 30% of his business across Howard Avenue in Chicago or into Skokie. Skokie's not smoke free, their bars a.'low smoking. The future is bleak if an ordinance like this is passed. As an Evanstonian he thinks it would be fool hearty to go this route, can Evanston afford to shun 20, 30% of its business to Chicago, to Skokie, Are we going to be back here in a couple of years saying to ourselves how are we going to close the gap between the revenue that we lost because of what we do tonight and what we used to make. The answer to nat is probably property tax, probably loss of services. We're already at the top there. He thinks you've done a great job in revitalizing downtown and all the neighborhoods of Evanston, Main Street, Noyes Street, Central Street, everything is ro.ng fine and he hopes you let the marketplace decide because you have good business owners here in town who are responsible and listen to their customers. Reverend Mark A. Dennis, Jr., Second Baptist Church of Evanston a church that has been hens for 133 years. It is our viewpoint that we empathize with the business leaders, we empathize with you all. It is a tough decision to make. We also want you to know that we care about all people and it is upon that side that we have to air to make our decision. A decision that's not popular, a decision that must be right. Times require strong, decisive leadership. We're asking you to take a stand not as politicians but as citizens of a larger universe. As citizens who must make right decisions on behalf of people who may be able to speak as well, for people who can't do all of the due diligence necessary to prove a point. This wave is true if it happens in Florida, New Yogic. Delaware, California, and other places it is an indication that somebody is trying to say something about the qua' y of life. We stand upon that common ground, a quality of life issue. Employees who have to work must feed their famiLes, we recognize that, we want them to do that and those who overlook Page 12. F the fact of second hand smoke or smoking directly are working in oaposiUon to their own bodies. They're deteriorating the quality of life for themselves we're asking you as the leaders to step forward not only to make a statement here but also to join us in order to open the marketplace in Chcaoo and other places to say we took a stand toward this. On this decision of Ordinance 8-21-1 we appeal again to your sense of ethics around life. Lets let our morals live so that we can inhale good air, for the babies, mothers who have to work at these places, and others who are caught up in the middle can have a quality of life for their children and others arp_,nd them. Lungs tnat can breathe and be free of the fumes that we all have around us. He is a person who has been affected greatly by second hand smoke from his father who said he had a right to smoke anywhere he wanted to. His caregiver, his mother, died before him. He shall never forget, on his father's closing days the regret and remorse he hac his own body and his own eyes remembering that the woman he lived with for 53 years died an early death because of second hand smoke. It was too late to bring her back and he changed his mind later in life. Lets give life a chance so that we can all be able to exist in this environment of quality and caring for one another. Nathaniel Fisher, 1218 Forest Avenue, born and raised in Evanston. He is a smoker and he works in a bar. First of all he will grant without any hesitation that his smoking can infringe on the rights of non-smokers more of their non- smoking friends can infringe on mine. That being said he has heard a lot of people tonight saying this argument is an employee rights issue, he would like to say thanks for looking out for him but he can took out for himself and he chose to apply for the job where he works. People who draw for oil at the bottom of the ocean tend to make more money than people who work in retail, this is what economists refer to as a wage premium. The deep-sea oil drillers are being compensated monetarily for the undesirability and apparent risk associated with their work. Were it not For this wage premium he thinks it would be quite difficult to find people willing to fix septic tanks or drill for oil at the bottom of the ocean. Waiting tables is one of the best paying jobs available to people who do not have extensive educational backgrounds. This is because we servers also make a wage premium in the form of tips from customers. With more and more non smoking restaurants and bars becoming available there are an increasing number of opportunities for wait persons that do not subject them to second hand smoke. With fewer and fewer restaurants and bars allowing smoking it seems likely to him that those who do allow it will do fare well and that success is likely to be passed on to the employees In the form of tips from an appreciative and consistent clientele. He would like to pose a few open ended questions to those of you prohibit indoor smoking, he wonders how many of you drive hybrid cars or one active in fighting sources of industrial pollution produced during the manufacture of the products you buy on a daily basis. How many fought against other sources of indoor air pollution, lead based paint. What about good new carpeting with mixed toxic chemicals for months after its been installed. He believes restaurants are already required to set aside at least 50% of their seating as non-smoking, apparently that's not enough. Why must you disallow smoking completely? Why have you seized on this particular issue as well? The answer is that smoking is an easy target, at least that's the way he sees it. No one here is asking that smoking be allowed everywhere or asking that you subject yourself to second hand smoke if you don't want to. As many of you have already said tonight you don't frequent places that allow smoking. That's fine, don't come in. He will say that this decision should not be made in a blanket fashion by an over reaching local legislator or executive. You're asking all of us that do smoke to alter our life style to accommodate your preferences because of some perceived moral high ground, we're not asking that of you. He would just like to close by reminding the Council that we as smokers also do have rights. Chip Butzko, 9538 Central Park Avenue. He is a member of the Evanston, Skokie and Morton Grove Chamber of Commerce. He would like to say as far as Skokie and their non smoking ban they haven't said a whole lot about it but Morton Grove is very, very happy with it. He is here to talk to you about himself, he is smoker and has smoked for 30 years. However, he can honestly tell you that he lives in a smoke free house. What he thinks is very important is when he moved to Evanston 17 years ago it was because Evanston was a town that had liberal views and was willing to listen to what everyone had to say. What we need to look at is the fact that there are plenty of non smoking restaurants and what we need to do is allow the restaurants and business owners themselves to decide what kind of establishment they are going to run and they're going to run that according to the customers. He does not thinks this is a business legislation that should be taken seriously and this is something that we can allow the people of Evanston, who are intelligent enough, to make their own decisions which is what we need to look at more than anything else. Whether this is something that should be acted upon the businesses or allow the businesses to make the decisions themselves. Varian Seferan, owner of Cafd Hookah. He is married, has three children and he does not smoke, but he does have a smoking establishment. A year and a half ago he and his wife took a second mortgage on their house $125.000 to open Caf6 Hookah at 726 Clark. In the last year they served over 100,000 people :n i.7eir cafd. That generates thousands of dollars for Evanston and for the state. if there is a smoking ban he would be out of business over night. They're not open for breakfast or for lunch but only at night from 7:00 p.m. and most of their customers come in knowing that this is a smoking establishment. Our customers choose to come and wait on an average of 2 to 3 hours on a weekend to get in. He believes it should be the businesses' choice and the customers' d they choose to come to their location. If you have this ban he will be out of business and he hasn't paid his mortgage. He's totally against the ban and is sure this committee will come to a mutual agreement on both sides. Again, he nor his wife smoke and he wishes his kids will not smoke, but economically right now this will have a big impact on the community. Page 13. Debbie Evans, has worked at Tommy Nevin's Pub for 8 years. She is a non-smoker and so is everyone in her family. They all choose not to smoke just as her husband and she choose to work at Tommy Nevin's, we have a freedom of choice just like the people who choose not to smoke and if they want not to enter establishments that have smoking environments. If this ban is passed the consequences for her and her family she feels will be huge. It won't be lust one income, they both work at Tommy Nevin's so if their sales drop dramatically and the restaurant has to close tney would lose both their incomes. They rely heavily on the people, smokers and non-smokers who frequent the restaurants She strongly opposes the ban because she tninks people should have a freedom of choice, and also she has a fa niiy to support. Wesly Friedman, an Evanston resident and lives at 412 Lee Street. He went to New Trier High School in Winnetka, to the University of Kansas, and has a degree in Marketing. He chose to work at Tommy Nevin's because a friend recommended it as a nice place to be with a good atmosphere and good food. Regardless of his view on smoking he does not smoke, he hates cigarettes, perhaps his two grandparents might be alive now if there was never smoking. The good news is everyone does have that freedom to choose whatever they want to do. There are many restaurants in Evanston plenty of places to go. Not only are we fighting this but every new restaurant or business that does open up if there was a non smoking ban it could get even worse. Not every place will close but a majority of them wy11 and hundreds of people will be out of jobs and have no place to go. Since Chicago is super huge and a short ride from Evanston. People will just disappear from Evanston and the City will suffer. So, he is opposed to the ban and asks you to please take your time and think about what you might be doing to the City. Jonathan Perman, Executive Director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. This is a tough issue, its tough for you as committee members and elected officials and for this community. Let him see if he can boil it down to an equation that is the one you really need to consider_ Are the overall losses incurred by local businesses and their employees. many of whom are Evanston residents, greater than the gains of that a smoking ban might yield. He would suggest that the losses from businesses and for their employees are greater than those gains and would try to provide some data for you tonight. The study that is most often quoted about economic impact and suggested by proponents of a ban on smoking talks about California and Colorado in particular and was done by a mechanical engineer from the University of California at San Francisco in 1994 named Stanton Glunts, who also happened to be the founder of the Americans for Non Smokers' Rights. That study has been most profoundly disputed by a study that was done by one of our local faculty members at Northwestern at the Kellogg School in 1997, Mr. Michael Evans, who showed after looking at Stanton Glunts study, universally every city where a ban was imposed restaurants indeed suffered a serious decline. He had a list which he provided to the committee and the rest of the City Council of about 300 individual businesses that were harmed in a variety of ways by smoking bans throughout the country. But the fact is that both sides on this issue have many studies, many that purport to show harm to businesses and in the case of smoking ban advocates purport to show no or very little harm. Most of those that are showing no harm are based on aggregated restaurant sales. They look at the industry in smoke free communities and what has happened to individual businesses, particularly independent businesses like those here in Evanston that we at the Chamber are most concerned about. Some restaurants may see more business, others may suffer or go out of business. This regulation that might be proposed here in Evanston simply creates a new nsk of winners and losers it does not create new wealth. Entrepreneurs play a vital role in the story because they direct product resources towards ends that believe will satisfy customers if they guess correctly they profit and if they're wrong they suffer losses and abandon their enterprises. But when an entrepreneur is just in a restaurant he or she is not just in the aggregated restaurant industry but rather in a specific kind of restaurant one that he or she believes will satisfy customers, in short they have a very specific plan in mind. Who supports a ban of smoking, according to a gallop poll done most recently as 2001 across the United States came up with this data, 52% of those responding believe that there should be a set aside area for smokers while 4491S suggested a total ban. Here in Evanston restaurants continues to be very significant as you know, these are figures that come from the City's Department of Finance, restaurant sales in Evanston have increased 76.1 % since 1999. Perhaps even more telling is that restaurant sales are an increasing percentage of the total sales revenue in Evanston, it's gone from i 1 % in 1999 to now almost 15%. We are more heavily dependent on the restaurant economy than ever before. At this time, due to the length of Mr. Perman's presentation Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Perman if he would submit in writing any additional information he wished the committee to have. (See Attachment A for Mr. Perman s restaurant sales graphs.) Alderman Feldman noted it was decided in a motion that at 9:00 we look at where we're at on the list of speakers and asked if Alderman Bernstein could give the committee some kind of appraisal status of the list. Alderman Bemstein said there are 8 more Evanston speakers and 6 speakers passed over for being non-residents. Frances Seidman, Committee on Aging. Little did she know when she put her name on the list that she was going to end up in enemy camp. She seems to be following all these people who are so concerned about their businesses and she thinks they have a right to do so. But, if we can't learn from history then we are in serious trouble. We have a momentum going in our society to limit the amount of smoking. If you go the Europe, in most of the countries there you are exposed to the smoke, when you come back to the United Stated you say thank God we seem to be making some Page 14. progress on this problem. She was marned to a man who starter smoking when was in the army in World War It. The United States government very kindly gave out free cigarettes to a!l the servicemen. He came home so addicted he smoked in the shorn-- This went on for a while, me man seemed reayhy and then one day he was not healthy any more. then they took a good chunk out of his left lung and he stopped smoking. He never smoked another cigarette as long as he lived, however he only Irved about 4 years, and was less than 60 when he died. Her kids don't smoke and she does not want her grancchridren to smoke She sees kids walking throucc i the street smoking cigarettes and its all she do not 'a go up to them. It's a message we are sending to socie:y, she can feel for all of you losing your income is truly tragic but that is no way to make a living, based on the fact that people can come into your business and destroy their lungs. This is a human problem, it is not economic and it should not bee eased on economics. Robert Strom, co-owner of Prairie Moon restaurant on Shennan Avenue In downtown Evanston. Most of the things he had to say have already been said and he was asked to put tocettier some numbers to make some sense of this all. 1963 is how long ne has been living in Evanston, 20 is the number of years he has been involved in the Evanston restaurant commun y, over 4 years in the planning is what it took fa us to develop Prairie Moon, over 2 years of his life in the building process putting it together. In excess of 51,000,000 and much more and in blood, sweat and tears is what it took to open the doors. It was always his goal and his dream and Evanston has always been the destination. Prairie Moon Lodge helped to organize the dining event for Projects for the Evanston McGaw YMCA to raise S35,000 for a scholarship program to help under privileged children, participating in after school and summer programs. Two years ago Prairie Moon helped to organize the 401 of July Freedom Jamb a berefit to help battered women and their children. We've already begun plarnmg this year's events to recognizing National Football Leagues. Prairie Moon and the previous restaurants have hosted literally hundreds of these events which make our community a richer and more vital community than most. A smoking ban in negative finance will impact a ban on our ability to do business in Evanston. It would not only destroy Prairie Moon but severely hurt those who in so many grays benefit from Prairie Moon. Less than one mile is the distance between Evanston and Chicago and as someone said earlier tonight Evanston is the dining capital of the north shore and he vrould view that Chicago is one of the greatest dining capitals in the world. 3:00 a.m. Is the liquor license that he has which is about the hour that they close, sometimes earlier never later. He gets in bed about 5:00 a.m. unfortunately while the majority of you are at home in your beds he'll be watching his dream fade away. Please consider this. Paul While, co-owner of Prairie Moon along with Rob and Is also a lifelong resident of Evanston. He has lived here for 35 years and worked in the restaurant community for 17. He's telling you this because he thinks its important that we take the economic impact from restaurateurs and not from medical professionals. After all we don't tell you how to run the medical profession. The incidents that have been imparted regarding the health and smoking while compelling is somewhat redundant, as we all know that smoking is bad. That's realty not the issue here because an Evanston local smoking ban will not keep people from smoking it will just keep people from smoking In Evanston, As Rob said it's only a mile to Chicago and people who will want to smoke and drink will drive to Chicago. It would be great if all the energy spent on a ban was focused on either a statewide ban or a countrywide ban or the ban of the manufacturing of cigarettes because that's the real issue here. There's a lot of energy being misspent on a local ban which will help no one. No one will be any healthier so don't kid yourselves about that. Ali that well have is ali the smokers will go into Chicago and spend their money and if you're not sure about that ask the owner of Jack's. The money will be lost and the interest and community developmeit and everything who benefits in Evanston because of the businesses that do allow smoking will be lost. If you don't want to be in a smoking environment you don't have to go there, but if people want to smoke and spend don't make them go to Chicago because they will. Melissa Leasla, she and her husband have been residents of Evanston for 27 years. She lives at 2127 Maple Avenue which is In the 5th Ward She also needs to add that she is an employee of the American Cancer Society. (See Attachment B for Ms. Leasia's testimony.) Tom Waterloo, has lived at 1028 Null Terrace since 1995, Approximately 3 years ago he wrote a letter to his Alderman Ann Rainey requesting a smoking ban in Evanston. It didn't get a lot of attention but it was read at one of the Council meetings and the Council decided not to take any action on it. He was told that as a citizen of Evanston if he got enough signatures before the next election he could get that put on the ballot as a binding referendum. His questions to this committee are when are you going 10 make a decision on this and if you decide not to enact a smoking ban what Is the timetable that a citizen of Evanston would have to get the proper signatures to get it on the referendum. Alderman Bernstein said he was not trying to avoid the issue but he can't answer either of those questions with certainty. With respect to how to put a referendum on the ballot as memory serves you need at least 6,000 signatures, it has to be done so many months before, and he would refer Mr. Waterloo to Herb Hill of the City's Law Department. Margot Shayne, 2440 Prospect. She comes to you as no authority an anything just somebody who lives here and she hopes no one will misconstrue her appearance as interpreting she is 41 in any way because she is not or hasn't been. She does not have that as an agenda. What she brings to this conversation is 20 years of smoking, understanding the addiction of smoking, understanding the difficulty of how hard it is to change, and 25 years of working in health care with Page 15. people who were dying of lung disease, cardiac disease, emphysema, and cancers. She worked with and counseled people who try to smoke cigarettes through their track when they couldn't breathe. It broke her heart. She thinks change needs to start small. We are our own town we don't have to have a Un,ted States ban, we have to make or own stand. We have to recognize that this is a difficult issue, there are not good guys and bad guys in this issue, her heart goes out to the people who will inevitably suffer to some degree economically by whatever decis!on is made here. She hopes that as a community if we're going to air on the side of promoting health over economtcs its because she th,nks tnat has to do with the values of why we live here. Loren Runner, General Manager of the 1800 Club in Evanston He's been working in Evanston for the past 4 years and also own restaurants in the Chicagoland area in Rogers Park rot too far away. It puts them in a hard spot to say that we wouldn't enjoy a smoking ban in Evanston because we would have all those customers that we'd lose in our Evanston location and would probably have to close their Evanston location as they would come to their places in Rogers Park less than a mile away. If you're going to take smoking away you're going to force these customers coming to Evanston on a regular basis to have a drink, cigarette, appetizer and food, then they're going down the street somewhere else, to Chicago. Small places like the 1800 Club rely on a large number of those customers who are able to pay their bills. We're open until 3:00 a.m. and as the night goes on we have customers vrho are smoking more than earlier in the evening, If we have a smoking ban that will take away their rights and they will go elsewhere. We're a little guy trying to make it in the world and Chicago will be glad to take all of our customers from us. Alderman Newman noted he would have to leave shortly. As he heard in the beginning of the meeting we are not going to be taking any vote tonight and would want to, either now or in 10 minutes, set the dale for the follow-up meeting on this. Kathleen Flaherty, 827 Ridge. Has lived in Evanston for 18 years and heard this on the news tonight. She came here with a few friends and has been listening to everything everyone else has said trying to take it in. A lot of people are talking about choice about how you shouldn't pass this ban because it takes away choices, that's nonsense. She has respiratory disabilities and for 18 years has lived in Evanston as a second class citizen. She's in Alderman Feldman's ward and asks him to represent her. She does not want to be a second class citizen. She cannot go into many Evanston restaurants or bars and cannot hear any music in Evanston. There are many people like her with respiratory disabilities. We have no choice, now she can't go to Davis Street Fish Market or Tommy Nevin's or any of the other fine establishments that have been here talking about their own use of choice. They say they don't turn people like me away they say we come and we don't complain. She has gone and has complained. and complained, and complained. And then she gave up and can't go and is a second class citizen in her own town. We keep hearing tonight about lost profits about how you have to take into consideration that these small businesses are going to be terribly hurt by this ban, maybe and maybe not, She'll leave that to you as you've had a lot of expert testimony on it and you can figure that out better than she can, frankly she doubts it. If the Evanston businesses that rely on making other people sick and killing them by exposing them to cigarette smoke are going to lose money here then let them lose money. They do not have a right to make money on other people's suffering and death. Somehow you've gotten the notion that they do and they don't. Rights come with responsibility. What they do have a right to do is protect the right to make a fine living with their hard work and their creative minds. In the ten years we've been talking about this and putting this off in the town of Evanston they could have done this in Springfield working for a statewide ban. That would be putting their energy and their work behind what comes out of their mouths which is empty, empty, empty when they talk about their rights now because she doesn't see them making any fine record of a presence in Springfield for a statewide ban. Right now she's speaking as a disabled woman, as a resident of your ward, but also as a former public interest lawyer and lobbyist she doesn't see them putting themselves on the line to get a statewide ban. To the committee she would like to say you have had wonderful expert testimony here tonight from medical professionals. She can't begin to convey to you what they have conveyed about the reality of the horrors of smoking and the fact that it's the leading cause of preventable death in this country and the plague of the 21 n century. We can push this plague a little bit out of Evanston and its time to do it, the restaurant and bar owners have had10 years to accomplish something in Springfield. Pass this ban that will light afire under them and they'll get to work on that, its their fob to work on that not hers. Dr. Irwin Benuck, Pediatrician practicing In Evanston for over 21 years. He takes care of the kids who are exposed to second hand smoke. He could tell you that there are increased risks for a whole bunch of respiratory illnesses including bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, and ear infections. Even when parents don't smoke brief exposures to second hand smoke even in establishments with non-smoking sections does trigger respiratory illnesses. To date there are about 4.000 ingredients in smoke including carbon monoxide, arsenic and cyanide. There are no systems known to remove these toxins or the 3,997 other substances. He asks you to help establish a smoking ban here in Evanston for the sake of the kids who live in Evanston and use Evanston restaurants. Dr. David W. Cugal, a physician and has lived at 1419 Judson Avenue for the past 42 years. He is a past president and current board member of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago and in his spare time is a Professor of Medicine at Northwestem University Medical School. In the course of his medical career he has spent it almost entirely Page 15. in the care and feeding of people with lung disease. He believes all of you will have received a communication from him stating his positon and would comment that this seems like deja vu all over again because 10 years ago on June 20, 1994. to be exact, he stood at this same podium and several of you were sating in the same location when this same argument was csmssed and the same position stated. The only difference is that the data to support the adverse effects of second hard smoke were not nearly as strong and there has been a considerable accuisition of information detailing the adverse afiACs that strongly support the position that they should toe prohibited and an indoor clean air act certainly should be forthcoming, He'd like to take the position that cleaning up the air we breathe is akin to the attitude we have toward our water supply. When the bacterial count in lake Michigan gets a littler higher than the normal level the authorities close the beaches and we can't go swimming. That occurs at a bacterial level that's not really particularly hazardous we're not going to suffer many diseases if we happen to jump in the lake on a day when swimming is banned. But a precaution is taken at a level well below that is likely to have any disastrous consequences. We should clean up the air we breatne and adopt an attitude toward the necessity for doing so in a manner similar to what we have toward our drinking supply. Al this time Alderman Newman asked that the date be set for the next Human Services Committee meeting to discuss this issue. Mr. Terry noted the date for next meeting is April 12"'. Alderman Bernstein noted this will be put first on the April 120' Human Services Agenda and he encouraged people to submit any and all documented evidence, writings, statistics, etc. Alderman Newman hoped that between now and April 12"' we take comments in writing and on April 120' we get right to the debate of the issue that we not reopen the public hearings that night as this hearing has been well advertised and we have spent a significant amount of time on this. James Hammang, said he does not live in Evanston but has been working on this for 2 years. He heard about this hearing on the news. Basically everybody is right and there is a solution for everybody to have what they want. It's basically a mechanical solution. Former ACHC situations are inappropriately designed this is not the same thing. He wanted to propose a system to the restaurant owners that he would install. Mr. Hammang left a packet of information for the Committee to review. At this time 9:50 p.m., Alderman Newman lent the meeting. Diane Hackbarth, RN, Ph.D., Chair of the Wilmette Board of Health and Is on the faculty of Loyola University where she teaches public health nursing. The Board of Trustees in Wilmette recently passed a clean indoor air ordinance which makes all enclosed workplaces and public places smoke free. Our trustees heard many of the same arguments that you've heard here this evening both from business people who were afraid for their businesses as well as from the hearth community and the vast majority of citizens who support clean indoor air. In Wilmette we weighed the evidence and d came down on the side of science and public health and we rejected the fears of people because we have the data to support it. As a public health professional she would like to make two points that they came up with as they talked about this in Wilmette. One of those is the whole idea of Evanston being a home rule community and having the power and duty to pass local ordinances that protect public health people and as volunteers and as citizens leave it up to individual businesses to decide for themselves whether or not they will install smoke detectors, whether or not they will sell tobacco to minors, whether or not an individual will follow a building code or whether or not a business will properly dispose of waste. Rather we as people in a civil society regulate business, we tell businesses what to do because these regulations promote the common good and that is what makes our communities and the north shore a desirable place to live. Why do people come to Evanston to eat because you have regulations as we do in Wilmette that promote the common good that makes it desirable to be there. In the case of public health local governments acting through health departments assure that the water is safe to drink, that the food is safe to eat, that toilet flushes properly into the sewer and that the toilet water doesn't go into the street, and businesses drain water and properly dispose of trash. Clean air inside a business is no different than clean water or clean food in a business. It is not a novel idea for government to say you have to have a safe workplace or dean food and clean water, its simple common sense. Its not a dangerous precedent for the City of Evanston to tell Tommy Nevin's or all the other people here that it has to be a clean safe working environment, in fact, that is the responsibility of public health and the responsibility of local government. That is why we have local government and why we have come together in a civil society to promote the common good. She firmly believes that the majority of people want a healthy safe community, people care about each other. They don't want the worker to get sick, she counsels smokers, smokers don't want other people to get sick. Smokers will go outside to smoke because it promotes the common good. This is something that is an opportunity to move forward to do what people want. She knows the businesses are afraid but as we heard earlier they were afraid when they took the kids out of the coal mines and when they closed the sweatshops, nothing terrible happened. Society moves forward if we promote the common good. She is asking you to please move this forward in Evanston, move it to the full board, give the full board and all the citizens an opportunity and she thinks you'll be pleased with what happens. Janet Williams, volunteer with the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco. She is also the former Director of Tobacco Prevention Control for the Cook County Department of Public Health and on the Board of the American lung Association. She is not on anybodys payroll to be here, she is a volunteer and the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco represents more Page 17. than a hundred organizations concemed about tobacco's devastating toll. She can respond to some things that were said here and has been working on clean indoor air :ssues for almost 15 years and has worked with people at the American Level and local level. She heard at the Clean Plate Cartel mention that none of his employees smoke, the fact is all of Ns employees smoke. You can't have a smaiing arc non-smoking section, smoke travels, its cancer causing chemicals travel and trey also reek out of the upholstery. Orce smoking is no longer there a ventilation expert has a study coming out that it leafs tuts out anywhere up to 2 - 4 hours afterwards. She would say 1001/6 of his employees do smoke whether they want to or not. The Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco and its members call on the Human Services Committee to advance this issue of strengthening the existing clean indoor air ordinance by eliminating tobacco smoke in all work places and indoor public places. The tobacco industry and their henchmen have certainly done their work here today by providing the good people of Evanston, their businesses and elected officials with false science, misinformation, half truths, and out and out lies. There is only one business that suffers and that's the tobacco industry and they know it because the more places that smoking is allowed the more smokers quit. Its not about choice where some families say, I'm a worker and I chose to work whereever I want. That's really nice and not everybody has that opportunity. We have a special hospitality industry, we have minority wcrkers who are people with limited skills, they're not going to stand up to the guy here in Evanston and say, "excuse me Doss I don't want to work in a smoke filled environment." They don't have a choice about where they can work. Most people she knows even white-collar workers don't. There is also talk about Jack's, the fact is Jack's was moving toward closing over night anyway. She grew up in Skokle and has a lot of commerce here in Evanston and still comes here to shop and eat and go to the movies. We were told that when the Varsity and Valencia movie theaters closed that downtown Evanston could never support another Movie Theater. When Marshall Field's left, Evanston would never be a retail establishment, she thinks it looks great and she tries to come here. But with Jack's the environment is changing and that all night diner especially in our areas in Skokie, Evanston, Wilmette and the nortnem suburbs, that's changing and Jack's was going with the changing times and it was convenient to use the clean indoor air ordinance as an excuse for that. There is also resemblance to Bar Louis and they should have picked a different town then Tempe because when she tasked to her friend the Mayor of Tempe or as she calls him Neil. and she and Neil have talked on several occasions, he gets downright irate every time she calls him and says Neil they're lying about Tempe again. He wrote a letter to the Sun Times and to Wilmette, he called the Wilmette Mayor and he quotes in his letter from the Sun Times it was lied about that Tempe was having problems and restaurants were closing because of their indoor clean air ordinance. Neil as the Mayor of Tempe and the Owner Restaurant Association's President said it was wrongly claimed that the smoking ban has caused a 12% reduction in sales tax revenue. In fact sales tax revenue has actually gone up in downtown Tempe and he goes on his letter to talk about the benefits. We also keep fixating on the hospitality industry which does have an inordinate amount of smokers who are exposed. This is about all workers, all workplaces, you do have small manufacturing firms and some small offices in Evanston that still allow smoking. Second hand smoke is a known cancer causing chemical, its toxic. Everybody deserves the right to breathe clean indoor air, if its only one person who bases their decision on where they're going dine, work or shop and that is somebody with asthma, emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease or respiratory. Ms. Williams said she would send the committee all the economic studies and there is not one economic study that is not paid for by the tobacco industry and its front groups to save the loss of business. (See Attachment C for the remainder of Ms. Williams's testimony.) At this time 10:00 p.m. Alderman Feldman left the meeting. Joel Africk, Chief Executive Officer of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago. He and his family spend thousands of dollars a year in the restaurants of Evanston. The Executive Director of your Chamber of Commerce said that you cannot fully decide this by balancing the value of the lives saved from going smoke free against the economic interests of local businesses and we urge you, we beg of you, to reject that type of balancing. The best known example of that type of balancing of lives versus economics was the case of the Ford Motor Company's balancing of the costs of redesigning the Pinto gas tank against the number of lives that would be lost and the cost of litigation as a result of the loss of those lives. Ford Motor Company was vilified for that type of balancing. The type of balancing when the sweat shops were closed, and he may he just add that he does not believe the women who worked there were paid a wage premium for working in sweat shops. With the judgement that civilized society made about responding to work place dangers when asbestos was discovered to be as cancer causing as it is we didn't poll the local businesses to see who could best afford to recapsutate the asbestos that was a decision made where public health crunched the economics discretion of business owners. Then some pesticides were discovered to be more cancer causing than could be tolerated. We didn't ask business owners if they would pay a little more for something that could kill the bugs a little less and especially in restaurants. We said civilized societies don't balance the foss of lives. We now know what we didn't know 10 years ago when this issue was before you just how dangerous this is. This is dangerous in lung cancer. Lung cancer is the top cancer kilter in all of Evanston. More lives are lost in Evanston from lung cancer than the next 3 types of cancer combined. In Caldomia lung cancer is down 20%. He's not going to ask you to think of the people who would be with us today if we knew that we had taken this action in 1994 but you could do a pretty good mathematical calculation. When it comes down to public health and what we know about cancer causing chemicals and there is no ventilation that can take it out, the question is not whether its going to be a little bit goad, a little bit bad, or a little bit indifferent for business. Civilized societies remove the work place danger so that all workers in Evanston are exposed to safe working environments and that's what this is about. Page 18. Michael Holmes, Executive Vice President of Clean Air Systems of America. His message to you tonight is simple, there are altematives to smoking bans. There are five areas on indoor air quality in a bar. Bio-aerosols, hydrocarbons, environmental tobacco smoke, hazardous air odlutant and sick building syndrome. By eliminating smoking you will eliminate one of the five categories. With fc*a,,on you can eliminate all five categories as a viable alternate to a smoking ban. In the City of Chicago and other cities around the coup ry we specialize in removing diesel fumes from fire houses, hydrogen sulfides from buildings, these are know carcinogens that our technology has scientifically proven with documentation that we can remove these. Not just ours but otner companies have it, but there is an alternative and he would like you again to consider this as a viable alternative and study this when you vote on a smoking ban. (See Attachment D for additional information from Mr. Holmmes. ) Marc Gordon, serves as President and CEO of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association. Our association represents 450 hotels throughout the state of Illinois including the hotels in Evanston. Overall these hotels employ over 50,000 employees. Since 2001 and 9/11 the hotel industry has suffered more than any other industry except for the airline industry and that includes the hotel industry in Evanston. Occupancy in Illinois since 2000 has dropped from 64 1/2% to 58 112%, average room rates are down about S10.00 and total state revenue in the hotel industry is down over S700,000,000. Thousands of employees have been laid off and most still have not been rehired. State hotel taxes dropped S21,000,000 from 2001 to 2003. State tourism budget has dropped from $75,000,000 to S52,000,000 this year and the governor has proposed another S25.000,000 cut in the tourism budget for 2004/05. This is the worst time for our industry. What we need now is to develop ways to expand tourism in Evanston and Illinois, not create obstacles to hurt our devastated industry even more. Our industry cannot afford additional set backs and Evanston cannot afford to put our hospitality tourism industry at a disadvantage. With Chicago as a world class convention and tourism destination and Evanston having a world class university we continue to build and hope to build the number of international visitors and students who come here. Our national visitors statistically have a higher propensity to smoke than Americans and do we want to tell those who come to Chicago and Evanston that because you smoke you're no longer welcome in our hospitality facilities. He's not a smoker, never has been, but he believe hotels, restaurants, and bars have a right to accommodate their guests without government interference. Villages of Wheeling and Arlington Heights have taken steps to protect their hotels and restaurants by recently rejecting proposed smoking bans. He hopes the City of Evanston will not allow this proposed smoking ban to hinder your hospitality and our hospitality industry. Colleen McShane, the President of the Illinois Restaurant Association. To be sensitive to the time said she is just going to highlight some things. She plans on sending this committee a summary of articles from throughout the United States that do report on the negative impact of smoking and will cover all of the correspondence that went back not just one side on the Tempe issue. She wanted it to be clear that she is not here to defend tobacco, she is here to contest a proposed restriction on the consumption of a legal product on a selective basis in Evanston restaurants. What happens when it comes to smoking is the hospitality industry gets caught in the middle. They get between a government mandate and responding to their customers' demands. The Illinois Restaurant Association applauds that choice to go smoke free because they did that as a business decision that best served their customers. Decisions on smoking should be made by the individual restaurant operators. She would like to remind this committee that not all communities are going smoke free. Arlington Heights and Wheeling unanimously voted against a smoking ban and the in the City of Chicago that smoking ban is still in committee a year later. '."That you have not heard is the proponents have told you that there is no economic impact, that's not true. A one of a kind study was recently conducted by the respected firm of Deloitte and Touche for the National Restaurant AssociaLon, paid for by them National Restaurant Association not a tobacco company. It found there is an economic impact from local government smoking bans on table service restaurants. The study interprets the issue more closely than prev,ous studies. This is partly because the study eliminated the many fast food restaurants that have voluntarily adopted no smoking policies. A local smoking policy would have no affect on this type of establishment. Similar studies regarding smoking in restaurants have failed to take into account the large number of fast food outlets that do not allow smoking. For example the State of California, they left them in. This view falsely shows little impact or no impact where smoking bars are enacted. The Deloitte and Touche study concludes what common sense has been telling us for some time. Depending on the many, many variables the banning of smoking by a govemment entity has 3 affects, a positive affect on some restaurants, no affect on other restaurants, however, majority of the restaurants experience a negative impact. The study shows there is no one size that fits all approach to this issue because there are so many different kinds of bans from a municipality to a county to statewide. However, it conclusively shows a long term adverse affect on restaurant sales. A complete smoking ban in an entire restaurant saw a decrease of 55.2% within a year. She thinks that Evanston restaurants are committed to service their customers, additional regulation will only add to the burden. She promises to send you more information to help you with this debate and come to a decision and urges that you let the owners of Evanston do what they do best and that's service the needs of their customers. Mary Lyman, lives In Wilmette and moved back to the mid west 3 112 years ago from New York City which you know is smoke free and very successfully so. Two weeks ago an article in the New Yoi k Times commented on the 3 restaurants that just went out of business. One was 125 years old and she is not surprised is out of business. The article Page 19. said the restaurants went o:rt of business because it was their time and the restaurant business is the highest it has ever been in restaurant history in the City of New York. July 5� the entire state of Massachusetts is going smoke free. Connecticut is going this summer, Sweden and Norway are going smoke free countrywide. In March Ireland is going smoke free. The country of Botan is going smoke free, also New Zealand. Norway is going smoke free because the restaurant employees, w2 tresses and bartenders, urged the legislators to go smoke free, its cost 58.25 to purchase a package of cigarettes, ore in three smoke, it gets to about 30 below zero in winter, and can one image going outside in winter to have cigarette. Tney're going smoke free and here's Chicago and Chicago suburban and the state of Illinois. She's fascinated that European countries are ahead of the City and suburbs of Chicago. She was thrilled that Wilmette made this significant and courageous decision. She comes from a family of asthmatics but she thankfully does not have it. She stupidly began smoking at the age of 13 years old just to be cool. She sees 13 year olds today smoking and it breaks her heart because v*'s a highly addictive habit and a very stupid one. She grew up when smoking was advertised on TV, when people all around her smoked. Her parents and grandparents never smoked but neighbors did and she thought it was the most wcxnderful thing to do. It toggles her mind Mat anyone can get into Northwestern University that smokes because they're aright kids and we all know the dangers of it. She thinks if we make smoking socially unacceptable it will help, and it was no in her own home, that helped her quit. It was a long hard process that took several times. She waitressed, bariended, and worked in an office where a man smoked 5 packs of cigarettes a day. If she worked in an office now she probably would not be subjected to smoke but in a restaurant you are. She urges you to make this significant step. Alderman Bernstein announced that concluded his fist of speakers and asked if there was anyone who did not get a chance to sign up and wished to speak. There being no other speakers, Alderman Bernstein requested that Dr. Zeigler, and Nis. McShane to please provide the committee with all documented evidence, everything and anything that advances their particular cause, states and countries that attach the smoking ban and with respect to the restaurant association to the extent that you have data. please submit it. He will ask our staff to go inner city and talk to the people in Skokie, Wilmette, Wheeling and Arlington Heights as far the reasons for which they made their votes. Alderman Bernstein wanted to thank everyone, and said tnis has been enlightening, frightening, and self-serving, but thinks we all learned a lot. Thank you everyone for your participation and we will see you on the 12"' of April. Ill. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10:20 p.m. Respectfully submitted, 44 re y Trotsky Department of ealth and Hum Services Page 20. MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CiTY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday - April 12, 2004 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman. Jean -Baptiste, Newman and Tisdahl Bob Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Frank Kaminski, Sam Pettineo, Jim Elliott, Maureen Barry, Carla Bush, Alisa Dean, Nancy Flowers, Erin Huebert, Doug Gaynor Audrey Trotsky Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office); Sharon Eckersall, Diane {Township Assessor's Office} See Attached List for other Attendees Alderman Bernstein Alderman Bernstein called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m. and announced tonight's agenda will be very long. Also, the committee wig be going into Executive Session at the preclusion of the agenda, as someone needs to address this committee regarding a police Issue. If. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETINGS OF DECEMBER 1, 2003 AND MARCH 1, 2004 The minutes of the December 1.2003 and March 1. 2004 were called and unanimously anoroved f5-01. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF MARCH 2O04 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS The March 2004 Township monthly bills were called for approval and unanlmousiv approved.. Alderman Bernstein noted he had three issues for the Township Assessor, two of which were addressed in a letter to the committee. He questioned what the legal fee of $,5000+ was for, to which Ms. Eckersall said they were expecting the Nash case to go to trial. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms. Eckersall if these legal services were already provided to which Ms. Eckersall said she was not sure the bill was for pre litigation that was probably not done yet and they are expecting to spend that money. Alderman Bernstein asked if a trial date has been set and was that told they are not yet anywhere near a trial. Alderman Bernstein also asked Ms. Eckersall about her office going on line with Houlahari s office and if so what Is the update of the $5,000 fee. Ms. Eckersall said they have at least 3 new computers in the office and they all have to be hooked together to go downtown. In order to do that they had to do a special program so that it can't be broken into by any other computer system and had to pay extra for that. All the software is for the computer which Hyde Park computers is doing as soon as they get approval of the bill. Alderman Bernstein asked if this is the same kind of thing they did historically when Mr. Hines ran the office and directed you to one of a couple of different facilities, to which Ms. Eckersall said no, this is different. Alderman Bemstein said if you're hooked into the Assessor's computer his question then is what you're talking about is not working on an additional 3 computers and asked is that what the S5,000 charge is for. Ms. Eckersall said that is correct, she believed one fee alone is over S3,000 to network into the main computer to hook up the others. Alderman Bernstein thought it sounded like a lot of money to him. Ms. Eckersall said each computer has to have a separate licensing agreement. They tried to get it through the City but the City would not allow them to use theirs due to licensing agreements so they had to go on their own to buy the different software. Alderman Bernstein asked if Ms. Eckersall is hiring 3 people for the 30 day trial reassessment period, to which Ms. Eckersall responded, no, now they have a gentleman that came through Mr. Hilliard's program and hired him last year part-time under 20 hours per week, they have a young lady, high school sophomore, who was with them through the Mayor's Program last summer that they're hiring back but not through the Mayor's program. Alderman Bernstein said his question relates to the fact there Is a trial reassessment which is why you need those 3 computers and is it your intention to have 3 people on those 3 computers for 30 days, to which Ms. Eckersall said they did that previously. Alderman Bernstein said then that Is what you're getting them for and after the 30 days those computers are superfluous as you do not have enough staff to utilize them, to which Ms. Eckersall responded, we do use them. Page 1. Alderman Newman said he would like to have the opportunity to discuss several of the Township bills in more details without keeping everyone in the room tonight waiting. He thought it would be helpful if Ms. Eckersall remained for a while to have a more lengthy d:scussion about this. An example of what he wants to talk about in much more detail is this legal bill because as he reads this on the bills list this is a one month legal bill, are we going to get more bills like this. We need to discuss that in terms of miat the budget has for legal and in terms of what we are going to do about this. We are going to have to be educated about this by the Township Assessor. Alderman Bernstein said at this point in time we do not want to spend the time to do it but we can come back to it. Ms. Eckersall said she does have a letter from Hoover & Associates that the bill for the year is not to exceed S35,000. Alderman Newman questioned what the $35,000 is for, to which Ms. Eckersall said that is in case it goes to trial. Alderman Newman then said in all due respect we don't know anything about S35,000, to which Ms. Eckersall said that is in the budget for next year. Alderman Newman said S35.000 for whatever is going to occur here is a major expenditure for us in the context of the Township and that is a very substantial and time- consuming discussion. He asked if anyone on the committee agreed with him or are we signing onto the S35,000 plan. He is not knocking that plan as he does not know anything about it. Ms. Eckersall said that is the worst case scenario, to which Alderman Newman added worst case scenarios with attorneys could be exactly what the scenario is going to be. Alderman Bernstein said basically Alderman Newman's questions relate to the Assessor not the Supervisor. Alderman Newman said his questions right now are in regard to the Assessor and he wants a bit more information to understand what is going on with the computers. Alderman Newman asked if the S5,000 legal fee has been paid or does this committee authorize payment, to which Ms. Eckersall said it has not been paid. Alderman Newman thought it should be held until we can better understand it. Alderman Bernstein noted this bill is for one month's service and asked it there was a bill submitted last month, to which Ms. Vance said it has not been paid. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms. Eckersall if she could come back to this meeting in an hour and a half to continue this discussion. Ms. Eckersall said yes she could and she would have a break down of Hyde Park Computer bill that shows the different software. Alderman Newman asked Ms. Eckersall if she would also bring an itemized bill from Hoover & Associates for legal services. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Ms. Eckersall has a detailed legal bill in the office, to which Ms. Eckersall said she has a bill for pre litigation costs. Alderman Jean Baptiste asked that she bring that back with her when she returns. Alderman Bernstein announced this will be held in abeyance until later this evening when Ms. Eckersall returns. iV. ADOPTION OF RESIILUTiON 20•R-04 AUTHORIZING THE TOWNSHIP OF EVANSTON CAPITALIZATION POLICY Alderman Feldman moved for approval seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Newman asked what that policy is, to which Alderman Bernstein said basically its about how you capitalize expenditures and asked Ms. Vance or Mr. Hilliard to discuss this policy. Ms. Vance said in their last audit the auditors made several suggestions and one of the suggestions was that they have the Trustees adopt a Capitalization Policy that was in regard to leasehold improvements based on the useful life of the lease and things we were going to buy such as computers with an original price of $1,000.00 and a useful life of over one year. It also talks about estimated useful life of capitalized assets for depreciation purposes and was done at the recommendation of our auditors. _ Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked it this was primarily done for insurance purposes, to which Ms. Vance responded some for insurance, but with the new GASB 34 (Government Accounting Standards Board) they put a lot of different things Into place that are now more formalized so they are trying to make people do audits on the recommendations from the auditors. - Alderman Bernstein recalled the motion for adoption of Resolution 20-R-04 authorizino the Township of Evanston Capitalization Policy. Motion unanimously approved (5-0). V. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE INDOOR CLEAN AiR ORDINANCE Alderman Bernstein noted that public commentary was to be precluded at this meeting. Alderman Newman suggested to the Chair that we had a public hearing and listened to all the speakers and does not see why we have to reinvent that hearing. Don Ziegler said he submitted a request verbally to Alderman Bernstein to give an update on new information from the Evanston Community Health Advisory Board, that was not heard at the March 1 n public hearing. Don Ziegler, of 1430 Elmwood, said he is a registered voter in the 4"' Ward, Vice Chair of the Evanston Community Health -- Advisory Board. This is National Public Health Week, let's see how we celebrate that tonight. You've heard testimony _ at our last meeting when there were tit people that spoke and he will not reiterate that as you have that summary. Since that meeting we submitted to you some information you requested for your consideration. A list of the 69 carcinogens Page 2. that Alderman Feldman requested demonstrating why second hand smoke not only smells horrible but is a class "a" carcinogen, unsafe at any level. We also provided a synopsis of communities that have gone smoke free for your consideration, all favorable citizens' outcomes. Also knowing the association would provide you with a report prepared by Deloitte and Touche and the National Restaurant Association we felt obligated to provide an expert critique from the University of California San Francisco which concluded that the Deloitte and Touche findings are consistent with a pattern of low quality non peer review studies concluding that smoking policies are hurting the hospitality industry and which ignores almost 100 competent peer review studies showing how its effects. The reason there is no negative effect on business is that smokers adjust quite nicely with thinking norms and policies. Many others are only social smokers anyway. Smokers learn quickly to anticipate being in situations where smoking is not possible, they smoke prior to or when leaving situations when smoking is not possible. Most smokers respect other people and refrain from smoking when others are bothered. Since there has been no consideration to date that workers exposed to second hand smoke are bothered let alone seriously harmed, smoking continues unabated in many workplaces. However, we know too much about the adverse effects to permit any exposure like this any longer. He wants to bring your attention to several new Items, highly relevant items since March 1" which reinforce our recommendation. New York City reports a one-year review of the economic and health impact of the law. Please note the departments included health and mental hygiene, also finance, small business services, and the City's Economic Development Corporation. The intent of the ordinance was to protect workers from second hand smoke because they said in the report that 30 minutes of exposure of second hand smoke produces some of the same physical reaction that occurs due to long term smoking and can increase the risk of heart attacks in non smokers. Their report said emphatically, one year later the data is clear the City's bar and restaurant industry is thriving and its workers' are breathing cleaner, safer air. New York City based that conclusion on bar and restaurant tax receipts and employment, business openings and closings compliance, public opinion surveys, and work place air quality and they conclude economic data confirm that New Yorkers love their bars and restaurants and so do the millions of tourists that come there every year to enjoy all that the city has to offer. Thanks to their clean indoor act the bars and restaurants experience is a safer and healthier one for everyone. They reported that prior to the clean indoor act the average air pollution levels in bars that permitted smoking was as much as 50 times higher than the entrance to the Holland Tunnel at rush hour. No longer, its one sixth of that now and shows in the blood tests of their workers. The British Medical Journal concerns some of the things that Dr. Winfield mentioned about the effects on the heart. Since we met last Ireland and Uganda went smoke free, a community near Vale in Colorado. Georgia went smoke free, the state of Idaho went smoke free in all their communities except stand alone bars and bowling alleys. Recently in the last two weeks Cook County raised the sales tax 450% on a pack of cigarettes from 18 cents to 82 cents a pack. The County Revenue Director said that the tax would likely cause cigarette sales to plunge 59%. Even smokers are price sensitive. Public Health experts predict that the higher price will spur 31,000 adults to quit smoking in Cook County. That is less reason for businesses to worry about losses since more of their customers will soon quit. At the last meeting we heard repeatedly about businesses, our Chamber of Commerce and some of our elected officials said that the decision about smoking in Illinois should be cited in Springfield not in Evanston. How that plays out In Springfield is after Arlington Heights recently defeated its Health Department recommendation allegedly because all the neighboring communities were preempted by state law, State Representative Krause of neighboring Mt. Prospect introduced a bill, 3996 to over throw preemption so that all communities could decide on their own to strengthen health codes to protect their citizens. White our Representative Julie Hamos was positive that it would pass the Illinois Restaurant Association was the lead lobby group working with RJR, Phillip Moms, and Tobacco Merchants Association to defeat the bill last week. According to its web site the Restaurant Association believes the current law regulating smoking In Illinois has worked quite effectively and thus no change in the taw is needed. Effective for whom, who does the IRA represent? Since most Illinois communities have again lost the possibility to clean their air and protect workers all the more reason for Evanston to act decisively and act now. When our recommendation becomes the strong ordinance that our City deserves 18 other communities that still retain authority will follow and sooner than later Illinois will join the growing number of states and nations that discard that economic argument and promote health. Let's celebrate National Health Week. Alderman Bernstein noted he left Mr. Ziegler speak because he is a City health advisor with respect to this issue. We did get the New York information along with a packet from the Chamber of Commerce and from other different organizations. He, as well as members of the Human Services Committee, have been Inundated with memos. The discussion Is now up to the committee. Alderman Tisdahl said she finds the Public Health arguments extremely compelling, and she also rinds are the restaurant and bar owners economic arguments as they know their businesses and knows them well, so we are left with a dilemma and a great deal of admiration for everything you all have done. She was not a part of the downtown development and realizes that is a statement by someone who had absolutely nothing to do with a very successful downtown. Alderman Tisdahl proposed that we ban smoking everywhere except In bars. She realizes that Is not nerfect because wa do not have any stand alone bars but thinks our restaurant are very. very mood restaurants and they will survive and thrive without smoking. That would be what she would want to do. The public health arguments, are clear. Page 3. that Alderman Feldman requested demonstrating why second hand smoke not only smells horrible but is a class "a" carcinogen, unsafe at any level. We also provided a synopsis of communities that have gone smoke free for your consideration, all favorable citizens' outcomes. Also knowing the association would provide you with a report prepared by Deloitte and Touche and the National Restaurant Association we felt obligated to provide an expert critique from the University of Caldomia San Francisco which concluded that the Del6tte and Touche findings are consistent with a pattern of low quality non peer review studies concluding that smoking policies are hurting the hospitality industry and which ignores almost 100 competent peer review studies showing how its effects. The reason there is no negative effect on business is that smokers adjust quite nicely with thinking norms and policies. Many others are only social smokers anyway. Smokers learn quickly to anticipate being in situations where smoking is not possible, they smoke prior to or when leaving situations when smoking is not possible. Most smokers respect other people and refrain from smoking when others are bothered. Since there has been no consideration to date that workers exposed to second hand smoke are bothered let alone seriously harmed, smoking continues unabated in many work places. However, we know too much about the adverse effects to permit any exposure like this any longer. He wants to bring your attention to several new items, highly relevant items since March 1' which reinforce our recommendation. New York City reports a one-year review of the economic and health impact of the law. Please note the departments included health and mental hygiene, also finance, small business services, and the City's Economic Development Corporation. The intent of the ordinance was to protect workers from second hand smoke because they said in the report that 30 minutes of exposure of second hand smoke produces some of the same physical reaction that occurs due to long term smoking and can increase the risk of heart attacks in non smokers. Their report said emphatically, one year later the data is clear the City's bar and restaurant industry is thriving and its workers' are breathing cleaner, safer air. New York City based that conclusion on bar and restaurant tax receipts and employment, business openings and closings compliance, public opinion surreys, and work place air quality and they conclude economic data confirm that New Yorkers love their bars and restaurants and so do the minions of tourists that come there every year to enjoy all that the city has to offer. Thanks to their clean indoor act the bars and restaurants experience is a safer and healthier one for everyone. They reported that prior to the clean indoor act the average air pollution levels in bars that permitted smoking was as much as 50 times higher than the entrance to the Holland Tunnel at rush hour. No longer, its one sixth of that now and shows in the blood tests of their workers. The British Medical Journal concerns some of the things that Dr. Winfield mentioned about the effects on the heart. Since we met last Ireland and Uganda went smoke free, a community near Vale in Colorado, Georgia went smoke free, the state of Idaho went smoke free in all their communities except stand alone bars and bowling alleys. Recently in the last tyro weeks Cook County raised the sales tax 450% on a pack of cigarettes from 18 cents to 82 cents a pack. The County Revenue Director said that the tax would likely cause cigarette sales to plunge 59%. Even smokers are price sensitive. Public Health experts predict that the higher price will spur 31.000 adults to quit smoking in Cook County. That is less reason for businesses to worry about losses since more of their customers wilt soon quit. Al the last meeting we heard repeatedly about businesses, our Chamber of Commerce and some of our elected officials said that the decision about smoking in Illinois should be cited in Springfield not in Evanston. How that plays out in Springfield is after Arlington Heights recently defeated its Health Department recommendation allegedly because all the neighboring communities were preempted by state law, State Representative Krause of neighboring Mt. Prospect introduced a bill, 3996 to over throw preemption so that all communities could decide on their own to strengthen health codes to protect their citizens. While our Representative Julie Hamos was positive that it would pass the Illinois Restaurant Association was the lead lobby group working with RJR, Phillip Morris, and Tobacco Merchants Association to defeat the bill last week. According to its web site the Restaurant Association believes the current law regulating smoking in Illinois has worked quite effectively and thus no change in the law is needed. Effective for whom, who does the IRA represent? Since most Illinois communities have again lost the possibility to clean their air and protect workers all the more reason for Evanston to act decisively and act now. When our recommendation becomes the strong ordinance that our City deserves 18 other communities that still retain authority will follow and sooner than later Illinois will join the growing number of states and nations that discard that economic argument and promote health. Let's celebrate National Health Week. Alderman Bernstein noted he left Mr. Ziegler speak because he is a City health advisor with respect to this issue. We did get the New York information along with a packet from the Chamber of Commerce and from other different organizations. He, as well as members of the Human Services Committee, have been inundated with memos. The discussion is now up to the committee. Alderman Tisdahl said she finds the Public Health arguments extremely compelling, and she also finds are the restaurant and bar owners economic arguments as they know their businesses and knows them well, so we are left with a dilemma and a great deal of admiration for everything you all have done. She was not a part of the downtown development and realizes that is a statement by someone who had absolutely nothing to do with a very successful downtown. Alderman Tlsdahl proposed that we ban smoking everywhere except In bars. She realizes that Is not perfect because we do not have anv stand alone bars but thinks our restaurant are very, very good restaurants and they will survive and thrive without smokinq. That would be what she would want to do. The public health arguments are clear. Page 3. Alderman Bernstein said when we talk about stand alone bars that would mean you could smoke in Pete Miller's in the smoking section, its imperfect, to which Alderman Tisdahl interjected she knows there are no stand alone bars. Alderman Bernstein called for a second to Alderman Tisdahl's motion, and himself seconded the motion for discussion. Alderman Newman said what he is construing as the motion means you would be exempting places like Prairie Moon, Davis Street Fish Market, Pete Millers. whoever they have at the Orrington Hotel, Blue Stone on Central, and a few others that he has not named. Those would not be subject to it but places like Crossroads on Main Street and the IHOP on Howard Street and all the remaining restaurants which are not smoke free will then be compelled to be smoke free. Alderman Tisdahl said that is what she meant by the motion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed with Alderman Tisdahl's statement that there has been a lot of good work done and the information that has been given to us is very compelling. It is obvious to everyone that smoking is very dangerous, he does not smoke nor does anyone in his family smoke and he does not necessarily enjoy going into a restaurant where people are smoking, but he is also charged with the responsibility of trying to balance the issues in the City of Evanston. We have had the argument on the part of the various restaurants that say that if we ban smoking it will impact the state of their business, while there are a number of surveys that have found in many other municipalities restaurants that have not been significantly impacted, we've also received information that says it is. He has discussions with some others on the Council and his suggestion is that we take the Initiative and try to pass a resolution as Alderman Newman suggested that would call for a statewide ban against smoking. To try to resolve the issue of the competition that we would face by other municipalities that offer smoking venues, we aggressively pursue that, and it is his meaning that we ban smoking in new restaurants and new venues opening up, if they are bars or music in the City of Evanston we ban smoking there too. What you would hopefully have is new establishments, presuming that different market would eventually satisfy that kind of need in the City of Evanston. He realizes there are probably a lot of people who are working in environments where they might have chosen not to work in such environments if they had a choice, but he is not sure that he can troubleshoot all of the issues. What he thinks he could do is try to maintain some kind of balance and push towards that position of a smoke free environment, but sees doing this as a process and not necessarily as an event. He would not just say that smoking would be limited to the bars only in those establishments that currently have the ability to offer services to smokers, but move it into the direction of the time to phase that out as new businesses come about. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is his position on this. Alderman Newman said he is not sure on the first motion, but on that motion we have to hear from legal counsel whether or not within the competitive market you can say one group is going to be subject to a law and another group is not, At some point in time under that theory you're going to have all the restaurants that are here now be able to do whatever they want, but any new place that comes in would be smoke free. He does not know if that approach would cut legal mustard. Ms. Brenniman said looking at the other issues too, you have an existing restaurant that sells its business to a new owner, that issue also has to be looked at, is that a new restaurant or a new owner. Alderman Newman said if we are going in the direction of what Alderman Jean -Baptiste is suggesting there is a considerable amount of leg work that would have to be done in regard to it and the threshold is whether or not its legal. Basically everybody who is here now would be grand fathered in and anybody who is new would have to be smoke free and that would include any potential new music dub or any potential new restaurant that was comparable in its operation to Pete Millers' and Prairie Moon and who ever else. We have to find out whether the market place, would be interested in locating here in terms of new places in downtown. That is something he would want to know before the vote. Alderman Feldman wanted to clarify whether the motion included bars as well as new restaurant bars. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said anyplace offering service to smokers, would not be eliminated with this. In looking at other situations where we grand father other institutions or allow certain zoning exceptions, etc., etc., he thinks would be similar. He agrees that we need to do a little more homework in trying to determine whether that's feasible and asked Ms. Brenniman to speak a little bit on other situations where we grand fathered certain rights. Ms. Brenniman said we have grand fathered in license issues, zoning issues, special use issues. It's very common and it may not be a legal issue but at this point she is not willing to say absolutely that its not. We certainly need to look at that and would do that as quickly as possible while you're deliberating on this issue. She wanted to reiterate when you're talking about new restaurants you're talking about new establishments, you're talking about new owners, distinctions that you will also have to make. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said his position would be restaurants and new establishments, Alderman Bernstein asked if a substitute motion is being suggested, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that would be a substitute motion but did not know how Alderman Tisdahl felt about it. Alderman Tisdahl said she wanted smoking ended in restaurants in Evanston and allowed In bars. Alderman Bernstein said the motion on the floor is to ban smoking in restaurants but not stand alone bars, since we don't have any stand alone bars, it would theoretically be in any restaurants, Alderman Tisdahl said it would be in bars and would not be in bar restaurants, like Pete Millers', it would be in restaurants only that don't have bars. Page 4. Alderman Feldman asked if we were to follow that motion what would prevent any restaurant from putting in a small bar. By this motion what you would say is restaurants must be smoke free but places that have bars are not smoke free. He's not giving anybody ideas but it will certainty occur to people if they're so inclined to say okay, Ili take six or eight feet of the restaurant, put four chairs in front of it and the guy behind it who is mixing my drinks anyhow. I then have a bar and therefore am exempt. Are we going to say no? Alderman Newman wanted to go on record and say Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion, while well intended, is a serious motion and we would really need to understand what would happen. At this point in time he would like to make a couple of comments on this. To start with he has never in his life smoked a cigarette, he hates smoking and he is very cognizant of where he goes when it comes to smoking. He buys into a lot of the argument and of course would like to have all the restaurants be smoke free. He respects all the people who want it to be smoke free, but despite what's going on here he does not think the response in our community has been at all overwhelming. The amount of public comment that we got on this, the letters written in the papers are mainly from leadership of both sides. He does not feel overwhelmed In terms of the amount of what he has received. There are some very passionate people out there but we have a different situation up here. Alderman Newman brought up Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion and said 7 or 8 years ago we had nothing In the downtown area. We had little in terms of restaurants or of 24-7 restaurants and we have become an excellent downtown area and we're going to get better. The downtown is a major part of our economy, we make three types of taxes there and the information that we had at budget time was the reason our real estate tax increase wasn't higher was because our local economy, especially in downtown, was better than most cities. The cornerstone of that local economy is the restaurant industry and right now we have an expansion going on downtown. Our ability to expand and grow in that area and to get the cutting edge restaurants, not just bars but restaurants, also to expand and to have growth. If you kill the growth, if you're just happy with what you have right now then when it comes to paying for all of the services that we have to provide to everybody, and we never provide enough, we have to find a way to pay for it. We are struggling as a community and in all due respect if we're the island here, with Skokie on one side and Wilmette on the other, he'll trade places with Skokie hell take Old Orchard. What do you need a restaurant industry for when you have Old Orchard. The sales taxes they bring in from Old Orchard are probably greater than what we bring in real estate. We have the highest taxes anywhere, we have the greatest demand for police services and pay more for that than any other community, and we have the highest property taxes. We are a seriously high tax community and the cornerstone of our economy right now in terms of expansion is the restaurant Industry. What we're going to do here is make the Evanston restaurant industry less competitive than the Chicago restaurant industry. We're going to rely on the theories of people that the non- smokers are going to come in and we're going to have this great influx. He wants the market place to dictate that he doesn't want the law of the City of Evanston to make us less competitive which is why the statewide law make sense. We're sitting here right next to the City of Chicago, we're currently trying to expand our conference potential. If Chicago is smoke free then the day after that maybe we should be smoke free, nut Chicago is not smoke free yet and we directly compete with them. We tried for years to get a music business downtown, we have one that came and spent S250,000 of his own money to go in. We should have told him before that we were going to make him one of the unique music clubs and what he's competing with. To him we should be on an equal pl%4ng field with the people that we compete with. Would he love for there to be non-smoking everywhere in Illinois so Evanston would be on an equal playing field, sure he would. He does not buy into the argument that you can't go to Davis Street Fish Market, because listening to the public testimony you walk into this restaurant you can go 3 feet to the right were the big dining room is that is smoke free. If you want to wait there on a Saturday night you'll have to go over to the bar and if you do that you'l be in smoke. You don't have to go at 6:00 Saturday night and wait at the bar. He's just expressing his opinion, he has constituents that he would love to please with a complete ban, however he also has other constituents who are haranguing him about the high taxes and the tax increase. Alderman Newman noted 6 or 7 years ago that he also had constituents saying why are all the downtown stores empty, what are you doing about that. The leading space filler of downtown office space is restaurants and he wants to be on an equal playing field in terms of our restaurant industry and on the same playing field as Chicago because he is fighting as a member of the Council for a livable City in terms of economics and he's not winning the fight. He's losing because our taxes are so high, every tax we have is the highest of everywhere. People are coming to us in very good faith, as this means everything to them, they don't want smoke, they're not here when we have to balance the budget, we as the managers of the City depend on downtown producing dollars for us. It produces real estate dollars, it produces liquor tax dollars which is an Incredibly important part of our budget, and it produces the fees that they pay for the liquor licenses. If we speculate as to whether well be more competitive or less competitive which is what we need to do, are the people with these studies from the other cities. The way he reacts to these studies is they are all put out by people who have an interest, and we should not believe the other side because they're biased. Alderman Newman compared Evanston's real estate property to Skokie and the amount Skokie is spending on their parks, amounts which we can't afford to spend on our parks. We have the Crown Center on our agenda, we don't have Page 5. the money for it, In Skokie where they banned smoking they have the Weber Center, they spent S50.000,000 on parks 3 or 4 years ago. In a good year we can spend 3 or 4 million and that's for over 5 years. We're broke compared to Skokie. Does Wilmette have to provide the services we do for the poor, he does not think they do. He finds himself very much frustrated and he has some of his own personal beliefs as things he would like to see in downtown that the people in Evanston on a personal level wouldn't want. Therefore he does not try to legislate his personal beliefs, his personal belief is smoking is the worst possible thing that anybody can do, you are totally stupid to destroy your life through smoking. He does not know why people like to go to some of these bars and like to smoke and drink, but has found that the restaurants in Evanston have basically regulated themselves pretty well. Seventy of them have gone smoke free, Dave's Italian Kitchen doesn't want smoking in there its smoke free, the Lucky P1arer made the decision to go smoke free. He thinks the people at Davis Street Fish Market have done a great job of having a section of their restaurant which is smoke free. This is why he feels that Evanston is in a tough position and wishes we weren't there, he wishes we were loaded with money and we didn't have the most expensive police department in the entire northern suburbs, that we didn't have the highest tax rates in every single area. Now we are confronted with the situation where we have one industry that is on the cutting edge and what we're going to do is we're going to speculate and that is what this is about. The people saying there are all these business studies where you can make more money if you go smoke free, they may be right he does not know, but they are asking us to speculate. He's sure they want us to do better and is sure they believe we would probably do better, but he is not the one who invested all the money, he did not create Pete Millers' and put in a multi million dollar expenditure and neither did any of the people who are asking us to ban it. Pete Misters' is a cornerstone of our downtown and we're being asked to say to them after they're investing their million dollars that some part of their customer base is going to go, He does not agree with that and does not think Bill's would have been here if we would have told him in advance that he was going to have to be different than all of his competitors. To sum this up, Alderman Newman said he would love to have a smoke free Evanston but does not want to experiment with our tax base and maybe if we had the type of tax base that Skokie does and we did not have to provide a whole different range of services than Wilmette does. Wilmette is putting much more into parks than we are, they just put aside $25,000.000 to take care of Malincroft. They don't have the population that we do to provide services to and the smoking ban was an easier decision for them. If he goes to Pete Millers, which he likes, he does not want to have to smell smoke on him but he also does not want to manage Pete Miller's for them. He does not want to do anything to gamble in terms of the future for Pete Miller's, Davis Street Fish Market, Prairie Moon, and Nevins' or any of the other restaurants. Looking at Alderman Jean-Saptiste's motion, which is basically a situation of potential for new and growth, he would like to know before he voted on that whether we have the potential to get any more new music, whether we have the potential to get any more restaurants like Prairie Moon in that type of neighborhood. Regarding Alderman Tisdahl's motion he's not going to vote while he's on the Council to hurt the owner of IHOP, she started as a waitress, put in a lot of her own money and Is now the owner. She's a 24-hour establishment and he wants her to remain 24 hours, he's not going to hurt the guy in Crossroads who competes so heavily with Chicago. These are restaurants that are not in his ward but are long time property owners. Does he wish that they went smoke free, yes? in order for us to provide service we need to be competitive and he would love to have a statewide ban. We hear that the state doesn't want to do it and he does not know why they can't rise up to it on a public health basis and make everybody equal, then Evanston's would be equal with Chicago. Maybe Chicago had considered it but maybe theyre not doing it because of their convention business as they're competing with Las Vegas, Atlanta and everybody else. The people who want us to gamble on this do not own any of these places and neither do we. When the downtown is not doing as well we're asked why are there empty stores downtown, what are you doing and why are our taxes so high, so he sees us in a cant win situation. if we had a stronger tax base and we had Old Orchard he thinks we'd be in a position to say okay we don't need to have a great restaurant industry because of all the money generated. if people don't want to go to an Evanston restaurant that has smoking, don't go. He does not want to be unequal but wants to be on an even playing field with all our competitors and the reason why Wheeling and Arlington Heights did not do it. This is where he is on this, it's a strong statement but it's where he stands. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Newman, assuming that we are able to go forward and legally ban future restaurants and music vendors from allowing smoking, does he then see that as creating some kind of competitiveness advantage. To answer Alderman Jean-Baptiste's question Alderman Newman said he thought if you want music in the downtown we have to find out about it by looking at Pete Miller's, the 1800 Club, Bill's, and the Rhythm Room. They all have music and have been an overwhelming success for us but people do smoke at these places. its also been a whole new dynamic in movie theaters that in his view a lot of people come to them because they took different and are different, they have music. Getting Bill's to come in whether he lasts or not is something we were trying to get for a number of years in the downtown area and what he got out of his testimony at the hearing was all of his competitors allow smoking. If its true that people won't go there because there is smoking he'll have to change but he'll change based on his own sense of the market place rather than us making him after he came into Evanston. He would want to know if we have any hope for anybody else and the way to find that out is by directly surveying the people who operate music businesses which we haven't done yet. If that's the direction the Council wants to go he'd like to go in the direction of finding out because at least when we do it we should know whether or not we're killing our growth. If we're comfortable in doing that because we feel that we should be smoke free even though Chicago is not then we should be smoke free in that regard. He would to like to understand it to see if there is some evidence on it before we just do it because the opportunity to make our Page 6. downtown more lively, diverse, and a drawing power for all around the northern suburbs is something we are on the edge of. We are doing something that is great for the City and once the Klutznick project is finally off the ground we're going to have a super downtown. He does not want to take a step back because he knows how long we've worked to try to get where we even are right now. Its not a question of whether or not he'd like to be smoke free he'd like all our competitors with us to be smoke free, and that means Chicago and the suburbs outside of Skokie and Wilmette. Alderman Tisdahl said she knows that Alderman Newman does not want to hurt the IHOP lady, she also thinks she's fabulous, nor does she want to hurt the lady who owns the IHOP or Crossroads she loves Crossroads, but she does not want to hurt small children, pregnant women or heart attack victims who go into those restaurants and that's the choice before us tonight. Her motion would not hurt Pete Mille►'s or Bluestone on Central but would provide more places in Evanston that are smoke free and are public healthy. She knows its not perfect but she does believe from her reading of numerous reports it is more likely to hurt bars than it is to hurt restaurants when you are smoke free. That's her motion. Alderman Newman said about 15 years ago we banned guns in Evanston and it didn't stop guns from being in Evanston through that ordinance and in his view it would have been much better dealing with guns if you had a statewide ban as opposed to just Evanston and Wilmette. Alderman Tisdahl said she agreed with that. Alderman Newman said his reason for not supporting Alderman Tisdahl's motion is that if you accept your position then there would be no reason not to ban it everywhere because you have to be just as concerned about pregnant women who choose go to a place that has smoking if it's a bar, Alderman Tisdahl interjected if you want to be healthy you can stay out of bars. Alderman Newman said In his view if you want to be healthy in Evanston he encourages people that there are at least 70 places that are smoke free. He wants to leave it to Crossroads to decide when he wants to be smoke free. If the community rises up and decides they're not going to go to places that have smoke then they will be heard and then will have to make their own adjustments. That is why he thinks our ordinance has worked well because we left it to the restaurants. Many of them decided on their own to go smoke free because we mandated they have a section, and what they have done on that level is try to have different sections, and it worked. Alderman Bernstein stated he comes down very strongly where Alderman Newman is. It would be popular not only to the members of the community that he has spoken with, but one of his children who signed a petition to ban smoking In Evanston, to sit up here and say in fact we should ban it. in his perfect world there would be no cigarettes but he exercises the right of choice, he does not go into restaurants where he is going to be subjected to smoke. A difficulty that he can't get away from is walking into an office building in Chicago where the workers are outside smoking which to him Is an affront he can't avoid. Unfortunately sitting up here a couple of years ago we expanded the hours of alcohol for our downtown restaurants in order to be competitive. Evanston has no industry, we have no appreciable retail. That which brings in the revenue with which we fund programs to support our poor, programs to support people who need health care, all come from general fund money the largest portion of which sales tax wise is from our restaurants. That is our cottage industry. He started to do a survey but there was a death in the family and he could not complete it, as he thinks the components of this ban are largely talking about protecting the workers. He had occasion to talk to bartenders and waitresses in areas where smoking is allowed and found that the vast majority of those people are smokers and Is not really sure that the second hand smoke is going to be any worse than the first hand smoke. Its not easy to sit up here and he would like to say lets ban smoking. Dr. Simon wrote a letter to the newspaper last week saying don't hide behind the level playing field, we have to because we are in direct competition with the City of Chicago. Skokie has other funds from which they can draw, he does not know that we can afford to preclude any of the people in our restaurant industry from doing everything they possibly can to be competitive. He's been in Skokie and talked to people who are hurting because of the ban. Jack's Restaurant did not close overnight because of the non-smoking, they were going to close and it was a convenient argument that he made. Unlike other decisions he has made up here he is not happy with his decision about this because in his heart of hearts lets forget no smoking, he just can't do that because he does not know where those funds are going to come from and he knows in his anecdotal heart that there is going to be a drop off in town in those restaurants which generates that kind of a cash flow. At the beginning of this discussion he said how crass and callous it was to put the welfare of people against the hard economic facts, that's what we're having to do. He thinks it's non -compelling to make the choice in the short term in favor of that. His position has always been a smoke free state. His children had visited California, they had never in their lives been exposed to smoke in their houses, they managed to associate in the large part with those people who are non-smoking. They loved California being smoke free. We have a choice, I have a choice, and people with difficulty breathing will not go to Pete Millers. Pete Miller's is a wonderful place and he has not been there since he walked through that blanket of cigar smoke 5 or 6 years ago and he cannot go back. Other places where he would love to go he can't go because they have insufficient non-smoking areas, it bleeds over and to him that It Is not non-smoking when you are sitting adjacent to that area. Not only are we forcing non-smoking sections in restaurants but at least in the near future Evanston cannot afford to take the gamble and to him this is a gamble. He apologizes to those people who are well meaning, he knows they are absolutely right because smoking is among the plagues of the world, but right here now in Evanston people are screaming at him to stop the condo conversions. If you're going to try to be all things to all people the funds have to come from somewhere. Our cottage industries have been restaurants and condos. People are literally coming to him and saying no more high rise buildings. We can't extend our cash base that way, we have no more land available for industry, we have no industry. We're never Page 7. going to compete with Old Orchard we don't even have available stores in our cluster to allow us to have that kind of a retail presence so the result is that we have developed the capital of north shore restaurants and even the Chicago area restaurant capital. There are choices available so that people do not have to associate themselves with smoke. He feels for workers and bus boys that can't find other jobs. On the other side of the coin we try to take care of them dealing with affordable housing. We have the largest social services budget anywhere. The only way that we can continue to do those things and try to be all things to all people is to increase our economy, to increase our revenues and in the short term we can't afford to take a chance. Unfortunately his vote will be against Alderman Tisdahl's motion. Alderman Feldman remarked this is a very troubling and difficult issue for all of us and he is fully aware of the conflict that his colleagues on this panel feet and indeed if it gets to the Coumi feeling the same way. There are values that are clear, just, right and admirable and there are those that are necessary and prudent which are in very clear conflict. There isn't anything he heard here tonight that he would not agree with except the motion. He would not agree with that because he agrees with most of the other things that have been said here tonight. Unfortunately he does not think we are all things to all people, as a matter of fact he thinks we're far from that, we struggle to be that. There is nothing of a luxury or Cadillac nature about this community at all. We do some things that other places don't do and we struggle trying to do that, we have a Health Department, we have a Battered Women's Shelter, we have a lot of social services and compassionate programs that other places do not have. Without question every time any diminution expenses comes before the Council it's voted down. its one thing that we must and we have to do, we feel that it's our responsibility to do it. That some kind of inner response to human needs is present right now that all of us would want to have a City that is smoke free. There are people in the audience that could make a decision very easily about that as they see things very clear and exact and he thinks they probably even believe that maybe we're wrong in assuming that this might have an economic impact on the City. He happens to feel that it does and it will. He looks at New York and California and says where are people going to go and looks at other places, but they're not Evanston. Wilmette is not Evanston nor is Skokie Evanston. He does not know how many restaurants Wilmette has, maybe 6. 8, or 10, but clearly its not Evanston. If you were to ask Skokie to put a lid on their retail that there could be no more retail shops that open and if any shop closed in Old Orchard they couldn't open up, you would see the kind of position they would be in. He's not comparing retail with smoking but he is comparing interests, the interest of a community. He thinks we should do everything possible to have a statewide ban on smoking in the State of Illinois, but we have obligated ourselves too much for too long and worked too hard and he does not want to threaten that right now nor does he think it will be threatened by a state ban on smoking in restaurants and public places and in the working places. If we do it by ourselves he believes it will threaten this economy. He appreciates the statement if somebody wants to go to a bar they're allowed to smoke, but what if somebody wants to go to bar and not be in the presence of smoking, they have to either open one or not go. While that seems to be okay for people that go to bars that want to get away from smoking its not true for people who go to restaurants. As a matter of fact we have a great many smoke free restaurants where people can go and he would urge that because he does not go to restaurants that have smoking. There are choices in this community and if there were none we'd have to insure that there would be some, but there are choices. The market place has worked so marvelously in this town. We started out with a smoking ordinance that only insured 20% of the seating be reserved for non-smokers. Within 6 to 8 months that was voluntarily expanded and it continues to voluntarily expand. Those people that don't do it all the way do it for their own reasons and he would urge if anybody is at all disturbed by smoking sections that they just don't go to those places. in the meantime we should all gel together and all work for a statewide ban on smoking as he thinks that would be fair and just and place no special jeopardy on Evanston's economy. 'that's his feeling. Alderman Newman would like us to remember that during the budget process our Financial Director came to us and said that we held up better than other communities because of our activity and the revenues that were being brought in downtown, Most places pay us only one revenue, property tax, a restaurant pays sales, liquor, real estate, and also pays money every year for the liquor license. This is the second year in a row that we raised property taxes between 6 an 7% its not an acceptable rate of increase every year, but based on what he heard from our Finance Director if we didn't have the kind of growth and sustained sales coming from our restaurant industry we would have been at an 8 or 9% increase. Just as a comparison to Skokie we spend 57,000,000 more a year without Old Orchard on police services than Skokie does. Its getting to the point where it is becoming more difficult to fund services here and have this be a livable community. If somebody could figure out how to get taxes to a reasonable level in Evanston we then might be in a position to take on the very serious and important arguments made by the proponents here. He respects all the people who have brought the request here and in their hearts they think and believe they are right and maybe they are. Yet, he sees us as having an impossible task here of keeping the rate of increase of taxes and taking the one industry that we are flourishing on and putting us on a different playing field. Maybe the people who don't have to balance the budget will urge us Ignore it, but they won't be here next year. We've been through 12 budgets, nobody else is going to help us except ourselves in terms of trying to promote investment in this town so that we can have a tax base. Alderman Bernstein recalled Alderman Tisdahl's motion to be voted on. Motion defeated by a vote 1 in favor and 4 against. (Alderman Tisdahl voted for, and Aldermen 8emstein, Feldman. Jean -Baptiste, Newman voted against.) Page 8. Alderman Bernstein noted we have no ordinance to forward to the City Council. Alderman Newman thought in fairness the committee should think about Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion. Alderman Bemstein said the reality is although he would like a statewide ban, a countywide ban would serve his purpose in terns of allowing him to have Evanston go smoke free because we do not compete with Carbondale, or Springfield, or Champaign. Alderman Newman added a countywide ban would be better, and asked if the county has the authority to tell a home rule unit of government that they are smoke free. Ms. Brenniman said right now the preemption is it has passed your ordinance by a certain date of preemption, which they are working to get rid of, it does not apply if you have passed your ordinance priors. As far as a county telling a home rule municipality she does think so but will look at that as she does not think they can overrule our ordinance. The state regulations can do that, county would have to be home rule to do that. She can also took Into that issue. Alderman Bernstein said we have no problem asking our State Representatives, as he has repeatedly for the last several years before this issue came to pass. He does not know how effective its going to be especially in light of the information Mr. Ziegler provided tonight. Alderman Feldman could not believe that unless a restaurant literally wanted to come into Evanston and build a smoke free restaurant, and which is entirely possible. He thinks if the number of applicants or initiatives made diminishes that means that the number of people coming in would diminish as well. The restaurant business is not an easy business. if you go down Halsted Street and Randolph and see a restaurant going out of business and the store is vacant maybe 6 or 8 months later another new trendy restaurant opens up. Rich Melman once told him that a restaurant itself doesn't or shouldn't last more than 5 years with the same kind of theme, it has to be closed and reinvented. He does not know whether that has happened here as we seem to be doing pretty well, but that's the kind of industry that you have. He does not know what would happen H a restaurant closed and another wanted to come in and we say he'd have to build a smoke free restaurant. That would never be a problem if there was a countywide or statewide ban but he thinks that it would place us at a disadvantage in terms of replacing restaurants and in fact even in growing. Alderman Newman talks about the downtown, there are many other sites throughout the community that have restaurants. This is not just a downtown issue, this is a community issue. He has to reiterate that this Council and this City spends so much time and energy and has worked so hard to make a miracle, if you were here at the start you would know what he's talking about. We practically had tumbleweeds rolling down the streets of Sherman Avenue, a third of the stores were closed. If you didn't need a book or a cup of coffee there would be no reason in the world to go to downtown Evanston. We changed all of that to a thriving, wonderful, vibrant, economic, exciting place that is paying off and over the next 18 years will probably bring to our schools 5i00,000,000. That economic activity has just happened in the last 10 years. He does not want to threaten that in any way and thinks people can stay out of places that are smoke tilled. He's sorry, but he thinks they can. You can't say I demand, I deserve, i have a right to go into every single place and should be exactly the way I want it. Life is not like that. Alderman Newman thought with Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion we have a good thing that we can do and maybe people won't buy into it. He questions going forward in new places when they have to compete with other places. In this motion these people have the option and any competitor who wants to build the exact same place as Prairie Moon would have to be smoke free. They have a big place there and could have the advantage over Miller's and everybody else. Its rough competing in the downtown business right now there is a lot of competition there and they have to be creative, some are doing music or something else different. He wants them all to stay. He's not sure that in a competitive market place it works and he would like to have the market place be drawn to Evanston instead of having people coming in the future saying they're not going to compete against Prairie Moon, Bar Louie, Nevins' and everybody else as they can do whatever they want and i can only be one way. He'd want to know what is the potential for growth because if you don't have growth eventually your tax base is going to go the other way. That is something he would really want to know the answer to. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would be open to having some further investigation before moving on and table this for next meeting. Alderman Feldman moved that the Citv of Evanston ban smoking In all work Maces in the Citv of Evanston except for the restaurants and bars. Alderman Bemsteln said he would second that if it could be Increased to, an area around the circumference. around the perimeter In the front of the oroperty. Alderman Feldman said that would include office buildings, dental offices, real estate offices, every single work place In the City of Evanston would be smoke free except restaurants and bars as that Is the only thing that is polna to pass. Alderman Feldman went on to say the restaurant and bar ban will not pass this Council. He does not how many people you're talking about, but you're talking about a lot of the people out of the smoke free environment. Every single building, work place, office, every one that all the people work in all day long will be smoke free except for restaurants and bars. He has not yet once been contacted by either a manager or owner of an office building, or owner of a building where there are shops and offices, saying we can't do that. If we banned smoking in work places which is what the indoor clean air act is, that would have been part of it. There is no settlement for restaurants or bars but he thinks it would be a reasonable thing to do and not place us at an economic disadvantage because there are places already who have said they are smoke free both by management decree of the individual office or the building, yet there are plenty places that are not. That would stretch all across the City, every single place. Page 9. Alderman Tisdahi asked about nursing homes as we have had a lot of problems with them. Alderman Feldman said Mr. Terry, who is not present this evening, sent this committee a message urging us, because of the special nature of nursing homes, to consider nursing homes as residences of the people that live there so that would be working in somebody's residence and that is not included in the buildings. Alderman Bernstein inquired about hotels, to which Alderman Feldman said that would be hotel public areas but not in the rooms, rooms are residences. He does not even have the number of people that would be affected but he has an idea it's very significant. As a matter of fact on a day to day basis probably it affects a lot more people than it does if we ban it in bars. Alderman Newman said he would vote for that but because of our unique situation he has an amendment. As he believes if it didn't affect us competitively with our restaurant industry we would go smoke free, we should do more than give lip service to working on the statewide issue. We need to make this a real effort as he knows everybody says its climbing a mountain, but he completely disagrees with Representative Krause who sees this as a cop out. We would support going statewide because Chicago and everybody around us would have that level playing field. We should actively work for and find a way that we could communicate it beyond just saying n to our legislators. We should actively work for the statewide ban and invest some time and some lobbying effort even it means money, as the issue is important enough. We should try to get the right solution for our town where it needs to be and the right solution is in Springfield. Unless municipalities start doing that you'll have nothing down there as that is the fairest and best way to do it, commit to actively, on a yearly basis, try to work down there even if means sending a couple of us down there on a yearly basis. That's the solution for us and our restaurant industry for growth, to sustain it to live with the rules that everybody does. Alderman Feldman said he certainly would agree to that and would be willing to include that as part of the motion but he must say that our credibility in the issue would be nothing if we didn't do something to speak towards that issue and banning cigarette smoking in the workplace does it. These are legislators and they will understand why we couldn't do it with restaurants and bars but at the same time they also will see that we made a sweeping kind of act in eliminating it in all work places except the two exceptions and for good reasons. He knows a lot of people disagree but he thinks for good reasons. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he will join Alderman Feldman's motion and the amendment. He would also add another E portion to the amendment to make specific requests to the City of Chicago to also pass a resolution calling for a statewide ban. Alderman Feldman said he would definitely accept that. Alderman Bernstein called for any further discussion, hearing none said what the committee will be voting Is for us to direct staff to create an ordinances to take to the City Council to ban smoking from all public work places with the exclusion of restaurants and bars. Also, that we take efforts to see that the state becomes smoke free, on a Yearly basis, likewise with the City of Chicago to join us in our effort to pass a resolution to be smoke free. Motion passed by a maiority of 4-1, Alderman Tlsdahl voted against the motion. Vi, CULTURAL FUND GRANT RECOMMENDATIONS Mr. Gaynor noted that is an annual funding program of the cultural arts division, $24,000 is funded by the City and S14000 is funded by the Arts Council. At the recommendation of the Arts Council the panel has brought together these 38 applicants for your review. This year is the first year that we actually have presented it in this way showing each discipline. He'd be happy to answer any questions as the Arts Council has met and approved this recommendation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved approval, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Hearing no further discussion Alderman Bernstein called for a vote on the Cultural Arts Grant Recommendations, motion unanimously approved f5-01. Vil. ROBERT CROWN CENTER EVALUATiON OF EXISTING FACILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT Mr. Gaynor said this is a recommendation for the Human Services Committee to bring to the City Council to use an additional appropriation that's in the budget to look at conceptual designs and cost estimates. This would be to look at a new facility, same size or a new larger facility to try 10 determine the best location in Crown Park and bring back that Information which will take about 10 months. He believes it wilt then hopefully coincide with better information relative to the City's financial situation regarding lawsuits. He believes the City Manager indicated at that point we should have a better handle and a better idea on how we can manage the finance of this based on the studies that come back. Alderman Feldman said one of the troubling ills that he experienced during the course of his serving on this Council, and Page 10. one that always frustrated and irritated him most, was the lack of proper, reasonable, professional information upon which he would make a decision. Without question he cannot think of a single thing that frustrated him more and indeed affected decision making by himself, and he thinks others on the Council, as that situation where you're making a decision and you don't have either the right information both in terms of quality or quantity. He does not believe that we can entertain or even think about the possibility of doing an}lhing anyplace with respect to the Crowns 1wrictions without taking the undertaking of this study with a caveat that we know that there are people that will be concerned. Then there are some people that would say spending this money is the first step on the road to doing it. That's sett defeating to say that its destructive to your purposes to get information that doesn't do justice to either any member of this committee or the Council and its function as a legislative body. We have to have information if we eventually wile reject, alter, or sustain the report that we get. He knows there will probably be all 3 of those in there and he does not mean to separate each one, but there will be things that we might or might not want to accept out of that. To sit here and have days and days and days go by and have the funds sitting there waiting to be spent on no better purpose, is a crime. The constituency that came out and have urged this committee and the Council to begin studying this is the preface to any quality decision making. Studying and getting the kind of materials and research and analysis that is necessary to do that is indeed the first step. We cannot just sit here and do nothing. Alderman Newman wanted to give a little historical perspective more for the benefit of Alderman Tisdahl and Alderman Jean -Baptiste. All his predecessors on the Council, he's referring those who were here before 1997 and he's not Including Alderman Feldman In this, handled our park systems as a disgrace. We had people in this town who did not at all think that is was necessary to fund an adequate park system. As a matter of fact we had a second rate Little League in this community, all the kids went to play in Skokie because our fields were so bad at James Park. Now because we have improved the fields at James Park we have 28 teams in the Farm League, 50 teams all over. There is an explosion going on in Evanston Little League among kids only because after 1997 the people who were on the Council decided to invest in parks. You couldn't get an Alderman, a Mayor, or a City staff person to spend decent money on the parks and we had a second, third and forth rate park system which he will debate all day withal] the people who were here before him. It affected the poorest neighborhoods in town, we did nothing with those neighborhoods. What we decided to in 1997 was to start spending a reasonable amount of money to make our parks acceptable all across town a didn't matter where it was. The reason we couldn't get the money from our predecessors was the people on the Council wanted to have a zero percent real estate Increase because that what was important. You can't have a park system in Evanston that functions unless you spend money on it. In terms of the park system, he gives Mr. Gaynor a lot of credit for this and gives the Council credit for willing to spend a reasonable amount. The only reason James Park Is a terrific park now is because we invested money in it. We put in Irrigation, we made the fields better, and all the kids that were playing in Skokie Little League are now playing in Evanston. That's probably the best investment that he supported while on the Council. He loves the fact that the fields of James Park are now social gathering places for families in Evanston. What we did was something great and adding the Levy Center there was even better. Where he is going with this is, we are not spending big money in Evanston on the parks and the Crown Center is the most important recreation building that we have. Without any doubt it is the key building for indoor recreation. The report in the packet says we have $5,000,000 in immediate needs. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Gaynor if this a real report or a phony report because he does not know whether or not the way the staff is presenting it to us and the word that's getting out in the community as immediate needs means Immediate needs. We are being told by speakers, coming to our meetings, they think this is some political game that members of the Council are playing because we just want to spend money. He does not just want to spend any money, he wants a park system that's not an embarrassment that we can be proud of, that's adequate not a Cadillac. He wants an acceptable place for kids to have recreation. That's a matter of policy. He seriously wants to know if this S5,000,000 Is for immediate needs or can we just forget about them. He thinks in order to get this building funded there needs to be a consensus on the Council and we're in a really tough time. Should we get rid of the day care program as someone suggests, no body is telling us to keep it there, but he hopes we get people to say we need to keep It there as he thinks we need to keep it there. We have to convince the community that there is a real problem. Do we have a real problem with this $5,000,000 in immediate needs and how compelling is the problem, how much time do we have to address it. If we have 5 years maybe somebody we'll figure it out. Mr. Gaynor said first of all the S5,000,000 was a little inaccurate because the consultant didn't add soft costs. The real number the consultant should have put in that was already addressed in the report and is more like S7,000,000. Immediate needs means we are out of compliance in a number of codes. We've talked about the structure of the building and talked about the building size being inadequate, it does not meet the needs of the number of users that we have. We've lost business because the locker rooms in the building are so sub standard that our adult leagues have left the City of Evanston and gone to other arenas. He could go on and on but al lot of this is In the report. Alderman Newman believes we need a new Crown Center and he wants a new Crown Center to be top quality, however, he does not want to support a penny for this unless the case is made by the City Manager's office that we have $5,000,000. or whatever the number is, in immediate needs so the community knows it and our professional staff Is saying this is what we have. Not the elected officials, but the professionals that we pay who are in the area to know what's going on. We received letters and have people coming to the Council saying this is some political ambition of one of the Page 11. members of the Council, I you think we have 55,000.000 in immediate needs and the building can't wait you need to tell us and you need to tell the community. Mr. Gaynor thought they have adoressed this and talked about the fact that there are no changing facilities for our young ladies. Alderman Newman said the public relations person we're paying that salary needs to put out in the community what the case is on the Crown Center and then let people see it and then they can comment on it. Alderman Tisdahl agreed with Alderman Newman that we should spend the money and get the report, she further agrees that the Crown Center is failing apart. She has spent enormous numbers of hours at the Crown Center and recently took her granddaughter there to a skating class. She can guarantee you that it has immediate needs. Her only concern is she hopes this is the first step toward spending the money on the new Crown Center because we need it, but she does not know where the money is coming from. She is delighted to spend the money and vote for this further report. You can count on her to vote for spending more money on a fabulous Crown Center as soon as she figures out where that money is coming from. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said based on the information presented to them over the past year and based on his own personal tour of the Crown Center it is clear that we have to move in the direction of a new center. As Alderman Tisdahl said we need to figure out where that money is coming from. The last time we met we talked about exploring the possibility of rents, of any funds or any major donations that may be out there somewhere. We have to have vision that is representative of where we ought to be as he does not want us to expand this and have some type of a small scale project that doesn't have the kind of vision to include the kind of activities that we may be able to benefit from. For example, if we want to do a new renter already there are certain givens, the skating rinks have to be improved and people talked about adding a new one. He thinks indoor soccer is a booming reality in this area. His understanding is the one that they had in Highland Park just folded and had generated a lot of revenue. Whatever we do problematically we have to took at how we serve our community because one of the complaints that he hears is that the Crown Center is really not that inviting to the diverse type of neighborhood for the needs of a lot of the youths in the neighborhood. He had a specific direct experience in Canal Park when we were fighting against some elements that should be stabilized in the community and were trying to attract the positive youth who wanted to find something to do. He specifically approached the people at the Crown Center and they were very reticent about allowing who they thought may be potentially unruly kids coming in there. Our centers that serve the community have to embrace everybody and so we have to took at it from the standpoint that we are tying to serve our entire Evanston population as opposed to someplace less exclusive. He knows this because the use of the center generates dollars from skaters and a very diverse kind of interest that dependency to may be to cater to a particular group but we have to be proactive in our vision to insure that we are all encompassing. He would say we need to move quickly to stop the talk and start looking at the possible sources for funding. We need to take positions to say we want to go forward, we want a new center, lets took for funding, The only thing we should be talking about in this next phase of the discussion is about trying to get the funds as opposed to rehashing what we've been doing for the last year and a half to two years. Alderman Feldman admired Alderman Jean-Baptiste's statement but the division laid is one that if right now unlimited. _ The limitations will come and we know that, but the aspiration should not be limited. Let's curb them, but let's not start out censoring ourselves. That's the best thing we could do right now and as a matter of fact the issue he raised which had to do with the change in direction, Mr. Gaynor was with seated in the audience when we said to staff. aim high, tells us what it takes to make a first Gass park system in the City of Evanston. If we can do it we'll do it, but we certainty could never do it without knowing what the goal is, what the community deserves and what the community wants. He agrees with Alderman Newman that we should have a list of one, two, three, four, five, six, etc., immediate needs. Going through the Crown Center he was literally ashamed, it is not what this community wants, deserves, needs, or should have. It must be fixed, replaced. it's a shame and ridiculous that the girls don't have locker rooms, also the way the security system is. One of the other aspirations we have is a basketball court that can be used competitively with stands. As far as he's concerned we should find out what this community needs, aim for it, and then struggle some way to get the money. if we have to cut back that's what we need to do, but that doesn't mean we don't know what we should have or what we want. in life, as well as anything else, the things that he's been most sadden about are things that he has refused to do, not those things that he has done, even the mistakes he's made. Let's not do that. _ Alderman Newman said its different now then 30 years ago when we built Crown and when we built Chandler in the earty 80's, now women's and girl's sports is exploding. 25 years ago FAAM did not have the girls they have now. One of the — Implications about FAM Is they have such a shortage of places to play the kids who are average in sports are not going to get as much time and It's a shame because the space isn't there for more leagues. They have so many girls' and boys' — teams they don't have any place else to go. They practice at Crown but don't play there. There is a need in this tcyvn not just for the advanced girls to be able to play but the average girls. To him any kid involved in sports should be involved = whether they're good, average, or whatever because its fun to be in a sports group. But you're not going to unless you _ have the chance to play and your ability to play is limited right now because of facilities. Girl's softball is also exploding, - being able to have teams and facilities to play in. He appreciates very much and agrees in the totality of where do you _ come up with the money, it's an impossible answer. Unless we are committed and unless we are leaning on this subject Page 12. its not going to happen. When we dell these comments that we're on spending sprees because we want a Crown Center that has an adequate girls locker room for figure skating, or hockey, or whatever, some---cdy has to be out there to the community giving the message hQN inadequate that building is right now. We're going to cet criticized either way, if we don't fix it now, in 2 or 3 years from now well be criticized because we did nothing about Crown even though we wanted to and didn't have the money. On the other hard we have found that every case where we have improved the recreation fatuity more people go to it. Its amazing when you fix up a facility what it does. He thirKs Alderman Jean-Baptiste's comments are right on target and he would be willing to wager that after we Fix up Crown -we have the Vecial needs for youths to go to our recreation centers and A. we don't have recreation centers that are adequate for the 21 century, they're not coming. They're not coming to dark and dingy places, which is what Crown is. We reed to put out the information of the immediate needs report, he wants to spenc the money but he also wants the community to think we're spending it because they believe in what we believe, the building has to have the needs of today. Alderman Bernstein said he does not disagree with anybody and for purposes of the record thinks Crown Center is a pit. When we had the meeting there in December he was appalled by the fact that there are no lockers in our locker rooms, there is not even a pretense of lockers for women. He was frightened by the presence of all the props for the ice show that were out In the hallway when people might fall and get severely injured. Thankfully we haven't been sued about that because we should have. His only problem is also money, he wouldn't have a problem going out for a referendum and letting the community speak about what their requirements are for recreation. We are certainly entitled to a Weber Center or something better than that. His concern is in the way this is structured that it all comes back to Crown and he does not think that space can accommodate a facility twice the size of Crown. We don't have enough open space for softball or a 100-yard football field for the Junior Wild Kits to play football. What we're talking about and what Mr. Gaynor has been talking about is if we double the size of Crown we need additional parking that will take away the space from open space from which is where we're going to get it. We're theoretically going to stay in this space at Boltwood while we build as he does not know where else we're going to build to keep it out of the plateau that floods and caused some of the problems. There is no question Crown Center is dilapidated nor is there any question that it doesn't pay to enhance what's there because its going to cost too many dollars. Structurally he does not think its falling down, he thinks each watt can be covered and his recollection of the report is structurally it is not in such bad condition. Alderman Newman said then the immediate needs aren't immediate, to which Alderman Bernstein responded it depends on what you can immediate. He's talking about esthetics, the fact that you can walk into that building and go through three quarters of the building without anybody knowing you are there, the fact that you don't have a surface in the gymnasium on which kids can play basketball without breaking their legs, he understands all those things. Alderman Newman said then some of the needs are immediate to which Alderman Bernstein responded, absolutely no question. Alderman Bernstein said his concern is if you try to put all these things in Crown and Boltwood Park we're going to be eliminating some open space that we also dearly need. As he has said several times before, he would not mind having Crown be a dedicated state of the art ice rink. It is his understanding that it paid for itself in historical times and had funds available with which we could pay for other facilities. In James Park we have a building that the City Manager wanted for storage, to which Alderman Newman said we already studied that building and it can't be converted for a recreation center. Alderman Bernstein said he's talking about space and his sense is the Crown report is going to come back and say knock it down because it was built 30 years ago in an ineffective way. He's not saying don't use Crown Park what he is saying is don't depend on it exclusively for that kind of center. When we first began talking about this he went and walked the perimeter of the Weber Center and then went over and walked Crown. This was about the time we put in the Skate Park and because we put in the Skate Park we had to take out the basketball court. He does not want to put in a two story facility and then have no place to play soccer or for girls to play softball. All he's saying is when you're talking about doubling the size of this facility on that existing site he thinks it's an over development of that site. Should we spend the money, yes, we've already allocated $200.000 and you're still talking about the $200,000 that we had in the budget 3 years ago which was something we talked about for the initial study which cost us S64.000, we now have the difference of S130,000. He has no problems with that so long as we're talking about programmatic needs. We don't put all our eggs in that one basket and we talk about where else in the City we can look. He asked for and was given a map of the land the City owns looking for open spaces on which we can put a facility like this. There aren't any open spaces on which we can put this facility. We do have a useless building that used to be our recycling center, we have some adjacent space that maybe would accommodate both of these. All he is suggesting is if this building should be expanded lets be realistic and at least determine whether or not this park can handle a size building we are entitled to and we need. It doesn't pay to redo the existing center, knock it down and build one just like it unless you leave some of the programmatic needs out of there. In a new one he'd like to see 2 full ice rinks, he'd like to see everything that everybody would like to see. If a referendum is the way we generate funds with which to do it, he honestly thinks that's the only way we're going to go because he does not see, in the near future, where we're going to come up with something unless you all accept to modify the amendment for the sub committee to focus not only on the Crown Center but also other available City lands. Maybe we put up two centers one devoted to ice and the other devoted to gymnasiums, indoor soccer, skate park, whatever. We have to be very careful, maybe he's the only one that does not think its big enough to accommodate what we want and what we are entitled to on that site. Page 13. Alderman Feldman said let's say the preservation of James Park is a viable and exalting space for recreation and play as a value. That's part of a mix, you have to work with that, and if it means that there's no design and it probably does, that it can be put together without threatening that value then you have to move on to another place. Everything you say is true we have people that use that park and we don't want to take it away from there. He's not saying every inch of it is sacrosanct but certainly one that changes the nature of recreation in Crown Park is the kind of thing you're talking about and taking space away from vital activities. We don't want to increase activities and take it away at the same time, but lets find out. If in fact we find out that there is no way that we can combine an indoor soccer facility with a gymnasium or ice rinks or anything like then we just have to go find another place for it if. tt,at's what we want. He's worried about getting everything we're talking about into one building. Let's get moving and find it out. By the way, this issue of public approval to him is very important. The reason he was attracted to this and he thinks we can get it done is because it is not confined to any given location, interest croup, race, religion, anything else. if this is designed to meet the needs of a diverse community we've got soccer moms, baseball moms, hockey moms. ice skating moms, etc., all over the City. Where else would you have this kind of diverse geographical, ethnic, even and topographical variety, It is important that the constituency be heard and it is not enough that it be heard in this room. This has to be head in the neighborhood meetings, by all the people here in the constituency groups, all the people in the survey that were so vocal about what the needs are, the nursery people, the basketball people, the hockey people, the figure skating people, all those people have to say Is we are going to see it. Without you selling it its not going to happen, this is too much to be foisted on the community's agenda without their support and approval. It has to be sold by the very constituencies that are supporting it and then we'll get it when there are people coming here and not just the familiar faces we always see. Know it's a good reason for spending the money, know that it's for their kids, know that it's for their community, know that it appreciates the property values. For every investment we make in the parks people drive by and say this is a place I want to live and they will pay a few more dollars to buy the house and everybody's happy with that. This is not only an investment in our kids and our society and community it's an investment in Evanston as a sustainable and viable place to live. He's going to say it again, the vocal part of this can't stay in this room it has to be out there, in the newspapers, signed letters, neighborhood meetings, door to door, it has to be we're going to sell it. Right now we don't have anything to sell, but we will have and there will be times when this Council will be looking for all the support it could possibly get and he expects it to come. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he does not want to talk about this anymore. He wants to see something we can consider, of course we will consider it in the context of the priorities of the City but we need to put something on the table to begin looking into it. Alderman Newman wanted to put into perspective that in the mid 90's Skokie took out bonds for under $50,000.000. They have a separate Park Board and we are the Park Board with the Recreation Board. They have a separate taxing body that they can levy taxes. Our other neighbor Wilmette in the last 3 or a years had the referendum on Malincroft for $25,000,000. Then they had two other S10,000.000 projects, one which was the Centennial pool. Alderman Newman said he was amazed about how much more money Wilmette was spending than us because we have not spent anywhere near that amount. One year we spent an extra S2,000,000 on parks and one of the alderman who is stilt on the Council accused us of being on a spending spree, one of the ail time ridiculous comments he has heard since he has been on the Council because on a comparative basis we are tiny spenders on parks. On the site issue, having it centrally located for all parts of this community is a very critical part of this building, James Park is not centrally located and it makes a difference. Having this type of building with a better basketball court centrally located on the West Side of Evanston is an important opportunity as to accommodation of where recreation needs are. He does not want to write Crown off but on the other hand wants to look at whether it's big enough. He does not know where we are on the field because we're irrigating a lot of James Park which is going to make those fields for soccer more usable. Alderman Newman asked if we have added any soccer fields on the Canal, to which Mr. Gaynor said that project is done and is being used, it's a joint project between us and Skokie. Alderman Newman said we need to figure out where those fields that have been used for years for soccer at Crown figures into what we've done to expand and thinks its an issue we have to took at. He would not want to take Crown as a site off the table. If you want to put other sites on that's fine with him. Alderman Bernstein said he is not saying take it off, he's just saying don't use it exclusively. Maybe well put two ice rinks on the West Side of James Park not impacting in any what we've already done at James Park. Alderman Newman said then you're building two recreation buildings, to which Alderman Bernstein said he thought maybe we have to do that. Alderman Newman wanted to amend the motion as he thought one of the issues that has to be debated on the Council _ has to be taking money out of the Capital improvements Civic Center which is a higher priority for Crown than the Civic Center and he totally believes this. At some point in time we have to be clear where our priorities are and to him although he understands the problems at the Civic Center we're going to have to make a short term choice unless we can - completely fund the Civic Center out of new development. If we can't its not a question of comparing priorities, but if we have to go to the Capital Improvement part of our budget, which is the property tax, the higher priority is Crown. He thinks we need a Civic Center and we have aft types of problems here but if he has to spend sooner rather than later he'd want to do on Crown as opposed to the Civic Center which is something we need to be thinking about as we go through the Page 14. Civic Center process because there aren't many kids playing in the Civic Center and its as high a priority to him although it's a big need. If we can't figure out how to fund the Civic Center out of the sale of the land and the site going over into the Capital Improvements budget to him would place this project even further off into the future and he's hoping as a Council we won't do that. That's a decision we have to be thinking about. We should talk about whether we want to advocate with the rest of the Council on this priority. Alderman Bernstein said he's in favor of that too as you know he's never been opposed to renting office space for our Civic Center and not looking to build a new one. Alderman Newman articulated a method by which we could fund a new Civic Center. Alderman Bernstein said he would take that in terms of a sense of where we're going to go from now on. Alderman Bernstein called for the motion on the table that we no forward in an amount not to exceed $130.000 as proposed by the Parks and Recreation Board to do this studv. Mr. Gaynor added the basic study to do is a comprehensive building program which is what will be in there, day care or ice rink or whatever, the conceptual level site plans. How we site it on that park how much more space is needed, are there options to go up, go down, or go under. Alderman Bernstein said Mr. Gaynor is proposing not to study any alternate sites, presuming doubling the size on the same footprint is not going to impact in a negative way. Creating parking to accommodate is problematic unless we decide to sub surface. Let's not forget that we have a vacant building on the south side of town which is accessible to people whose parents can drive them as he understands the lack of accessibility there. Alderman Newman said when we sat in the Levy Center sub committee we looked at that site as the primary first site of the Levy Center we found it could not be used as a recreation building. Mr. Gaynor noted basically you have to tear it down and start over again and you have the parking issue. Alderman Newman said if you get into the parking issue you're Into the gardens and other issues. Alderman Feldman added you're also into the playground of Dawes School and you will knock out tennis courts and everything else. Alderman Newman said we first looked at that building for even a smaller facility, we couldn't do it there. He thinks we should bring back whatever we did when we looked at that building and let the committee look at that study. Alderman Newman asked if we can get up to date in naming the issue, the grant issue, whatever we have to issue to raise money, going to the legislators. We have to explore everything. Mr. Gaynor said they talked with our State Legislators and Senator Schoenberg said there was no money available but there might be a possibility of a financing vehicle preliminary discussion with our Finance Director. He has had three different meetings with the Crown family representatives and they are interested and asked that we keep them posted on the progress. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Gaynor to give the committee a memo on what has been done so far. Hearina no further discussion Alderman Bernstein called for a vote of the motion on the floor, motion unanimousiv approved (5-01. Mr. Gaynor asked if other sites should be looked at and was told this site and other sites should be on the table. At this time, 9:35 p.m., Alderman Bernstein called for a short recess. The meeting resumed at 9.45 p.m. Vill. ENVIRONMENTAL BOARD REQUEST FOR MODIFICATION TO THEIR AGREEMENT Mr. Gaynor reported the Environmental Board had bid S400,00015500,000 to add an addition to the Evanston Ecology Center. The final price came out to S600,0001S700,000 and they made a commitment to pay it all. They have not been able to raise enough funds according to the original agreement and have asked to modify the agreement so they can pay it out over a longer period of time. They feel confident they should be able to do fundraising on an annual basis and make the commitment to pay it off. Therefore, they recommended this agreement which would provide for them to pay it off over the next couple of years. Alderman Tisdahl said she agreed and wants to vote for this but has one question whether they are expanding their board at all. Mr. Gaynor responded, yes, that they are trying to expand their board. Alderman Tisdahl remarked she has names of people that could help them, to which Mr. Gaynor asked if a copy of those names could be sent to him and he will work hard to get additional individuals on that board. Alderman Tisdahl remarked they are a wonderful group, but they are very small. Alderman Newman remarked they are not going to raise the money they need doing the Duck Pluck, even though it's a lot of fun. In terms of fundraising that's not going to be your event. Mr. Gaynor said in their memo they indicated there are a variety of other fund raising efforts. Alderman Newman said he Is not saying there wasn't but he does not know how much time they're putting into that. Page 15. Alderman Bernstein called the motion on the table, the Evanston Ecolooical Association (EEA1 can't meet the obligation and still maintain enounh funds to keen the organization viable and has asked for a time extension wherebv the remaining amount of the loan will be paid in equal payments over the course of the next three vears for aonroximatety $30.000 a vear. Mr. Gaynor explained that the Environmental Board originally had a loan from a bank. They came to ask the City Council to give them a loan, make interest on the loan and save the Environmental Board money because they were paying a higher interest rate at the bank. The City Council approved that but in that was also the terms for payback, they can't meet the terns so they're going to continue with the same program. Everyone was in agreement that it is a beautiful building and a credit to the City. Hearing no further discussion Alderman Bernstein called for a vote on the motion, the motion was moved for approval, seconded and unanimously aooroved (5-01. iX. EMERGENCY SHELTER GRANT FUND FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS Aldermen Newman asked if this is just basically dividing the funds with the same people and was told that Is correct. Hearing no further discussion, Alderman Bernstein called for approval of the Emeraencv Shelter Grant f-indinq recommendations. Recommendation was seconded and unanimouslv approved (5-01. At this point Alderman Bemstein noted the committee was to go into Executive Session but the person that was expected to appear for a citizen complaint before the committee was not in attendance. Therefore, there Is no need to go Into Executive Session. X. QUESTIONS WITH RELATION TO THE TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS SPECIFICALLY THE ASSESSOR'S OFFICE Ms. Eckersall said for the committee's knowledge she went back to the office and looked at the budget. They had a budget of S10,000 for forensics for the year and $25,000 for legal. Out of that they have used a total of S20,747. They have in excess over S13,000 plus In the budget that will be put back in the Town Fund for next year so they did not expend what they thought they would. Alderman Bemstein noted looking at R.S. Hoover's bill he wishes he could bill like that. They get S5,000 an hour for pre- trial time, this is a ridiculous bill, We're entitled to know how you're spending that money. Ms. Eckersall said she would call tomorrow about that bill. Alderman Newman asked if this bill is a misprint, one hour S5,000, to which Ms. Eckersall said she is sure it has to be. Alderman Newman recalled that we had a meeting with the Legal Counsel here to talk about the defense of the case. In all due respect, before we get into S35,000 he wants to know what's going on here, as did all the other members of the committee. Alderman Newman said they met the legal counsel in Executive Session to talk about the case. It didn'tseem like we were going to be spending S35,000 and he thinks we need a status report as to what is going on in the case. Ms. Eckersall said the total amount is S10,747 spent and another $10,000 was forensic so the only thing they have paid Hover & Associates the entire year is S10,747 Including staffs bill that she distributed to the committee. Alderman Newman noted we've paid them S10,000 already, to which Ms. Eckersall responded correct_ Alderman Newman said now they want another $5,000, to which Ms. Eckersall said that S10,000 includes the $5,000 that would be on the budget. Alderman Newman noted the statement says the balance due is $10,805.00. Ms. Eckersall said she put a check mark by what they owe them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought this man is exploiting you to which Alderman Newman added this is a bogus bill. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked not only does he (eel this Is a bonus bill but he wants to move to denv navment, to which Alderman Bernstein said he would second that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said let him come and make a vigorous defense of this kind of bill, If he can have the nerve to send a bill for $5.000 for one hour of fees and expenses related to discovery and pre-trial work. You can't spend that amount of money at S200.00 an hour, he is not going to come and apologize to us and give us any money back if we send him this money. As opposed to making a statement to him to correct his bill we deny it and let him come back and justify whatever the bill is. Why do we have to Identify this as a misprint, he can't see It? Alderman Newman said we're not going to pay this bill because it's a bogus bill. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we paid him S220.00 for the work he did on 2102/04 and 3103104 a month apart. He moves that we pay him S220.00 and we deny him whatever the balance is and let him come and justify his bill, Alderman Bernstein said he did second Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion. Alderman Newman said he also supports Alderman Page 16. Jean-Baptiste's leadership on this issue and totally agrees with it but believes we are both getting to the same thing in a different way. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why we have to take a self -approach to this to which Alderman Newman said what this says is he didn't think at ail about how he was billing us, he didn't read this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there is something beyond this m stake, to which Alderman Feldman added he agreed. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Ms. Eckersall if she ever recewved a corrected bill to which his. Eckersall said that is all they got. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said at this particular po!nt in tame this individual, until its proven otherwise, is exploiting this situation that has been identified. To him this says you have a budget of S35,000 legal fees to pay me. I'm going to get paid that S35,000 one way or another. Alderman New^>an asked that the committee receive the minutes of the Executive Session with this attorney. Alderman Bemste;n reCuested that Ms. Eckersall also get the corroborative data in which he talks about the previous balance find to out how t-e comes to this S5,585.00 he says we owe him. Nis. Eckersall said she has that data. Alderman Newman wanted to ctarfy and make sure it is the sense of the committee, that initially we were all in agreement that we were going to defend this law suit because it was an elected official. This has nothing to do with people somehow saying we don't want to be defending, we want to be defending but we want to be doing it reasonably and prudently because its an unusual thing that we've been doing and we want to make sure its done right. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked Alderman Newman for correcting that because this is not contingent to anything we said we would do. Alderman Newman said there may be a member of the Council who feels differently. Alderman Bernstein said our Counsel had a conversation with our able staff person with respect to what could be forthcoming from the minutes of this special meeting that will be a confidential document. Ms. Brenniman said First of all these minutes have not been reviewed for release under the Open Meetings Act, secondly even if they were this is an ongoing situation and you would not release them anyway. If you want to look at them you certainly could do that but you have to do it confidentially and not release them because they're so confidential. Alderman Newman said he wants to have these minutes in our packets the night that we talk to this counsel so we can refresh our recollection as to what our discussion was when we retained him. Alderman Newman wanted to amend the motion that before any further oavment to this attornev he will have to come to the Council and explain himself. It might as well be the Council in Executive Session as opposed to lust this committee. He wants this sent back to the Council with the words written on the bill "fhadequate for Pavmant" Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought is should read "Urraccentable for Pavment by the Township of Evanston.' Ms. Eckersall wanted to add its not only being handled by the gentleman you met that night but Is being handled by Mr. Hoover and his son. All three of them are doing this and a lot of the work on this has been done out of Lake Forest. The committee wanted to see the bill on this to which Ms. Eckersall said she is just saying to her knowledge she has been to Lake Forest. Alderman Newman said we need itemized bills. Alderman Bernstein asked if Hoover's sons are lawyers, to which Ms. Eckersall said Mr. Graettinger has the Hoovers, Stan Hoover and his son Bob Hoover as the main people who she has talked to. Alderman Newman asked who the lead attorney is to which Ms. Eckersall said it would probably a Hoover that would be coming to this meeting. Alderman Bernstein said he would like to see all the lawyers, we retained. Ms. Eckersall said you retained Hoover & Associates, Graettinger is out counsel. Alderman Bemstoin recalled Alderman Jean-Baptiste's motion and Alderman Newman's amendment to the, motion to be voted on, motion and amendment unanimously avoroved 15-0). Alderman Bernstein noted the Assessor also brought in bills from Hyde Park Computers of Evanston, inc. He noted the bill is for 4 XP Pros and asked if that includes the computer in the office. Ms. Eckersall said over a period of the last 3 years they had to replace computers and it was cheaper when she and Ms. Benjamin went to Office Depot to pick up a new computer for under S1,OU0 with the rebates than to try and rebuild memory into the old one. We had to put different software into the new computers to make them compatible because we have an encrypted system with Cook County and have to be careful what is put on, as it has to be in compliance with the county. This is what Hyde Park did when they came out and as she understands they also do the Citys work. She's not a computer buff and can only go on what she's told. Alderman Bernstein said then you'd have 4 fully operational computers. Ms. Eckersall said they have a server and 4 others, one is coming back from downtown and the 3 in the office right now are hooked to the server so they will have 5 computers. There are usually 5 people in the office, a G.A. person, a summer help person, the girl from the assessment, and Jim and Diane. Alderman Newman asked if they consulted at all with the computer people on the City staff before making any expenditures. Did they help you at all? Ms. Eckersall said Hyde Park called the City because they're doing the City's computers, likewise with the licensing. The City staff refused to help her under their licensing they could not help her. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they cannot share the licensing, they cannot install their software in your computers. Alderman Newman asked if the City staff helped Ms. Eckersall out to which Ms. Eckersall said, no, and Alderman Page 17. Newman asked why not Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked whether or not Ms. Eckersall requested assistance to which his. Eckersall responded, she did not. Alderman Newman asked if either hls. Eckersall or Ms. Benjamin has expertise in computers, to which Ms. Benjamin said she knows somewhat a=ut them. Alderman Newman said we have people on the Citys staff who are dealing with multi mc'iion dollar computer expenditures. None of us on this committee would object to someone on our staff, that we are paying salanes, maybe taking a day and going out and giving you advise as to what you ought to be doing. Ms. Eckersall said they can't do it that they need to go according to what Cook County needs for us to have, to which Alderman Newman sa)d we're talking about individual computers not connec*jng computers. Forget about licensing and using this vendor, in general we have people on our staff who have computer expertise and maybe they can give you some advise on how to set up, where you should buy, etc., and you ought to be consulting with them. Ms. Eckersall said we have stipulations with Cook County not the City of Evanston. Alderman Bernstein remarked when he was the Township Assessor, Hynes came to us for the fast time and asked the Townships to go on line we had to chose from among three select service agency vendors, the only places we could get our computers. He would not even let us use our printer. He asked you earlier if that was the case and you said it wasn't. Cook County is no longer commanding that you go to one of three places. What Alderman Newman is suggesting is we have people in house who can do the same thing that Hyde Park can do at least consult with you to determine whether or not we're getting value for this. Ms. Eckersall said she knows what you're saying but we have to buy the software one way or the other and we tried to gel it through the licensing over here and we were denied. Alderman Newman said it doesn't mean you were denied it means you couldn't use that license it doesn't mean our people over here won't talk to you. Alderman Feldman inquired as whether you can buy a license and it can be used for more than one computer. Ms. Eckersall said there is a S10,000 fine for every computer, we don't need that kind of fine and are tied to do what the law Is telling us to do which is why we're doing this. Alderman Newman asked if they have a web site to which Ms. Eckersall said they have the Township web site that Pat Vance set up. Alderman Newman asked if there is any connection to what we're doing at the City, Ms. Eckersall said no, Its totally separate. Their web site is Chvofevanton.orq and has Township on there. You can go through the City web site to get to the Township. Alderman Jean-Baptiste's suggestion was since we could not connect in terms of Alderman Newman's suggestion, that we have our computer people review this to determine whether or not we are spending money in the best way possible. Also, from now on going forward you can get the expertise that we're paying for. He suggests that our people review this bill and review the expenditures for computer expenses. Ms. Eckersall said they have a deadline coming up, the reassessment is within a month. Alderman Newman said he would like to have a sense from the City Manager's office that our computer people, who we're paying, are available to give advise and assistance to the Township when they're doing something like this. Ms. Benjamin said the reason they went to Hyde Park is because they do the software for the City here, to which Alderman Newman said that might be and we'll find that out. Alderman Bernstein made a motion to get the City involved and have the Cltv Manager determine whether we can provide the same or similar services or at least consulting services to the Township Assessor. Alderman Bernstein called for a vote on this motion, motion unanimously approved f5-01. Alderman Newman noted this will be brought back to our May 3-:% 2004 meeting to make sure its happening. Alderman Bernstein said we could also authorize payment at the next City Council meeting. Ms. Eckersall and Ms. Benjamin said they have been waiting since before March 9t" to get this bill approved and they have to have it approved. Alderman Bernstein said it will be voted on at the April 13" City Council meeting. Alderman Bernstein remarked with all due respect we know when this period comes around so did you have to wait until March to consult with a consultant. You knew that you were going to need to have this up and running. Ms. Eckersall said as long as a lot of the Aldermen are here we're trying to get a date the beginning of May, during the day, for Houlihan to talk about the reassessment and all of you will be invited. Alderman Newman said that doesn't work he can't take a day off of work, lets tell Houlihan we want him here at night. Ms. Eckersall said she tried that. Ms. Benjamin said the plan is they want him to come to support people and do the mapping and the work in the area during the day and then after the meeting with you will go out and drive the whole area. Alderman Bernstein said what you're talking about is what we used to do, convene a group of real estate brokers and people to tell him how one neighborhood coexists or is like or unlike another neighborhood. Hines would never come to that meeting. We're talking about a generic reassessment, its field people who actually go out and physically survey a city. We don't want to see him in the context of that. Alderman Bemstein thought we could call him and thinks he'll accommodate us. Alderman Bernstein said there was one other question with respect to the bills list, S3,000.00 plus for supplies, what are you buying? Ms. Eckersall responded Pat Vance's office wrote a check to Office Depot for that amount. In that amount there was equipment that should have been disbursed properly and it was not. On the final summary for the Township it will be equally put in the right category. Included in that was one computer, a lot of cartridges for the printer, we also Page 18. have a colored printer in the office. Alderman Newman said we need to see a detailed bill with a breakdown of where those supplies are. Ms. Eckersall said if you ,want us to do that every month we'll be happy to do that, to which Ms. Benjamin said whenever she turns in the bills she always includes all the receipts. She assumed that you folks were seeing what we we've been doing. Alderman Bernstein noted that all the bills have been approved with the exception of the 55.000.00 legal fee and the question will be asked of City Manager with respect to this Hyde Park computer bill. Everytning else will be on the bills list that we will vote on tomorrow night. Ms. Benjamin said they work very hard there and put in long hours, she even spent her own money on the office to reflect comfort there so that people will enjoy being there as it takes a lot of pain out of what can be a painful situation. Alderman Bernstein said we don't want you to soend your own money the Assessor has sufficient funds available with which to outfit your office in an appropriate way. He thanked Ms. Eckersali and Ms. Benjamin for their attendance lonighL Xl. DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINT AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Bernstein said he originally was instructed that there was going to be a complainant to talk to us who didn't appreciate the finding of the Police Department. He did see somebody earlier In the night but they are not here now. Alderman Bernstein called for questions and comments on the consideration of police complaints against police officers. He questioned why a lot of the cases are SOL (Stricken Off with Leave) before they get stricken or lead to reinstate. To him that was always a red herring that the policeman didn't have a right to stop and SOL the cases to hearings. Why do we do that, why don't we just proceed with these cases? Chief Kaminski said a lot of these cases will be SOL because the officers won't appear in court. We instituted a new policy that officers had to be subpoenaed on all misdemeanors not necessarily on the first time up, they may get SOL. We only sent our officers to court when they get a subpoena because were running into the hire back issue of last year. We were running into a deficit and did that last year as a result of trying to cut back on the hire back and the over expenditures. We talked to the States Attorney and the Judges about it. Alderman Newman said that's a serious policy change and asked how about talking to us about it, did you talk to the City Manager's office about it to which Chief Kaminski said he did. Alderman Bernstein remarked it is still dangerous and if the States Attorney knows about that policy they're entitled to a continuation the first time the case is up. Why don't they just continue and subpoena you if they can't work out some agreement. Chief Kaminski responded, that's right, but he can't speak for the States Attorneys office. Alderman Newman did not want to be disrespectful in anyway because he understands you have budget problems, but he totally does not understand this. Is he wrong to say that the business community of Evanston has a major problem with theft? When you say we're not going to show up on a misdemeanor, to which Chief Kaminski interjected, he did not say we're not going to show up he said we have to be subpoenaed. Alderman Newman tiled as an example, we have a misdemeanor of criminal damage to property of graffiti on a garage, you're saying our police don't have to go to which Chief Kaminski said they'll go when they're subpoenaed. Alderman Newman asked for what reason we're putting it in the hands of the state then they're letting all these people off. Forget the state, they don't care about Evanston, do you think he wants to depend on Richard Devine's office to decide what's important to the City of Evanston, he does not. Chief Kaminski said the case Is going to be handled by the State's Attorneys office whether or not the officers are there. Alderman Newman said a lot of misdemeanors in Evanston are serious and if we just left It out as a budget item we should have been told about this. This Is important to him. to cite as example, if somebody's downtown isn't it a misdemeanor to ask somebody for money, disorderly conduct is a misdemeanor. Chief Kaminski said disorderly conduct is a misdemeanor but if we do we do it out of the Panhandling Ordinance. Alderman Newman said d somebody is picked up for misdemeanor theft, and theft is a serious crime in Evanston to the business community and everybody, prices go up besides there are businesses that have left Evanston because of theft. Right now what we have is somebody not charged with felony theft. We have a situation where our police officers do not have to go to court they only go if the State's Attorney and Cook County decides to issue a subpoena, which is a great concern to him. If the State's Attorney decides he does not want to push this case these people walk every time unless our police go and they're not going to go because they have to be subpoenaed to go. The State's Attorney is not being informed about our cases and they can just walk away from every one of our cases. It's a great thing for defense lawyers. Chief Kaminski said he did not think we've taken less concern about any of the cases. Even if the officer Is there at the case its still going to be the State's Attorneys decision whether they're going to move forward on the case or not. We could have the officers sit there and not have any input on the case if the victim doesn't show up and there's a routine usually on the first time. He's looked at the way this process is worked and does not think its hurt our system in the long term compared before or after. He's talked regularly to Steve Gobel about it and about our cases and how well we're doing and even though policy is there does not think it has hurt our relationship of moving forward on any cases. If they feet it's a good case that they can move forward on then theyll move forward on. We've thought about whether we should reinstate the policy based on how the budget's going, those are tough decisions, but he doesn't think it has hurt the quality of our cases. We can always go back and re Institute Page 19. or put the case back on. Alderman Newman said this is very important to him as a member of the Council, he does not have a problem with coming up with new polices, but when there's a budget reason when the City Manager's office and the Police Department are making a decision on whether or not our police show up as witnesses that may effect cases he'd like to be informed. This may be the right way to go if we can have some information on it, possibly he'd be open to it but the problem he has is he does not think the criminal justice people at the State's Attorney have as much appreciation for the problems that we face in Evanston as our police do. If our officers aren't there, if they just show up when they're subpoenaed then there's not a consultation on the cases. He wants to understand before we stop sending witnesses whether the police help when they're there getting the complaining witnesses to come in. As an example, the Lucky Platter case, that guy was arrested 50 times. If he would have been locked up in some of those 50 arrests maybe he wouldn't have been on the street when he did the 51 st theft. He would want us to understand here what the impact of our ability to prosecute misdemeanors is because this is a budget issue. He has someone in his ward who is a professional misdemeanor. Chief Kaminski said we've always looked at those problem people and he has even sent letters to the State's Attorney for the files on those people. Alderman Newman asked if the Chief has any information as to how long we haven't been sending our police officers unless there's a subpoenaed. Chief Kaminski responded, for the last couple of years. Alderman Newman asked whether we have information on how its affected prosecutions on misdemeanors. Chief Kaminski said he talked to Steve Golen about it and we don't have the data because we don't have the ability to track the cases once they go to court. We don't get the disposition in an automated format where we can look at all that. That's all done at the County system, all he can tell you is he asked about the quality of our cases and our prosecution and he's very happy with that, When we went there and met with the Judge she made reference to that and also when he spoke with her before, mentioned should we have all the officers out there. He said he would reconsider looking at the policy based our how our financial situation is here. Steve Golen has been very cooperative, he understood the problem that we were in a deficit, we were cutting positions, and was very supportive of it and as of today he still is. If we can look back and see if its going to be a more significant budget impact and yet not impact on the quality of the prosecution its going to mean more money will be put into it. Alderman Newman wanted to clarify how this works, if the States Attorney doesn't send a subpoena in a misdemeanor case for whatever reason for the police officer no matter what role the police officer plays in that, our police officer just doesn't go. Chief Kaminski said the State's Attorney will review the case and then they'll send a subpoena for the officer. Alderman Newman asked if we have found whether they are issuing a lot of subpoenas, to which the Chief responded, they are, we're the only department that has a full time civilian person there every day that monitors all of our cases, the quality of the cases, and makes sure if the officers are needed are out there. Subpoenas come every day. Alderman Newman then said, because we're not sending the officers do we know whether we're getting more SO Us. which the Chief said he really could not answer because he does not get that data, but he will be glad to ask Deb Wilson our Court Liaison Officer what she feels about it and to monitor it. We wouldn't make any decisions that would negatively impact on our ability to impact on crime. We're all trying to be cost effective and balance the budget and look at better ways to work smarter not harder because on the first time up the officers would have to sit there for 4 hours, when for 15 minutes we're paying them for 4 hours which is also a waist of their time. Alderman Newman said he totally agrees with that but how does the police officer who doesn't go the first time track that case. Does he forget about that case and the only way that he'll ever go back is if the State's Attorney decides to subpoena, to which the Chief said that's correct and then well monitor the cases that are out there on the court calendar, Ms. Wilson will monitor all the cases for us. Alderman Newman said if our police officers are not there on certain types of cases then we're not educating the State's Attorney as to whether or not its an important case, he's talking about a misdemeanor problem. Chief Kaminski said if the system is going to work then the State's Attorney has to do his job and prosecute the cases. Whether or not the officers are there does not necessitate whether the State's Attorney is going to do their job. We can have the officers there on every case and the results may be the same. Alderman Newman said he sees that as a legitimate concern but Just wanted to know if our officers don't go the first time does an officer just decide this isn't an important case and he's not going to go because he's not subpoenaed. Chief Kaminski said the officer has to be subpoenaed, they keep monitors of their case files. They're only going to know this if Ms. Wilson does a report based on those cases if they're closed out or not and the officer will get a copy of that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Chief if the officers consult with the State's Attorney once they make an arrest. Chief Kaminski said not on misdemeanors we make ourselves its only felony review. Any felony in Cook County has to get a prior approval by a State's Attorney before the charges are lodged. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how the process works once you make an arrest on the basis of a misdemeanor. Chief Kaminski said the paperwork goes through the process by going out to the court to make bond, if they're free on bond, if not they go into the judge for the bond hearing and the paper is then placed into the system and will be set for a court date and the process will continue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if once its set for the first court date the State's Attorney evaluates the case, to which the Chief added from the prospective of whether or not they can prosecute it or not and if the witness is going to cooperate, all those factors will be included. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said you don't know whether a State's Attorney gets the case, calls Page 20. all the witnesses to determine their availability. or talks to the officer. Chief Kaminski said if they need to talk to the officers they will subpoena them, they should be reviewirc those cases before they go to the court call. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said what we need to correct is there should be some consultation with the arresting officer before there is a decision to just SOL the case. Chief Kaminski said then all t~e officers will have to go out to court, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why can't there be some phone calls. Ch-ef Kaminski said it's really the type of system where with all the officers and all the States Attorneys working all the days off and all the shifts and everything it would tough to get all those dots connected on any given time. Alderman Jean-Bazttste said it sounds to him that if the State's Attorneys office dedicates a Assistant State's Attorney or clerk or somebody who is trained to follow up with the officer to determine whether or not the case appears to be weak, there should be an attempt to go after that individual because that individual is a repeat offender or something of that nature. It seems to h;m that is what we need to fix. Chief Kaminski said the State's Attorney has all that at their disposal, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not saying they do not, what he is saying is independently the State's Attorney's office doesn't have the interest of Evanston and in particular certain neighborhoods where there is repeat activities going on that we .'ant to troubleshoot. He thinks the Chief agrees with this, to which the Chief said he could not say that the State's Anomey's office would give one community less service than another. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he was not saying that, what he is saying is an officer may decide to arrest a certain party in the community for a number of repeat offenses, yet the State's Attorney is letting that individual go. If there was some consultation then at least the State's Attorney would know to be giving priority to this case not SOL it, even if may be a week because that individual needs to have some kind of lesson or response. Maybe it Is from our end that we need to communicate with the State's Attorney's office and say this individual consistently breaks the rules or whatever on that basis, and you need to find a way to bring this individual before the court, we make an officer available and try to pursue that case. He agrees that we may not need to be there but we may need to target certain repeat offenders to ensure that our cases are being addressed in the way that we would want them to be addressed and to a certain extent leave the discretion up to us. We are trying to vary the two interests, to which Chief Kaminski said he understands focused cases are problem issues and we try to make sure the system works the way everybody would like it work for every case. We have to understand we make a lot of arrests and have a lot of cases and other than coming up with a dear cut policy that everybody is going to court the first time out, or we come up to another system maybe for these sort of cases, or we make sure that in those reports going out there it is dearly indicated the type of case we're dealing with so when they review those initial cases none of these subpoena the officers. It's a tough one to come to grips with. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if we identify certain individuals in certain neighborhoods as being key people who are causing the instability. When we get a chance to put our hands on them and they have committed some kind of offense can your officers be empowered to communicate with the State's Attorney the necessity to subpoena them to come to court or however you do it to make sure that there is some follow through with these particular individuals. As you remember we had a couple cases when the neighbors were working on particular problems trying to regionalize particular individuals and the time the neighbors felt the most in power was the time when police found this individual in a situation where they brought charges against them and the neighbors were w1ling to be mobilized to come and pursue the charges. Chief Kaminski said those cases are not the normal routine cases those are the exception that we would focus on and the PST guys would work on those cases individually. They'll have a little more leeway in what they can do with those cases. You have to understand we have shop lifting and other kinds of cases on a routine basis that those officers have to decide, if you had a list of offenders that you only go to court on these people it would be difficult to make the decision. Alderman Newman said then we don't go on shoplifting unless we get a subpoena, to which the Chief said that Is correct because many times the officers won't witness the event it has to be up to the store keeper to be there to prosecute and the officer will sit there for 4 hours, to which Alderman Newman said on shoplifting that's okay. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked then we basically agree that those individuals get special attention. Chief Kaminski said when they problem solve an issue as they have done for Alderman Jean -Baptiste and certain neighborhoods that's a different approach. We pull all our resources and the State's Attorneys focus on that problem whether its misdemeanor, speed tickets, or whatever to eliminate that problem. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question regarding Lucky Platter, if in that particular case the man was constantly arrested. Chief Kaminski said what's more important than the officer being in court is the witness has to be in court. Alderman Newman interjected the police officer as a facilitator or somebody from our staff has to get the complaining witness there. Chief Kaminski said the State's Attorney also has to subpoena that witness to be in court. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed that there should be some discussions with Council that there is a departure here on the basis of the budget, this is how we're doing this now and give us a chance to do something about it. He's also concerned that individuals who have been arrested 50 times are still on the streets. Alderman Newman added one of our guys, 97 times. Chief Kaminski said they just had a record this weekend of an 82 year old lady they arrested for shoplifting at the Jewel who had been arrested 26 times. Alderman Newman said in that case he does not care how old she is, we should have our officer in court every single time. Alderman Bernstein said we're here tonight for the complaints. His concern with respect to these complaints is the reason he brought up about a SOL. In this kind of case people have filed grievances against the Police Department for an alleged bad cop. He Is suggesting you send an officer out on those cases because later we may get sued and the first thing that comes up is whywasn't the officer there. It legitimizes the complainer's complaint. When he used to do this that was the Page 21. first thing he wanted to know, what happened in court, v.ere you convicted because if you were convicted it diminished the opportunity to come back and sue because there is an independent body that made a determination beyond a reasonable doubt standard. He understands why you don't wEnt to send policemen where they were facilitating just coming in and arresting. He didn't see a shoplifter, or see so-nebsdy enter a house, or somebody hit somebody else, he's the arresting officer. If our victim witness people can facilitate that's one thing, he Coes not have a problem with police testimony for those types of situations. Anytime there's a pe-spective lawsuit against the City of Evanston he thinks you're hanging our cops out to dry. Is he wrong in thinking than What he is saying is where is the probable cause we spend a lot of time on our profiling. This evening he saw someone walk in that he knows in this town for the last 25 years, one of the people who's wife wrote us a letter and was going to come to talk to us tonight. Those people will sue us, and if they sue us the first question is what happened in court. % a had a resisting charge it was also old because the policeman chose not to show up, the implication is he didn't show up because he knew the arrest was bogus. Alderman Newman said he did criminal defense for 5 years, and knows from his 5 years of experience in defending is the police subpoena when there's going to be a trial, When you're in the business of arresting people you want there to be consequences. He understands the part of not wanting to have an officer sit there on the first appearance because you know nothing is happening. But there is a point in time to have contact on these arrests with the police on some type of defenses. This is a policy thing he would like to have more information on and why we're doing it because of budget. He would like to find some type of middle ground for the first appearance. Until the State's Attorney subpoenas them they're not there, that means on every single court appearance in some cases our police will never inform the state as to how important it is to stop theft. Shoplifting is a major problem in Evanston and we have to push them on that to prosecute our cases. Chief Kaminski said the only other fall back position that he thinks can be looked at with something like this, and which he himself has thought about, is to have them appear on the first tail and then wait until there's a subpoena for the second or third. Before he would do that he would like to make sure that the system is working. Maybe it would be better for the second call to be cost effective to see how to do this and maybe only eliminate it for the thefts that we don't witness which are policy decisions that have to be looked at. Alderman Bernstein said he has a problem with police not showing up in any situation with a civilian witness. If you're not a current witness there's no reason for you to be there other than maybe to transport the witness. He's already noted the issues he's concerned about from this standpoint. Clearly if there's an issue like this kind of a situation that could cause doubt for maybe a group to mobilize and maybe to walk to the courthouse, Alderman Newman suggested as far as the criminal justice system out there we will get as little as we try to get and if we don't have a conscious effort to try to have it out of that system, he's talking about sentencing and taking things seriously. If we happen to have an officer who fines someone on criminal damage to property who did something to a garage, he does not want to wait until he gets a subpoena from the State's Attorney. If we find one of these guys on misdemeanor who is writing on a garage he wants our officer there every single time. The state will not get a sense of how we feel about certain things that happen in this town and unless we push the judges in the state we're not going to get as much as we need for our town. If an officer sees somebody writing on a garage you dam well better be there in court the first time, the second time, the third time. If it's a question of a civilian calling and saying they have graffiti and he saw who wrote it police have no reason to be there. Alderman Newman said if he doesn't have to be there on that type of a case fine, but he might be a facilitator to _ make sure that witness is there and to let them know at some point what it means to our town in terms of graffiti. When we catch somebody it's not just a misdemeanor case where we're going to count on the complaining witness. The police department has to push that system to deal with that person who's caught, not the complaining witness. The police department has the ability to say to the state this is a hot rase because we have this type of problem. If they're not saying then we're not having our message communicated. Alderman Bernstein said he would suggest to you its not the policeman's duty to do that, it's our responsibility. Alderman Newman disagreed with that. Alderman Bernstein said it's our responsibility to say we want you to start taking these things more seriously. At times policemen have to be there but he does not see any reason to waste their time for cases when theyweren't there. Alderman Newman said because a police officer is never there each one of those cases is going to be adjusted by a plea and nothing is going to happen. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said usually the witness is not even asked to testify the first time up. Profiling is a waste of time for the policeman. Alderman Newman agreed but Alderman Bernstein said that is not true. Alderman Bernstein said first time up on a misdemeanor if the complaining witness is not there the case is gone, to which Alderman Newman said not necessarily. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said often the complaining witness is not asked to come to court but is subpoenaed for the second Gme, to which the Chief said the first time up the witness is asked to be there. The Chief said the officers give the witness the court date and time to be there and then the State's Attorney is supposed to make sure they do subpoenas for everybody to be there the first time. Alderman Bernstein said if the witness is not there the first time 90% of the judges wilt pitch the case because its not worth bringing it back for a second time. if the policeman is there then they ask the State's Attomey to continue it, there's no question of that, but that to him is an unreasonable burden because if the complaining witness was not there the first time why wasn't he/she there the first time. Alderman Newman said we're the ones of the City in making sure the prosecution happens. The complaining witness has an individual decision Page 22. to make whether they shah but for us on the issue we are the ones who have lost businesses over time because of theft, so we have an interest in making sure that if we have people who are going out and making stores, in some parts of Evanston, not profitable because of a lot of theft and we won't have tenants there and other retailers are hearing about Drat. His position on a retail shoplifting is he wants to do whatever we can to get the complaining witness in there. A:derman Bernstein said on a retail shoplifting the merchant is more aware of the loss than we are. If they have a security force that person will be at that case. Alderman Newman asked what if we caught someone who had 20 prior arrests for misdemeanor thefts, aren't we in a better position to know when we have their sheet and Nye have the officer, this is a person who has been arrested 20 times and he does not want to wait for the subpoena. In that case he wants to have the officer there every time to push on that person and if the complaining witnesses isn't there he wants the officer to find them. Chief Kaminski said we don't track and target people by their criminal histories, we work on problems in neighborhoods with individuals. There is no way that we would be able to track people and send officers to court when they reach a threshold on the number of arrests they've had, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why not. Chief Kaminski said it wouldn't make sense, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought that would be very consistent with your broken window theory because if we tolerate that kind of pattern then that individual will feel he can continue to get away with what they're doing. Chief Kaminski said the State's Attomey gets those rap sheets at the bond hearing. Both Alderman Jean -Baptiste and Alderman Newman said they don't care about us. Alderman Bemstein suggested this be continued for another time and his sense is that we should have a non-swom officer in court, and asked the Chief what is doing with Victim Witness. Chief Kaminski said they'll be there for the victim support on the street, domestic violence, sexual assaults, or for serious violent crimes. Alderman Bernstein thought the policy should be reviewed with respect to cases where there's a complaint filed against an office. Alderman Newman wanted to clarify he thought the Slate's Attorney's office, considered the resources it has tries hard and thinks they care about everything. We care the most about us and we understand us the best. In his experience if we want to have more in terms of the effect on misdemeanors, which are a serious problem in this community, we have to be the ones pushing the State's Attorneys office. That's the nature of the criminal justice system and in his experience doing criminal for 5 years when you have a witness whether they're a complainant, civilian, or police office, that pushes harder and you get a better prosecution and a better sentence. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we are basically in agreement, as the Chief says the reason why this policy was instituted was because he lacked resources. Alderman Newman interjected, no, they were pulling $17,000.000 a year, they don't lack resources, he understands trying to save money but we were not made aware of this new policy. Chief Kaminski said they looked at policies several years ago when you asked us to look at hire back. We said the expenditures for hire back was one of the areas, which we looked and was very high. We pay officer's minimum full time and when they go every case that's more money for court time. Are they really needed In the system during the process? We have done well over the last several years with the process and moving it through the system. Alderman Newman asked did any of us understand that because of the hire backs we were cutting down and changing the policy. Alderman Bernstein did not necessarily think, in most instances, we are hurting ourselves. The complaining witness is the person who has to be present the first time. The presence of the police officer who only made the arrest is of no consequences; in fact to get the guy there for the second time so the officer has to be there twice when he's not going to testify once. Alderman Newman said a blanket policy, if you only wait for the subpoena, means you'll never be there until they decide they're going to have a trial, Alderman Bernstein's concern from our standpoint is where there is a complaint filed he thinks we have to get this change of policy if the guardian and the officer are there to prosecute the case. If the case could not be prosecuted then the officers should not have been there to begin with. Alderman Newman said if you're there on the first date as a police officer you now know what's going on when the next date is, and when its possibly going to be up for a pre trial conference. At lease you know something. Now you have made the decision to completely rely on the state and the state will settle the case without perhaps the complaining witness being there, without anybody being there. Alderman Bernstein said you cannot settle without a complaining witness being there, they can pitch the case they can't settle it. No defendant's lawyer in his right mind will enter a plea if there's no witness standing there. He's going to come back to the next time and hope the witness doesn't show up again. If the complaining witness is there the defendant says okay he's read the report, bring out your witness, we're pleading this out. Take your supervision or probation and go home unless you want to try the case, we'll bring your witness in the next time if there's a policeman that saw anything he'll be there the second time because the state will subpoena him. In 99% of the cases the police will be the arresting officer. Alderman Newman asked if the officer goes on the misdemeanors where he's the one who viewed it and was told no. Alderman Bernstein said unless he State's Attorney understands that you're not going to be present and in looking at the record that he can absolutely prove this case he'll call you In for the second time especially if there is an officer who is a witness. Alderman Newman asked it there is any way of knowing whether more of our cases have been dismissed since we've entered into this policy, to which Page 23. Chief Kaminski said he would have look into that, Alderman Newman asked whether it would be valuable for us to know that it we cut back because of this hire back issue and if we knew that we were getting a tot more dismissals of cases because our police are not there on the first date. Wouldn't it make an interesting decision for us if we knew we were going to have a higher prosecution rate and better of hope of conditions and response on problems? Wouldn't we want to have the choice to perhaps spend the money if we knew that would be improved, he knows he'd like to know that. Chief Kaminski said neither do we have any control over the effectiveness of them as prosecutors. If there are good State's Attorneys theyre going to have a good prosecution rate as opposed to other State's Attorneys. Alderman Newman asked whether we have any idea whetner our cases are being SOL because we're not sending the police, to which Chief Kaminski said he would ask about that tomorrow, as he does not know. Alderman Bernstein said we can get the common law records and see on an Evanston day how many cases are SOL. Chief Kaminski said we don't have a regular computerized system to look at cats for service of other things for that. We can run data; you can't do that at the County nor just for Evanston its dtffiicult data, as they don't have a system for that. They can give us a global number of SOL cases, but 0 he asked to look at Evanston compared to Skokie or Wilmette it would too tough. Alderman Bernstein said our cases come up in courtroom 104 on the third Wednesday of the month and we then go to the court sheet on that Thursday open the file and see how many cases are SOL. Alderman Newman said if Ms. Wilson is there every day then maybe we should bring her in to talk to her about this and find out if we've created a problem in what we're doing. He's open to saying maybe we haven't. Alderman Bernstein did not think we have except in circumstances where we are at risk. Chief Kaminski said he looks at this all the time because he's concerned about the quality of the way we appear in court. We're part of the process, but they have to do their job too just as his men have to do their job. He works with them out there to make sure they know what we feel is important for this community and the only way he's able to do that is by talking with Steve Gobel and hopes he filters it down to the prosecutors just as he gives the information down to his officers, Alderman Newman said it is very hard when you're in a criminal court system that has murders, armed robberies. and aggravated sexual assaults, they're not going to get excited about a misdemeanor theft and theft Is a big part of our crime here in Evanston. In his experience the state and most prosecutors aren't as excited about property crimes as they are about physical things that have actually happened to people. We have a problem with misdemeanor theft in this town and if we don't push them they won't take it seriously. Business is potentially not locating here in some cases. Alderman Bernstein agreed with Alderman Newman that we should send a message that we care that people steal in our town, but we have to send the message to the business owners that when they're a victim of a shoplifting they must appear in court and must continue to appear in court unless the judge says they don't have to until they're called. Alderman Newman said the point he was making is regarding a policy of just deciding to unit for them to subpoena. He's not saying it isn't a good decision not having them sit there for 4 hours on the first day. What worries him is that a misdemeanor such as panhandling, if the officer viewed it how does he get these people in the state system to know when an officer sees somebody harass somebody. They don't care about disorderly conduct and panhandling there. Alderman Bemstein said on that case officers can collaborate but he can't tell the judge what was in the panhandler's mind, to which Alderman Newman said they're not going to even if they saw it. Alderman Bernstein said there are circumstances where our policy probably is not effective and he is guessing that some of the time it does not make any difference whether or not we're there because we have no reason to be there. Alderman Newman said on sentencing if you're a policeman and you push the state harder when there's a conviction you'll get one. Alderman Newman thought it would be interesting to have an Executive Session to see the rap sheet and go over what happened with the Lucky Platter case because that's only going to cost us $5,000,000 or some amount of money. That was a misdemeanor theft and it would be unbelievable to him under this policy if we had somebody who was arrested 50 or 70 times. On that case he wants an officer there every time. Chief Kaminski sold when the initial call comes out you don't know what it is, whether it's a robbery or a theft, initial calls are always confusing. Alderman Newman said one of our cases had 97 arrests, what happened there. Alderman Bernstein said the state does see it and he agrees that there are priorities, the judges have priorities, but in those misdemeanor courtrooms the State's Attorneys are prosecuting misdemeanors where there were these conditions because that's how they're going to get to a felony courtroom. They're as concerned about getting a conviction and an admission as we are. They're not going to be responsive unless we get to Steve Gobel and beg, borrow, and pound on him. Alderman Newman asked how much time do we put into prosecuting these guys to arrest them for a misdemeanor writing reports and everything else. Chief Kaminski said he wanted the committee to know he constantly watches this stuff to make sure that we don't suffer in quality. He was just talking to some of the officers the other day and this issue came up. Should we change the policy, should we try to go to the first day or look at something better? Its also what their motive is, some officers like to go to court while others do not like to go, there's a whole host of factors out there. Alderman Bernstein called for anv further discussion on consideration of citizen complaints against Police — Officers to be voted on. s - Alderman Newman said the complaint he did not quite understand was the double parking. Chief Kaminski said the last two complaints are related they are the same complainant families. They ail involve the officers in the NET team and Page 24. they're all related to surveillance on drug activ.. There have been complaints from other elected officials on those stops and things going on about drug activity and certain actMtywhere these stops were happening. Alderman Newman asked what the officers did wrong, which Chief Kaminski said there was no probable cause and the arrest was not the best thing to do at that time because of double parking. Technically they can do an arrest for that, doe he think it's the best thing to do, no, does he think its in our value system, no. They could go another way to deal with the problem. he does not think they handled themselves the way he would expect them to do it. They forced the law for the double parking but he does not think they needed to take it to the next level. They gave the ticket there should be another violation. On the complaint about the stuff in the mouth, because of the other factors of who the kid was, where they were at, and all the other things, he might have been up to probable cause, actually he gave them the benefit of the doubt. But in his mind they did not articulate in the report the way he would have wanted it articulated and that is why he sustained both of them. He thinks they all could have done abetter job on both of those cases. Luckily the end result down the road is things will eventually work out. Hearing no further discussion Alderman Bernsteln called for approval of accepting the disposition of citizen complaints against police officers, approval accepted (3-01. (Alderman Feldman left the meeting at 10:25 p.m., and Alderman Jean -Baptiste left the meeting at 11:00 p.m., before this vote was taken.} Alderman Newman said at some he would like to get a little more information on not sending them to wait in court. Chief Kaminski said he plans to look into that. Alderman Newman said he does not fault the Chief for trying to save money, to which the Chief said it seemed cost effective for the City. XI. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 11,25 p.m. Respectfully submitte d, "TrotskDepartment of legaith & Human services Page 25. GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE T'EE Civic Center - Room 2402 Name: —S-tb fl 44 g�j n9i J Annu5 Nh(,r-v 5 3P 1, C." —/ �2& imn104,, t/ 1,11-14&- Neca `Vni lli ps, Monday - April 12, 2004 7:00 p.m. PLEASE FBI C Address/ organization: 3,7 t-it c-H ! J ot. & . lost w(Sr�ULLgw tjw �f//�••rr, 11�,�. t .� rIlrc.O,c J i Ya C) 5 AlLs 1 ao w. r...14.f.rc l A, CS at 1 i� ('r�Yi� r qW D i-� --q- In awro V � t e ,D S r�- Z 2Sp f17tP14A( AVG. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, May 3, 2004 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, and Tisdahl MEMBERS ABSENT: Alderman Newman STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Harvey Saver, Maureen Barry, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Ann Rainey; Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office); Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin, (Township Assessor's Office); Jane Grover, Sue Cantor (Mental Health Board); Virginia Roeder, (Evanston Arts Council); See Attached Attendance Sheets for other attendees. PRESiDING: Alderman Bernstein 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Bernstein called the meeting to order at 7:48 p.m. and apologized for the lateness of the hour in convening the meeting as the Aldermen were detained in a Rules Committee meeting. If. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE APRiL 12, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the April 12.2004 meeting were called and unanimously approved (4-0). Ill. CONSIDERATION OF THE APRiL 2004 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS AND REPORTS Alderman Feldman motioned for approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Bernstein called for questions and comments concerning the April 2004 Township Bills. Alderman Rainey had some comments regarding the Township bills, and noted that about 6 weeks ago at a Council meeting she asked for an itemized statement of items purchased by the Assistant Assessor specifically two checks for over S1,000. She was told it was for office equipment and furniture but has never received any explanation of this amount. Alderman Bemstein asked if these were the checks written out of Ms. Benjamin's personal account and then reversed, he was told that was correct. Alderman Bernstein then asked what was purchased for that amount. Ms. Benjamin said she turned that explanation in to the Township, she was asked for another copy of this explanation. Alderman Rainey said for ten years she has seen mileage expenditures and reimbursements on the bills list and wondered what the current mileage reimbursement is and how are these miles accounted for. Where do people who submit mileage reimbursement go? Ms. Vance said the mileage is now 32 cents per mile and is accounted for when staff has to do home visits, also when they have to attend meetings. They have a sheet where they record the odometer reading. Alderman Rainey said she was wondering where they went, she was not questioning the mileage. She thought it was about 37 cents and if it was she sees one person drives 90 miles, Evanston is a very small town. Ms. Vance said they have mostly social work meetings that can be anywhere in the town and they also have mileage where they have to do home visits back and forth. Alderman Rainey asked what is the Township Organizations of Illinois MA for $8,437. Ms. Vance said that is the TORMA, the Township has liability insurance, workman's comp, etc., all of which is covered by this. Alderman Rainey said she has several more questions and will submit them in writing. Hearing no further Questions or comments Alderman Bernstein recalled the motion to aonroval the Anrll 2004 Township bills list, motion unanimously approved (4-0). fV. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED FY05 BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked when the budget has to be approved and was told by the end of June but first it has to go to a Pubfic Hearing. Mr. Terry said we can review the budget at the next Human Services Committee meeting and It will Page 1. still fall within the scheduled date. A!dennan Jean -Baptiste granted to get an idea of the timetable of this budget and moved to approve introduction. ?%'derman Semstein said we are not quite there yet and will keep it in this committee unbl the June meeting. Alderman Feldman wondered if the Towns^io Super.zsor had a message with this budget. Ms. Vance said it comes wsth the message that they are see;rc an oncrease in the number of General Assistance clients and at the same time looking at the actual revenue amounts �n 'eras O v.-Iiat we sho,ild be receiving as opposed to what is coming in. Also, she is currently in the process of reviewing tre ert,re operaticn in terms of expenditures and where we can find alternative means to make sure clients rece,ve some of the services. par'=lariy in reference to the medical because we are seeing extremely high costs for prescription d=s. One cancer patient's medical bills accounted for driving this past year's budget so high. We are seeing an increase in medical and want to look at the possibility of a coordination of County and other services to get those med,cals reduced in order to keep enough money to serve every client that is eligible, with the funds that we have. Alderman Feldman asked if the committee could be kept informed as to the progress of that even on an incremental basis as it goes forward. He would also like to know the percentage of increase in the medical bills on a per case basis rather the entire report, as you may have more clients than the bills show. Given a certain number of clients he would like to know what the increase would be. and he would like to have that compared to last year's figures. Alderman Feldman asked if the county has any kind of branch medical facilities. Ms. Vance said she knows Commissioner Suffredin's Health Task Committee is trying to look into the possibility of being able to out source some of the services. At the current time the only place is the Stroger Hospital. Alderman Feldman asked if some of our people are now going to Evanston and St. Francis Hospitals, and was told they are. Ms. Vance said Public Aid still has significantly limited funds. Alderman Feldman asked would you be billed at all if you went to County Hospital and was told we should not be billed or the bill should be at a low rate. That is one of the things Ms. Vance said she wanted to look into, if we go to County would we have to be billed or would that be assumed as County tax dollars. Alderman Feldman said he would be interested in that because you mentioned that there is such as thing as a Public Aid rate and he would like to know how that is determined. Ms. Vance said the Illinois Department of Human Services has established a rate of what they will pay on Public Aid for services. For example, if we have had such cases and S6.000+ was normally billed, but due to the Public Aid reimbursement rate it goes down to something like S1,000+ we would pay that from the Township. Alderman Feldman remarked that was a great difference and noted Ms. Vance is saying that Is Increasing. Ms. Vance said she does not know if its because we have a sicker population but we just have more and more people having to access medical services. Last year's case had to do with a cancer case and unfortunately he died. Alderman Feldman said then what he is hearing is the medical bill rate they're charging isn't any greater but we're having more use of their services. Ms. Vance said there is absolutely no way they could pay a rate other than the Public Aid rate. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not recall whether the Aldermen get a budget presentation at the time this is presented before the Council because we're not integrated in this process, as we are when we pass the City budget. By the time you come to us it with your budget you come alienated from the issues and concern of where the funds are going. Since we have to approve the budget he would think we need to hear what is going on for us to better understand it other than seeing things that seem strange on paper. We need a broad sense as to what is going on, how the money is being spent, what E are new needs, etc., etc. For example, the decision we made two years ago to send Emergency Assistance to the Township, how is that going, what part of the budget is it, etc. Ms. Vance asked if this is needed verbally or written, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought a verbal presentation would be good. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if item 9310 on page 8, the Housing Service Line Item, is the Emergency Assistance budget? Ms. Vance said under the contractual agreement of the City of Evanston and the Township this is for the reimbursement of services related to housing and food. Any service related to utilities is paid by the Township, anything you see on page 8 within that budget line item has to do with expenses related to the Emergency Assistance Program. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question regarding Eamfare. Ms. Vance said Earnfare is a program through the Illinois Department of Human Services where, in order for a person on food stamps to get an additional $200+ they can go out and do work at a community service or not -for -profit organization. In fact, the Township has teamed up with IDHS for this. When they started out they had 10 clients and now they are down to one, they only have one slot. We are not going to participate with them the next round because they only want to reimburse you on a basis of a person employed for 90 days, no up front costs, if they will be terminated on the 80'h day you would not get back any of your cost. That's the IDHS program with one client. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then its not going to be related to anything. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there is any training for anybody in terms of transiUoning for those who are on General Assistance in your budget. Ms. Vance said under General Assistance it's mandated that you have the Work Opportunity Program and Job Club, technical job training programs. Job Club is where you get your soft skills, your resume writing and those types of things, in fact its open to the public to come in. They try to assist workers and others in hooking up with One Stop to get jobs. As far as training there are no direct training dollars and that is one of the reasons we are linking with and trying to work more with the One Stop system that has Title it "training dollars` for low income people to Page 2. work with for those dollars that exist within the community. We have t'ooked up several of our clients with those dollars and some have gone on to take the training, got off the GA ro!is driving trucks or whatever making larger sums of money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if somewhere in the presentation of your budget we have a sense of transition as there are some names that he sees tnat are always on the list and he would like to know if they are standard, do they have some kind of disability, what is the problem. If we can get a sense of transition and if there are dollars being pulled from here or there, even needs, he is hoping that ultimate'y we do something different for those folks who pass through the system. Ms. Vance invited the committee to attend a Job Club session at the Township office where she can show you around and go more into detail as to what is that we do at the Township. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked about page 3, where you have the case coordinator to Earnfare, line item 5300. his. Vance said they have two case workers for General Assistance and also have the Earnfare responsibility. With that Earnfare responsibility they are familiar with whatever else is on file that also has to be submitted. Alderman Feldman asked how much the Township pays for rent. Lis, Vance said the Township rent is actually broken down and charged to various programs and you have to go to page 4, page 6, and then to the Assessor's office on page 11. Those three figures add up to the total rent. The rent amount for the continued duration of the lease is set but what goes up is the portion that has to be paid for the property tax as they have to pay a portion of the property tax. The actual rent adds up to over 590,000. Alderman Feldman asked if Ms. Vance has been in touch with anybody in the City, in particular Max Rubin, with respect to moving into a new building, to which his. Vance responded, no. Alderman Feldman asked how much space the Township has and was told off hand it would be about 7200 square feet. Alderman Feldman asked if that's an adequate amount of space, to which Ms. Vance said she would like to see a little bit more space. Mr. Hilliard said 10,000 square feet would be fine then they could make a larger auditorium for the kinds of programs they have. Ms. Vance said from a policy position it would make a lot of sense to consider that especially In view of the new planned facility for the City to include the Township because we do pay rent and where ever we go we have to pay. Alderman Feldman said that's exactly his thought on this, but personally and from the position of your office you would have any objection to that, to which Ms. Vance responded, no. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Terry to have Max Rubin get a copy of this. Ms. Vance said their lease is up in 2008 to which Mr. Hilliard said he does not think there would be a problem to remove themselves from the tease to which Alderman Feldman remarked on the chances of getting a new Civic Center built by then, Alderman Tisdahl had a question regarding contract services, of S64,700+, Ms. Vance said the office space contract services include the garbage collection, the Xerox machine, the computers, etc. Alderman Tisdahl asked why it was so much more than you budgeted for? Ms. Vance said because of the new computer system. When they took over the Emergency Services Program they ran into problems. The system they have was custom designed for their office and now had to be custom designed so the Emergency Services Program would also flow into their system. There had been problems making the system compatible to work with their system. They do not anticipate having any more problems as the system should now be totally complete. Alderman Tisdahl said that explains why it's the same amount in the budget. Alderman Bernstein had some questions for the Assessor with respect to certain things which do not have to be gone Into now. He asked for clarification of the increases you are proposing in Travel and Education on pages 11 and 12. Also, he had a question with respect to what the Council/Trustees authorized for legal services. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms. Eckersall if she has anything from her lawyer that was asked for last week. Ms. Eckersall responded that she left a letter in the building mail area this aftemoon, to which Alderman Bernstein asked what about. Ms. Eckersall said it was a letter from Hoover & Associates regarding what happened in court last week. Alderman Bernstein said we asked him for a breakdown of his fees and costs, to which Ms. Eckersall said we have that and he was going to bring it but he wanted to get the letter to you regarding court. Alderman Bernstein asked when we could get that to which Ms. Eckersall said she could get that to you tomorrow. Alderman Bernstein asked if that could please be done as the committee has been waiting for that information. Alderman Bernstein inquired regarding Dues and Subscriptions, which the actual 2003104 figure was $167.94 and you are now budgeting S3,000. How and why has that been increased? Ms. Eckersall said they had a reassessment this year, to which Alderman Bernstein asked what that has to do with Dues and Subscriptions. Ms. Eckersall said she would have to think about what they did there. Alderman Bernstein suggested Ms. Eckersall get that information also the Proposed Equipment of roughly $8,000, S5,500 of which was just talked about in last month's budget bills. Ms. Eckersall said that was not equipment it was software needed to run the equipment. Alderman Bernstein noted that was to Hyde Park, but there was another dollar amount and he asked d she recalled him asking how many paper clips were purchased when you said that was for computers, how many computers. Also, you propose about S1,800 more for Telephone in the coming budget than you spent in the last year. Ms. Eckersall said because they have more complaints on the system they have now. They cannot pick up anybody else's phone on a call coming in, they have one line and one on hold. We're changing they system SBC is in there. The phones atone were over S400. Alderman Bernstein said he has some other questions that he will call directly to Ms. Eckersall, Page 3. Alderman Bernstein said this budget will be moved for fu wtier discussion and introduced at the Human Services Committee June meeting. He would advise the committee to rake specific requests of Ms. Vance and Ms. Eckersall with respect to individual items, and why you need what you neec. Alderman Feldman asked if IAs. Vance could give us a sense of ,fiat's going on. She mentioned she thinks people might be sicker, one of the things he tries to looK for in a budget is translation of events of what's on, If we could get ms. Vance's sense of what's happening both in terms of the Find of ;eople coming in, the condition in which they are coming in now as opposed to a year or two years ago, if you notice any change, the age, the sex, whatever it is. Also, what their situation is and how that changed, if at all. If you notice a drarnatic decrease in employment, all the various issues, as it Is helpful for us to understand the dynamics and you are in a very good position to see that because you deal with them on a very personal basis. He thinks that would help us a great deaf. Alderman Rainey remarked one of the things that is very helpful on the City budget is page by page, department, and sub department, are explanations of what happens there. It would be ever so helpful to have a very small explanation paragraph, as many of us have reviewed this budget for 15 or 20 years. Our City budget has excellent explanations of the various programs and it would be helpful if both the Supervisor and Assessor give us some explanation in their budget as to the programs. Also, in each department of the City budget each program explains any increases, what the nature of those increases are. Another thing she did not see in the budget is a page where we can make comparisons in the two different funds, the Town Fund and the General Fund, To see just one page where we can take a look and see what the ratio is between the money we spend directly on clients, the direct services, and the costs to administer those services would be extremely helpful. Every single month the Township Supervisor gives her a tally of last month's clients, this month's clients, increase of clients or cases, the number of clients waiting, the number of clients rejected, number clients approved. One thing we have no idea about is the Township Assessor's office unless we have a public hearing or something where they round up all the proponents of the Assessor's office when people come and tell us what a great job theyre doing, we really don't know what that clientele is. She certainly does not know, but she is entitled to know that. She would like to see a monthly sheet from the Assessor's office showing us the clientele service and the nature of that service, was it on reassessment, tax bills, identifying somebody's PiN number, explaining the tax bill, whatever service is provided would be extremely helpful. Alderman Bernstein thanked the Township and Assessor's offices for their attendance. V. REVIEW OF CONDITIONIOPERATiON OF LEVY CENTER SIGN Alderman Bernstein announced Alderman Rainey asked that we accelerate this and put it on tonight's agenda. We talked to the City Council some time ago about the fact that we have a sign at the Levy Center on Dodge Avenue which unlike other of our signs is illuminated, blinks and carries messages which some propose is an inopportune methodology. Alderman Rainey said she simply wanted the committee to air this because of the complaints received. There are single family homes that are on eye level with the sign and she has received numerous letters complaining about the sign. None of the Levy Center generates much member support for the sign. Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor it this went through the Sign Review Committee process? Mr. Gaynor said yes it did, to which Alderman Rainey said it did but It's not subject to that. Mr. Gaynor said they took this to the Sign Review Board first in a very draft way officially knowing that the City didn't have to go through that process, as the City could apply and receive a municipal exemption. He personally took this to that committee and said we were working on this, they said bring it back when you have It complete. We then went to the Site Plan Committee they said its okay with them, take it back to Sign Review. We did take it to the Sign Review and they did their typical posting of the sign indicating there would be a meeting. The committee only had two members at that meeting, they did say go ahead as they felt the sign was fine. Alderman Bernstein asked if they were aware of removable parts and everything, to which Mr. Gaynor said absolutely he had all the specifications and pictures of the sign. Alderman Bernstein asked how many people staff the sign committee, in total. Mr. Gaynor said it's a five - member board, to which Alderman Bernstein noted a quorum would be three members. Mr. Gaynor said that is correct. Alderman Feldman thought the discussion should not be on whether there's a board in this City that approved this because we all make mistakes and we should evaluate this on the basis of what's going on with this. If there is something really difficult for the community he does not want to sit here and argue whether or not they did it and then go into whether or not they did it right. If we could get to the heart of the matter, which is, we have a sign, is there anything wrong with it, what is wrong with it. The next question would be can it be changed, in what way could it be changed to satisfy the people at all. These are the kind of questions he would want to get to. Alderman Bernstein called upon Mr. Koch who spoke on behalf of the neighborhood regarding the sign. Mr. Kochi speech In its entirely is attached (see ATTACHMENT A) to these minutes. Alderman Feldman said he would like three options as to how to make the sign palatable to Mr. Koch and the neighborhood. Mr. Koch said first shut it down, start with the premise of that, by default it doesn't go on it should be €t Page 4. goes off by default. Twb, when there are special events, when Senator Kerry or President Bush comes, when you have a play, when you have a dance, or some special event, then the board can go on in a modest way for a limited number of hours each day, for a limited number of times And then by default it goes off. He's not opposed to promoting events a, the Levy Center or even events in me- City of E•.-anston on that sign. But do you think we needed reminders for the past two years of the same words over and over aga-n, he thinks that's enough. Alderman Feldman asked what about the possibility of the sign staying on, not changing, %vhen it's a given message that changes as Mr, Koch said occasionally, but a sign that's on between a reasonable time in the morning and doesn't change, just the sign itself. Something like, ' Bush comes to visit - 8 a.m. Saturday.' Mr. Koch said you would do that a week before he comes and it goes on from 8 to 8, he's not opposed to that he's lust opposeC to tr,is mindless, repetitive thing which we are afflicted with which has not been approved by you people. If you approve i; then lets go on record. lets find the monies, lets look at them, lets allocate them and have them be held responsible to City government. That's all he's asking. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor what his objection is to that. Mr. Gaynor said he's not going to get into a debate and would like to make it very clear for the record he has never not responded to the press, Mr. Sidenberg, of the Evanston Review, is here tonight and he would not put him on the spot unless he wants to answer. There are some inaccuracies in the report to Mr. Koch as presented but he does not want to go there. We did follow a policy, the sign was totally paid for by Mr. Levy. It went to the Levy Advisory Sub Committee and went through a variety of checks and balances. However, he has absolutely no problem with modifying it. The sign now goes on at 9 o'dock, it has been going on at 9 o'clock for a number of months and it goes off at 8 o'clock. We have toned the sign down, the sign is 18 inches wide facing bodge, its perpendicular to Dodge, It doesn't block views into the park its only 18 inches wide when you go by. We have no problems making modifications, its there for marketing purposes for both the Levy Center and James Park, that was the primary reason. There is a sign at Mulford and [dodge that also announces the Levy Center. It was not his idea it was an idea that we had to have signs visible to identify the Levy Center, Alderman Feldman said then you would not have an objection to selected messages evert if you decided to have one of those messages as a promotion of programs that would be on for a certain period of time, not flashing up and down, just a message having to do with a special event that's occurring. Mr. Gaynor said we do that now, we introduced Senator Kent' and the Governor when they where there. Alderman Feldman said the objection seems to be countless other messages, the fact that Its constantly blinking. He has received enough responses from people to indicate that there is a concern about that. He asked if there is a way that could be mitigated as he does not see that this is a matter of principle, to which Mr. Gaynor said he agreed. Alderman Feldman said if its not a matter of principle we could use the sign, but use it tastefully with sensitivity to the people that live directly across the street as he happens to be sympathetic with that. Mr. Gaynor said they purposely put the sign to make it perpendicular so it would not annoy the people across the street. He suggested that they will look at possibly 2 messages in the morning and 2 messages in the afternoon, it shuts down at 8 and we can shut it down at 7. Mr. Koch asked if the messages will be repetitive, to which Mr. Gaynor said Mr. Oomecker has been working on how to administer the computer program and he can help out with these questions. Alderman Feldman asked if it would be acceptable to have a message, "Saturday afternoon we're having a party", period, which Mr. Gaynor said he thought that could be done. Mr. Gaynor said it would be 2 messages in the morning but it would be one message for an hour and a half and then switch to another message. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor if he could submit a plan for that to this committee. Joan Hickman, Levy Center Board Member and Member of the Evanston Commission on Aging, wished to make some remarks regarding the sign. Ms. Hickman said the sign is not harmful to anyone's health Its all a matter of beauty. She does not look out her front window all day long, when she does look out she sees the dandelions across the street in Crown Park that she wishes were not there as they put dandelions in her yard something she complained about, but she has to live with. Some things that are uncomfortable you must live with. She just does not see where this sign is causing all that concern. We are in the process of trying to learn how to use the sign and you should allow us the time to do that in her opinion you need to focus more on the terrorists, to harass the Levy Center about this sign is a form of terrorism. Alderman Rainey said she wasn't going to get into this but this is the only ward in the City, except for the High School ward, that is a residential neighborhood that has to put up with a blinking something like a neon sign, all day long. Number one, the sign is in the wrong place, you can go around and see these kinds of signs around the metropolitan area they are always situated where cars coming to a stop at a signal light intersection will be able to view them. The sign isn't at this signal light intersection it's half way down the block and is really misplaced, if it was not for the signal light it would not be across from anybody's house, but on City property across from no one's house. One of the key issues here is to move the sign. She does not know how big a deal that is, she is sure laying wiring and whatever is going to be an Issue. To say that people in this Town and this neighborhood should put up with this neon sign, that's wrong. If you don't like the dandelions, believe her there is a greater Impact from a blinking garish, the only word you can use for it, red, flashing sign. She does not like it, nobody ever showed it to her before it went up, the minute she saw it she hated it. If you're working on programming the sign, it seems that work went on 6 to 8 months and may have been longer, where you would drive by and you would say "What's that?", it would be these streaming darts, arrows and letters that appears that the sign is having a seizure of some kind. The other night she went by the Levy Center at 9:30 p.m., that sign was on and there Page 5. was a big line across the sign, that might have been due a ma'funct:on m the electricity but that sign has not always been off at 8 o'clock. To say that we need this sign �n order to promote une events and its going to cost money, to her it does not matter. That sign can promote the Levy Center and events and still be tasteful. it is the most beautiful building in our City designed by the same woman who just designed and bu1 tre Oirlahoma City Federal Budding. She read in the Sunday paper about our architect and is so p70ud every time sne reaos about her. It is a beautiful budding. This sign reminds her of when you go to the country ano in certain taverns, or bingo parlors, or VFVV halls, where they haul one of these signs up on a trailer and there is an arrow announcing rood, ra.mrral, or whatever. Mr. Levy is a very generous man and she will be forever grateful for every penny he has gr:en, money, time, accessories, equipment, everything he has every given to our community. Nobody has ever done snore for this City, but when he gave the money for this sign the person who created mis sign did our City and Mr. Levy a disservice. Is ugly, it needs to go, it detracts from the beauty of the Levy Center. Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor when he talks with the Levy Center if we can get some accommodations so everybody is happy and the sign performs the function it was intended to perform, to which Mr. Gaynor said he certainly will. Alderman Feldman said he would also like kit. Gaynor to examine the possibility of moving the sign and letting us know what it would accomplish, what it would cost, and how it would work best. Alderman Rainey added she is sure the committee is keeping in mind that funds for correcting the sign could be ublized from the downtown TiF because all the money that supported the Levy Center came from that fund. Aiderman Bernstein thanked everyone for their comments and input in this issue. Vl. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP ETHICS ORDINANCE 55-"4 Alderman Bernstein noted this is informal in nature although not a State Statute with which we have to comply. Ms. Brenniman said that is correct and we just recently received model ordinances from Townships and also from the Illinois Municipal League. Ellen Szymanski is drafting an amendment to the current City Ethics Ordinance and she is drafting a new ordinance for the Township that Wil be substantively identical and brought back to you on June 7". Ms. Brenniman said our obligation under the law is preempted from being less strict, we may be more strict if we chose to do so and in some ways our current City ordinance already is more strict than the state's. We plan on making the Township ordinance consistent with the City ordinance, both will be consistent with the requirements of the law. VII. DISCUSSION WITH THE EVANSTON MENTAL HEALTH BOARD Jane Grover, Chairman of the Mental Health Board Introduced Sue Cantor who will become Chalnman of the Mental Health Board In June, and Executive Director Harvey Saver, Ms. Grover noted that last December they first submitted a memo to this committee reporting the funding allocation decisions made in November. Since writing that memo, which was included in your packet, the City Council approved the Cityrs budget which held our budget unchanged from the previous year. Despite the fact that our overall budget of S828, 900 hasn't changed we did make some changes within that budget to the allocations from the previous year. Noting some of the highlights, we increased the funding to 3 agencies, the Evanston Community Defender, Metropolitan Family Services, and Peer Services, by the amount of 3% which is like a cost of living increase. We decreased funding to 3 agencies/programs, BE/HIV, Connections for the Homeless, and Legal Assistance Foundation's Evanston office. The Board also added back one agency that was dropped the previous year because we did not see that they had been performing. They came back to us this year for renewal of the funding and we agreed to fund them for $10,000 with the provision that they had to come up with the remainder of the money to match it to fund a particular behavioral therapist position. If they don't find the money to fund the position then we'll go back to the Board and theoretically revoke the funding. Since we've consolidated, thanks to Mr. Saver we have been able to take a look at the Mental Health Board's Purchased Services budget with the Human Service Committee's Purchased Services budget. The profile of the Mental Health Board has changed significantly and it looks as if we're now pretty much in the business of prevention rather than providing funding for direct services for persons who are mentally ill. Our funding by age goes one third to adults, one third to teens and adolescents, and a third to children under the age of 5. Of the funding allocated to young children 12% of our total budget goes to scholarships through the ChildCare Network of Evanston. Our budget now only accounts for 38% of what one might consider hard core mental health issues, mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse. We are now spending a lot of our time and energy in the area of early intervention and prevention with a great deal of focus on ctdidren. For the next funding year we are also looking at considering a new agency, Center for Independent futures, that has come to us and has already given us a letter of intent asking for funding. They have just started this great agency and we are looking forward to hearing their proposal in November. She does not have much more to report except to make sure she thanks the City's professional staff who makes us look awfully good. Indirectly Mr. Terry, Audrey, and of course Mr. Saver. When we make important decisions its in a large part thanks to Mr. Saver. Alderman Feldman thanked the Mental Health Board and remarked it seemed the aspirations the Human Services Committee had when they thought it would be wise to turn its allocations over to the Mental Health Board has really bom Page 6. frui- A long time ago when he was a member of the Mental Health Board the focus was on prevert)on and young people. There's something very heartening about that, somet—ng that makes life feet better when you tnink you're stopping something from happening and saving a life rather t,`+an taring to re -mediate it. We all knos tha! re -mediation is much more difficult than prevention. He would like to ask W-ca"ler or not there is a sense an the Mental Health Board that this has ,.tiorked well and you feel comfortable in doing tn+s. unat it was a good thing that the Human Services Committee did turning this over to you and knowing you feel epua' to the job and deeply enthusiastic about it. his Grover said thanks to the consolidation of the furc,Ig they have a much bigger. better pictu-e of Human Services agencies and who's providing services in Evanston. 1; added to the workload but as she said Mr. Saver made it easy to irtecrate the additional agencies they inherited from th,s commiltee. It has given them a different focus and she is sure there are those an the Board who regret the loss of a rr:ental health focus but as a technical matter she thinks prevention can be considered a mental health issue. Alderman Feldman remarked Alderman Jean -Baptiste was on the committee when they turned their allocation money over to the Mental Health Board for execution but Alderman Tisdahl was not. Alderman Tisdahl said she was delighted at the wonderful job the Mental Health Board has been doing. Alderman Feldman said they are actually doing a better job than the Human Services Committee did, we were too distracted and could not spend the kind of time on this that the Mental Health Board spends. We were wise enough to realize that and turned it over to people that could do what the Mental Health Board has done. He is delighted at the wonderful job the Mental Health Board has done and thanks you for coming and letting us know how things are going. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked the Mental Health Board and said he feels somewhat lazy about this issue because It seems to be in good hands and you're doing all the worts. He wanted to know how the Mental Health Board characterized what we are accomplishing and how you measure that_ Ms. Cantor said she thought the agencies all have goals and objectives when they present the proposals to the Mental Health Board and the United Way and ask for money, some is for general funding and some is for specific programs. We look at their quarterly reports to see how they are accomplishing their goals and if they are. Each one of us on the Board relates to a variety of agencies as liaisons, We attend their board meetings, we do site visits, we communicate with the director or whoever else would be the appropriate person. The data we get from the agencies enables to make decisions about what their performance is like, what they're accomplishing, and how they're using the funding that they get from the City. Alderman Jean -Baptiste understood that from an administrative standpoint they report to you, you monitor them and get a sense of some degree of accountability. He is trying to get a sense of what we say we are accomplishing with our citizen relief for our constituents. You talked about the trend we are into is prevention, investing in early childhood programs, etc., etc., that's great but what he's trying to figure out is your observation as to what we're doing. Can you characterize the last 5 or 10 years as to what you see has been accomplished by the work we do through our investment in mental health in the City of Evanston. If we were talking about the hardcore mentally ill people how could we specifically identify the number of people who have this particular problem or that particular problem where we provided some medical care. In prevention and other areas where you are providing this assistance what do you see overall, what are we doing for our constituents that we can say is helping them. Are we just providing accountability? He does not know every program and is not asking for your evaluation of every program because sometimes you can have an excellent program and then again have a program that is not so excellent. Do you monitor that yourself in terms of removing funding from people and refunding them? What is Evanston doing, are we helping people, are we making a difference? Ms. Grover said the way she sees it is the funding that we allocate to the agencies provides direct services for Evanston residents. That amounts to thousands of Evanston residents over the course of the fiscal year from the teen mother who decides to stay in high sd000l because she catnected with this great program through the Teen Baby Nursery, to one of the kids at Y.O.U. who learns how to do hic- homework better because we funded an after school program there, or someone with mental illness who is able to go on a camping trip to Wisconsin thanks to funds that we provide and learns how to socialize and be a little more independent. We do get results back from each of the programs that we fund. The funding makes a difference and d touches Evanston residents in a way that improves their lives, otherwise there's no point in funding those programs. It runs the gamut depending on the nature of the program that we fund. There was an attachment to our memo with a description of each of the programs, the type of clients each program served and the trend of results. Alderman Feldman noted Alderman Jean -Baptiste tapped the single most haunting question that he has asked himself over a period of time dealing with this. Everybody wants accountability, everybody wants to know do we have less mental illness, do we have less teenage pregnancy, are we winning the battle, so to speak, as if there would be a time when there would be no mental illness, no teenage pregnancy, no crime, no drugs, no alcoholism, or anything like that. That will never happen, Its like our work, it goes on and on and on. There are always problems to solve. What he has been heartened by and has come to believe is he knows that people are being helped in a manner where they would not be helped were it not for the generosity and the largess and compassion of the citizens of Evanston who say we want to spend money that way. The only time he was involved in a program where that didn't happen was when we started a program called Youth Advocacy with a very intense attempt to change the lives of kids that were at risk. After 2 years Page 7. the professionals that ran the program, the social workers and psychologists with all kinds of degrees, came to us and told us to disband the program. The reason was, and they used me phrase, 'We are not changing their lives, we cannot and have not been able to change their lives.' To do this tney would nave had to approach it on a much more universal way to solve the father's, mother's, sister's, brcther's problems. Yo°., can't take a kid out of an environment and change their lives. so they could only help them for a short time and they wo-j4 revert back to the same way. They said they were probably doing as much harm as good. However, the phrase that is constant is people's lives are not the same, they are changing. We know there are kids in the Teen Baby Nursery prog•am that stay in school. We know how many stay in school, what we don't know is what happens to tnem after they graduate. That is one of the things that the Mental Health Board wants to be reassured of is this money changing people's Ives, his. Cantor said the other thing is many people who have severe, persistent mental illness will always have it, they're not going to be cured. But the kind of funding we provide to some of the agencies is greatly needed to support these individuals because they're going to need support forever and without that where would they be. Even if you're not changing people you're still providing them with the support they need in order to function at their best level which is another way of looking at this. Alderman Feldman asked if this is a scheduled report to this committee that we've asked for on a regular basis. Mr. Terry said we are trying to gel all boards and commissions to come in before the Human Services Committee on a somewhat regular basis. Alderman Feldman asked if this would be once or twice a year, to which Mr. Terry responded once a year is the best we could do. Alderman Tisdahl said after the wonderful global discussions she had a very small question, how is it possible the Evanston Community Defender has a decrease in demand for legal services. She is not disagreeing with their funding but sees the decrease in demand for services. Alderman Bernstein said they changed their focus, they no longer are as compelled to deal with courts as they are geared toward the schools. Also, they are getting more younger people coming to them to deal with their worldly problems. The social welfare component and the psychological component helps the big picture. They also try to impact the kids so they don't go back to court. Customarily they used to represent people again and again and he thinks the are probably the victims of their own imposed success. Alderman Bernstein thanked Ms. Grover for her good service and said she leaves big shoes to fill. Ms. Cantor who will be the new Mental Health Board Chair and Mr. Saver for all their good work. Vill. PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE CULTURAL. FUND APPLICATION Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor to address the why of the proposed changes to the Cultural Fund Application. Mr. Gaynor said this year the Arts Council members made some very specific comments to review the art components for the Cultural Grant. A number of suggestions were made and considered that the Arts Council Sub Committee boiled down to some very specifics and took to the Arts Council who then reviewed and made modifications and adopted what they now recommend to you and what Ms. Roeder as Chair of the Arts Council can speak more about on the specifics of this. Virginia Roeder, Chair of the Evanston Arts Council, has been on the Am Council for4 years and Chair for a yearand a half. The proposals presented to you tonight area compilation of a year and a half worth of work. The process began last year. The Sub Committee was not able to get the decisions made in time to make the changes last year, those changes were carried over to this year and you are seeing a two-year process. An extensive amount of work has gone into this, not only on the Arts Council level but also at the Sub Committee meeting level. She also reached out in the community and started a community arts discussion with some of the community leaders in the arts organizations to get feedback from them. Panelists from the review boards were asked to give her feedback as to what their suggestions might be to make changes to simplify the process. There are two members in attendance in support of the Arts Council that would like to speak about this. Penelope Sachs, President of Evanston Symphony Orchestra. said she brings a message from the whole orchestra that they very much wanted to speak in support of these changes. They regularly apply to the City for funds to support their organization, funds which sometimes they get and sometimes they don't. The whole policy of the method of grant giving has been obtusely difficult and looking at the grants that are given she doesn't always think those you do support are of the highest quality or reaches out to the largest number of people. Ms. Roeder has been great reaching out to the arts organizations as she has been In a lot of discussions with other arts organizations and the Arts Council about suggestions that we have. She likes the changes and thinks they will result in the City's money being spent for higher quality art. Obviously she is looking to have it offered to the Symphony Orchestra but that is not your particular decision, so she very much would like you to support what Ms. Roeder is proposing as it has the support of other arts organizations. Pam Blevins, wor*ed on the Sub Committee that began making some of these changes and also served on the Diversity Commiftee which is another Sub Committee of the Arts Council. She no longer is on the Arts Council but site does serve on the Bach Week Board. She too is very much in support of this. A lot of these changes were made to Page 8. align what the City did with what the Illinois Arts Council does which s.~e thinks is an important point because they do give us the money tore grant because they like that we like what they line. She did want to say something about Diversity. She is the only member of the Evanston Arts Council who served on that committee for probably the last 4 years. The other people vtio served on it were no longer involved with the Ar's Council and she thinks diversity is an important point but artistic excellence is what the Arts Council is all about. What the/re supposed to be doing is advocating an and maybe the Diversity Committee should advocate Diversity which has ceen a little bit of a problem. Alderman Feldman had a question devoted to ever body here from tr.e Arts Council, He sees this as an activity taking a lot of your time, do you have any other priorities, any hot burner issz,es that you are thinking about. In a sense he's asking what's going on with the Arts Council. Ms. Roeder said there are other things going on, but at this point this a major priority because it hasn't been revamped for several years and its something that's been on going for several years. It's important to the Arts Council to continue to make some changes because we have seen a tot of disconnects between the community and the Arts Council and the direction that we're going. Other things that we're doing, and she's is sure you're aware of, is our input into the Noyes Cultural Art Center and the community service aspect of that. We are also making a general effort to make ourselves known more in the community to take the art from Evanston into the arts in general. For instance next weekend, Mother's Day weekend, she will be at Arts Chicago with someone from the Arts Center and someone from Block Gallery representing various arts organizations in Evanston. This is a fantastic opportunity because it's an international exhibition and well be passing out brochures about the arts in our community. This is one thing that she has tried to build and initiate more as an outreach, because in the past she felt the Arts Council has been to insular and spent too much time at Noyes, She has tried to focus it more into the community and we can see the beginnings of some of that. Alderman Feldman said initially his attention was brought to some phenomenon that is happening in cities throughout the country having to do with taking advantage of and using cultural activities, everything from museums to art galleries to music, and using the arts as an identification, a sense of place having the result of dramatic Increases in tourists coming in and money being spent in restaurant visitations, they discovered far more than when they have a winning basketball or baseball team. They discovered in Cincinnati and Cleveland that a lot of time was spent in the arts community of those towns along with the merchant community, the industrial community, and banking community examining that issue. They decided to invest in coalescing the arts in a very reasonable way pointing towards, as you indicated, publicizing all the institutions making it easy having free bus service, coordination of nationwide marketing, etc., and they discovered they had dramatic results in increase of tourism. The reason he's bringing this up is he began a group that is starting to deal with that In the City of Evanston and does not know whether you are part of it. It's going to take a lot of thought and time and energy. Ms. Roeder was familiar with the group and said she is compiling for them a list of all the artists and arts organizations and everything having to do with art in the City of Evanston, which of course is a good idea but Is somewhat overwhelming. She has already started to do that ► ith the arts organizations which will then lead into some kind of a web site. Also, the Vice Chair of the Arts Council of Illinois had worked with the arts organizations with the idea of coming up with across arts calendar which we've written a grant. Across arts calendar would be things like the Symphony, the Arts Center, the Historical Society, Bach Week, all the arts organization of Evanston giving us a list of their programs that they're giving that year. We would make a calendar that would list all of that so anyone coming to the City wouldn't have to contact each organization separately they would just pickup this calendar to seethe events. We were trying to think of things we could do to help the arts organizations that wouldn't just be giving grants. Other things we could do to get the word out there about who they are and what they're doing was one of the ideas we came up with. Alderman Feldman remarked that last Saturday there was a visioning process, a cross group of people put together by City staff some of which were artists, architects, etc., sent to recluse themselves in a room and talk about what we need to do in the next 5 years with reference to downtown Evanston. What are the problems, what are the issues, the good things we're doing, how can we avoid mistakes, etc., to have some kind of a framework so the Council is able to make the right kinds of decisions both in terms of land use, support, etc. One of the major things that was talked about was the arts in Evanston and places and support for them, These were people from all aspects of the community. Ms. Roeder said there have been a lot of examples of arts communities, River North area is a good example, the artists moved in there and the galleries came and now it's a very expensive area. The artists always move to the area and people then follow later. We already have a very rich artistic community in Evanston its just a matter of getting the word out and marketing it better. There's a lot to do in downtown Evanston. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted there are some discussions now that John Worthheimer is talking about opening up an art center on the west side of the City, hopefully that's a goal that can be accomplished. There is a building on Greenleaf and Grey, currently owned by District 65, and he does not know right now whether there are negotiations or whether it will be accomplished. The thought is great because it might address a couple of the issues that he heard you talk about. There is a sort of integration of the committee to try to reach out to other parts of the City which would help accomplish diversity. You come to present about diversity and in talking about diversity you also say, but we want to make sure that we are supporting quality art. He did not know what the context of that meant. his. Blevins said that means that our focus is excellence, we're advocating art and artists we want to make sure excellence is going to be our priority, as it Is with Page 9. the Illinois Arts Council. The Illinois Arts Council has 5 arts categories, the first one is excellence its only 20% but when she attended the seminar in Chicago she asked the question if you could conceivably have 20 points in each of the other categories a total of 80 and still get a grant and have no excellence. Even though it would not happen it was explained to her that unless you excel and have a high score in excellence they don't even consider the other 4 categories. That's not how it was done in Evanston, we had a very low mark for excellence. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how do those words fit together, you talked about diversity then you talked aooul seeking to accomplish excellence. It sounds to him like some of the terms he sometimes hears is that we can't accc�nVish this diversity, for example in employment because we can't get any qualified folks. When you put those words in the same sentence he's trying to understand maybe from the experience of the Arts Council what's going on. What's go:rag on with diversity? How are we in Evanston which is ethnically diverse and where we have such rich diversity of culture, doing in terms of trying to accomplish those things. Ms. Blevins said, honestly, the priority has shifted, she no longer serves on the Arts Council and she was on the Diversity Board because it's an important point to her personally. She's just a family of two, she has one daughter she is not white so that becomes an issue, diversity becomes an issue. She herself is disabled so she kind of helps the Diversity panel as she sits on a board that people want her on because she's disabled, that helps the numbers a little bit. She thinks there was a lot of emphasis on making sure other categories, diversity as one, where we're taking out of importance and we're detracted from excellence became an issue on the Arts Council, is something is changing and she hopes its changing. She believes it's still the mere fact that they've approved this language change that the shift has gone to excellence, which is where she thinks it needed to be. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why do you talk about diversity in counter position to excellence. Ms. Blevins said it came up today. Ms. Roeder said to be completely frank with you she thinks we're working from somewhat of a defensive mode right now. Last year the Arts Council voted to raise the artistic quality part of this to 50%. If you look at the original points it was 20, 30, and 40%. The Arts Council decided that was acceptable and changed it to 50%. it came before the entire Arts Council and was passed again by the Arts Council. Just this past weekend someone wrote an anonymous letter accusing us of being against diversity because we were raising the excellence part. We had to lower other things and diversity was one of them, therefore was the defensive mode. Its still a balance we're very concemed about diversity, it's a 50 - 50 kind of thing instead of an 80 - 20. To tell you the truth part of the requirement for these grants is they target a recipient group and those recipient groups are almost always diverse in some way. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said regardless of the give and take you made in terms of criteria the question is still, how are we doing? Ms. Roeder said we're doing very well probably 100% of the grants went toward some kind of diverse community, it's a very important part. We're not doing so well In the quality, we're giving a little too much to the diversity and not enough to the quality. That's what's been going on for the past 3 or 4 years and we want to bring it back into a balance. Joan Gunzberg, Arts and Business Council Chicago, just wanted to point out that she has been working on the Illinois Council for years and community input is terribly important, its not ever been suggested that artistic excellence isn't important, its part of what the mix is, but its just as important that they're reaching citizens and that the communities have input to what goes on. She thinks the diversity issue is a big one, it needs to be right up there as an important criteria. If this is only impacting a very tiny segment of the population it probably isn't as strong a case to be made with such limited dollars the Arts Council has to spend. If you want to spread it out throughout the community it doesn't look like a dramatic hitch, but the innovation drop and diversity drop is sending a message you might want look at. Ms. Roeder said actually we're working on the same side of this because one of the other points that we did put in here is that these programs had to be open to the public end that was not in there before. In other words someone could go to one school and do a program only for that school funded just for that school. This year the Arts Council decided that is not accessible. If they want to do something in a school they have to do it after school or in the evening and they can still hold it at that school and have it for those school children but it would have to be that other children and families are also welcome. That speaks to opening up for more diversity. his. Gunzberg asked what would happen to the school program if that takes place. Ms. Roeder said she did not know but their responsibility isn't to fund the schools. Again to be completely open with you they have had numerous complaints that we have funded too many children's programs in the past 5 years. She has heard that over, and over, and over again, even at Arts Council last year 2 or 3 people said look at these grants 70% of these are children's programming, that's not diverse. This proposal will make it more equally spread around. Alderman Jean-Sapbste asked how diverse is the Arts Council membership. Ms. Roeder said its pretty diverse, we have blacks, we have Hispanics, the Mayor is very careful about that she usually sends us 3 people at a time and they're all different. Julie Andrianapoll, Public Policy Director for the Illinois Arts Alliance, said they are the lobbying arm for the Illinois Arts Council. We work to insure that arts organizations from across the state receive public funding by maintaining and - insuring that the money for the Illinois Arts Council gets placed. They also work on local arts Issues and this issue was actually brought to the Illinois Arts Alliance because there are members of the Illinois Arts Alliance that were concerned with some of the information that was coming out of the Illinois Arts Council. They weren't quite certain as to how the changes in the grant guidelines would specifically impact their organizations and their public. For example, the programs that work with schools for the children was one issue brought to our attention and so our organization took it upon =- Page 10. themselves to try to collect information, in a very limited amount of titre, as this just came to us on Thursday. She and her husband are new Evanston residents, they just moved here 2 weeks ago, and this was not only of interest'.o their organization but it was also of interest to her as a resident of Evanstc-, To that end her only comment would be that there are members of the Evanston arts community who have express=d some concern and she has indicated that they should make sure that they contact and talk to their Arts Council boarc --�ernber, but if there is an opportunity to continue with these discussions make sure there is an open public dialogue :ghat you've already done because it seems to have been relatively extensive and has happened for the last 12 or -5 months. Just to make sure there is a broad community impact the issue of artistic quality versus diversity is a huge ssue She actually came out of Cleveland where she worked with the arts community for the last 3 years in trying to chin public funding, Cleveland is the largest City without local public sector support for the arts. She worked on a carr.-aicn and developed funding criteria through 12 public forums and over and over again the community had indicated that community involvement and diversity were equally important to artistic quality. She does not know that is the case n Evanston but she does hope we make sure to test these changes with the community before theyre actually accepted She is not sure she understands the comments about changing the guidelines so that there would be an addition that t~e programs would have to be open to the public means. She would think we would want to insure that our arts programs voll impact, that it's a matter whether we're trying to keep programs that influence a wide range or do we want to create and fund programs that have a deeper impact. As she said she has not been involved with the conversation long enough to know the history of the Arts Council or what the goals are but she would hope programs that have a deep impact on our community are considered as valuable as those that serve the entire community. Alderman Feldman moved acceptance of the Arts Council's proposed changed to the Cultural Fund Application. Alderman Jean Baptiste said he would not second that because he had some concern about diversity being decreased by 15 points and yet we say that's not an objective that we seek to accomplish and we insulate that and seek greater integration. You can't do that without minimizing that value in a community that is very diverse, Therefore, he has some concern with that particular criteria. Regarding the spirit in which you are trying to accomplish this, you won't accomplish what you're trying to accomplish by doing that. Alderman Feldman asked if the Arts Council thinks that statistical value difference they're talking about will make any kind of dramatic statement in practice in terms of diminishing the diverse nature of our programs? Ms. Roeder responded, no, it won't diminish that at all it will just insure that the programs that get funded are of that quality because that's what has been lacking. We will continue to have the diversity because it's built into the system. The application has to insure a recipient group and that recipient group has to be diverse, it has to -I-- the Levy Center, or a school, or the Y, or something like that. That's what the application is all about. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if that's built in why Is it addressed at all. Ms. Roeder said that's an excellent question and we could address that next year. She does not know why it's addressed because it does seem contradictory. Alderman Tisdahl seconded Alderman Feldman's motion because if this does impact adversely on diversity she completely trusts the Arts Council will stet back to us in 6 months and we will switch it back. Alderman Bernstein called for further discussion, and noted it has been moved and seconded that we accept the proposed changes to the Cultural Fund Application. Motion for accepted was a tied vote (2-2), two voted for acceptance (Alderman Feldman and Alderman Tisdahl, and two opposed (Alderman Jean -Baptiste and Alderman Bernstein).1 Alderman Bernstein said he would like to have an opportunity to consult with some opponents there. With all due respect he does not know the openness of your meetings or the nature of the pooulation that attends your meetings. He is hearing some things for the first time that he would like to investigate further. For that reason we will send it on without recommendation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there are minutes from the discussion of that issue, to which Ms Roeder said we always have minutes. Alderman Feldman said this has been an ongoing study over a period of time. Mr. Gaynor noted the deadline to apply for our grant is June 1 u. Alderman Bernstein remarked its going to City Council and asked if this could be on the agenda for Monday. May 10a". Mr. Gaynor said they need to include the document that you're considering amending with this amended language in the grant application and it's due June 1'a to the Illinois Arts Council. Alderman Bernstein said he heard something to the effect that o:.r funding might be impacted as a result of diminution. Ms. Roeder said it was a misinterpretation she said something about 30% had to be given to diverse recipients, she would say pretty much 100% of ours is given to diverse recap ents. It's very, very high. This is a different issue, this has to do with one individual grant. A panelists looking at her grant as going to say while the excellence quality the diversity is this, etc., that's a totally different figure, two different calegones. Alderman Bernstein said in the back of his mind he is asking how you can be objective about excellence. Diversity is something about which one can be absolutely objective, he can count numbers of people. Ms. Roeder said you w�iil have to trust artists to know they're the right one, you know good art when you see it. Alderman Bernstein said he knows it's in the eyes of the beholder. Mr. Gaynor suggested providing the City Council a copy of the policies which says what will be funded and won't be funded, applicants must comply with the Arts Council's cultural diversity in the arts goats, that's a prerequisite. Before Page 11. the application gets to the Arts Council, in order for it to even be considered staff goes through all the applications to make sure it meets *tie minimum qualifications and only deal with those that do. Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor if he's refemng to the policy segment Cultural Diversity Art Goats and the first thing he would ask is are you changing that by changing the application process? Mr. Gaynor said it's not being changed, only the points after they have met these goals, these goats are a minimum that have to be met. Once they've met these goats, this year the Arts Councils has placed a higher level on quality they're applying this new numbering, but we must First meet the goals for diversity. Federman Jean -Baptiste said you need to work on how to determine this because you qualify something and then you reduce its value. Alderman Bernstein announced this is going to the City Council and thanked everyone from the Arts Council and speaking on behalf of the Arts Council for coming to tonight's meeting. Mr. Terry noted an information point linking the Mental Health Board discussion and the Arts Council pointed out one of the bigger picture changes going on in the community. While the City budgetary difficulties have limits to our ability sometimes to respond to new and emerging needs the Evanston Community Foundation is becoming the place where many people are turning to. At the last funding round for the Evanston Community Foundation received 73 applications. If one thinks about that there were 73 not -for -profit organizations, either a new idea or a new group, that turned to the Community Foundation. He has requested, but has not yet received, a listing of all of those applications because he thought they'd be a nice window to what people perceive as the emerging needs of the community. As an example, Ms. Roeder indicated that the Arts Council receives a certain amount of money for the Cultural Fund as well as the budget from the City to operate applied for a grant from the foundation. They were one of the 73 applicants. Mr. Terry said a number of organizations are doubting up and obtaining that information will be very important. Alderman Feldman thought that is sensational that not -for -profit a group of citizens in this town can partner with the City in meeting the needs of the community. That is just marvelous and exactly what should be happening. We're overloaded in budget issues and somebody else is stepping forward and making a difference, he's very heartened by that. He hopes it happens a lot more and good luck to you. At one time he thought the Arts Council was going to do some fundraising on its own. IX. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 24-R-04 AUTHORIZiNG THE CITY MANAGER TO SIGN AN AGREEMENT WITHADEHEID MERS AND PATRICK MCGEE FOR PUBLIC ART FOR FIRE STATION # Alderman Feldman moved approval of consideration of authorizing the Cltv Manager to slan an agreement with Adelheld Mers and Patrick McGee for public art for Fire Station #3, Alderman Tisdahl seconded the motion„ motion unanimousiv approved (4-0). X. 2004 SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM STATUS REPORT This item can be discussed at the June Human Services Committee meeting, if committee members have questions. XI ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:50 p.m. Respectfully sub — A�Tro, _- Department of Health and Human Services Page 12. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, June 7, 2004 Civic Center - Room 2402 7 00 P M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean-Bact.,ve, Newman, and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman. Doug Gaynor, Bob Dornecker, Carla Bush, Alisa Dean, Aracely Conchola, Vincent Jones, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Pat Vance, Sylvester Hilliard (Township Office); Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin, (Township Assessor's Office); Derek Supple. Leonard Sciarra, Gwen Burton Poole, Steve Lupton, Jan Loughlin (Environmental Board), (See Attached Attendance Sheets for other attendees.) PRESIDING: Alderman Bernstein I. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Bernstein called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. and announced agenda items would be taken out of order because of the expectation that there will be some issues that will take longer than others. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE MAY 3, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the May 3, 2004 meeting were called and unanimously sassed (3-0) Alderman Jean-Bactiste and Alderman Newman were not present at this time. III. APPROVAL OF EVANSTON ART CENTER AND GROSSE POINTE LIGHTHOUSE PARK DISTRICT FESTIVALIFAIR ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2004 AT THE CENTER AND LIGHTHOUSE. Alderman Feldman moved approval of this special event, motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Feldman understood this is the 75'" anniversary and asked how that will be celebrated. Mr. Gaynor said there will be a full day of activities from 11 to 5 or 6 with tours of the Lighthouse itself and the museum. There will be a number of displays with hands on activities in the park north of the Art Center on the beach and all will be self contained on the property. Alderman Feldman asked if there will be a charge for any of this and was told there will not be any charge. At this time Alan Maynor, Director of the Arts Center entered the room and said this celebration is aimed towards families, children and students of the Evanston Arts Center. The intent is to develop an even wider audience in the Evanston area by providing them with free access to our programs and services. We volt have workshops going on both outside and inside the classrooms for people to visit and to have hands on experiences. We will also have music from the Chicago Music Institute, student performers will be playing on the lawn. There will be demonstrations of pottery firing and a hands on opportunity to watch the works in the metal shop. Programs will be constantly going on in the Arts Center. The mailing went out to a much larger group of community residents beyond the immediate Evanston Arts Center arena in order to acquaint them with what is available for those who have not had the opportunity to partake of that. All the events are free and happen to be taking place on the day that the student exhibition at the Evanston Art Center is being taken down so the families, parents and children will be there. This is to expand upon that audience for this free family event We consider it an open house celebration part of the on going activity of the 75" year. Alderman Feldman asked if the distribution of notice was citywide, to which Mr. Maynor said it was sent to mailing lists not only in the Evanston area but in Skokie and other communities who have not had the opportunities of being aware of the event. Alderman Newman asked if there is a Northwestern football game on this date and was told this event will take place on a Sunday and there will not be any conflict with anything. Alderman Feldman asked if the Arts Center does glass blowing and was told they do not have that facility. Hearina no further comments. Alderman Bernstein called for approval of this special event that was moved and. seconded. Approval for this event unanimously accepted 15-01. Mr. Maynor thanked and cordially invited everyone to attend this event Page 1. W. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 33-R-0 RECOGNIZING THE MATRICULA CONSULAR IDENTIFICATION CARD Aracely Conchola with the Department of Health and Human Services. Tomas Ramires, with Y.O U and also Evanston Police Department, Alejandro Abraham and Veronica Joshi with Fifth Third Bank of Evanston, and Father Robert Oldershaw Pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Evanston introduced themselves Ms. Conchola said Mr Ramires spoke to her a couple of months ago about the Alatricula Consular identification taro that is issued by the Mexican Consulate to Mexican nationals living in the United States. They discussed the importance of this card as an identification form. She knows we accept it in our Health Department but not all City Departments accept it They want to make a resolution where this will be accepted Citywide as a form of identification. It is accepted in Des Plaines, Highwood, Waukegan, and various cities across the country. Mr. Ramires said this is only an identification card and has no legal value, it does not mean that you are a resident, nor can you get a driver's license, it just states your name, age and address. What is important for the community is it is good for us to know these peoples names, addresses and ages for many purposes from opening up a bank account to when you get stopped by the police you have a form of W. This is an i.d, that cannot be falsified and the Mexican consulate will provide any organization that requires specific information that will verify that informabon is correct. This will have a great impact on the community because people over 18 can start purchasing products and people wilt have a tax W. number, they will be contributing more to the economy of the City instead of going into Chicago to cash their checks and make purchases. The most important thing is these people feel they are welcome in their community when they need to show proof of i.d. Even to check on their child's grades at the high school they have to show some i.d. that they are the parent. This will give these people some identity and make them feel closer to the community. Alderman Newman moved to approve the resolution, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Bernstein asked if the photo i.d. also shows the age and was told it does He asked if you are also speaking here tonight to authorize the use of this card with relationship to City projects and was told that was also correct. Alderman Bernstein did not know if Districts 202 and 65 will accept our authorization as legal and from what he reads banks can do it regardless of whether or not the City wants to do it. Ms. Conchola said she knows when they want to get copies from the City's Vital Records Department and at the hospitals the first thing they ask for is an i.d, A lot of the families don't have state W.'s or drivers licenses. informally our department has accepted It because she explained to the department that this is an actual identification and has an actual local address. in Evanston they have to prove, by a utility bill or lease, that you live in Evanston and they are actually Mexican nationalists. Alderman Bernstein said one difficulty he perceives is that you may approve this and give it the power such as a City sanction and then somebody goes to St. Francis Hospital where they say they don't care what the City of Evanston says we need a passport, he does not want to mislead anybody. Mr. Ramirez said the Mexican Consulate can be contacted to promote the Matricula in getting sanctions; banks are doing it as it is beneficial for them to go and inform the community about it. Ms. Joshi said this also will also help you to get a tax i d. number, a nine digit number issued by the I.R.S. it's not a Social Security number and with that number Mexican people can file their taxes for the last three years. They can also start credit with a bank and we are working hard on so they can get a mortgage and buy a house. Alderman Bernstein asked if these are resident aliens, and was told these are Mexicans that do not need to have a Social Security card. Alderman Feldman thought this is a wonderful idea and is happy to support this. He thinks these people are in dire need of some system of recognition of identification and the City should do this immediately. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the other reality is that more nationals not documented like the Mexicans have not been able to file taxes and do a number of different things even if they are willing to pay taxes. On the other hand the INS at some point when they're filing their own papers want to know whether they've been paying taxes. This kind of W. card will help them facilitate getting tax W, numbers to be able to document their presence in the United States and remain responsible people while here. Alderman Tisdahl said after passing this she would suggest informing both school districts about this. Ms. Joshi added they are acceptance agents which means they are an extension of the I.R.S. and will process these forms totally free of charge for the clients, sometimes the charge would be S30 to $50 just to file them. If any of these forms get rejected they will reapply as many times as it takes until the client gets their W. number. Father Oldershawsaid he wholeheartedly supports this as there are 400 or so people thatgather for Spanish mass every Sunday. This is certainly away of saying we care about you and your part in this community and are doing whatever we can do to help them be a part of it. Page 2. Alderman Bernstein caned for a vote on the aooroval of Resolution 33-R-04 Recoanizina the Matricula Consular Identification Card. Motion unanimousiv oassed. 15-01. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms. Conchola to explain mat this comm� ,ee cues not have final authoritythis now goes before full Council on Monday, June 14µ. V. CONSIDERATION OF MAY 2004 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Bernstein called for questions and comments, hearing none called for approval of the motion to accept the Mav 2004 Township monthiv bills. Motion unanimousiv passed f5-0i. VI, CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 64-0-04 PROPOSED FY05 BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP Alderman Newman asked how much money is actually left in the Town Fund and if that is the fund where there is limited funds that has been going down every year. Ms. Vance said that is tree G A Fund, to which Alderman Newman said isn't there some fund that is getting low on money. Ms Vance said the G A Fund because the total G.A Fund and Town Fund tax about .06 per $100,00 and the amount in the G.A. Fund is actually the amount that is always left in the Town Fund. Alderman Newman said then we don't know hoer much is in the Town Fund and asked if it's over S1,000,000. Ms. Vance did not have that figure but said it is definitely not that much, if we have S100,000 it would be good. Alderman Newman noted the budget says S330,000 from the Torn Fund, Io which Ms Vance said that's what they propose our budget is based upon tax revenue that's received twice during the year in March and in September. We get that total amount in two different installments, but each year we get a different tax le,ry in different amounts. We levy for the Town Fund $330.000 and we levied for the G.A. Fund at about S880,000. Alderman Newman noted about 10 years ago we took 51.000,000 from the G.A. Fund and asked how much is currently in that fund Ms. Vance said that fund now has a deficit of $48,000. Proposed taxes to come in for March and September is based upon last year, we proposed receiving $865,000, the cost of living on a consumer price index is where we can increase the taxes by 1.8% which would give us a proposed amount of S880,000 to be realized in tax revenues by the G A. Fund. Alderman Newman asked if there Is a chance you will not get that, to which Ms. Vance said we may not get all of ,t but we tend to get the majority of it and if necessary she is prepared to make adjustments and cuts to the budget. Alderman Newman asked what the Township has in reserves. Ms. Vance said the Township currently has about S50,000 in reserves. Alderman Newman asked if your budget is based on 100 cases, right now you have 97 cases, what will you do if it goes to 110 cases. Ms. Vance said they look at each case because it's difficult when a person comes on whether or not they're getting the full amount for rental, also it is within the discretion of the supervisor, if necessary, to adjust the payment allowance. Alderman Newman said he was still not clear on this as there is only S50,000 in reserves and if you go up 10 or 15 people wouldn't that be a problem. Ms. Vance said not necessarily because everybody does not get the maximum amount so there is some flexibility. Alderman Newman asked how many out of the 97 now get $330.00, and was told at this time about 80 or 87 get the total amount, some people have the housing voucher programs and are subsidized with their housing. Alderman Newman asked how it has worked out taking over the Emergency Assistance. Ms. Vance said it worked out fairly well, we have a good working relationship with the City and have been able to serve the clients. Alderman Newman remarked this says $107,000 in 2003104 and $133.000 for next year. Ms. Vance said that includes S110,000 max allocation for direct services and we can go up to S25,000 for administrative costs. Alderman Newman asked why it's increasing from S107,000 to S133.000 and was told because the prior year had nothing built in for administration costs for the reimbursement to the Township; it's not in the contract. Alderman Feldman remarked when you said that you have the capacity as Supervisor to alter the grant are you talking about reducing it. Ms. Vance said reducing the grant level is by statute, the state only requires that we meet the minimum that's set by IDHS which is S212.00, but to keep up vnth the cost of living as it is in Evanston is at $334.00. However, if you chose to have increases in numbers and shrinkage cr no growth in income then some adjustments have to be made somewhere, Alderman Bemstein said with respect to a deficit you indicate transfers from the Town Fund to the G.A. Fund and asked if that is how you fund that in short term, to which Ms. Vance responded, that is right. Mr. Terry said one response to that is it has always been the case that the G.A. Fund has never been big enough to handle the grant .Another thing, while the budget is fine it's anticipated there may be some cash flow difficulties given the schedule for payment. Ms. Vance said they indicated payment but do not realize it until maybe December. Mr. Terry added the City may be in a position to have to float a cushion to the Township, all to be repaid, but nevertheless at some point the Township is going to run out of cash. Page 3. Alderman Newman had some questions in regards to the Assessor's budget. He asked what is the Forensic Scientists and was told that was taken out and no longer is in the budget Alderman Newman then asked why the budget goes from the actual $126,000 to S156,000, if you take the $10.000 for Forensic S_tenbsts you have S116,000 and yet this year you're going to have S166.000 which is a 33`/o increase h1s. Eckersall saia starting Monday reassessments are being mailed and we will be open for appeals for 45 days in which case every 3 ; ears we have to hire extra help for the office, we have a flyer going out. we have to have more postage. everything has -creased. If you compare this to 3 years ago, we did the same thing then We have a girl coming in from the Mayor's crccram starting on the 15" and have hired back one of our last year's summer help to help with the reassessment, also tie: nnrng on the 15". You asked to be filled in on what we do down there and she wants to give you a heads up from January, 2'2 to May 17", in regards to permits we input S75,000,000 worth of new permits into the system which will be reflectea on next year's assessed values for property. Alderman Bernstein asked for how many years that is for, to which Ms Eckersall said that's only for 5 months, S75,000,000 in new construction, anything over $5,000 last year them office looked at over 6500 permits and did something with them, which are over 500 permits a month coming through ner office with only one full time person. They also had 1300 transfer deeds come in which we have to input into the system We now have over200 books thatwe work with between files so we can find them right away. When a person comes ,n to appeal their taxes or do an exemption for one reason or another, we have over 1100 folders and that means we have filled anywhere from one thing up to 3 or 4 different appeals or exemptions for them which can take Diane or Jeff i to 2 hours per person. We're tracking 35 to 40 phone calls a day, that's an average, some days there may only be 20. We re getting appraisers calling and all kinds of calls because of all the conversions in town. We're getting a lot of calls on the new developments about the PIN number to which we don't have answers because they have not divided out the parcels yet. The divisions go through downtown and we're getting all the deeds back but we can't process them yet because we don't have the breakdown on them. We have over 2000 more parcels than we did 3 years ago that we are working with and trying to service so we have a big increase in the office that we're trying to handle. Alderman Newman asked about Printing and Duplicating which says budgeted S1,800, variance S1,590. and then it has S5,500 in the proposed column. Ms. Eckersall said that is for the 31,000 parcels that we usually do a mailing to and then we have to include that 31,000 for postage, etc. We had 29,000 and we're up another 2,000 this year with the conversions. Each taxpayer has to receive a mailing per parcel. Alderman Newman asked what's in the mailing, to which Ms. Eckersall said we have not heard from Houlihan, he is backlogged we don't even get answers. We can't get the software loaded in until Monday when they finalize downtown so we're in a crunch right now. Alderman Bernstein said the question is what's in your mailing, you're not the one that's mailing the proposed assessment that comes from Houlihan's office. Ms. Eckersall said that's correct but we mail the flyer. Alderman Bernstein said there is a process to which people can go through why do you have to wait for Houlihan for that, to which Ms. Eckersall said because we don't have numbers to put into that flyer, Alderman Bernstein said why do you need them it's a generic process, to which Ms. Benjamin said because of the cap that hasn't been decided by the Governor yet, everybody is in a holding position. Alderman Bernstein said with respect to the new legislation everything else is the same and whatever is assessed the process is not going to change. You may have a complaint based on a proposed assessment of 101,10 when the cap is 7% that will be an automatic reduction, he's guessing. The numbers will change but the process is the same. Alderman Newman did not have any problem with the increase for the Deputy Assessor because that is a critical position, but he does not see a real effort to try to conserve considering we have this legal problem. We're budgeting another $25,000 for legal after we've spent, according to this, $30,000 last year. We spent $20,000 on legal and S10,000 on the witnesses totaling $30,000 and you have another $25.000 bringing the figure up to S55,000. He's not sure he wants to budget the $25,000 and he would actually move that we cut this down to $10.000. If they need more money they have to come before the committee and ask for more money. When he looks at the bottom line of this budget, last year you spent S126,000 with the S10,000 expert witnesses which you no longer have in your budget so you actually should have been down to $116.000, but you're at S166,000 this year a 33% increase over what you actually spent, not including that one time expert witness expense. Ms. Eckersall said that was not for witnesses to which Alderman Newman said whatever it was you're not spending it this year. Ms. Eckersall said the legal fees are still mounting and they're not billed yet so part of that 310,000 has already been used up because they've gone to court a couple of times. if you are going to cut that budget there is already money spent because it is almost the end of June and they've gone to court 2 or 3 times. Alderman Newman asked if the new law of 7% goes into effect for this year to which Ms. Benjamin said she believed it will. Alderman Newman then said because the new assessment bills people will be getting is not going to be that huge, the amount of action in your office should also not to increase as much. People are now basically protected in the assessment process by that law, their maximum will be 7%. His feeling is he does not think you need as much for the postage and everything else to do the mailing. Alderman Feldman asked if the budget is cut does this reduce the Township level. Ms. Vance responded it would not, they go into the reserves if there is not enough money to help support the deficit. Alderman Bernstein noted there is a motion on the floor to reduce legal fees from $25.000 to $10.000. Page 4. E Alderman Feldman said he was confused about that because Alderman Newman makes a case that throughout the budget there doesn't seem to be any attempt in any way to cut and he thinks ne wants to cut it, but he is not certain about the case made for the legal fees to be cut. Is there away in which you want to cut the budget without a specific line item? Alderman Bernstein said he would second Alderman Newman's motion. His recollection is the City Council capped legal fees and when we had conversations with his Eckersall's counsel we )- ere ;ed to believe that every nickel we funded would be spent and conversely if we don't fund it maybe we don't spend those oo',ars. Alderman Bernstein said S10,000 for two court appearances means he has been doing something wrong for 30 years Ms. Eckersall remarked she did not say that. Mr. Terry noted as a point of information he would remind the committee that the Township is the only form of government where you're approving the budget after the fiscal year has already started There has already been three months worth of expenditures. He does not know, but it could very well be that the legal expenditures have already exceeded that amount. Alderman Newman remarked then between now and Monday nigh: s Council meeting Ms. Eckersall should come in with what was spent in each category. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms Eckersall if she knew how much was spent in legal fees as we gave this attorney S25.000 the last time %ye had this conversation Ms. Eckersall said with all of the things needed for the reassessment, which she is more concerned about nght now, she has not gone over what we have used, those are still the same amounts. Everything is right about where it was 3 hears ago as she took out the budget of 3 years ago and went through it and put the tine items in according to reassessment_ Alderman Bernstein said Alderman Newman is suggesting, and he would agree with him, that things have changed. Previously where somebody's assessment would go up 50% or 100%, as often was the case and they would come screaming into your office, now they're capped at 7%. Ms, Eckersall said that only means they're not going to come in. Alderman Bernstein brought up that we recently funded 4 computers and you are now on line. Historically he is speaking from personal experience when he was the Assessor, for 6 years, we turned pages. You propose to spend S21,000 in this 45 day period for extra help with computers. He knows times were different but he does not know where you're spending this money. Ms. Eckersall said the last reassessment she had a body coming in every 15 minutes for an appointment and we had 3 people manning the computers. Alderman Bernstein noted that since that time the county has now gone on line and every one of the counties can access information that was never previously available. Ms. Eckersall said they still come in. Alderman Tisdahl asked if Alderman Newman is saying he wants to cap the legal fees not because we're not going to defend the suit, but because he's concerned about the lawyer. Alderman Newman said he does not know if there may be a good reason to spend $25,000, if we authorize the S25,000 then it's just going to be spent. He's not at all saying don't defend the suit but to him when you have a law suit like this it's a crisis situation, an unfortunate thing, and he's not putting any blame on anybody. It strikes him that you're going to have to cut back somewhere. He knows it's a reassessment year and there's going to be less service but you shouldn't be spending S5,500 in printing nor $5,000 for postage, not this year, because you're being sued and he's sorry but he's not sympathetic to it. Ms. Eckersall asked how do you tell taxpayers that they're not entitled to the information. Alderman Newman said they are entitled but you're sending out a mailing, your phone number is listed, you're in a computer and this particular year you should be doing whatever you did last year in postage not increasing the amount by S4,000 and almost 53.000 in printing and duplicating, building maintenance for some reason is going up S2,000. You've spent S116,000 in the 2003104 budget year because you no longer have the $10,000 forensic scientist's amount. You're now up S50.000, a 331.6 increase in actual expenses which he is saying is too much. As he said before, give the increase to your employee because he believes she performs valuable services and S53,000 is a reasonable amount, but he does not see any effort to cut here when the office is being sued. That is what he is putting forward and suggesting his own cuts. Alderman Jean -Baptiste supported the motion to reduce the legal fees with the caveat that they come back and ask for additional funds only because that law firm should know that you don't have that much money as they've been spending every dime that you have and more. But for our vigilance the last time you would have given this attorney S5,000 for an hour's worth of work, and on that basis he supports the reduction He does not support the cap on reduction o1 the printing because this is an assessment year. What we need to say to the Assessor is that she has to be more conservative in terms of the outreach she does because she does not have that much money and we can't just open the vault for her to spend as much as she would want to because of some of the conditions that Alderman Bernstein spoke about that we don't have a wide open reassessment its capped at a specific percentage We, therefore, expect that you will have less traffic coming into your office, to which Ms. Eckersall interjected she did not think so, Alderman Jean - Baptiste continued, he is just saying it may not be the case, he is not suggesting that we cap or we reduce it but the tendency of spending all you have or seeking to spend as much as you want to spend has to be reevaluated. Are you sure what it is that you are mailing out and is not being mailed from the Assessor's office downtown. Ms. Eckersall said they have a lot of taxpayers that do not live in the City of Evanston, this reaches the taxpayers who are out of the City, out of state, because normally if we put something in the review it's only going to reach the taxpayers that are here. How do we get to the other taxpayers who do not reside here? Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then your aim is to spend this money to reach taxpayers who do not We in Evanston. Ms. Eckersall said it is one taxpayer per each parcel. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked what the communication will be, to which Ms. Eckersall said it is a pamphlet that will be going out about the Page 5. reassessment coming out and the figures going in Alderman Jean-Bao:iste asked if we then can assume there is no mae,ng going to these taxpayers and don't we receive that from the Assessor s affice. Ms. Eckersall responded, no, it =ryes out from us the local office Alderman Bernstein said Houlihan's office sends the same mailing to every taxpayer •Anet+.er they live in Timbuktu or en Evanston. his Eckersall said he didn't do the Evanston one three years ago we did it. »,loerrnan Bernstein said his recolle`-aon :s he made some terrible miscalcu'ancns and came here and defended himself. .Alderman Jean -Baptiste said taefcre you soend the money make sure the Assessor's office has not already done what you're getting ready to do Before ..ou ao forward you need to come back ar,a we need to make an assessment as to •Meal s going on, whether we're dun',eating an effort er whether this is needed to be done He would not cut it at this time but wo ld say it not to be spent. at tnis pant Ms Eckersall interjected the reassessment starts next Monday and you're asking us to come here to do this wren it's going to be over. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said you don't have to come back t-ere come back to City Council to da that Alderman Bemstein asked if it's correct that your pamphlet hasn't been printed as you don't even have the information Anh which you're going to print in that pamphlet, how much time do you think these taxpayers are going to have to look at ne pamphlet. Ms. Eckersall said she was hoping to do a turn around fairly quickly with this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he supports hiring an additional person because two people cannot handle that kind of derriand. People get confused even though it's capped at a particular percentage and he thinks there would still be addrbonal demand and at the rate you are suggesting that people come into the office you need some assistance to meet t'ne demand. Because there has been a concern about smooth operations and the expenditures we need to get a report to understand what the real demand is. Ms. Eckersall said we have that log d eras just completed, also we have a daily log nat people log in, right now we're doing that weekly and monthly. Alderman Feldman said he is ready to support a cut but is not certain what we're talking about here because if we're talking about cutting back on the mailing and actually not cutting back that line item but instead saying we're going to take S10,000 off the legal fees, that does not make sense to him. The legal fees are the one thing that we and they have no control over. If we want the Assessor's office to be reduced and to cut back then we say that, and say it in terms of line items that we think are excessive, rather than say we think you're spending too much money so we're going to cut your legal fees. The legal fees are going to come back to us as a result of those submitted by outside attorneys. If we don't want them to spend as much money on mailings or rent or anything, we should say that and let's cut it that way. What rave the legal fees to do with stamps or mailings? He's interested in cutting and thinks Alderman Newman makes a good case, let's do it. Alderman Newman said what he is referring to in legal fees is just by looking at these numbers without looking at the last fiscal year we've already spent S30,000 on this law suit, not knowing what was spent the year before and its time to gel the reigns on this. He is also saying this office does an extra service that people would have to go all trie way downtown for. People have a reason to call them; it's called their tax bill. You get your tax bill, you read it, you don't like it you go talk to them and they will help you do an appeal and get some information, a very valuable service. We don't have to send a pamphlet to people or we don't have to increase it by the amount we're increasing it. Also we don't reed travel and education is for $4,000. Another item here is S4,000 for distribution, that increased from S1,000, what is trat about? Ms. Eckersall again said, it was primarily for the printing. Alderman Newman asked how much is being spent on the pamphlet, Ms. Eckersall said she increased the postage and increased the distribution and the printing, if you want to bring it back to where it was this year she'll do that A3derm2n Newman said his motion is he proposes $1.000 In distribution. S1,000 in inostane. S1,800 in orintina and duplication, which was actually an increase over the vear before, and we save some monev. Also. because vou're being sued and he values travel and education. thinks we aught to give it up for a vear. Ms. Eckersall said we can't we have continuing education excluded she cannot be certified without the education. Alderman Newman asked what education requirements cost S4,000. Ms. Eckersall said the courses cost S200 or $300 each. Alderman Newman asked how many courses have to be taken, to which Ms Eckersall 15 hours or more. merman Bernstein noted Ms Eckersall is the only one in the office that needs to be certified under the statute. For your certification S4,000 includes your travel expenses to and from Peoria or wherever the courses are. Ms. Eckersall said she did not go out of state because she cut the budget fast year and paid the S1,200 Alderman Bernstein said he knows there are aso courses within state. Ms. Eckersall said she has never gone out of town and spent one nickel to which Alderman Bernstein said then $2,500 should be sufficient because don't have to pay for Ms. Benjamin's certification. Ms. Benjamin gets S53,000, she's wonderful. With respect to the S10,000 motion he shares Alderman Newman's concern, the question is can the Trustees have the legal authority to cut individual line items or can we just cut a budget. &ts. Brenniman said your authority is to cut the budget and the individual line items are with the Assessor's authority. Aliderman Bernstein said with that in mind does anyone have a motion with respect to the bottom line of this proposed tfjdget. Alderman Newman said he would cut it $25,000. We just heard during this meeting that cash flow is so tight that the City is going have to loan the Township money, and $25,000 makes a difference. He sees a lot of increase in this t*.rdget from where it was a couple of years ago. He would cut it $25,000 total, get rid of the mailing and legal fees over Page 6. $10,000 they'll have to comeback to the committee. Alderman Feldman said you've already heard they have the authority to spend it any they way want. to which Alderman Newman said he understands that but they don't have to do this mailing, to him they'll have plenty of customers. Alderman Bernstein called for a second to Alderman Newman's motion, motion seconded bvAlderman Feldman. Alderman Bernstein called for further discussion Alderman Jean -Baptiste was trying to understand the total increase in legal fees Alderman Nevrman said it is really $30,600 they had S 10.000 last year in the expert witnesses, without that S10,000 they have an increase of S20.000. Alderman Tisdahl said then you are proposing this item would be even less than this year's budget. Alderman Newman said he expects they will be back here for more legal fees but he would not like to see this mailing done Alderman Bernstein noted the proposal is to cut the budget from $166,100 to $141,100. We have to learn to live within our means and he senses some consternation on the part of this committee with respect to the operation of this vote. Alderman Newman said that not where he's coming from, he thinks they're doing the best theyean but thinks they could have tried to consider the legal taw suit and the problems that the Township is having overall with cash flow. He thinks the increase for the Deputy Assessor is justified but there should have been some attempts to have some cost cutting in other places to pay for it, which he does not see. This is the sum of his motion. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he could support a cut but does not see the necessity to go below the previous budget especially because this is an assessment year. There will be increased pressure on this office and they will need to spend more money. He would not cut $25,000 but would cut it to S15,000 and have them try to play with the line items. Alderman Tisdahl stated she could support that motion. Alderman Newman added they are not doing the mailing to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we do not have authority to do that the Assessor can do as she chooses. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Newman if he accepts this, to which Alderman Newman said its finewith him, he accepts it but hopes they don't do this pamphlet. Alderman Bernstein stated there has been an amendment motion for a $15,000 cut from the $166.100 budget to $151,000 and called for further discussion on this motion. Hearinq none, the motion to cut the budciet as amended was put to a vote, the motion was unanimously passed (5-0). Mr. Terry reminded the committee the budget will only be introduced Monday night, June 14", and there will be a public hearing on the 28". Ms. Brenniman added the requirement is that the budget will pass by the end of June, it will be introduced on the 14`h when there will not be that much discussion, the discussion will take place at the 28'" Council meeting when the budget will be up for passage. Alderman Bernstein thanked everyone from the Township and Assessor's offices for attending VII. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 63-0-04 AMENDING THE CiTY'S INDOOR CLEAN AIR ORDINANCE Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Newman, Alderman Bernstein announced this is the first time the City has presented the ordinance and called for any opponents to this ordinance. He suggested that we have already discounted some of the proposed ordinance on bars and restaurants and knows it is much to the consternation of the people shaking their heads, but that's why they pay us the "big bucks'. He does not mean to be flip and apologizes for that because nobody on this committee is happy about what we did. if you have questions directly with respect to the currency proposed ordinance let us hear that now. Don Ziegler, 1430 Elmwood of the 4�" Ward and Vice -Chair of the Evanston Community Health Advisory Board, said he wished to commend the committee for its proposed well structured language on eliminating smoking in most workplaces, public areas of apartment and condo buildings, and in rear entrances to office buildings............................(See Attachment A for Dr. Ziegler's speech.) At the point in Dr. Ziegler presentation when he said, "very quickly he would like to bring to your attention five pertinent items Since April 12"', Alderman Newman raised an objection and said if we are going to rehash that debate he'd rather table it right now as there are other items on this agenda that we haven't previously spent time on. if we're going to receive a debate or comments not on this ordinance but the ordinance that we passed, right now it's not a good use of his time. We had this debate, it's closed, and it's over. He would move to table this or to move it to the end of the agenda because he does not want the people who are here tonight on new issues who haven't had a chance to address the committee go through something that we've already been through. It you want to address what we're changing in the ordinance, fine, but this is going back into why we made a mistake which is not necessary. Alderman Newman said he does not believe it is fair to anybody else here to go through this, and he will be asking the Chair to place this at the end of the agenda. Page 7. Alderman Bernstein said this is pretty much at the end of the agenda because we just have one other item. He would concur as he knows Dr. Ziegler was not happy with the Council's decision nor does he know that anyone was happy with our decision including members of the Council. It was a decision that was made and you heard that all of us reflect on the reasons which we thought we had to make that decisionif you have specific suggestions, comments with respect to the proposed ordinance he wishes Dr. Ziegler would address those. Dr. Ziegler said had new information that corrects the misinformation given by other testimony including a memo from Mr. Terry and new information from Tempe. Arizona which totally contradicts the rational for your decision. He also has suggestions if you persist in doing what you're doing, also suggestions to tweak the ordinance a little bit to better protect our public. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Dr. Ziegler is asking us to reconsider the decision we made, to which Mr. Ziegler interjected, yes, because it was based on misinformation that he had corrected by the Mayor of Tempe who was misquoted including misrepresented in a memo from Mr. Terry and he wants to correct that information because its an important basis for your decision, which he thinks was wrong. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said you have new information from the Mayor of Tempe, what else do you have that's new that you want to put into the mix so that we can potentially reconsider. Dr. Ziegler said he had totally new information, to which Alderman Bernstein asked that Or, Ziegler just characterize the nature of the information he has. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would agree if Dr. Ziegler is just going over the information that we had to persuade us to do something different then you need to let us know what the new information is, generalize and give us a chance to make an assessment as to whether or not that information can lead us to reconsider and we may be able to do that one, two, three and get it over with. Every time we pass an ordinance people are unhappy with we don't have to reconsider everything unless there is some significant new information. Dr. Ziegler said he wanted to correct the misinformation and then if you are going to persist in exempting bars and restaurants, in tweaking that to better protect public health maintaining your compromise. Alderman Feldman said there is one body of the City that has not acted in any way on this ordinance and that's the City Council, the Human Services Committee has. He does think its appropriate to hear someone suggest amendments to the ordinance that we're considering tonight and if there is very specific information that he thinks was influential in our decision and has new information its very difficult for him to indicate that we should not hear that. However, he does not want to have to go through the entire presentation we heard before. The presentation was exceptional, articulate, sent to us and delivered by significant and respectable members of this community and without question their arguments were strong. The decision, and his vote was cast with much struggle and anxiety and concern, but none the less it was a decision that he Stilt stands by, and one that unless he has an amazing power of persuasion with new data he'll continue to support, but he does have to listen to someone indicating we should amend the ordinance in a way that would be very positive. Alderman Tisdahl said she wants to hear what Dr. Ziegler has to say as we have a terrific record as a City Council of listening to the community. Alderman Newman said there is a basic on fairness that is happening here because this is an effort to get us to reconsider what we did and the people who are opposed to what he wants to do are not here, The reason they're not here is because - they think we're done with that portion of the ordinance. What's happening here is not fair and its not because we didn't hear this from the people who have had all the opportunity in the world, they've had a City Council meeting, a special meeting of this committee to address the issue, we took every speakers, we took a number of speakers who do not live in here in Evanston, we listened to them, and now they want to come back and do it again without their adversaries being here. That's where our process is breaking down. Tonight we should limit the testimony to the ordinance before us, and he agrees if they have some way to make it better that would be fine, but if they want to go back to the other issue let them ask us, let's tell the other side we're going to think about it and we'll schedule a time for that. Alderman Feldman said they could do it before the Council, to which Alderman Newman agreed but said it's not fair because their opponents are not here to have the chance to say why the Mayor of Tempe's representations were something else. Alderman Bernstein said this is the first time we've had the ordinance, the ordinance will be introduced Monday so there is time. Please be brief and talk only to the issues that contradict what you think might persuade some members of the Council to add some different modifications. Please do not rehash, we heard the testimony. He asked that Dr. Ziegler continue and speak quickly. Dr. Ziegler continued with his speech, "1. Norway and Toronto went smoke free in bars and restaurants. 2. April 240, the British Medical Journal...................(See Attachment A forthe remainder of Dr. Zleglees speech.) (See Attachment B. for Dr. Zleglees letter from the Mayor of Tempe.) Alderman Bernstein thanked Dr. Ziegler and said he liked the sounds of additions with respect to some of the signage as those things may well be appropriate. He personally wasn't necessarily moved by Tempe as he took into consideration his Page 8. own sharing of reference with respect to our businesses and conversations he has had with proprietors of our businesses. With respect to choice, 70°I of our restaurants are already voluntarily smoke free. It was never an issue of health he does not think anybody every said that smoking was good for anybody. Dr. Ziegler said it comes down to the automobile company, how many deaths before you change the gas tanks. Alderman Bernstein thanked Dr. Ziegler, Dr. Catherine Counard said as she thought about what she wanted to say to you tonight she must admit she was of two minds because she is happy She is happy that you suggested making a change and that you acknowledged that you guys would not look well in the community, if you did nothing velich is what happened 10 years ago. Thank you Alderman Feldman because you're the one who said this should be done. She would also like to thank the City staff for making the corrections or changes in the amendments to the ordinance that you have recommended. She thinks that is going to make a difference, it is going to keep people from being harmed and it is going to save lives. These changes were long overdue and desperately needed so she thanks you for making those changes. She also completely supports what Dr. Ziegler had to say and is actually incredulous that you know workers are being harmed in Evanston every day and some will die of the results but you are not willing to take action to prevent that from occurring. As a matter of fact she is sort of sick that her Aldermen would do that. in any event she thinks this is a historic moment and we're going to go down in history being remembered for what you've done today. Thank you for making the changes you're willing to make right now and we will not say that this is the end because when people are being harmed in our community we will becoming back over and over again until a correct decision is made. She is saying that as a physician, in fact taking care of people who have died from this. When she sees them in front of her you just can't tell her we can't come and speak on it. Thank you. Alderman Jane -Baptiste said he is not open to getting beaten up every time he has to make a decision to balance what he thinks are the best interests of the community. We heard the maximum presentation; we balanced it and heard it on numerous occasions. We considered options but we have different responsibilities standing in these shoes and that is at the end of the day we have to be able to balance the budget, to be able to provide leadership in the City, we have to be able to represent taxpayer's interest in the community, so this notion of we would not look well if we did nothing has nothing to do with that. He does not know about the rest of the Aldermen who sit up here but almost every day he spends two or three hours in this service and what he gets out of it does not look like giving up something. That's what this is all about, it's about sacrifice and so he does not think we're mobvated by the looks of what we do so much on this issue but balancing the issues. We would love to be able to do more and at some point conditions maybe such that we can. We have said we want to do more work in trying to convince the legislators in Springfield to move in the direction of a total ban on smoking. This notice that we are allowing people to die has nothing to do with any of that. There is also an option that people have, under the circumstances people have certain options to exercise so he is not taking that weight. He does not find the argument persuasive to reconsider the ordinance at this point in time or to add that kind of signage in those establishments. He would, therefore, leave the ordinance as it is and advance it for introduction at the Monday, June 14"" Council meeting. Alderman Newman thought people said over and over again that they were concerned about the effects of smoking and there was a large amount of concern about the impact of doing a local ban as opposed to a statewide ban and our ability to compete as a municipality. This goes on all the time in Evanston, maybe we're too close, but what happens is when somebody doesn't get their way they have to attack, they have to insult, and they have to denigrate motives. He has the utmost respect for the last speaker, Dr. Counard, and believes that she is incredibly dedicated and believes in what she believes in. He respects the amount of time she has put in and the dedication and everything she puts forward on this issue, but he happens to disagree. He also appreciates the time everybody else put into this and knows they feel sincerely dedicated toward this. We have an election coming up in a year, go elect somebody else different. That's what it's all about, they have all the opportunity to do that, they don't have to accuse people on this committee of killing people, it's ridiculous. He therefore wants to go on to the next agenda item. Saying its not being done because we had to something is an unfortunate thing, he supports it because he thinks it's the right thing to do. Alderman Tisdahl asked how you can fine someone with language saying smoking is prohibited within a reasonable distance. Alderman Bemstein said some may have thought some of the ordinance is vague. One of his concerns is when we had the debate people said if you were intent on smoking during dinner you could go outside. He chooses not to patronize smoking restaurants. Not having to walk through the cloud of smoke in order to get into those places he is not sure that he gets that from this ordinance, nor does he get that when there are a given distance or radius of the entrance to any of our non smoking establishments. He'd like that language Ughtened up a bit. Also, he would like something added in order to respond to that with respect to the disposal of a burning cigarette in public, he does not see anything about that. People who just throw their cigarette into the street and let the fumes come up for the next passers by to inhale, he thinks should also be prohibited. He is also concerned about the phrase 'reasonable' because it's inviting controversy and interpretation that he does not think we need. He thinks we need a distance requirement. Page 9. Ms Brenniman said with all due respect on Page 2, Sub -Section B at the bottom, which is repeated again in the other section. the measure of this is not whether it's reasonable, the measure of this is v&ether or not the effect occurs. The citation woula be if the smoke enters the enclosed areas through entrances, windows. venAlation systems orother means, then the distance is not reasonable. Because she had some questions about this she spoke to the attorneys in Wilmette and particularly to tie attorney in Skokie as this is the language that is being drafted universally in these kinds of ordinances. it s ore::; hard to say to measure it by distance because the distance is not what you're citing, it's the effect. What you're trtng to crevent is the effect and if the effect that you don t want occurs then the distance is not reasonable. Alderman Bernstein trpn said if smoke enters the enclosure it's unreasonable distance Wnat about the passerby who is not going to enter into this building and just passes by where 18 or 20 emplayees in Evanston are on a front porch smoking. What about the effect of that. which is what we re trying to mitigate. He does not know how creating a distance requirement impedes that, if you want to say 20 feet he knows it's difficult to count 20 feet the enforcement officers will have to have a ruler. Reasonableness would mandate that the person who enforces this goes within the restaurant to determine whether or not any of the smoke is coming in. It's easier for me to say 'hey you within 20 feet of this doorway you're guilty of violating an ordinance because this is a non smoking establishment ' Alderman Feldman said if you have a restricted path to an entrance, very much like we have here in the Civic Center, coming up to the main stairway you want to avoid people being clustered around the entrance, so you say 20 feet. If there's enough people 20 feet from the gauntlet what people will have to go through is the same except that its not 20 feet away. You can have a group of people surrounding an area 20 feet away and if the sidewalk is such that you have to pass through them no matter how far away from the entrance they go there is no way to get away from that. Walking down the street or standing next to somebody at a bus stop the only thing you can do is move, because they're not going to move. If you can find a reasonable solution to it he would support it but he would tend to go this way and see whether or not it works or until we get a lot of complaints. There is no reason why we can't tweak it further unless you have a very specific, effective way of getting around that. He does not think distance is it unless you're going to say smokers have to go into the park or in the parking lot or someplace else, maybe then people getting out of their cars would have to go through a group of people that smoke. Alderman Newman thought the distance should be 50 feet because people in the office buildings he goes into are right in front of the door, especially when it's cold out. He's saying chase them away. There are also a tot of cigarette butts around so he would chase them away from the entrance and you have to have a clear distance if you are going to enforce this. The term reasonable does nothing it should be 50 feet from the entrance and let's see how this works and what complaints we get about it. Alderman Bennstein asked Alderman Newman if he would put that into a motion to which Alderman Newman said his motion would be 50 feet from the entrance. Alderman Feldman said he would like to get legal counsel's perspective on that and asked if the extent of your comments with respect to distance, those given us already, or do you have another perspective. Ms. Brenniman said to be very honest about it she hasn't looked at whether or not the 50 feet you're asking for would pass constitutional muster, which will have to be looked at. In some situations it might be precluded if that's what your intention is. Alderman Newman said he is not worried about precluding and he would insert 50 feet where it says reasonable distance on Page 2. (B), and on Page 3. (C), you'll give us a legal opinion that we might introduce this Monday. Ms. Brenniman asked if you want this introduced with 50 feet, she has to tell you that this is the only way she seen this written and will try to do the research on the other. Alderman Bernstein asked if the City of Evanston can preclude people from smoking in the streets, period. Ms. Brenniman said she did not believe they can but she would have to look at that. Alderman Bernstein said he was thinking of this as an incentive when it's cold for people who don't want to run out 50 feet to smoke would maybe limit their cigarette consumption. Ms. Brenniman said she would remind the Council that this is an indoor clean air act and the genesis of this ordinance is to regulate and prohibit smoking in enclosed public places This is the one place in the ordinance where we deal with outside buildings. Alderman Newman interjected, but we're protecting entrances. 5- Alderman Bernstein said what Ms. Brenniman said earlier with respect to the intrusion into the enclosure is consistent with that. We have an existing act in place so we have an opportunity to address it. Not having anything with respect to outside air does the State of Illinois allow us to address this? Ms. Brenniman said if that is what you want her to do she will certainty took at that as she is has been only dealing with indoor. Are you saying that we would enlarge this ordinance to include that, to which Alderman Bernstein said his main concern is with respect to the butt that is burning on the street? We have an ordinance that prohibits littering and theoretically we can enforce it that way. The egregious nature of that butt is not only the fact that its going to be there for an extended period of time but before it burns itself out its putting smoke into the air. Ms. Brenniman said she understands that but would like to make the point that it's not considered the purview of the clean air indoor act unless you want her to go beyond that. Alderman Bernstein asked that she just find out whether or not we have the constitutional authority to regulate our streets_ Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think you're proposing intervention is relevant to the indoor clean act and the 50 feet goes beyond what we're trying to do. You can't enforce that amount of feet because it's an indoor clean air act that you're trying Page 10. to pass. Alderman New-nan said he's trying to clean up entrances to cff:ce buildings. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that individuals could go ar•;; stand under a w:ndov: 50 feet a,hay 1.7rien .%-e tarked about reasonab?eness it was to be extended at impact of L^e inside of the structure to insure that toga-_s smoke cues not enter the enclosed area through entrances or windows, ventilation, etc., etc When you say 50 fee: awa it gets a bit unrelated to the enforcement you're trying to dor it seems to him :f you do it 15 feet you're talking acc:r, a reasc^sable distance that might impact indoor conditions. Alderman Newman said he goes in:c office bui'amgs every day w*ere there is a ring of people standing in front of the entrances and as you're walking in front of the entrances you smell t-e smoke This w,ii disperse those people He does not want them 15 feet away he wants teem 50 feet aNay from the entrance because :f tney re all sitting together that's what forms the nr -o of smoke you have to walk through arc ne d =s not Vilnk it's fair to the people who are using the buildings. He wants to c:sparse, he wants to discourage it, ara noNefuny eli,T,nate :t, and 15 feet Kon't do it. Alderman Feldman said there is no place in the block between Cnurch and Clark on Sherman Avenue that you could be 50 feet away from one entrance and not in front of another. The idea of 50 fee: in front of one now puts you 50 feet in front of another. Alderman Newman said he is not bothered by that out if you go to the Shan Morhan Building where there's an entrance and you put people 15 feet away they want to be near the entrance. If they can't go on Sherman Avenue and smoke fuse they're 50 feet away that's too bad. that's great. He's not saying they can't smoke but they can't be near an entrance where people are walking in and out and if it causes people problems on Sherman Avenue he's not bothered by that. Ten feet away from an entrance doesn't do anything. Ms. Brenniman said the reason the ordinance is written the way is is, is because in her discussions with other attorneys have included this kind of section to deal with the flexibility in different kinds of buildings where reasonable distance in one place might be 5, or 10 feet, reasonable distance in others might be 50 feet. The idea is people have to be where it doesn't cause effect and if the effect is caused at 1 foot. 2, feet. or 10 feet, or 50 feet, then it's unreasonable. She understands you're uncomfortable with not having a set amount but you have to realize each building and how its configuration is and perhaps that flexibility might work better because we're really working at precluding the effect, that's the issue here. Again, if you want her to draft it differently she can co that but she just wanted you to understand that she believes the way its drafted now will get the results that you want Where ever people are standing an effect occurs, it's not reasonable, period. Alderman Bernstein said from an enforcement standpoint the only person who would be able to testify intelligently with respect to whether it's intruding is someone inside. Ms. Brenniman said that's right and that's what we're talking about indoor clean air. Alderman Bernstein said then it would have to be someone from inside calling a police department office and willing to sign a complaint saying that Joe Jones was smoking and his smoke impacted cn a negative way. Alderman Feldman said he is willing to entertain the idea of eliminating smoking in Evanston on the streets and he thinks that's what we're talking about when we say that we're shooing them out. He thinks smoking :s terrible but we allow smoking in restaurants and bars and to say that somebody is being shooed down Sherman Avenue until they go to someplace else, if we want to talk about an outdoor smoking ordinance lets talk about that. He doesn't even know if it's constitutional. He would be willing to entertain that motion but not on this ordinance. He knows the purpose not to have people smoke indoors and still allow them to smoke out of doors in which he gathers they're entitled to some reasonable distance to that has to be part of this unless we want to just eliminate smoking altogether. Somebody lights up and we issue them a ticket. He's not certain what the magic number is and :s tree reason he likes flexibility where there's no magic number. He expects that ordinance could be enforced, he does not like walking into smoke any more than anybody else does nor does he know what the alternative is unless we actually restrict people from smoking out of doors as well as indoors. Alderman Tisdahl said she believes it is legal because in California they outlawed it on the beaches. Ms. Brenniman suggested you deal with your indoor clean air act as we have it and then if you want us to do research on broadening a prohibition out of doors we can look and legally come back to you at another time with a legal opinion on that. Alderman Newman said he is just getting to entrances and the people who gather around an entrance smoking and some of them littering. Walking back to train today he looked at the entrances of the office buildings and you see cigarette butts right by the doors not in the middle of the block, just near the doors. He's trying to get the people from congregating in front of doors, he's not saying you can't smoke he's saying its going to be harder to do it standing in front of the entrance of a major building. When you go to the OuPage County Court House you have to walk past 50 or 60 people smoking right in the entrance there's no other entrance to go through because you have to go through the metal detector. He's interested in clearing the entrances not slopping the smoking on the streets. Alderman Feldman said if you say smoking is restricted directly in front of an entrance, which means impeding the path of somebody going into the building, but not along the side of the entrance, 15 feet from the entrance along the side, but in no case in front of the entrance so people have a direct clear path to the entrance of the building with no one standing in the way. They could stand a reasonable distance away from the entrance along the sides of the building. As far as he's Page 11. concerned there are people walking along the sidewalk, not going into a building just walking who are subjected to the same kind of thing. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked we're talking about a different ordinance and that can be put on the table for discussion at same later point in time, but thinks that the reasonableness of this measure a:iows for enforcement. What are we trying to do, we're trying to change behavLor, to change how people do things To t3egin enforcement outside you want to enforce an indoor clean air act outs.de and you want to begin to set the distance Tne distance can be 15 feet or it can be 100 feet, so arbitrate. When we talk about impact on inside air quality that's the main issue here, it's not the distance from the door. He's open to broadening the discussion to some type of clean air act impacting the outdoors, but that is not what is on the table at this time. Alderman Newman said what's on the table is the paragraph in the ordinance that says, 'Enclosed area through entrances, windows, ventilation systems'. We have in there reasonable distance which is a non functioning entity, it's a non ordinance, its nothing, because it doesn't give anybody any warning to anything and you don't want to hand over to enforcement agents something that is as vague as this. Reasonable distance, which part of this ordinance, doesn't work and as far as he's concerned this ordinance has nothing but a very unclear standard for everybody. In his viewyou need a number of feet and that gets to what do you want to accomplish in terms of what's the problem you're trying to correct. What he's is trying to get to is the finer in front of the entrances and the smoke ring. If you don't think that's a problem, fine, he does not care, but thinks that's what Alderman Bernstein was adding when he referred it back to us. Alderman Bernstein asked what is the committee's pleasure, we have a proposal for 50 feet Alderman Newman said he would send it to 25 or 20, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we'll compromise on 25 feet. Alderman Bernstein noted it is the view of this committee that 25 feet would be a reasonable distance. Alderman Newman said we should get a report on how the enforcement works on this and if there are problems we'll look into changing this, maybe it should be 10 or maybe 35. Alderman Bemstein stated it has been moved by Alderman Jean -Baptiste and seconded by Alderman Tisdahl that the 25 feet would be a reasonable distance. Ms. Brenniman said her issue with this is if they're at 25 feet away and the smoke still goes inside would you have a violation? Alderman Bernstein sa'd maybe you can leave reasonable but in no way less than 25 feet. Ms. Brenniman said give her another chance at this to which Alderman Bernstein added why don't we wait to see it in writing. Alderman Newman said we can then comment on it and have the opportunity to amend or go forward with it. Ms. Brenniman said the important thing here is the effect not the distance, the effect is it the smoke goes in it's now a violation. A person will argue that they are within 25 feet and in line with the ordinance, Alderman Bernstein said unless the 25 feet is under a window or close enough proximity to allow the smoke within. We are trying to address two different concerns. one of which is the maintenance of an interior clean air act which he proposes to address. Another is a concern that he has about having to walk through the smoke every time he comes into this building or any other office building. Once he's inside he does not think he has ever been confronted by smoke inside of buildings. He can't remember being in an office building where he was subjected to smoke. Ms. Brenniman said that is a concem that could be dealt with outside the parameters of the indoor clean air act. Alderman Bernstein asked Ms. Brenniman if she could please work on that. Alderman Feldman asked why we don't deal with this now by passing and recommending it to the Council to which Alderman Newman said we have until June 28'" to look over Ms. Brenniman's memo and if we wish to make changes. Alderman Bernstein noted at this time there is a proposed modification to this proposed ordinance a distance of a minimum of 25 feet, or in cases where the smoke is clearly entering the building it's a violation, in lieu of the reasonable. Alderman Bernstein called for further discussion and had a question with respect to Page 3., Section 1 , 8.21-6 A `.... Every employer shall have the right to designate any place of employment, or any portion thereof, as a nonsmoking area." and asked why we need that paragraph if all interiors are non smoking other than the restaurants, bars and long term care facilities, to which Ms. Brenniman responded it's currently in the ordinance and she left it in. Alderman Bernstein asked if this is needed in light of the fact that theoretically we're eliminating smoking. He could see the rational if you want a smoking area but not a nonsmoking area. Ms. Brenniman said there was some discussion among the staff about improving private offices which she thinks is why that is in there. In 8-21-6 (B), `Smoking in all enclosed facilities and places of employment shall be prohibited." She went on to enumerate everything we think of that would be included, including private offices. She could get rid of (E) because essentially is says you can't do it. Alderman Bemstein made the motion to eliminate Section 2:, 8-21-6:, (E) in the ordinance. "Notwithstanding anv other provisions of this Section, every emplover shall have the right to designate anyplace ofemolovment, or arty portion thereof, as a nonsmokinq area." The motion was seconded by Alderman Newman. Hearinq no further discussion called for a vote, motion unanimously passed ("). Ms. Brenniman asked if she could get clarification of the language wanted and what would be reasonable. Alderman Bernstein said the attempt is to keep smoke from going within the building, the test of which is to preclude that ring of smoke through which everybody has to pass to get into any office building Page 12. Alderman Bernstein recalled the motion to pass the ordinance as amended, Alderman Feldman moved passage of the amended ordinance, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Hearing no further discussion Alderman Bernstein called fora vote, motion unanimously passed 45.01. Alderman Bernstein noted the amended crdinance will be moved on for introduction and Ms Brenniman will work on some language which may or may not be approved for discussion at the next Human Services Committee meeting. Vill. AUDIENCE DISCUSSION Alderman Bernstein called for the next agenda item. Evanston Environment Board. He apologized and addressed the people present for the Evanston Hospital incinerator and said he had a conversation with one member of the group that there is discussion by at least one Alderman with the hospital administration. When he called and he asked the representative of the group not to bring this matter up because we don't want it in public yet to force the hospital to take a position. For the benefit of those who do not know what this is about, is the fact that the Evanston Hospital has an incinerator and they do incineration in the City of Evanston. They do it pursuant to a state of Illinois statute which allows them to do it. Alderman Bernstein said he talked to Shale Miller and Clare Kelly Delgado and noted there were two communications in the Human Services Committee packets. Ms. Delgado said back in December they presented a letter that has since been updated and in lieu of that letter she would like to read a short statement. Alderman Bernstein said the letter in the Human Services packet is dated December of 2003 and if you have additional information please provide it to the committee. We are about to start a discussion regarding a report from the Evanston Environmental Board a portion of which addresses your concern. Ms Delgado asked if they could have a public communication, as that washer understanding to which Alderman Bernstein responded he thought told Ms. Delgado that we would put this on the agenda to have a public hearing, it would be a discussion item and there would be an opportunity to have everybody come and discuss it. Ms. Delgado said she was told she would be allowed to have a few minutes to speak tonight, in fact the manna was taken off the agenda which allows some additional time and it sounds to her like you aren't responding to the issue. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked let's not make that kind of declaration. Alderman Bernstein said we have a report from the Evanston Environment Board a portion of which deals with yourissue which is what we're getting to now. A woman in the audience had a question because Alderman Bernstein said one of the Aldermen had spoken to the hospital and the hospital asked that this not be on the agenda. Alderman Jean -Baptist said two of us spoke to the hospital to which Alderman Tisdahl said she spoke to the hospital and nobody, not the hospital nor has she, ever asked it not be on the agenda She asked that it be on the agenda tonight and the hospital never told her nor had they ever told Alderman Jean -Baptiste that they didn't want it on the agenda tonight. Alderman Bernstein said his understanding was that we were trying to worts out an arrangement whereby the hospital would just cease and desist People in the audience representing the incinerator insisted that this item go before the Environmental Board and the Environmental Board representatives graciously said they would give up their time for them. Alderman Bernstein thanked the Environmental Board. IX. EVANSTON HOSPITAL MEDICAL WASTE INCINERATOR Clare Kelly Delgado said she was speaking on behalf of many Evanston residents who are seeking immediate closure of the Evanston Hospital medical waste incinerator. In addition she has also been asked to speak on behalf of the Orrington School P.T.A. Unbeknown to you most Evanston residents Evanston Hospital operates one of the large remaining medical waste incinerators in the nation burning literally tons of medical waste everyday. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified medical waste incinerators into three categories, small, medium and large. The incinerator that operates in the heart of our neighborhood surrounded by schools is classified as a large medical waste incinerator. We're not particularly happy at Orrington School to know that a block away from our school, where there are upwards of 300 children, there is a large medical waste incinerator. This represents a serious threat to our children. Evanston Hospital burns literally tons of waste every day. More than 5,000 medical waste incinerators have closed in the United - States in the last 10 years, about 80 remain in the United States and none remain in Chicago. Medical waste incinerators are extremely dangerous even at the tiniest levels. They are one of the largest emitters of dioxin for which there is no safe level of exposure. Dioxin is a carcinogen and is considered the most dangerous chemical known to science. Manyother harmful pollutants including mercury, cadmium and small particles of soot are also released during the incineration of medical waste. Children are the most vulnerable to the dangerous effects of these products of medical waste incineration. Evanston Hospital incinerator emits all these toxic fluids. It is also important to mention that in Evanston over 20%of our Evanston children, particularly minority children, suffer from asthma which is well documented to be triggered by atmospheric particulates. There used to be hundreds of medical waste incinerators in Illinois and thousands in the nation. With growing awareness of the dangers of incineration there are now only 11 left in Illinois and only 83 in the nation and the number is shrinking. Again there are none in the City of Chicago. Page 13. For many years Evanston residents have expressed their concerns about this incinerator and its location with the hospital with City officials and with the Ilhno:s EPA. In addition to concerns about pollutants like dioxins, mercury, cadmium, lead, and soot there have been complarnts about odors presumably from the buming plastics and other unknown wastes. Recently a group of residents came tc-aether to share our concerns and invest ate and discovered as we investigated that medical waste incineration has becc—)e moiety an obsolete practice. We also found through the Freedom of Information Act some data regarding the operat:ens of the hospital's incinerator. Evanston Hospital reports on numerous and frequent malfunctions of its incinerator Many of these malfunctions result in increased rates of emissions of those really dangerous pollutants. In aderticn. on i,Rarch 9" we asked the IDPA to loc% rr,to t`Pese particularly dangerous pollutants like dioxin. mercury, and cadmium. ano fund out the hospital had not been rem ,ing these pollutants. On March 9"the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency cited the hospital for failure to report cm dioxin, mercury and cadmium for several years and gave Evanston Hospital untl April It -'Of this year to come into comp::ance and report. Evanston Hospital failed to respond. A second letter from the Air Compliance office was sent on Apnl 19" of this year requesting a response in compliance by May 190. As of May 28"" according to the legal department that called heron behalf of the Director Julie Armitist of the Air Compliance office, Evanston Hospital still had failed to respond. It appears the Hospital doesn't take our State Regulatory Agency terribly seriously. Defenders of medical waste inarrerabon will tell you their facilities are operated in accordance with Federal and State regulations. This doesn't particularly reassure us for several reasons; first emission limits when it's established for pollutants for medical waste incinerators are not based on safety for human health but rather are based on the limits of avar'.able and affordable technology at the time that the regulations are written. Second, our IDPA has been one of the hardest hit state environmental regulatory agenaes in the nation rendering it less capable of thorough monitoring which has led to oversights that we've seen in lapses that have occurred at Evanston Hospital. The State of Illinois does not require the incineration of medical waste and we found there are several other importanlways to dispose of medical waste such autoclaving, a steam sterilization process. By the way, this is not a not in my backyard issue, we do not want Evanston Hospital to burn this waste in somebody else's community. We want them to reduce the amount of medical waste they produce and dispose of their remaining waste responsibly using methods that do not involve incineration. There are less polluting more cost effective and safer methods of waste disposal widely used by the vast majority of hospitals in the Chicago land area, this state and in the nation. Evanston Hospital already used these alternative services 5 or 5 weeks of the year when its incinerator is closed for maintenance. EiVH's other two hospitals Glenbrook and Highland Park do not operate incinerators and use these alternatives so Evanston Hospital could quickly and easily switch as well. In response to community concern and dialogue the hospital has agreed to close the incinerator in one year. We think its great that they recognize that medical waste incineration must end but the hospital claims they need a year to phase out incineration does not jive with the experience of other hospitals where quick transitions to cleaner, safer alternatives have been made. All that is needed is the will to make the change. We have given all the aldermen packets of ordinances of other cities and when these ordinances have been passed they've given incinerators just weeks to close and they managed to do so. Tonight we are urging the Health and Human Services to urge Evanston City Council to follow the lead of many other cities across the nation like Chicago, who have enacted ordinances prohibibng incineration in residential neighborhoods. We urge that Health and Human Services place as an action item on their next meeting the recommendation of such an ordinance. Evanston citizens are prohibited from burning leaves in their back yard surely it is time to prohibit Evanston Hospital from the daily burning of thousands of pounds of medical waste. Tne medical waste incinerator the hospital operates in the heart of a neighborhood surrounded by schools needs to be Gosed immediately. Thank you. Alderman Bernstein said he would like to know about some of the things Ms. Delgado raised if we find the lack of reporting and if those things are in fact correct then they are in violation and we should know about that. Ms. Delgado said she did send those letters from the IAT, to which Alderman Bernstein said today he got a red folder that he did not have to chance to look at. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said partrcularty for the benefit of the media here he wanted to share with you that the community for whom Ms. Delgado is speaking had asked Alderman Tisdahl and himself to go and meet with the hospital, and they went there and presented the information that Ms. Delgado spoke about. We went there and communicated that and they made an offer, the hospital has not gone public with its offer and he has met with leaders of the community and we disagree on process. Process meaning if you open up a dialogue for the negotiation and there is an offer made you need to make a counter offer but you have to make it within the constraints of the negotiation. When you go and take it to the media with your full blown position then it may jeopardize whatever that negotiabon may be. He understands that the community may not have full confidence in those they have sent in, that's a fact of life. The reality that profits is if the media is Interested, as we all are, in making sure that this incineration stops he is hoping that the media then will be responsible to then talk the negotiation brought on and then hopefully the negotiation will bring about the speedy closure of the incinerator as opposed to publishing all of that with it. Page 14. Alderman Tisdahl said since Ms. Delgado first raised this issue and then withdrew her letter because she asked that certain representatives stay on, Shale Miller and Joanna Vatillia, and negotiate with the hospital They have been diligently doing that for 3 months and the hospital has said it will answer the concerns of the neighborhood at the Neighborhood Liaison Meeting on Tuesday, .tune 15" . Alderman Tisdahl said Ms. Delgado is invrted to that meeting when the hospital is going to give its positron and it's rational for the position. It seems to her that it is reasonable having asked the hospital to consider stopping incineration and having the hospital respond diligently, working hard and seriously considering the request of the community. It seems to her reasonable to listen to the hospital's resoonse ano that is what she believes we should do Tuesday night. Therefore she would ask that we wait before maKrno this an agenda item or doing anything and listen to what the hospital has to say as a result of 3 months of negotiation Alderman Feldman had no objection to that process and would just like to be kept in the loop with the kinds of negotiations. To him this issue and the actions of two members of the Council wrh respect their negotiations was an area he knew nothing about except a vague reference made on the phone. As these negotiations progress he would like to be informed of what's going on. Alderman Tisdahl said the hospital wilt announce its position and you will hear immediately. Alderman Newman appreciated all the work that's going on because it seems we're closer to gettinq the incinerator closed than we have been for several years. He also appreciates the fact that there's a meeting June 15` but does not see why this can't be put on the Human Services Committee agenda for July 19`. The hospital knows about the year not being acceptable and thinks this should be on our agenda for discussion. Maybe before July IV it mil be resolved. He sees no harm in putting it on and having these ordinances they've come up with looked at, talked about, and if we resolve this with the hospital, that's great. July 19`' is a way off and we will have a lot of information by then. Alderman Newman moved to put this on the Human Services Agenda for July 19'", listen to the report of the two aldermen and the community, figure out what we will do. Alderman Jean -Baptiste supports the call for the Council to begin to take ownership of this and to put it on the agenda and consider the issue and to give the parties an opportunity to come and present. The community has responded and said, look a year is not acceptable, and at some point that needs to be communicated to the hospital so the negotiation then may yield something. We don't know. He thinks the process has to be something that contains as much as possible to maximize the chance of resolving this issue and then put it on the July 19' agenda. By then there whit be more information and the hospital would have made a public announcement, the community would then have informed the rest of us even more so, thus his assurance process is short term. Alderman Bernstein asked Alderman Tisdaht to announce where and what time the meeting will take place time on June 15"', Alderman Tisdahl announced it's the Neighborhood Liaison Meeting that is held regularly with Evanston Hospital for the neighbors as Alderman Engelman appointed the neighborhood liaison committee. Alderman Bernstein asked if this is an open meeting, to which Alderman Tisdahl responded, no its not. Alderman Newman noted his surprise that it's not an open meeting, to which Alderman Tisdahl again responded it's a neighborhood meeting. Alderman Tisdahl asked if you mean can the entire community come. her response was you would have to ask Evanston Hospital. Alderman Bernstein asked if Ms. Delgado's part of the meeting could be communicated. Ms. Delgado had one point of clarification. With all due respect to Alderman Jean -Baptiste, she asked him what information was given, as she wanted to be very careful because she said, could she work publicly with this information. He said, yes, bring it back to the community for response. She made it clear she did not want to use it. she did not want to jeopardize compromise and asked very point blank if this is information that we can work with publicly, it's your offer. Alderman Bernstein said it's out here now. A gentleman is the audience wanted to clarify that the only communication he had with you was a call, sometime in late April or early May, regarding just to apprise you of this process that we were doing and that was the only communication, this was a misunderstanding. Alderman Bernstein apologized, as he recalls he understands the process as we've dealt with institutions before and when you go public sometimes what's done in private is no longer private. We hope not to create that situation_ It will be on the agenda for the next July 19' Human Services Committee meeting and in the interim period he would like staff to get a history of their reporting or lack thereof and anything that might indicate to us their keeping up with the mandates of the State of Illinois with respect to the incinerator. {At this point (9:25 p,m,) Alderman Newman `eft the meeting.) Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to clarify to Ms. Delgado that the issue is not whether one year gets put out, he was addressing the media and he is asking the media to be as responsible as they can be to protect the process because the issues that we face are, the procession of the hospital, the procession of people living in the surrounding area and their property value and all the rest of those issues. He is just suggesting that the first time there has been some dialogue with representatives and the hospital has made an offer, it's up to the community to make a counter offer and try to negotiate Page 15. this process. That is what we're talking about, we're not talking about whether or not you could discuss the one year, that's not the point. The paint is what we publish cut there at this particular time, do we create a situation where the hospital gets defensive and doesn't want to enter into a negotiation do we create a kind of resistance or to try to resolve this so there is a win win situation He thinks once we're all conformed we are committed to try to advance the process. Awoman in the audience said she certainly hoped there is leadership on the part of the hospital and they are not going to become defensive. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said any time you make a public accusation particularly with a private institution, especially after there's been some beginning negotiation less than a week ago. then the people who sat around the table will feel that people are operating in bad faith. He is not saying that is the case in fact, but he is saying that if we are to advance this process once the City Council gels involved and passes an ordinance to effect some kind of a measure to close this incinerator, we need to work with these people as opposed to trying to gel them against the wall and create bad blood because down the line there will be other things that we need to resolve with the hospital. Ms. Delgado noted a number of Evanston residents don't know about this and asked do you not feel that they have the right to be aware of this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if you are saying the community group had not informed the residents, and was told they have not. Alderman Bernstein said as Alderman Jean -Baptiste has indicated we are trying to negotiate with the hospital we're not going to presume they are going to become defensive. We want to hope that they will not. This is now out there and we're going to get information with respect to whether they're operating a lawful incinerator, if they are not we can step in far more quickly than if they are. Alderman Bernstein thanked all those in attendance regarding this issue. X. REPORT FROM EVANSTON ENVIRONMENT BOARD Derek Supple, Chairperson of the Environment Board introduced Leonard Sciarra and acknowledged Gwen Burton Poole, Steve Lupton, and Jan Loughlin were also in attendance representing the Board. He thanked the committee for making time on the agenda to hear their report tonight even though the meeting has gone longer than expected. They will tryand be brief and concise and he would like to quickly update you on their recent activities and recommendations. The first of which is the proposed adoption and implementation of the International Energy Conservation Code ,it's the Budding Code in Evanston. In February of 2003 their presentation to P & D along with the Energy Commission recommended that the City adopt energy conservation requirements into the Building Code, not only because it will save resources and fuel prevention but also to reduce the utility costs for the occupant and residents of Evanston buildings. Julie Hamos's Illinois Energy Assistance Commercial Building Act House Bill 4099 was passed on April 20m by the General Assembly and is awaiting the Governor's signature. That will require all commercial industrial and multi residential buildings new construction and significant rehabs to meet the 2000 International Energy Conservation Codes. Since compliance enforcement is going to be required by the City, the Board is urging the City to adopt the energy codes as soon as possible with provisions for both commercial and residential parts of the conservation code. He understands that is now under Mr. Wolinski's review and a member of their Board will be meeting with him in the near future to discuss this. We would be interested to hear his report when the department is finished analyzing implementation obstacles and steps. We cannot emphasize enough doing energy efficiency right at first construction stage, is the most cost effective way to make these pro environmental energy investments. The second item is the Environment Board would like to initiate a dialogue with City staff and Facilities Management particularly regarding Green design. energy efficient design for potential new City construction buildings, such as the future Civic Center and Robert Crown Recreation Center. As you may or may not know there is a variety of benefits to a Green design which include lower operating costs, optimized life cycle performance of the equipment, improved employee productivity, satisfaction improved air and water quality of the building, reduced waste and improved thermo and acoustical comfort in the building. You may or may not be familiar with the LEED leadership energy and environmental design Green building rating system. Cook County has recently adopted a standard that all new County buildings have to meet LEED certification. We recommend that the City adopt an ordinance design that all new City construction buildings be designed to meet with LEED standards. We would like to note there is a lot of potential grant funds available for Green designs of this type through organizations such as the Illinois Clean Air Community Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The Environment Board would definitely be willing to help management in working to secure such grant funding or selected design team if they are interested. The third item is in regards to the Use Attainability Analysis study of the upper North Shore channel which is being conducted by IEPA. The channel is currently designated as general use which includes swimming. Under this new analysis study the new proposed designation is limited contact recreation and this reduction in standards is due to the current measured water quality and poor water quality because of combined sewer overflows into the channel. While the Environment Board agrees that this designation is justified we also believe that many Evanston residents would like to see an improvement in water quality in the channel so it would once again be designated as a whole body contact recreation okay for swimming, wading, etc., and things the Ecology Center uses for it as well. Some alternatives to improve this water quality might include various combinations of disinfection and aeration and we would like a commitment from IEPA and their study toward improving the water quality before it goes to subcommittees to look at developments of these Page 16. standards. Also to use the subcommittee to develop positions of technical resource that come before this City if they'd like to use it in developing their position with what the standards of the channel should be. The next item is the hotly debated topic of the manna which he is sure will take a huge chunk of your time at the next meeting The Board would like to offer some of their resources to the City regarding environmental impact studies or conversations now amongst the community, Phase One Report from the reconnaissance study made clear that there are legitimate community concerns abou'. both air and water pollution in addition to traffic congestion if the manna is ultimately constructed. Therefore, the Environment Board would like to work to ensure that any future environmental impact assessment study or public input crocess are both thorough and effective We also have concerns about the shoreline sand drift and the combined impact of all marinas being oroposed in the wine glass of Lake Michigan down south here. We trust that the community here will take these issues into account in deciding whether to move forward with future phases of the manna evaluation. In this regard we definitely would be wiffing, if so directed by the Council, to hold forums specifically related to the environmental issues regarding the marina. The Environment Board was a primary sponsor of an Earth Month event series in April following a presentation by John Norquist We had a participatory community visioning session which drew more than 90 people to talk about what realistic steps Evanston could take to become a more sustainable City. A diverse cross section of people came together and we are currently in the process of creating the report. The initial draft of this report will be sent to all participants and cosponsors to get their feed back and revisions and we hope to have a document for public distribution finalized sometime in September. We would like to acknowledge Mayor Morton, City Clerk Morris, and several City Council and City staff members that participated in the forum, which we greatly appreciated. With regards to tonight's discussion both Boards continues to be concerned about air quality in Evanston. In the past year we've undertaken a citizen's request for the investigation of local air quality issues including indoor air quality due to smoking, diesel exhaust issues at the Gilbert tot lot, and the burning of medical wastes at ENH Hospital. After researching the environmental health issues concerning the smoking ordinance in public workplaces the Board did support a unanimous vote of the previously proposed ordinance for the smoking flan. in regards to the ENH Hospital issue upon our analysis what we did get from the IEPA was clear at that point and he has some new information tonight that the incinerator was in compliance. Now whether being in compliance negates any public health issues is still up in the air and we definitely would be willing to assist the City in any way possible if you choose to request more information from ENH which they haven't given to us or the community members and if the hospital chooses to supply it. From a prevention point and a personal point of view it does seem that there is definitely cost effective options there that shouldn't be a huge barrier, and alternatives to processing medical waste. The final item of their report tonight is the most relevant for you in getting feedback and that's a more general request as how to improve the effectiveness of the Environment Board and to improve the communication between the Environment Board, Senior City staff officials and the Council, in recent years we've received very few directives or Board specific communications from the Council or Senior City staff and he would just like to emphasize that we are composed of attorneys, engineers, architects, educators, and public health professionals all with tremendous technical and regulatory experience in environmental matters. It is our hope to be a good research and advisory resource and guesses we would like a little bit more direction as to how our collaboration efforts with the City would be better directed so they would be more eagerly received. Alderman Feldman thanked Mr. Supple fora very thoughtful and thorough report. He especially wanted to commend him on his offer to be involved and help us make decisions. His feelings with respect to all of our Boards and Commissions is that they are the eyes and ears of the Council and able to focus on issues and inform and educate the Council on issues of their concern and certainly of concem of ours. Your offer to be involved in introducing and educating the Council and perhaps staff with respect to all of these issues especially having to do with Green architecture, if we have the chance to build some new buildings that should be considered. Also he thinks there is a lot of resistance because a lot of people aren't quite certain as to what it means but you could help us by letting them know that and showing us buildings and indicate to us the construction of a Green building while it may cost more initially returns a great deal in terms of economic benefits so that most of the additional costs are paid off quickly, if he understands that correctly. He thinks its important that you keep coming back and asking for an opportunity to be part of the decision making process especially in terms of advise and education as that is very, very important for us. Alderman Feldman inquired as to the last time this Board came before the Human Services Committee and was told that was last year. He thought this is a good forum, but on important occasions his perspective is it would be very helpful for this Board to come before the Council and asked for 5 minutes, send us memos and then get up before the Council in regular citizen comment and alert or remind us of something special or something coming up. You don't have a wait a year to come before us, don't restrict your encounters with us to getting an invitation. Mr. Supple said he thought they were just cautious not to flood you with letters. Alderman Feldman said they should be in regular contact with Mr. Terry and the Human Services Committee Chair. There should be a way that you can make a presentation to staff with respect to Green architecture and he thinks this committee should sanction that. He and other member of the Council would certainly like to sit in on that. It would be better if members of Page 17. the Council were present at these presentat-ons rather than just staff as the dynamics would change. The time to be thinking about this is before we have a construction site. Again, accept his congratulations for a good report, for the dedication and work that this report indicates t:; him, keep it up Alderman Jean -Baptiste echoed Alderman i=elzman's coneratutattons and comments. He said they had a presentation before the CDBJ Committee and the commiree encouraged whoever wanted to propose any of these type design projects to come back and get funding to oo so Those are great ideas but somebody has to move them and he thinks people should take the initiative, if you kno,v people who have that concept and can help us achieve affordable housing that is environmental friendly that would be a areal thing He did go and check out a home in Skokie but it was very expensive and we may not be at the point where we can be able to afford to build that kind of housing, but perhaps we are there, he does not know if we can ask some people to come and make specific proposals to try to advance this particular type of project he is sure they would get the support of the committee and subsequently the Council. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is very interested in the upper North Shore channel study, for one things he lives right near the channel but also as a potential resource as we need to start thinking about whether or not this has some utility beyond being a place where we dump sewage. He knows there are some groups that have begun to use the channel for rowing but does not know what the ultimate impact is not does he know if we ever had a vision as to what can be done with that waterway. We need to hear about going through the process of disinfecting, irrigation, etc., etc., etc., we have to know for what end. He does not know whether we have a sense as to what we would do with it and thinks if you could come back with some proposals or directions that would help us understand what we can do with the perspectives that you bring, if we were to do something about the condition, what would be the purpose of doing something, of spending the money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said another thing we have on the table is the hospital and you talked about maybe helping with that, well help. Some of the neighbors who came forward tonight were very concerned about this and it seems to him we do have a clear understanding of what the impact is and as the hospital responds we need to understand their perspective as well in terms of moving the process forward. If you have a sense as to how the hospital can move expeditiously to do certain things to alleviate this condition please provide the leadership, intervene, be a player. Mr. Supple said the question is more of process, how to get that to you as a matter of coming and trying to get on the agenda here, telephone or email or letter. Alderman Bernstein said that's all ittakes, and as Alderman Feldman indicated the fact that you are our eyes and ears, your time is now, you saw that tonight. Tonight we talked about clean air, about potential degradation of that clean air and next month we'll probably talk about a marina all of which you are citing in your report. Mr. Sciarra said when they found out about the incinerator they had already gotten the reports because Ms. Delgado came to them to talk about it. Mr. Lipton had done work on researching the compliance, the state regulations, so we have a fair body of knowledge about it that we've been debating. if you read our meeting minutes in terms of what is the City's liability, what's the hospital's responsibility, where we stand on that ground, before you can even begin to say is it morally right or morally wrong. Alderman Tisdahl said it doesn't matter if its morally right or morally wrong but its going to close so the issue that's left is the best method of closing it and they have to meet all sorts of ordinances state laws as they close it, how to help them to do it in as expeditious a manner as possible. Don't go back over all the ground we've covered because it was painful, there is no need to do that The point to go forward with is closing it in a sale manner because this hazardous waste is going to go through our community, the different vendors who have different track records who do that, as this is a very serious thing. The real solution is the one the hospital is working that you can help with as well which is to decrease the amount of hazardous waste, that's the real issue. if you want to help, please do and don't go back over old ground that's been conquered go for decreasing hazardous waste and the best, speediest method to dispose of it. Alderman Bernstein said we charge these gentlemen with the responsibility of coming up with a report. He does snot know if you're going to get the information he's looking for by asking the hospital for its records but to that extend that you can do a Freedom of Information request, and was told that has already been done. Alderman Bernstein said that is what he is concerned about if they are operating inappropriately we should know about that. You can help Mr. Terry and his staff create that kind of information for us which is very important Alderman Feldman said the question of appropriateness and legality was addressed here tonight and even if everything is legal It doesn't mean that it is not a threat to peoples' lives. What we have to determine is if in fact the fears are really justified, if it ever gets to that, as this may be settled long before the Council gets to it. He'd be very concerned about that and if in fact it is in the power of Evanston to order a shut down of a facility that is within the taw and within compliance. Alderman Bernstein said that is his question, if it's not within the law then we have a better opportunity to do that. He was a little concerned when he read the report which he thought was wonderful, just having conversations with respect to the = incinerator. On page 4 of the Environment Board's report it is one part of an item. He wondered about the immediacy of things of that sort to the extent that you agree with the community telling us it is important to us. Page 18. Alderman Feldman thought it was a bit ironic tonight that this whole idea of a medical facility and its practces wit respect to economics and saving money and doing things efficiently, etc., was in one sense being accused by the community of an act that endangered the health c' the surrounding area. At the same time we dealt with the whole question of the City cleating with the indoor clean air crornance which raised some of the same questions especially the accommodation that the City made which had to do -r%" h a lot of things that are present in all kinds of medical decisions. The Fclea that not everybody in this country can get decent medical care, the idea that drugs are being prescribed at a rate that can be counter productive and in many ways dangerous to people The struggle we're going through to Msperse and disseminate good medical practices throughc.* the country are all issues that not cnhy deal with what is r,gM but deal ::,gin whatwe can afford. The entire concept of traces something trial medicine is wresting with Should we spend 5250 1011110. $300,000, S400.000, on a liver transplant fcr somebody that's 65, 75, or80 years old and by doing that deny people of younger years indifferent kinds of circumstances because the pot is very clearly limited He thinks we're tragically stuck ,n the middle of an of these kinds of decisions. Tt-e medical community is not immune from the same kind of economic pressures that the City of Evanston has. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said what drives a lot of this is the economics and a few will develop all kinds of oh,losophical justification because in the context of U.S Environmental Law you have the issue of offsetting rights to pollute You pay a cost for rights to pollute and you are constantly trading When you talk about the question of health and organ transplants, the need of those who have the resources to pollute who have the need go beyond what we think ,s the right thing to do. He just read an article about a mar, n Brazil who sold his kidneys and at some point prior to the AIDS epidemic we used to sell blood, we have a great deal to contend with and if you can help us in terms of trying to make some of these decisions within the law. When you talked at>out how you could help, he thinks eventually as we look forward to dealing with the hospital issue we need to inquire v.hat in fact is their perception of the issue and we need to be informed of the kind of time table. The community has a ereat urgency and it has to be balanced someway or another. Mt. Terry said the comment he was going to make on two of the points was that the environmental area, the enforcement and improvement of the environment is charged generally to other units of government. Part of the frustration of the group that came here tonight about the hospital is a feeling that the State Environment Protection agency is not doing that, not being responsive. In fact, born he and Ms. Bush have had difficulty getting them to return phone calls and the community group received its data only through a Freedom of Information request. We don't have air quality specialists on staff nor do we have the resources to do that. Similarly with the North Shore channel we have a whole unit of local government whose job it is to have that channel be improved and our ability to impact that unit of local government has been mixed through the years, so any strategies you might have in that regard will help. What the municipality can do in these big picture issues is a question we wrestle with all the time. Mr. Sciarra said sometimes ,t does come down to some sort of monolithically political debate or clout and so if you were informed that something was going on with the channel and we had a particular ,cea of where we wanted the channel to go, you as the political entity through Jan Schakowsky or Julie Hamos can start to influence some of those decisions because a lot of those decisions are bonds between economics and policy. We can provide technical data but at some level there are some discuss=ons that may happen on a policy level that you would need to be involved in or talked to. Alderman Bernstein said you'll have the ear of our legislative team, they are all Evanstonians. to come up vnth some questions and see if they can provide some interest. Alderman Bernstein thanked the Environment Board for their attendance and excellent presentation and asked that they continue to weigh in. Xll. COMMUNICATION: LEVY CENTER LIGNAGE REPORT Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Gaynor if policy with respect to the sign has changed at all. Mr. Gaynor said, yes, in the report they indicated they about have it an hour and a half to two hours on in morning the same late in the afternoon with only 2 or 3 messages and will cut off XII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 10.00 p.m Respectfully submit d, Audrey Trot y, r Departmen of Health and Human Services Page 19. SPEAKER SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 an ay - june 7, 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Name: j\ Address/Organizatx S f1 Prt4J�► "D.V 1 V 30 CIM Wdod V a,,4� 3, Iluwfed ✓:717. j C)04 PijLk-_ AT Vg MEMBERS PRESENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: I. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, August 2, 2004 Civic Center - Council Chambers 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Tisdahl (Alderman Newman arrived at the meeting 8:30 p.m.) Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Neal Ney, Carla Bush, Donna Stuckert, Vincent Jones, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Mayor Morton, Alderman Rainey, Sharon Eckersall, (Township Assessor's Office); Julie Amitage, Brad Frost, (Illinois E.P.A.) (See Attached Attendance Sheets for other attendees. Alderman Tisdahl Alderman Tisdahl called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m. and thanked everyone for coming. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE JUNE 7, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the June 7, 2004 meetinq were called and unanimousiv passed (3-0). (At this time Alderman Bernstein was not In the room.1 III. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP JULY 2004 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Alderman Feldman asked if there was a Township representative at the meeting as he had a question regarding the legal bills. He wanted to know if the statement included in the packet brings us up to date. Robert Hoover representing Sharon Eckersall said at this point we have billed approximately 14 hours since June 2121, there will be an August bill representing that and then there will be another bill in September representing the August bill, which will probably be slightly higher because there are several depositions going forward right now and he is anticipating the August bill will be somewhere between 15 and 20 hours. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if we could get a sense as to where you are in the case. Mr. Hoover said currently the breakdown is the plaintiff is being deposed and we have completed one round of discovery. We Page 1. are working on supplemental responses to the plaintiffs discovery and will be questioning the Assessor for deposition. Mr. Hoover said the status of the case is such that the plaintiff has been deposed in that case and that took place the end of July. We are in the middle of supplemental responses to written discovery that have been served on us by the plaintiff and we intend to present the Assessor for deposition hopefully by the middle of this month. However, we have not yet settled on a time with the plaintiff's attorneys. The written discovery should be wrapped up by the end of this month. There are a number of other depositions that will go forward between now and the end of October and he then anticipates a trial date will probably be set down sometime in the spring. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Mr. Hoover if he anticipates a problem of motions of summary judgment, and is that where you're going. Mr. Hoover, responded, yes, but he'd rather not discuss that in open session if you don't mind. Alderman Tisdahl recalled the motion of approving the Township bills and the Townshin Assessor's legal expenses, motion unanimous approved. (4-0) (Alderman Newman was not present at this time.1 Alderman Tisdahl announced the next item of the agenda was supposed to be Consideration of Municipal Hospital Incinerator but Alderman Newman who is not here yet has a family obligation and has asked that we go through communications first as he is very interested in this issue and wants to be here for all of the discussion. IV. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 39-R-04 AUTHORIZING AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT TO PROVIDE FOR AN INTEGRATED INFORMATION SYSTEM Alderman Feldman moved approval, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Ney if this is too good to be true. Mr. Ney said he certainly hoped not. CCS has been around for some— time, since the 1970's. They've been providing this sort of service for some time and he thinks this is a pretty solid option for us. Alderman Feldman asked Mr. Ney to tell us what CCS is as we have a number of people in the audience who do not what this stands for. Mr. Ney said it stands for Cooperative Computer Services, a group of 21 libraries in the northern suburbs, all members of the North Suburban Library System, that is essentially a surge search server and software, and a staff to maintain them, to provide the integrated library systems which is the library's catalogue, circulation and acquisition system. Alderman Feldman said then according to this memo we would be saving money by doing that and the option to this would be starting from scratch and building our own system. Mr. Ney responded, no, we've had a system for 30 years but the software is now what is referred to as a legacy system which means that nobody is paying any attention to it and our server at this point is beat up almost beyond its useful life. We would need to replace the serer and replace the software and servers since servers are essentially software we would have to purchase a server for the software. You'd want to do it at the same time and this seems to be a viable option. Alderman Feldman thought this is a great idea and will be happy to support it. It did get unanimous approval by the Library Board, Page 2. Alderman Tisdahl recalled motion 39-R-04 Authorizinq an Internovernmental Agreement to Provide for an lnte4rated Information System. Motion unanimousiv passed, (4-01. V. COMMUNICATIONS Alderman Tisdahl asked for any discussion regarding: A) Evanston Historical Society Ice Cream Social B) 2004 Continuum of Care for the Homeless C) School District 65's Back to School Picnic Saturday, August 21". Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he knows District 65 is making a major effort to reach out to the surrounding communities in particular to get their participation and he would encourage those parents in attendance tonight who are open to participating in this picnic to come out. He understands there will be plenty of free food and entertainment will be multi ethnic in terns of presentation. This should be a good time for all. There being no further discussion regarding these communications, Alderman Tisdahl went on the next agenda item. VI. CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBLE MUNICIPAL REGULATION OF HOSPITAL INCINERATOR Alderman Tisdahl said she has an agenda for this discussion which has changed several times but thinks everyone has now agreed that we will have public comments first, then Evanston Hospital has 45 minutes. Julie Armitage from the Illinois E.P.A. is here and if she would like to speak can have 5 minutes. Dr. Wynia and Clare Delgado and the No Bum Group, and whoever they chose to have speak for them, have 45 minutes. In the hope of possibly shortening this she would like to say a few things. She would like to thank Clare Delgado, Bruce Erenbach, Laura Pellitier, and Dr. Matthew Wynia for raising the issue which she thinks is an important one. She would also like to thank the Neighbors Liaison Committee for their work on this and would like to thank Dr. Schale Miller, Joanna Botelia, Ray Grady and J.P. Gallagher for 3 months of intense discussion resulting in the hospital's decision to close the incinerator. She would like to remind you all that in the interest of time we are here to discuss a nine and a half month difference between the closing date proposed by Evanston Hospital and the date proposed by Dr. Wynia and Ms. Delgado and hopes there will be movement on both sides this evening. We will start with public comments, and since the hospital has 45 minutes she assumes Mr. Grady and J.P. Gallagher do not want to be called upon during public comments. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. Nick Bilandic, a structural engineerlives at 2756 Garrison. FormerAlderman Steve Engleman invited him to become a member of the Evanston Hospital Neighbor liaison Committee. We have mutual interests relating to the quality of moving in around the surround of Evanston Hospital. We have lively discussions, some are all the time civil, sometimes there's a quick response to our inquiries and other occasions extend the discussion. Page 3. Jay Volimichek, your former Vice President, would spend a lot of time with his neighbors, he would actually go out and visit them to find out what their concerns were and whenever possible would include whatever recommendations were appropriate to be included in the budget for Evanston Hospital. We had a very good and cooperative relationship with him and he left for another job opportunity. Then comes J.P. Gallagher, he was introduced to us March 11`' which was also the occasion for the first initial presentation and discussion regarding the management and operation of the 1989 incinerator on the Evanston campus. Evanston Hospital has a long history of incineration going back to the days when Birch Hall was a nursing residence. The present incinerator is not rated as cutting edge technology. Public policy on incineration has changed; examples include ENH Glenview campus and ENH Highland Park campus which are incinerator free. At the June 15, 2004 ENH meeting, ENH made a voluntary commitment to shut down the Evanston campus incinerator. This was an enormous victory for environmental justice. That issue is a schedule that is considered too long. The Sierra Club's VP, in the letter to the Review, encouraged ENH prodding. Mary Gavin's July 26'h Roundtable provided a balanced discussion on the issue of Incineration. Evanston Health and Environmental Network collected data and this provided some very valuable information to all of us. Before going on the basis of the following commentary, the Evanston Hospital Neighbor Liaison Committee includes our Alderman and is an existing appropriate group to monitor ENH means and methods for achieving incinerator removal responsively on a timely basis. We will work to promote safer non -incineration technologies and encourage ENH to use less toxic products. The quality of living adjacent to ENH and the continuous healthcare services they provide must not be compromised. We must be mutually responsive. There Is no need, in his opinion, for a change that is bias and is certain to be challenged. Total regulations recommend the elimination of incineration in all residential areas. its time to bring the Evanston building code into the 21" century, in his opinion, propose code changes if any should be made by practicing professionals with input by building officials and by other interested parties. The Evanston Hospital Neighbor Liaison Committee must be encouraged to participate in an early, reasonable and workable solution to ENH incinerator shutdown. We are sensitive to the equality of living adjacent to ENH and its highly rated health care services. We are mutually responsive. Thank you. Tony Schlax, of 2733 Gerard Avenue, lives just north of the hospital. As a matter of fad of all of you here today, those that work with him on the Evanston Hospital Neighbors Liaison Committee know that he is more passionate about making sure that the hospital is a fair partner and neighbor with those in our neighborhood. His family has been impacted by Evanston Hospital over the last 6 years since he has lived here more than anybody else in this room and can assure you that if you were aware of the issues at the time there was hospital construction regarding the parking garage, they just recently completed a large administration building and research facility. He has worked very close with the hospital to make sure they've been sensitive to the needs of the issues in the neighborhood. The reason he wanted to get up and comment was he like many of you here would like to have the incinerator shut down as soon as possible and he admires all the efforts you are making. He just wants you to make sure you take into account the concerns of the neighborhood Page 4. - immediately in proximately to the hospital. One of the points the hospital has made in terms of what they would need to do would be to make some potential changes to their loading docks to accommodate the waste removal and so on. The Gose in neighbors are very much willing to work with the hospital and make sure that happens and that we can get this incinerator shut down immediately. He just wants to make sure you are all aware that we consider what the short term arrangements may be including some of the steps that were taken recently with the addition of an administration building which was to install large semi diesel generators to supply power short term, and so on. Diesel fumes have environmental impacts not only on your neighborhood but significant impacts on my family. He is with you and your efforts here today but he just wanted to make sure you give them the time to give us a detailed plan on how they're going to approach these specific plans on what they plan to do to change the operation here at the hospital and that those are considered not only by the City but the Evanston Hospital Neighbors Liaison Committee. Thank you. Eric Lorenz, is with the Sierra Club and as it happened the Sierra Club has 900 members here in Evanston and he is here tonight to speak on their behalf. A thousand hospitals, give or take 10 or 20, have closed down their medical waste incinerators because they didn't want to be in the business of potentially harming the people that they purport to help, all within a very short period of time. There are 84 left, one of them is right here in Evanston as you guys all know by now. They got out of that business, we have to remember the Evanston Hospital is a business, we hope that their first and foremost concern is doing no harm, but we know their business. Corporations all across America continue to lobby our governments at state, federal and local levels for voluntary emission standards, longer time lines to meet even those standards, all to the detriment to our air quality, water quality, and our public health. Remember, they're just another such corporation taking the same business before nature, business before people, even if it's only business slightly before people. He's not saying business along way before people, just slightly. It's still not good enough for the City and citizens of Evanston, it's not good enough for the 900 Evanston Sierra Club members that he represents and we won't accept any more waiting and lackadaisically attitude toward this. Thanks. Louis Stern said he would like to yield his time as well as his wife's time to Leane Casten so Leane can appropriately expound on a very important matter that she has to offer. Leane Casten, a 30 yearresident of Evanston lives at'1030 Asbury, she is also a journalist and author and has written a number of pieces over many years that reflect the deep concerns that people have about the issues of dioxin. But first the history, dioxin is no longer a chemical word it is a political word and we must bring the discussions here understanding this fact. Dioxin is CCDD is considered the most toxic chemical known to man. It is not a natural chemical but only comes as a contaminate and a number of chlorinated manufacturing processes including the defoliant Agent Orange. During the Vietnam War Agent Orange was used extensively, the dioxin contaminate was identified by the companies making this defoliant in parts per million, in parts per billion, and in parts per trillion. Now, let me make sure we understand, in parts per trillion you can't even see it you need special machinery to understand how this is computed, but eventually because dioxin does bio- Page 5. accumulate it becomes parts per billion, it becomes parts per million and eventually can cause terrible harm to your body. However, if it's parts per trillion the effects don't show up very fast. Our own military exposed via a number of avenues, came back deeply contaminated and very, very sick and their children were often deeply impaired. This is especially sad since the chemical companies making the stuff knew about the toxicity of dioxin early on. In Dow Chemical's case they knew as early as 1941, they knew that their chemical was dangerous, toxic enough to kill test animals exposed to via their experiments and later in the 50's after a number of industrial accidents the companies identified the toxic effects in office memos and made certain their workers were clothed property and protected. But this never happened in Vietnam. i have here selected papers which I will hand off to the members of the committee that are dated 1940, 1964, 1965, 1966, when the war was at Its full intensity. The main goal of the manufacturer is to share information but to keep the toxicity of Agent Orange contaminate a secret. They did not want the government to interfere with their very lucrative, multi million dollar contracts and i will read a few before handing them off to you. From Monsanto Corporation I received a batch from Dow Chemical Corporation, this was 1965, according to them irs the most toxic compound they have ever experienced. It is presumably toxic by skin contact as well as inhalation and according to Dow it is 10 times as toxic as parathion. A strictly confidential memo to Dow in Canada, `this material is exceptionally toxic it has a tremendous potential for chloracine, that was the horrible skin eruptions that came with Vietnam veterans and it will be carried through and become a systemic problem (systemic means the whole body is affected). Number 3, the clinical picture of the disease is one that primarily affects the skin and extreme exposures to certain chlorinated compounds and organ toxicity can be the result, this is primarily demonstrated in the liver and the blood system and in the nervous system. This is all during 1964 and 1965. Then in 1981 a wonderful scientist by the name of Ralph Doherty in Florida, identified the fact that in parts, 10 parts per trillion, you can affect the male sperm and one can expect to experience approximately one trillion mutagenic events as a - result of exposure. After the war and the veterans came home with dreadful cancers, birth defective children, heart and liver conditions, emotional problems, whatever, it became important to cover over the corporation's true knowledge and that's when the other half of the dioxin story begins. The first was simple truth, the chemical is capable of destroying the immune system and attacking nearly every organ in the body. The _ second half is the story of the cover up, and over up they did with the full complicity of the military, why because Vietnam had become a cesspool of contamination, a destroyed desiccated land where Vietnam mothers were producing hideous grotesque birth defective children. No group, not the government, nor the chemical companies wanted to pay out the billions they would have had to pay to compensate the Vietnamese or our wounded military. So, the EPA, DOD, White House, Center for Disease Control, and the VA and another federal agency got involved against their lies and deceptions. My story of the cover up was printed in the Nation in 1992, 1 only have one copy, here is the original, if you would like to look it over I would be more than — - glad to hand this out too. From then on we are witness to the second phase of this drama, the political phase, �— the collusion between business and government. I cite only corporate studies, corporate public relations, Page 6. industry paid scientists who lie for money, defenders for disease control, the books on Vietnam veterans and the media. They bleach through their own pulp and paper with chlorine and they add it to the lies in order to protect themselves and their own self interests. Profits were involved, all dangerous manufacturing processes were in place but few were willing to change, it would cost money short term. In the long term it would be cheaper and more efficient to say nothing about better health effects. I even have printed one story about how there is an alternative to incineration in environmental health perspectives. EPA comes dramatically into the picture in the 1990's, all kinds of manufacturing businesses and the manufacturer of and use of chlorine in pulp and paper bleaching in all refining, pesticides, manufacture of PCBs and the incineration of toxins continue to create trace levels of dioxin in their various products and processes. Trace levels also bio accumulate into larger and larger masses, I explained. Those businesses went to the EPA and demanded a reassessment of the chemical in the hopes that the new findings would alleviate their legal assaults. Well guess what, here's the first draft of their new findings, rather than easing a legal burden the EPA discovered the worst. Dioxin creates all the problems now known to be associated with it so the draft was kept under wraps as was the final draft published several years later. However, while EPA actually did admit the worst exposure of dioxins in other heavy metals from medical waste incinerators were the best way to get dioxin exposure. The well known scientist Barret Cominer discovered that dioxin can travel by air 1300 miles, no one is safe, not people, not animals. That same year the international Joint Commission, the body monitoring the health of the Great Lakes between Canada and the U.S., asked for an immediate phase out of the Industrial uses of chlorine. The chemical council was wound up, they fought like tigers, got the ear of our government officials and the recommendations went into the waste basket. Pregnant women are warned not to eat more than 2 Great Lakes fish a month. Toxins harm the fetus in the uterus. Some 8 years ago, I along with 2 other members of the Environmental Commission, went to Evanston Hospital to discuss the possibility of their closing the incinerator down. By that time enough was known to justify its immediate closure. I have copies here of a report. At this point we must ask If these toxic chemicals are now allowed into the air, water and yes, our food via fish and farm animals creating endocrine disrupters, birth defective and brain damaged children, endometriosis, lowered sperm count, developmental toxicity, cancers, including breast cancer, infertility and amine suppression and if the hospital is in the process of treating the very victims of their own negligent practices. I have to ask what kind of morality do we have. I feel there's no time to lose, shut this poisonous thing down now. Sue L.annin, lives at 7100 North Greenview in Chicago. I was born in Evanston Hospital more years ago than one usually cares to admit, but because of that very personal relationship I have a special concern where the hospital where I was born is being a conscious institution safeguarding the environment for the future of all of the newborns and young people as well as us aging folk within Evanston and its adjacent communities. This is more than an Evanston issue. I live in Rogers Park 2 blocks from Lake Michigan, our City's source of drinking water. My family of 2 children, my husband and I, do shop and eat and recreate in Evanston which you'll be happy to know, and we breathe the air. It is unacceptable that Evanston Hospital continue to rely on Page 7. outdated polluting technology that other more forward thinking medical institutions moved to years ago. I call on our public officials and the hospital administration to do their duty to safeguard public health and the environment for further relief of harmful neural toxins such as mercury and cadmium that the incinerator emits. These pollutants get into our lungs and into our lakes causing real threats to public health. There are alternatives. I can be home weeding my garden tonight but it behooves all of us individuals and institutions in this democratic society to participate in our government and the decision making processes that determine how livable, how sustainable, our communities are and will be. I urge you to be a good neighbor, clean up after yourselves, don't be like the dog walker who goes out with his dogs without a pooper scooper. Thank you for your time. Alderman Tisdahl announced that concludes pubic comments as there are no more speakers listed. Next Evanston Hospital will present. Good evening, lam Ray Grady, President and CEO of Evanston Hospital and I welcome the opportunity to share my perspectives and that of the medical professionals at Evanston Hospital on this very important issue. I want you to know that I accept full responsibility for the response of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare to this community issue. I also want you to know that I accept full accountability for crafting a solution that meets the pubic health needs, the needs of the hospital to address the Illinois Department of Public Health requirements and move this community towards the preferred future that everyone wants, no incineration. The last time I had an opportunity to address Aldermen in this room is on the occasion of the approval of our physical facilities expansion plan. You offered some very sage advice on building relationships with our neighbors and I want you to know that we listened to that advice. We started a series of quarterly forums to keep the neighbors abreast of our programs and services and to keep our fingers on the pulse of what's important to this community and it was through this process that the current concerns regarding the medical waste incinerator was brought to our attention. It was through this process that we have reached a chord on many issues based on the concerns expressed by the neighbors we voluntarily, voluntarily agreed to shut down the incinerator within a 12 month period. Our commitment was made in June, we are now down to 11 months. There are some new members of the committee who suggest that we failed to admit in writing to the shutting down of the incinerator and that in someway this discounts our commitment. I want every citizen in Evanston to know that our commitment to shutting down the incinerator is unequivocal. I would suggest to you that I gave this committee something better than a signed document, I gave this committee my word and for the members of that committee who routinely attend the meetings they will tell you that we say what we will do and we do what we say or we find a better solution, and we have a track record to support that. They ask us to build a parking structure that fit the residential character of the community, we did it. They asked us to stop traffic from exiting from the hospital on Ridge, we did it. They asked us to change the delivery hours of the many trucks that delivers goods and services to our organization, we did it. They asked us to put automatic blinds on the lobby windows to decrease the light emitted from the lobby in the evening into the neighborhood, we did it. They were concerned about noise pollution from the sewers on the roof, we walked the neighborhood, we listened Page 8. for ourselves and we replaced the chillers. They asked us to reroute the shuttle busses from Ryan Field so that their summer evenings could be quiet and comfortable, and we did it. They asked us to landscape the green areas in the front of the parking structure to create a park like setting on Ridge Avenue, and we did it. They now ask us to shut down the incinerator and we've agreed to do it, however, it must be done in a way that is logical, a way that is orderly, a way that is thoughtful, a way that is consistent with our needs to maintain a safe and comfortable healthcare environment for the patients and families who come to us for care, for the 4,000 employees that work at our hospitals and in a way that is consistent with the best public health in this community. Our plan allows us to do all of these things and achieve that preferred future that everyone wants, no incinerator. There are those voices in this discussion that would suggest to you and have you believe that emission from the incinerator over the next 12 months are an immediate and a chief threat to the public health that our hospital is not acknowledging. The facts ladies and gentlemen, are these, no one, no one invests more money in the health of this community more than Evanston Hospital. Along with the Aldermen no one cares about the health of this community more than the professionals that work at Evanston Hospital. No one is closer to the emission from that incinerator than the health professionals who come to work at our hospital every day. We are not afraid because we know the emissions are managed safely. There have been no citations from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to corroborate the alleged unsafe emission levels. We have routinely reported emission levels when they asked us for other elements that we did not report, we reported on those, we complied and there were still no citations. The incinerator operates in full compliance with all local, state and federal guidelines. We do not even operate the incinerator at its full capacity. We have experts In toxicology to advise us if there was an immediate threat to the health of the children or anyone else as we shut down this incinerator. They have told us no, we have met with representatives of children's organizations to allow them to talk directly to the toxicologist and to the young people. To those beautiful young people in the audience tonight, I want you to know you're always welcomed at Evanston Hospital, we will not hurt you. We received an article recently from a neighbor who was a member of the Evanston Environmental Board in 1995. The article was entitled "Healthcare Without Harm the Campaign for Environmentally Responsible Healthcare'. This article points out that the EPA estimates that humans receive 90% of their dioxin intake from their food. Jay Terry, your City Director of Health and Human Services, Is on record of saying that there is no epidemiological evidence that has been presented related to areas around the hospital that might document increased incidences of increased cancer, birth defects, and the like that might be linked to emissions from this incinerator. As President of Evanston Hospital when I see members of the community casting doubt on our commitment to the health of this community I am compelled to respond. Every day our nurses go into harms way, into the rooms of patients in this community with infectious diseases to care for those patients. We make sure that they have adequate protection to do the best job. The threat to their health over the next 12 months is more eminent than the emissions of that incinerator or that that incinerator will present for the Page 9. community. We create a safe environment for them so that they are not harmed. We don'tstop the service we manage the risk by ensuring that they are safe. Everyday our young professionals go into harms way to care for you when you get a radiology diagnostic exam. The risk to the health of these young professionals is so acute that they have to wear huge badges to monitor their exposure to radiation. We don't stop providing the service, we manage the risk to ensure that they are not harmed. A risk that is more life threatening to these individuals over the course of the next year than the emissions from that incinerator over the next 12 months. Every day at our radiation medicine department we send young professionals into harms way. An environment replete with radio active materials to treat you and your loved ones, adults and children, with cancer. The immediate risk to these healthcare givers is more acute over the next 12 months than the emissions from that incinerator. We don't refuse to provide the service, we manage the risk in each of these instances it is clear we do not do as the Sierra Club would have you believe, put business before the safety of our employees or the patients that we care for. Likewise we will manage the risk associated with this incinerator as we have for the last 15 years. The incinerator is equipped with monitoring devices just like the instruments on your car. When the service engine light comes on you take the car in for service. You head off the problem by responding appropriately. When the low oil light comes on you know to change the oil, you head off the problem before it becomes acute. We report each signal when it is presented, it doesn't mean that there is a malfunction, it means that we need to pay attention to preventable maintenance to forego any threats to the community, and we do. I am deeply concerned about the public image of our organization. When I see young people with masks on marching around our hospital suggesting that we are threatening the health of this community, let me tell you about the people who wear masks in our organizations. The people who wear masks in our organizations are the medical professionals when they are busy in surgery restoring the health of the people in this community, The people who wear masks in our organizations, in our facilities, are the patients and families who hover over the quarter pound babies in our Infant Special Care Unit who are clinging to life and will be with us for a 4 to 6 month period. When they leave our hospital with that young child healthy, the mask comes off and they are full of hope and potential. Every year we have these families back for a party on the front lawn of the hospital, and you know what, they don't wear masks. What they bring to that front lawn is appreciation and the only thing that we admit is the thank you for the privilege of serving them and making a difference in their lives. Now, we 1 have agreed to shut down the incinerator. We're going to do it in a logical and orderly fashion that gets to that preferred feature that everyone wants. It's a complicated shut down and it's a complicated shut down because the incinerator doubles as a heat source. We will need the City's support with timely zoning and permit approvals to shut down within the 11 months remaining. If there is a way to speed up the process we will take advantage of that opportunity. You have to address all the problems of shutting down the incinerator from A to Z simultaneously or you will find yourself with residual problems to manage. This evening Mr. Gallagher will take you through this process the training, and the proper waste disposal that must occur for us to manage 280.000 bags of trash that we cannot allow to backup on our patient care units. The construction necessary to Page 10. create accommodations to hold this trash until it can be disposed of safely and the timetable and steps that must occur to achieve this outcome. Finally. I invite every person in this room to come and see for yourself what we are. I think you will be impressed with the magnitude of the commitment that we have made to this project and doing it the right way. Ladies and gentlemen. Evanston Hospital has done nothing wrong. Our health professionals review data on your health every day and if there is a problem we would be the first to sound the clarion call. Our plan reflects that we are exhibiting leadership in addressing this problem, and all we're asking of you is that we be permitted to do the right thing the right way. Mr. Gallagher is going to walk you through the logistics of this change and I think you will be impressed with the amount of work that this takes. Myname Is J.P. Gallagher, I'm a member of the adminlstrative team at Evanston Hospital. I have been working closely on this issue from the beginning when this was first brought to our attention back in January of this year. I think Ray has provided a very clear layout in terms of the commitment that we made so I am going to dive right into the specifics of what it is we're talking about. There are a lot of questions that have come up related to why we're doing what we're doing and how we're approaching it. What I want to make sure everybody understands in the intent of my discussion here is to help everybody appreciate on a local levelwhat it is we're talking about. There's been a lot of both in the media as well as this evening, a lot of statements made on a general level. We all know that dioxins and hazardous materials are a serious issue. They need to be treated as such, they need to be managed as effectively as possible. What i want to do is take a discussion dependent on national and general data and break it down to our local situation. There are a number of concerns, if you have been following this issue in the media, that have been raised and my intent here is to give you a bit of a road map in terms of how we've handled those issues and what we're doing going forward to address them. The first and foremost thing everyone admits is the issue of public health. What risk does this incinerator present to members of the community. If this is a significant issue then the rest of the logistics really don't make a difference. In order to answer this question I'm not the one that's going to be able to give you the detail that you're looking for so we've pulled together a team of experts that we have been working closelywith in the last few weeks to ask specific questions based on the data that our incinerator generates. We worked with individuals like Dr. Jerry Liken, one of the foremost toxicologists in this community. Dr. Liken has 25 years of experience in the field of toxicology, he deals with clinical health risk at the individual level, how exposures of various elements impact an individual of a various age or background. He is a former Director of the Illinois Poison Control Center, he is a fellow of the American College of Medical Toxicology and has research grants in 15 different areas related to his field of expertise. He has also authored a book on the topic and has published over 150 articles. We've worked as well with Dr. Ted Hogan, a Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Illinois. Dr. Hogan assesses risk through scientific analysis and research. We gave him reams and reams of data over the last 10 years to evaluate our incinerator and tell us what do these emissions mean to the community. We've also worked with gentlemen like Bill O'Shea, an Environmental Consultant who has expertise in the areas of air pollution control. He is an I.I.T. graduate with a Masters in Environmental Page 11. Engineering and is a technical expert in the field of combustion as it realties to incinerators. These are the individuals that we asked important questions about what are the public health implications involved. Now, I will share with you the findings related to that process but i also want to acknowledge several other concerns that have come to us in the course of the last several months. One is the length of the decommission period. Questions have been asked of why 11 months, why not just set it down in 34 days like many other institutions throughout the state and country have done. We have what I believe are some very significant and very specific issues on a local level that we need to manage carefully. One of those is the issue of heating redundancy. The Illinois Department of Public Health requires that a certain amount of heating capacity be available to every healthcare institution in case there is any system glitch at any point in time. There are very clear guidelines, we have a letter from the Illinois Department of Public Health that confirms our interpretation of the guidelines. We also have confirmation from the Department of Public Health that if we were to explore changes to the incinerator there is a clear process that we would need to go through regarding their approval and review to make sure that everything is done safely so that none of our services in the community were at risk. There have been comments about malfunctions the perception that the incinerator may not work theway that we have expressed that it does. As were alluded to in this discussion what these really are is a series of warnings in a system that's designed to proactively identify potential issues before they surface. These malfunctions are part of the safety mechanism that allows us to make sure that the incinerator is always kept within state balance. There are questions that have been raised about data that was requested from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. This is a letter that went out to every hospital that has an operational incinerator in the slate. It took us some time to make sure that we got historical data that had not been requested at that particular point in time for the years in question, but we communicated with the IEPA right away, we provided a thorough summary of the data that was requested and has since been provided without any question or concern. There are other issues and statements that have been made related to the temporary maintenance of the incinerator as with your automobile, if you take good care of it, we set it down periodically. We want to make sure that we don't push it to the point of having any significant issue that might surface down the road. What that translates to is every 6 to 8 weeks we set the incinerator down for anywhere from 3 to 7 days. These are isolated periods of time in which we have to manage a significant increase in our waste but we do it to make sure that the system functions appropriately and we do not have any major adverse events down the road. When we do that we have very significant issues relating to our loading docks, and those of you after taking the time to come down and look first hand, have a the strong appreciation for what it translates to on a daily basis in terms of managing our operation. The other issues that you've heard about in the media are the fact that many other hospitals have made the decision already to take care of incineration, and as Ray has indicated we have made that commitment as well and we will do it. A year from today this will not be an issue. But there are many specific details at a local level c Page 12. that we need to make sure are acknowledged in the process of doing this. I can't speak to all those incinerators that were shut down. I can speak very clearly to the one we are responsible for. The system is a very complex one, it's a very involved one, its integral to our infrastructure and it's something that will take time and caution to dismantle and reconfigure appropriately, There is an ordinance that the City of Chicago passed back in 1999 after the Title 5 permit process provided more stringent requirements, After that point in time almost all municipal incinerators ultimately shut down within the City of Chicago. That ordinance did not address the issue of medical incineration, it still allows for it and over a 6 month period of time incinerators common in the City of Chicago were ultimately shut down. You all heard about the background and the meetings we had with our community, we've met with Aldermen, we've met with environmental experts, the Sierra Club, and we made the commitment in June. I am now going to walk you through more specifically what it is we're talking about. Incinerators raise many visceral reactions in the general public and this is an example of what is called a bum box. It's essentially a very unsophisticated approach to getting rid of waste. It has very few regulation mechanisms and its something that has contributed to many of the problems and has been well documented as it relates to incineration. Our incinerator is very different, our incinerator, which i have outlined in this graphic for anyone who's interested, is essentially a five part system. What it provides is three different chambers that bum all the matter down to a finite particulate level, again not the most exciting stuff but its important to understand first hand when we're talking about this issue as it relates to our local community. Those three burning chambers breakdown of particulate matter to very finite detail, it then runs through two filtration processes. Those filtration processes include a bag house filter as well as a dry acid scrubber. When it goes to the dry acid scrubber it encounters, which essentially counteracts the hydrogen chloride that's passing through. The net result is that the emissions of the incinerator, once they're going out into the air, are essentially neutralized. Now what does that mean, that means that our incinerator has been always in regulatory compliance. There has been a lot of talk about the EPA standards and there are people in this room who are adapt at answering exactly how those standards have developed. You've heard comments like they're not health based, they have nothing to do with what it means to a woman of child bearing age as it related to health. I'm going to defer answers in terms of the standards to the experts who can speak to them. What i can tell you is our incinerator operates very safely within the guidelines that have been established by the IEPA. Again when we worked with our team of health experts they were able to quantify that emissions of hazardous air pollutions translate to about 3% of the permitted requirement levels as outlined by IEPA. I want to break this down even further, what are we talking about, lets talk about the hazardous elements that we're all concerned about, dioxins. What's coming out of the incinerator at the end of the day, that's what matters. Our incinerator on an annual basis emits .004 ounces per year of cardamom, emits .02 ounces per year of lead. Our incinerator emits 0.34 ounces per year into the environment, mercury another substance of significant concern our incinerator emits 1.35 ounces per year into the air. Page 13. Our facility is a big one, we take care of over 365,000 patients per year, we have 24.000 admissions, we have 36,000 visits to our Emergency Room. We generate 5.000,000 pounds of solid waste annually. To provide the services that we do waste comes along with the process. 40% of this 5.000,000 pounds, approximately 2,000.000 pounds of waste, are currently incinerated through our incinerator. 2,000,000 pounds fractions of ounces of emissions that come out into the air, lets talk about it on a local level. There is another measure called TEED or Total Equivalent Emissions for Dioxins, another very important measure provided by the US EPA. The United States Environmental Protection Agency established a limit of a quarter ounce per year as a guideline for all medical waste incinerators if they are operating in compliance with the guidelines that they've established. At all emission levels it would take 41,000 Evanston Hospital incinerators to get that quarter ounce level. Let's get specific, we took this data and we broke it down even further. Let's talk about exposure on a local level, what does it mean for the individuals in this community. We took the numbers, we talked to the experts and we said tell us what this means to someone who is in our community. Dioxin level, a very significant issue, one of the questions that's been asked is why would we tolerate for one more minute another source of dioxin, a very legitimate question. What we found it that when we measured our emissions and we looked at the quality of ambient air quality which is essentially a measure of dioxin exposure in the air within 15 feet of the incinerator the dioxins were too low to mathematically quantify. What that means is that they were many times less than the normal background exposure levels you would encounter in any urban environment. Essentially the emissions coming out an incinerator are immeasurable, they do not impact the air quality once you get within 15 feet of the incinerator. Even more immediately, what does that mean for a woman of child bearing age or a child in our community. What that means is if he or she was concerned about their Immediate health exposure in the next day, in the next month, over the next many months, might they reduce their risks and if you're talking at the scientific level you would not be able to reduce a risk by meeting anywhere else in a major metropolitan area. There are other background exposures that exist in our own environment and there's a certain baseline threshold that no matter what legislative recourse we seek we will not assess at the local level. Mercury is an important issue and is one that we've been asked in the course of this dialogue for several months about how we're managing and we've taken many active steps to reduce as aggressively as possible. We've identified all the mercury containing sources within the hospital. We've eliminated mercury blood pressure devices, we've eliminated mercury thermometers in patient care areas, and we've controlled our mercury disposal through a hazardous waste vendor in both our clinical and our research environments. - Again, active steps that we are taking to make sure this is done and done right. Now, let's take a step back and talk a littie bit more about what other sources of dioxin we are exposed to in every day. Air source is obviously a significant one as it is one that relates to our incinerator. But there are other sources, there are vehicle exhausts, diesel engines, home heating systems that are oil based, burning wood, cigarette smoke, wildfires, all of these have combustion, all of these have the potential to introduce dioxins into the air. As we have mentioned over 90% of the dioxins that we are exposed to comes through Page 14. food, that's your meat and dairy products that we get at the Jewel that we purchase wherever we do. Again, this was measured against the environmental standards that we have with our team of experts, a child who eats a fast food meal encounters more dioxins than by breathing the air next to the incinerator, Anybody who drank a cup of coffee this morning exposed themselves to more dioxins than they would experience by standing next to the Evanston incinerator for over a year, Herzfeld, the father of modem toxicology goes back to the 16" century and the premise he outlines which has been the basis over this field is its not so much eliminating all sources its managing the dose. The dose defines the poison and that's something we've taken very seriously in terms of how we manage those hazardous materials that we are responsible for. In sharing this information we are not looking to create hysteria. The fact that dioxin exists in milk, coffee, baby food, and other elements are not a cause for immediate concern. These are managed in small levels so that they do not present an acute health risk to those who encounter them. This data came from the Agency for Toxic Sedentary Disease Registry which is an arm of the CDC. There is research from 1998 where the ATSDR basically quantifies those toxic elements that you will find in everyday foods that we encounter. What we're saying is in doing this process and talking about these expurgates we have to understand on a first hand level what it is we mean. Mr. Grady touched on the issue of malfunctions and in the interest of time I will simply say that this something that we have managed very closely. There is a period of time at which individuals of reference that say in a 6 month period there were over 25 different instances in which we had malfunctions. Those malfunctions or warning systems essentially were raised in which we identified as a potential issue and headed it off at the pass so to speak. The most common malfunction that has been sited essentially goes into our lime feed. Lime is a very important decontaminant that helps neutralize all of these elements. There is a pipe that feeds the incinerator directly and it works on an automatic basis. There are times when that pipe clogs up, when that happens an alarm goes off. When the alarm goes off the incinerator operator immediately goes into manual override, which means he gets a shovel and feeds in large amounts of the lime until those levels come back in order. Feeding the incinerator stops immediately any time one of those alarms goes off. Again, the idea is that we have safety mechanisms in place to override any potential concerns that come up. Another issue that has been addressed is the notion of the emergency bypass stack being opened. There are infrequent instances where the bypass stack, which essentially means when the heat of the incinerator, gets to a potential temperature that could cause problems with the system, it diverts the two filtration processes and goes out into the air to the bypass stack. What you need to understand is that this is something that, one, happens very infrequently and secondly, happens for very short durations of time. Ina 6 month period in 2001 we had 25 occurrences where our bypass stack was accessed. We took some steps proactively and the following year we cut the number of bypass stack instances down to 10. In 2003 and 2004 we had accessed our bypass stack 3 times for a grand total of less than 30 minutes. All of that is reported to the state, all of the emission level impact that that provides translates down to information that is shared publicly. Our emission Page 15. levels have never been compromised throughout all of those encounters. We also did some steps proactively to make sure that these types of issues didn't continue to surface. We hired a fulltime professional industrial hygienist Mr. John Wandolowski, who has a Masters in Civil Engineering from Marquette and a Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Illinois Chicago. We also transferred an outstanding Stationery Engineer Pat Burke who has helped us identify waste to better manage the incinerator on a regular basis. We did all these issues back in 2001 despite the fact that there was no public scrutiny or outside pressure to make sure that we improved our operations. We did it because we could and we felt there was a way to become more responsible in the way we manage this operation. Now, lets take a step back and move away from the incinerator and talk about our decommission process. What is it exactly that we're proposing. First and foremost our mission requires that we maintain patient safety at all times and as Mr. Grady alluded to part of that involves making sure that our waste segregation takes place appropriately. We have large amounts of waste that accumulates on a daily basis that need to be managed. We also need to minimize, as Mr. Schlax alluded to, the impact on the immediate community. Our loading docks only operate between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m. in deference to those who have been concerned about the way in which that traffic has been managed, we have 3 loading docks that service the lifeline for our entire hospital, 1,000,000 square feet. Over a quarter of a billion people served in our institution get all of their supplies, all of their food, all of their medical equipment through 3 loading docks... By comparison St. Francis Hospital has 5 loading docks including one that is designated full time for medical waste. The University of Chicago has 14 loading docks including one for medical waste, one for maintenance, and several for its research facility. What we are talking about doing is essentially if we shut down anything short of the time frame that we're discussing we're talking about taking one of those loading docks out of operation designating it full time to handle this increase in waste that would essentially occur immediately. We would then be reduced to 2 loading docks defeating our hospital operation, it also would present some very significant issues in terms of the way that waste is staged. Right now we have a fairly confined consolidated area where all those supplies come in which is immediately adjacent to our compacting area. You would have the food for the hospital coming in right next to medical and municipal waste that would be hauled out. Our plan, which we will share with you, creates more clearly delineated space so that 2 functions can happen simultaneously without any risk introduced in the process. Some folks have mentioned how about focusing in on avoiding burning things like plastics and other issues that have been a source of public concern. Legitimate questions and one that if I could control simply t would. Part of what we're talking about Is a training process. We need to change our internal practices, we have 4,000 staff who man our facility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, who generate waste at the point of terror. In order to make sure that plastics do not get into the inappropriate waste stream we need to make sure that each one of those individuals understood and follows through on those practices. In speaking with professional vendors who do this for a living, and we've talked to many of them since this issue has become significant, they have counseled us that this is generally a 6 to 12 month process to consistently change those practices. We're Page 16. committed to doing it and we have identified a vendor that is willing to work with us to launch a training program that will begin this fall as part of this but we're not going to be able to see the fruition of those efforts until that training is under way and we're able to reinforce it through ongoing monitoring and consistency. There have also been questions about this notion of boiler redundancy requirements and there has been a question about why not spend it on the natural gas. Other facilities have with the incinerators operating as a boiler, why not consider doing that. It's a question we explored and its one that we don't have a definitive answer for yet tonight but we know a couple of things, we know it would require a mechanical change to the incinerator. Any mechanical change to that devise requires the involvement of IDPH which requires a permit process. We also know that it's just not a matter of flicking on a switch. If the incinerator is brought off line as a current active source of heat and cooling power for us at specific months we need to make sure that that incinerator, if it's active on a backup basis, it's functional at any given point in time. If it's used as an emergency system it has to be 100°% reliable. We cannot compromise on that, our obligation to patient safety is paramount. All of those issues need to be addressed and will be addressed as part of this ongoing process and dialogue. For the decommissioning plan I have a detailed game chart that will outline the specific steps involved essentially leaving ourwaste management into solid waste that will be hauled out through the community via a professional vendor into sites. Let's be very clear about this, every vendor that we've talked to has acknowledged that some portion of our waste will continue to be burned. Most likely at commercial incinerators some place far away from the Evanston area. Part of why we want to be an effective partner in doing that is making sure that we minimize the amount of waste that still needs to get burned in some other area. The ratio that we have been cited from these vendors is that approximately 85% of your waste can be handled through autoclaving, microwaveing, and some of the newer technologies that are available. 50°% pathologically will still need to be bumed, so when we're talking about shutting down the incinerator lets be very clear, on a local level we're not talking about eliminating all incineration. We have a responsibility for our waste and our commitment is to deal with it as best we can. What I would like to do is share with you a brief video, that for those of you that haven't had the chance to see what this space looks like and what we're talking about, how this impacts our daily operation. (At this point Mr. Gallagherproceeded to show a video and gave the following explanation.) This is our loading dock area and this is the structure that currently houses the incinerator. That tall structure right there is part of the boiler house. What we're going to be doing as part of this program is taking the roof of that structure off and knocking down one of the walls to get into the incinerator. We'll then break the incinerator down, pull it out of here and openly reconfigure that area to expand our compacting capacity. He pointed to a green bin that is currently the compacting machine that we use to handle all of the solid waste that currently is hauled off of our campus. He then showed the 3 loading docks that he was speaking about. What we're going to do as part of this plan is add a 4" loading dock near that bay and that loading dock will be 24-7 available to handle all waste Page 17. that will be hauled off of this campus which allows these other 3 loading docks to continue for the hospital, our patients and our employees. We're not going inside into the loading dock area on the backside. Again, this is what we're showing people first hand who have an interest in coming down to our facility. This is our entire loading dock bay area. All of our poundage, all of our tonnage comes in and is stored in this area. What we're talking about is food sitting right next to medical and municipal waste that would be going out of bays that are completely adjacent to each other. He showed the tractor that is immediately adjacent to the compactor where the compactor is essentially fed currently. He also showed the entrance to the compactor and the incinerator itself. If you think about and the other burn box I showed you earlier it's easy to say that this is a much more involved complex and supplicated piece of equipment. All of this will be broken down, ripped out and pulled apart and replaced by a boiler that currently resides in our boiler house right here. He showed the part of this chamber that is tied into this incinerator that provides heat that is currently used in our hospital, and showed another took at the boiler room and some of the components that tied into that lime house for the back house feed and the back house feed chamber that goes all the way from that roof that we told you we were going to be taking off. Now, what do we have to do to get there. As everyone knows when you're talking about healthcare institutions you have to go through a very thorough process as it relates to permits and getting government approval. We have every confidence that this will be a smooth process. That being said when you're talking about healthcare institutions a lot of very specific details need to be taken care of. We have an obligation to the community to make sure that all these is are crossed and the is are dotted and they're done effectively. We talked to Mayor Morton this moming and she gave us her commitment that this will be a priority as it relates to the City of Evanston and we have every reason to believe this based on Alderman Tisdahl's leadership as well that we get the support that we need to have this done quickly and effectively. Nevertheless, these are steps that are an important part of the process. We've also seen the front of the designing work outlining exactly what this decommission process will translate to. He showed an overhead view of what we showed you on the video basically talking about the 3 loading dock bays, the compact area, and incinerator which is currently right there. The dotted line outlet area outlines those areas that will essentially be broken down are rebuilt. The next picture showed what our firm is proposing in terms of a final solution, again, the 41h loading dock, a consolidated but expanded compact staging area that then ties into a new boiler that would be in our boiler house. What is our plan, at the end of the day how are you going to get this done. We have here for anyone's review who would like to see it more specifically, and this is a more condensed summary of what it is we're talking about, each of the specific steps that we're going to do decommissioning this incinerator. They go down from everything that's basis as the construction design, the permit approval, the preconstruction process all the way through to the procurement of the boiler and the ultimate shut down and replacement of the unit. Ali the way through to completing the redesign of the loading dock area. What I want to draw your attention here to is a -_- very key detail. Our commitment is to shut down the incinerator no later than June 1 5`h of next year. Our plan, _ Page 18. all be it a fairly aggressive one, is to stop burning by March of next spring. In essence what we're saying is if all the pieces that we're proposing are followed and followed aggressively, we can stop burning well before the 11 month time frame that we've been talking about. We know that this is an important public issue and this is hardly the end of the discussion. What we want to acknowledge is that there are several things that we feel need to be done in this process. We want to give this group a better understanding of what it is we're talking about. A conviction that we have details behind us, this is not just smoking mirrors, this is not just us trying to keep these issues at bay. What we're proposing is that as the largest hospital in this community that served this area for 110 years vie base this discussion on factual scientific information relative to the local situation. What we also hope is that we inter direct an element of common sense into this process. It's easy to take positions and talk about things in absolute terms, it's much more difficult to translate that into practical application that doesn't compromise patient safety and we are committed to doing that. We have extended communication to the local P.T.A., we're willing to meet with Dr. Wynia and any other member of the community who would like to discuss this in more detail and we have extended this invitation. I believe Mr. Grady is going to introduce another member of our team. (Mr. Grady) Thank you, J.P., as you can see we've done a lot of work since we met with the committee in June. We're doing this in a very thoughtful, logical, and orderly way, but don't take my word for it, whose word can you take. Let me introduce a member of our Board of Directors Mr. Percy Berger. Mr. Berger has been a long time resident of Evanston and he will attest to the commitment of our Board of Directors to resolving this issue in the right way. (Alderman Newman entered the meeting at 8:30 p.m.) Mr. Berger- Good evening, Madam Mayor, and Chairman, I have lived in Evanston for 35 years, I raised 3 kids here and I've been very active in the community. We also have, in terms of Evanston Hospital, Evanston Northwestem Health Care, we have 3 hospitals of which, of course, the most significant and the original one was Evanston Hospital. We cover and handle all of the citizens of Evanston but our entire market area really stretches from Chicago, on the north side Rogers Park up to the Wisconsin border and out west. We have 19 Directors of the Corporation. We have 3 Directors that live in Evanston and have lived in Evanston for long periods of time. Sam Mincoff along with myself, we have Michelle Cooper on the big Board and we have other people in Evanston who have been actively involved. It is in my view and the Board of Directors' view we are committed to doing what's right for this community. Can you imagine that we, who started here, grown up here, would want to do anything to hurt and affect our community, our principle base. We all have children in the schools, we all live here, we all work here. l want to reinforce a couple of misconceptions, Evanston is a not - for -profit Corporation, always has been. We spend a substantial amount of revenue for charitable cases, community cases, etc., so we are not -for -profit. We are not profit oriented and the Directors serve the Corporation not for pay but because we love the hospital and the community. I think I'm headed into my 8w Page 19. year. I also serve on other boards, this is a Board that is no pay and all of our Directors serve on this Board not for pay but for love of the hospital and the community and to provide healthcare and healthcare services for all of the community including the people that are represented here, the 900 or so people you refer to, the other 73,000 people in Evanston and those in the rest of our market area. You have the commitment of the Board of Directors of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. I served on the Governor's Committee, I served on the Investment Committee, the Healthcare Committee, and the Nominating Committee, we all support Mr. Grady doing what's right for this community We need to do it in an orderly and a timely fashion that makes sense for everyone and I think the program that's been laid out here is a very reasonable program that does not diminish the services to the rest of the community. We're going to do this as fast as we can and we're going to do this at implemental cost to us and to the hospital at a time when medical malpractice is having a very negate and detrimental effect upon the hospital and the services we can commit to the community. But you have the assurance and commitment of my other 14 colleagues on the Board of Directors that we will do what's right as quickly and as timely as we can do that and I think this program lays that out in a very logical and systematic way to serve not only you but also the rest of our entire market area. Thank you. Mr. Grady said that concludes our presentation. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Evanston Hospital for their presentation and asked if there are questions for the hospital from the Aldermen. Alderman Tisdahl addressed the audience and said this is a meeting of the Aldermen, the hospital will meet with you and will answer your questions, but you have to go to the hospital for that. Alderman Bemsteln said he heard you say we're not going to close down the incinerator, even if we close down the incinerator there's still going to be some incineration, what does that mean. Mr. Gallagher responded what that means is once we start hauling away from our campus we will be working with a professional vendor that - does this for a living, there are many vendors that do this nationally. We invited them back in February of this year to say what would this look like. We were evaluating this proposal, we said if we move away from Incinerating on our campus how will this waste be managed ultimately. What that means is even though someone else takes the waste away it's still our waste, we are still responsible for it, and so these vendors will take the waste away and they will send it to an incineration, Alderman Bemstein added some to be Incinerated elsewhere. Mr. Gallagher said Evanston's incinerator will be completely shut down. Alderman Feldman said he would like you to go over the relationship you have with the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Rules and Regulations with respect to what your obligations are having to do with redundancy. The specific question he has is they demand of you, or you and any hospital he assumes, that you have some degree of redundancy in your provision of heat, is that correct. Mr. Gallagher responded, that is correct. Alderman Feldman said then we're talking about heat that heats the hospital, that provides the comfortable temperatures in inclement weather when it's cold outside. If you violate for any reason that Page 20. — redundancy what can they do. Mr. Gallagher said the Illinois Department of Public Health in sort of generic terms is the watchdog agency that makes sure that ail hospitals within the state are in compliance with all the regulations that they outline. We deal with them extensively in every aspect of patient care as well as facility management. This specific regulation that we're referring to is something that we informally call'in plus one redundancy What it essentially means is given that we are missing critical facility heat if that heating capacity is lost at a given point in time and we're out of compliance IDPH could cite us and then openly take up issue with CMS which is our source of Medicare and Medicaid funding and they could put us in a program where we basically would have to outline a very specific plan to address that issue immediately going forward. They could also broaden their inspection to any other of the hospitals that they feel is worth exploration and so it's an appropriate mission that they serve but we pay very close caution to make sure that we are always within the boundaries of the guidelines that they provide. Alderman Feldman asked if you have the letter that you referto for us this evening. Mr. Gallagher said we just received it this morning, we provided a copy to Alderman Tisdahl and we'd be happy to make other copies available. Alderman Feldman had another question that has to do with your referents to the possibility of using the Incinerator as a redundancy without incinerating medical waste. You said you weren't able at this time to answer that, can you tell him how you intend to resolve that issue. Mr. Gallagher said what it essentially involves is looking at what are the operational implications of essentially putting the incinerator on line with natural gas. What that means is essentially instead of using the waste as a source of combustion that drives the heat you're bypassing that and using natural gas. You lose the efficiency that it created from the 3 burner chambers that ultimately drive the heating source, so on one level you know it's not nearly as efficient. With that aside you need to know that, mechanically speaking, works more effectively. We actually have one of our Stationery Engineers, who we work very closelywith, who can probably better answer the technical aspects of that but in looking at that need to understand if it would always be a reliable source of heat at any given point in time. In other words what we will most likely be doing is use the incinerator instead of being online all the time, it would be a backup source of heat. If it's a backup source of. heat we cannot at any point in time encounter a situation where it might not work and get up to that base temperature 1800 degrees Fahrenheit immediately so that the operating room, the cath lab, all those services that can't be interrupted aren't compromised. Alderman Feldman said then you have to study that to determine whether that's effective, and does that also require a permit from the City. Mr. Gallagher said what we would be proposing is mechanical adjustments to make sure that it operated as efficiently as possible off of natural gas which essentially translates to changing the function of the incinerator as it was originally designed which would involve getting IDPH involved in to make sure that those permits and approvals were received. Alderman Feldman said lets say this is just speculation and you were able to determine that that's a reasonable possibility and a reasonable option. If you chose that option he understands it would take time to implement it, that would permit you at a sooner date to stop incinerating waste. Is that correct? Mr. Gallagher said we look at our obligation in a broad spectrum, there's the issue of heat redundancy, there's also the issue of managing waste. What's very clear to us is regardless of how we address the heating issue, the loading dock and the managing of the 2,000,000 pounds Page 21. of solid waste does not go away and we need a more permanent solution that does not compromise the way our supplies, our food, and our waste are handled. Alderman Feldman thanked Mr. Gallagher. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a question regarding heat redundancy and asked if you are saying that the hospital does not have the capacity to provide heat for its facilities and its patients and employees without the boiler that functions some sense through incineration. Mr. Gallagher responded, yes, what we have in our current configuration is one 600 horse power boiler that is our largest source of heat, a 400 horse power in addition to a 200 horse power boiler which essentially is the incinerator. We have another 600 horse boiler that is off line that is our source of heat redundancy . The IDPH guidelines essentially says you need the equivalent of your largest boiler available off line at any given point in time to meet our redundancy requirements. What we've also done is we've compared our heating capacity relative to Glenbrook Hospital and Highland Park Hospital compared to the amount of square footage that they support. What we've clearly been able to document by evaluating our heat load as well as the use of steam and cool in hot summer months is that we have less heating redundancy capacity at Evanston Hospital than we have at the other 2 hospitals. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said based on the information you've given us it seems like you have 1800 horse power of heat, you have two boilers at 600 horse power one for 400 and one at 200, then how much horse power do you utilize during the cold months of the winter. Mr. Gallagher said we'd be happy to share with you very specific answers to that information. He would defer to several members of our team who have actually gone over our heating logs with members of the community. Shale Miller and Joanna Batilia have spent a lot of time with us in looking at those heat redundancy capacities. I can't give you a specific answer right now but we'll get that to you if you like. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said but you're able to conclude that you could not provide adequate heat without the 200 horse power boiler and you're saying then you need almost 1800 .horse power in order to provide adequate heat in the winter. He understands you do not have the specific data but you conclude that you could not function properly and provide adequate heat without this 200 horse power boiler and that even though you don't have access to the specifics you're saying that's what it takes to heat the hospital during the winter. Mr. Gallagher said, yes, while also meeting the redundancy requirement, that's correct. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had a couple of other questions and hopefully if we could hear some more specifics later he would appreciate that. At this point Alderman Feldman excused himself with a point of order, and said Madam Chairman in the audience we've had reference to the fact that there are people that can answer those questions now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste added maybe they should. Alderman Feldman said he would appreciate it if in fact one of the Aldermen asked a question and if this gentleman can't answer and we have experts that can, than instead of us getting a memo some time next week or two weeks later, we find out now what the answer is. Is that acceptable? Page 22. Mr. Gallagher thanked Alderman Feldman as he can avoid writing a memo, he appreciates that. Mr. Gallagher said he is now going to introduce Mr. John Wandolowsk, who is the Director of Facilities for all 3 of our hospitals, is based at Evanston Hospital and deals with this issue immediately. Mr. John Wandolowski- In the winter we've already utilized anywhere from 1100 horse power to 1200 horse power in sub zero temperatures. To answer the question of whether we utilize capacity there is a real issue when we compare Glenbrook, Highland Park, and Evanston. We do need more heating capacity at this site. We have had instances in sub zero temps of getting 1100, 1200 horse power requirement. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said then you don't use it to the capacity of the 1800 horse power and you have at all times in the coldest times of the winter 600 horse power still available that you're not utilizing, is that what your saying. Mr. Wandolowski said when you're talking about redundancy you're tacking about the capability of coming up with 1200 horse power, 1100 horse power of steam you need to have a system for 1800 it's a bare requirement if one of those large 600's fail you have the ability to at least hold up the system but you need that full capacity of what's in that boiler room. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said so what you are seeking to do between now and your deadline to shut down, is to provide an alternative for the 200 horse power, to which Mr. Wandolowski said, correct, to bring our capacity up. Alderman Jean -Baptiste continued to say, during the cold months of January and February you certainly need that capacity but as soon as the thick of winter is over with you won't need that capacity, is that correct. Mr. Wandolowski said that is correct and that's one of the parts because if you look at the schedule why March was the ear mark time frame for shutting down the boiler at least we're past the fear of the sub zero temperatures. We couldn't really attempt this with safety by trying to do it any earlier than then. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what does it take between now and the winter to get this thing resolved. Mr. Gallagher asked as a point of clarification, are you asking is there a way to do this faster so that we got it in place before the winter kicked in, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said, yes. Mr. Gallagher said whatwe know is that first of all we need to identify the specifications of the boiler that would be required, we've already done that. We then need to submit to the state as part of the permit process, where we're saying we're not going to take this boiler, bring it into our facility, and it will be part of that heat source that we will rely on for the next how ever many years of its use for life, because it is a part of our facility's operation that will go through a very stringent review at the state level to make sure that it meets all those requirements. As part of our time frame to get that permit approval our experience is that can take as long as 6 months. We've modeled it out to be 30 days, we think it will be fairly tight. We then need to order and procure the boiler which you cannot order until you have state approval based on the requirements you have submitted. A lead time to acquire a boiler is a. couple of months which typically has been over a month period of time, it then gets to our facility no sooner than November or December. Installation of that boiler involves all the construction that we talked about which basically means changing the footprint of the facility, and again the planning and design planning and state approval thatwould be required for that> We would not be able to complete that before the winter months kick in. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if you already ordered the boiler and you've already applied for the permit. Mr. Gallagher said they've identified the specifications and will be applying for the permits in September once all the details have been finalized, which we are close to doing. Page 23. Mr. Grady noted we have in the audience tonight the Construction Manager who will be overseeing this, Mr. Tim VanderMolen. Tim, maybe you might want to speak to the process. I'm Tim VanderMolen the Project Manager for the hospital. We at this point have retained the services of a Mechanical Engineer who has helped us size the boiler and look at what we need. We now are in the process of getting the documents together to apply for the IEPA permit which they have a 90 day window of approval. During that 90 day window we can start the process with the boiler company. Boilers of this size aren't sitting on a shelf, it will take 2 to 3 weeks to have shop drawings done and sent to our Engineer and approved. Delivery time is anywhere from 10 to 12 weeks after a shop drawing approval. Again going back to J.P.'s comment even if we ordered it now we're going to be in the dead of winter when the redundancy is needed most when that boiler is going to arrive. Our goal and our time table is to set it up so we have the boiler available in late March, we can start the project in early March, start opening up the building getting things ready so during that time frame of say March through the end of May when the hospital's steam usage is the least that's when we would install the new boiled. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what about the capacity to still provide the heat and not incinerate, he thinks that question was raised. Mr. VanderMolen said as J.P. explained earlier we're still investigating that, we know that there will need to be some mechanical changes made to the incinerator to do that which will involve any change we make. If you've seen the IDPH letter, the second page, the last item, any change we make either to the boiler or to the waste stream itself how it's handled we have to get their approval. We also have to go to IEPA if we change the use of the incinerator. We think there's a possibility but we've got some hoops to jump through yet to say that it's positively possible. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if you are exploring this short term process, he was told yes. Alderman Jean - Baptiste went on to say he understands your longer time table to replace the boiler but are you looking at some way of retrofitting this piece of machinery so that you can provide heat without incinerating. Mr. VanderMolen said, right, the issue is, and J.P. alluded to this, its not just the redundancy issue, if we fix that problem we are creating another problem and knowing that I'm going to have a trailer and a dock that's already for the waste. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not there yet he just wanted to get clear whether you can really move up the time table which would provide heat and not incinerate, and what you're saying is yes. You could do that with that boiler and reengineer the thing to go ahead to do that, right, that's what you said. Mr. VanderMolen said, like I said we've got issues to work through yet on the engineering side of this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste to make this possible you've just got to take the step to try to do that. Mr. VanderMolen said we've got to dot some is and cross some t's. Mr. Terrywanted to let the committee know this afternoon he spoke to Mr. Thomas Bussey, currently the Acting Supervisor at IDPH who is responsible for this process, and he understood the extent to which this was a communityissue. However, as many of you have been dealing with state government are aware, given all the early retirements there are significant vacancies in a number of key positions throughout state government. Included in that are engineering positions that would be responsible for the review of Evanston Hospital's Page 24. application. In fact he indicated he would need to acquire the skills of someone to review that application. In light of that he said he did understand the year time table. He expressed his own personal reluctance to approve anything during the winter months until he was sure the redundancy requirement had been met. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had some other questions, but at this time would pass. Alderman Bernstein said with respect to this redundancy issue, you close your existing incineratordown for, he believed your chart said, 5 days but the other day you told him 3 to 7 days. How do you provide the standby requirements when that goes down, how does the state allow you to continue to operate during that week period? Mr. Gallagher said these periods of time when those redundancy requirements are not met to the same capacity that we currently need, in other words in the spring months, the fall months, and the summer months, its generally not an issue. If you're talking about from November through March there are isolated periods of time much in the same way that's at the waste compact area. if IDPH were to come in and see the way that the waste accumulates, there are isolated periods of time in which we could be found out of compliance. What we're talking about is making sure that we manage that risk appropriately and we do not open ourselves up to exposure for an extended period of time that could present an exposed risk to our operation. Alderman Newman said he knows he's came late but just wanted to follow up on something someone said. He wants to understand this redundancy thing a little bit more. We're in the winter months and you need that 1800 total capacity, does that mean that if one of the 600's does not break down and they function the whole time that the incinerator itself does not have to be on to function power. What he was hearing is it's a backup and it only had to be on if the concern is if one of the 600's failed, he would like to know how often does the 600 fail. What's the record on that and does it ever have to be on if the 600's fully function. Mr. VanderMolen said he would start out by saying we manage our operation based on the potential for an incinerator, in otherwords we need to minimize and eliminate risk wherever we can. In answer to your question the incinerator is always on line as a source of heat, in other words it doesn't operate as a backup currently. If it were to go to natural gas we would consider if that was a possibility. What that means is that at any given point in time as our heat load sieges the incinerator is tapped into without going into that 600 horse power boiler because by regulation that 600 horse power boiler is meant to be in reserve so that that redundancy requirement is never compromised. In terms of how often it happens Mr. Wandolowski and his team could probably answer in terms of the frequency and extent. There are times both in the winter months and times in the summer months when that incinerator serves as a source of steam that powers our cooling systems when that takes place. Just this May we actually had the problem with 2 of our 600 boilers going down at the same time which is our worse case scenario and it does have that kind of risk. If this was sub zero temperatures that would be our worse case scenario, so it has happened. We have to manage that risk. Alderman Newman then said one of these 600's is a backup and you don't have to have it on all the time, to which Mr. VanderMolen responded, right. Page 25. Mr. Grady said, Alderman Newman this is much like the requirement that we have a backup generator. Every hospital in this country is required to have a backup generatcr They usually never use them, but if you had lightening strike or anything else that knocks out the electricity you better have that backup generator ready to go or you're putting people's lives at risk. That is the same issue with the boiler, we have to have that backup. Alderman Feldman wanted to go back to the presentation tha' has to do with the statistics you gave us with respect to the emissions, the. 135 tablespoons per year, that kind of thing. Where did they come from? Mr. Gallagher said the health professionals that he mentioned that specialize in this field and Dr. Jerry Liken who is not with us, he's in Boston presenting at a national conference on toxicology, has looked at the data. Dr Ted Hogan who is with us this evening, who is available for more specific questions, reviewed year's worth of data and then accessed research in this arena to provide those statistics. We also did it in consultation with Bill O'Shea, the environmental expert that we've worked with who again deals with incineration and combustion sources. Would you like for those gentlemen to speak. Alderman Feldman said without question, he would like to hear from the source of that from an expert or any authority that you might have and he will probably ask this of the other side as well. It's very important for him and he thinks the rest of the committee and certainly the Council, to hear more than assertions, more than a statement by a presenter. He respects you greatly and respects the way in which you presented this and conducted yourself and thinks it does justice to the issue. But it's very important for him to understand that whatever statistics or assertions you make they come from someone whose business it is to do that. For example, he was about to ask you about the letter that the state sent and if there is somebody whose information or opinion is part of this testimony, he would like to have that as well. If there is someone here who can address the very things that you discussed he'd certainly like to hear. You refer to a Doctor that's here. Mr. Gallagher said the Clinical Physician that we've worked with over the last several weeks, Dr. Jerry Liken is In Boston but will make himself available, he actually has made himself available to some members of this committee, He is happy to meet with any member of the community on that issue, he is just indisposed until August 12'". Dr. Ted Hogan who 1 would ask as well as Bill O'Shea to come up and more specifically address the issue. My name is Ted Hogan, I have a Ph.D. In Public Health I'm not a medical doctor, but I've been on the faculty of the University of Illinois Public Health since 1980, 1 also teach at Benedictine University, I'm an independent consultant and among other things I teach. The last class i taught at UIC was Risk Assessment. teach people how to analyze risks, I teach medical physicians how to analyze these types of risks. To answer your specific question Alderman Feldman the data that we're looking at, in terms of the calculations, are basically emissions information. This emission information was already provided to Alderman Bernstein and the rest of the committee and that's where the emission information came from. Alderman Feldman said according to that emission information you came up with the analysis comparing those risks to a cup coffee having more dioxins in it than standing in front of an incinerator, to which Dr. Hogan said, let me quote to you from the ATFCR, this is about fast foods daily PVQ consumption for kilogram body weight assuming a 65 program adult, for ones that have eaten the fast food tested at a range between 0.046 and 1.1556 kilograms Page 26. per program. The point is this is much lower than what the emissions are in terms of being 15 feet away from the stack. You can be 15 feet away from the stack, a 6 year old child for a daywould have much less exposure to dioxins from that exposure than eating a regular fast food meal. Alderman Feldman said lets say that's true as he has no reason to doubt that. The next question he would have it seems to him must follow from that, while it seems a small amount, we've all teamed that it doesn't take tot to make somebody sick if it has an adverse effect on a human being, and he would ask this question of the amount, even though its smaller than the fast food meal does that amount presents a reasonable, meaningful danger to the life of that child that's standing there and getting less than in a fast food restaurant, but maybe more than he should from both places. Dr. Hogan said he sees a different type of risk eating the fast food is a voluntary type of risk, being exposed to an incinerator is an involuntary risk. There's no question about that. It's important to acknowledge the difference between those, but if over 99% of the exposure comes from something other than the incinerator then the risk contribution is extremely small. The reality is if we're talking about 15 feet away from the stack when you get 400 feet away from the stack it's so far below background levels that incrementally it is insignificant in terms of the contribution to it. Alderman Feldman said he would like that, at least for his file so he could go back and look at it the analogies and comparisons Dr. Hogan made. Dr. Hogan said he would give Alderman Feldman his own copy before he leaves. Mr. Gallagher said, Alderman Feldman if I could suggest part of the perspective that may be valuable at a later date is to actually speak to Dr. Jerry Liken. We had members of this committee who have had that chance, and he speaks very specifically to what this type of risk exposure means in a clinical perspective. We've had technical experts, but we also have clinical experts and Dr. Liken has dealt with mercury, he's related that to Nicor, he's taken them on a community level and translated them into individual risks and that maybe a perspective that you would find helpful at a later date. Alderman Tisdahl wished to add that she did meet with Dr. Liken and did ask him if there is any Immediate danger to this community, and he said no. She asked him is running the incinerator for 9'/2 more months going to cause any health damage to this community, and he said no. Someone from the audience asked, "why are you closing it'. Mr. Grady responded to that question and said we're dosing it because our community has asked us to do it and in the court of public opinion medical waste incineration is a bad thing over all. We're closing it because you asked us to do it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had questions on other categories and wanted to go back to the heating redundancy, Or, Hogan said the issue of acceptable risk is standards that are defined from time to time and redefined based on different kinds of tendencies in a particular society. The whole issue of having mercury inside people's homes as thermometers to measure proper temperature level and such is no longer acceptable. Asbestos is no longer acceptable in people's homes, and so the general standards of acceptable emissions are sometimes calculated from the standpoint of balancing business interests versus human risks. You say the whole policy regarding acceptable emission or pollution in this society is driven through a lot of offsets that are given based on what kind of society values the particular industry that is emitting that particular pollutant in the air. Isn't that correct? Dr. Hogan said he understands your discussion about risk, he teaches Page 27. this and he teaches the concepts that you're talking about. The point is if you turn off the incinerator today it would have no measurable impact on the community in terms of the concentration that you should be measuring out in the community. Whether it's on or off the measurable impact is so insignificant that you couldn't find it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he was just suggesting that the definitions shift from different time periods depending on the issues that are discovered along the line. The whole issue of presence of mercury in people's homes at some point was deemed to be acceptable, isn't that correct. Dr. Hogan responded, yes, but said he does not understand what your point is. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his point is if there is emission of dioxin into the air, if there is emission of mercury into the air, that is not a good thing for the community. The acceptable risk is something that is defined but it's none the less a risk. Dr. Hogan said if you want to reduce the amount of dioxins in that that are being emitted to the environment the incinerator is one minor source. You need also to look at the fact that you have bon fire permits that the City Council issues here and also fireplaces there are other sources that also impact the environment, too The point is the incinerator is being shut down and in the meantime the impact on the community for burning for another 11 months is insignificant, of course that's his opinion, and that's based on the science that's available. If you have other science to show him, please he'd love to talk about it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he wanted to talk about the heating redundancy issue and asked what's line capacity. Since the 600 horse power boiler is one that's not constantly on line, that means it stays as a reserve to offset heat, isn't that correct. Dr. Hogan responded, yes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why can't we put the 200 gorse power boiler as a reserve for this coming winter months and cease incineration all together. Regarding the waste segregation issue, he's not even there, but from a heating source requirement and the redundancy requirement, why can't that be, isn't it simply an administrative decision. Mr. Gallagher said it's a very legitimate question it's not simply an administrative decision and he'll let Mr. VanderMolen answer that in more detail. Mr. VanderMolen said in order to have redundancy like Mr. Wandolowski"s guys are using today, 600 horse power, we have to have a second 600 horse power available to go immediately so that boiler doesn't run on line all the time but it has to be on line it has to be warm and ready to go. A boiler of this size doesn't come from 0 to producing that horse power in a matter of seconds. In the incinerator's case, this is part of why we've got to look at this a little closer and is why we are to keep that thing warm, even at night when it's not burning. Because of the refractory, the brick work in it, to keep the boiler hot because you can't take from cold to hot and up and down it just doesn't work. Even if it's going to be the backup you're going to use gas to keep that thing warm all the time during that time period to serve as your backup. So it's not like just flipping a switch on or off. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then to keep it warm at night you're not incinerating, right. Mr. VanderMolen responded, right, but we use other natural gas to do that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if you want to keep it on line and available as a reserve during the winter you just keep it warm, or maybe he's being aver simplistic. Mr. VanderMolen said you're also being a little over simplistic because there's more to it in the air requirements and so to bum enough gas to keep it warm so that it keeps a head of steam in it is a whole lot different than the 1800 degrees that it takes to really produce the 200 horse power steam. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said then you are saying the only way you can produce the 200 horse power steam is to incinerate Page 28. during the winter. Mr. VanderMolen said he does not know that, what he answered before is we're still looking into the issue if the thing can be handled for a long period of time with just the gas. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how long it has been since the incinerator has been functioning. Mr. Gallagher said the incinerator was installed in 1989. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said every 6 weeks your shut it down for 7 days, to which Mr. Gallagher responded, every 6 to 8 weeks we set it down anywhere from 3 to 7 days. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then during that time staff has to segregate waste to be hauled away. Mr. Gallagher said the staff and the units do nothing different than they do when we're incinerating, to them this process is invisible. What's happening behind the scenes is down by the loading dock that area where the waste is accumulating is being managed through a hauling and compacting process. If you would like to visit us when one of these down periods is taking place you will see that the congestion in that area in that loading the dock is dramatically different than it is when the incinerator is functioning. What we're looking to do is eliminate the risk that is associated with those periods of time so that there is complete separation of waste and what we call our clean and dirty sources that are basically coexisting right now during those windows. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said from your staff you would probably need more people to segregate waste when the incinerator shuts down, but your staff has 15 years of experience in segregating waste. Mr. Gallagher said they have staff who were originally there with these processes. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste said then when you talk about training staff you're not talking about a qualitative leap in terms of process and you're not saying you would need the entire 9 month period to train staff to learn to segregate waste because they've been doing this. Mr, Gallagher said there is actually a very important distinction to make when you ask him about the training required to handle that waste, he'll give 2 examples, the issue that we're talking about right now is a facilities employee who is working down by the loading dock by the incinerator that supports our compact activities. That individual is very knowledgeable in terms of where the municipal waste needs to be and where the medical waste needs to be. What we're talking about when it comes to training are the individuals who are helping generate the waste. That is every nurse, every technician, every staff person in every unit of our hospital because that's the point of origin. What they're currently doing now is they're disposing of the waste through the same channels that they always have been for the last 15+ years. In order to manage this waste more effectively, in order to change our waste streams, we need to reinforce into every employee, we also need to monitor, audit, and follow through with those practices 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We can start the training next month and we're in a position to do that, that's what we're committed to doing. But in order to come to you and say our practices now reflect this new approach, experienced professionals who have done this say it takes no less than 6 months, more likely 12 months to change that type of behavior. Alderman Newman said he's reading your background materials, and again he might have missed some things, where it says you had some meetings with soma neighbors in terms of the liaison group and Aldermen, how many meetings did you have. Mr. Gallagher said we have our quarterly neighborhood meetings with the standing liaison committee, there was one in March. Alderman Newman interjected, asked if he could clarify this, maybe get some light, and asked how many letters have you sent out to the homeowners in Evanston Page 29. about the incinerator. Mr. Gallagher said they sent out a communication fast week, he believes to 1500 residents explaining what our process is. Alderman Newman said what he's concerned about is if you except your position, and he's not saying he does, you're basically saying there's no risk, then we have people all over the City right now who are upset and many, many of them who are college educated, many professionals, believe there is a danger here. He's just not sure what you've been doing. He appreciates you sent out one letter, but we have a real problem here because if you're right then we have an entire community with what you would say is a false perception. It's a terrible situation that we're in and he does not know what you've spent but clearly have not communicated in any affective waywith our community because our community to a large extent does not have knowledge of your assessment. This is a real problem. Mr. Gallagher said we have focused almost all efforts internally with the immediate individuals that have been involved and you're correct in terms of a broad wide -scale message we've only recently begun to do that and that is a challenge and something that we need to take on. Alderman Tisdahl called for any other questions from the Aldermen. Hearing none she had a question, when will you know if you can run the incinerator on gas? Mr. Gallagher said it would take 3 to 4 weeks to answer that specific issue in terms of the technical detail that would be involved, and we will then have an answer on the use of natural gas. We will still have the same concerns about the loading dock. Alderman Tisdahl said let's just deal with natural gas for the moment, if you can run it on natural gas and the answer to that is yes, then do you have to go to the IDPH for permits? Mr. Gallagher responded, yes, if mechanical changes are made the IDPH has to come in. Alderman Tisdahi said then we're at a 3 month time over that, but do you think you could still make the change in winter if you got the permits. Mr. Hogan said if we're ready in August, those 3 months, he does not know. Alderman Tisdahl then said, but it is still within the realm of possibility that you could run it on natural gas and you might be able to make that change before the winter, maybe. Mr. Grady said, Alderman Tisdahl I said in my opening comments that we would do this as quickly as possible. As we get into this if that opportunity presents itself to us we will explore it thoroughly and if we can do it we will. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Mr. Grady and said that concludes her questions. Alderman Newman asked if the hospital answered why all these other hospitals are shutting down the incinerators. That's been a question that has been raised and he does not know whether that was taken up earlier and asked if it could be fully told to us why, and if this is completely safe as you seem to say then you're deciding to close it, clarify that for him. Mr. Gallagher said it's a basic question he can't speak to every other hospital incinerator he does not know of many that are as tied into the heat regeneration function as ours is. We also know that the issues related to heat redundancy are an immediate issue that we need to accommodate as part of that process. The incinerator itself in terms of the way it resides in our building, which he'd be happy to show it to you first hand, occupies a very large portion of what will become our compacting and waste management area and so all of those issues will need to be factored into in terms of a permanent solution. Alderman Newman said he was trying to figure this out a little bit, you don't get power from ComEd, or Page 30. do you. Mr. Gallagher said yes they use the utilities from ComEd. Alderman Newman asked if you have any way of bypassing them in terms of producing your own power. Mr. Gallagher said, for emergencies. Alderman Tisdahl had one last question. from what she understands of what you've said if we pass an ordinance that ends medical waste incineration on August 30`' we are putting you in a position where you cannot both comply with our ordinance and comply with the requirements of IDPH, is that correct. Mr. Gallagher said, that is correct. Alderman Tisdahl announced if there are no more questions it is Clare Delgado's and Dr. Wynia's turn. Alderman Tisdahl also announced Julie Armitage, of the Illinois Protection Environmental Agency, is here and will answer questions if we have any for her. At this time Alderman Tisdahl called for a short recess (The recess commenced at 9:23 p.m. and the meeting reconvened at 9:35 p.m.) Good evening, I'm Clare Delgado and I'd like to start out by first saying its been many, many years that Evanston residents have been expressing serious concerns to the medical waste incinerator at Evanston Hospital. Finally the community has stepped forward in unison to say enough is enough, and that's the great news. Just to respond a bit to the hospital I don't believe that the hospital or anybody else in this room can seriously say that that medical waste incinerator does not present a threat to the health of our community. Evanston Hospital daily emits some of the worst pollutants known to mankind. And by EPA standards this is considered a large medical waste incinerator. There are 3 categories small, medium, and large and we have in the heart of our neighborhood butting up against homes, surrounded by schools, a large medical waste incinerator. Its time that our City Council responds to this undeniable health threat to our community and respond to the community's request that Evanston Hospital stop buming medical waste now, enough is enough. I want to respond a little bit to some of the comments about the emissions. You don't really know for a fact exactly how much is coming out of that stack of some of the worst emissions such as cadmium and dioxin. The last time the hospital sampled for those dangerous pollutants was when it was applying for its operating permit in 2000. They have failed to report to the IEPA on those emissions. Our group has taken a great deal of time and hard work to source out meticuiously any statement we made and we took a long time coming out with statements with regards to the emissions of this hospital. That was because after we contacted the IEPA to get their emissions reports we heard that medical waste incinerators emerged such things as dioxins and mercury but when we got those reports that data was missing, it wasn't on there. It took some time, it took some months, and finally the IEPA issued a citation to the hospital saying, "What's going on you haven't been reporting on these things.' For us that's a concern, it's a concern that they're not sampling their air when they're surrounded by children and homes in the heart of the community, but also a concern when they're not taking the IEPA and the Clean Air Act seriously and reporting on these emissions... I'm not going to go on in detail because there are people following me who can talk at more detail about that, but 1 would like to say first on a very positive note it seems to me tonight that we have a resolution. It seems to Page 31. me that the hospital has acknowledged the fact they really don't need that 200 horse power boiler to generate daily the steam required to run that hospital safely, they don't need it. Use it as backup, we say turn it off immediately and use that inc,nerator, that boiler attached to it as backup, we don't need it. We say do it now, do it before school starts and we'd like see our City Council make sure that that will happen by voting on an ordinance. We're saying they can rely on the incinerator as a backup they don't need to rely on it to generate daily the steam for that hospital, they have plenty of horse power apart from that little 200 horse power one to generate enough steam for that hospital, use it as backup. We're not asking for any fancy mechanical reconfigurations, no, we're saying stop feeding it medical waste and keep it as a backup. Feed it the gas that you need to and if you need to fire it up if there's an emergency, so be it, but stop using it as a primary source of steam, now. Tonight I'm going to make my speech short because it's very important that the City Council vote on this. It does deserve urgent attention. It's wonderful that the community has stepped forward and I'm going to limit my speech and now hand over the mike to Mr. Gordon McGrew who will address the boiler issue in a little more detail. Thank you very much. My name Is Gordon McGrew, 1 live at 2505 Ridge, I'm a member of the Hospital Neighborhood liaison Committee and I've also attended a number of meetings with the No Bum Evanston Group. The No Burn Group has asked me to review some of the materials that were provided by the hospital concerning the operations of their boiler systems of which the incinerator is part, as you know. Based on this review I believe that the outcome of the boiler is unneeded in normal operation and it's too small to suffice in a dire emergency. I viewed these materials with my wife Delia Tacharata who is a chemical engineer by training and in the course of her career has been a member of Eurs Managing Facilities mainly for large chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing plants. In this capacity she has had considerable experience supervising the installation and maintenance of industrial boiler systems. I myself am a chemist by trade and am comfortable with the information we discussed. The information we were given makes it difficult to determine how much capacity the hospital really needs. We looked at certain of these power house round sheets that showed it had some missing data often missing from entire shifts of information. However, in looking at what the hospital said were some of the coldest months of this last winter, back in January of 2004, we did note that the hospital never used in excess of 1200 horse power which agrees with what the hospital people have said tonight. We do note there is another building they added to the hospital, the Walgreen's Building which will add about 8% of the floor space to the hospital's total facilities, and presume they will add a similar amount to their energy requirements. However, even in adding that 8% to the 1200 that they used under most extreme conditions its Gear that they do not need the last 200 horse power to meet the requirements of the hospital as long as the 3 conventional boilers are operating and available. The issue, of course, is if one of the 600 horse power boilers were to shut off and be taken out of service for an extended period of time in frigid weather, it appeared to us it wasn't clear that the hospital could meet all of its needs even with the full output of the incinerator especially when considering the Walgreen's Building, There is a possibility, one issue that hasn't been touched on, that the 250 rules there say that they must provide for essential services, not all of the operations of the hospital is essential, There are specific things of course patient's services and operating facilities but there is also the Page 32. possibility of shutting down some non essential services to conserve energy as needed. The bottom line is that they could encounter a situation if they tried to maintain the whole facility where even with the incinerator they would have the insufficient amount of energy to heat the building and provide for the other services. The other offsite to this is, as been noted, this incinerator is down periodically often as much as once every 4 weeks according to what the hospital circulated the other day. Certainly after a week every 6 to 8 weeks his wife feels this would not be something you want to count on in an emergency. You can need these things, of course, when they aren't available. Fundamentally this is a garbage incinerator with some modest curb incineration capacity it's really not a backup boiler that could be counted on in a crisis. Nonetheless, its clear that they don't need to operate it in the normal daily requirements as long as the boilers are up and running they should never need that 200 horse power capacity. It does also appear that the hospital was trying to squeak by with the Walgreen's Building and not adding it to their boiler capacity at that time. I do want to mention one other thing that was apparent tome, the hospital is talking about one of the 600 horse power boilers being held solely as a backup. According to my understanding reading the powerhouse rounds, all 3 of the conventional boilers are employed at various times, its possible that they never use more than 2 at a time. However, it's not like one Is set aside as being just a backup that's never actually used. All 3 of them seem to be used at various times. I also asked my wife what she would do if she had to balance the legal requirements as well as the technical redundancy requirement of the hospital and compliance with the community interest in an immediate shut down. She agreed that the permanent replacement of the incinerator with a larger capacity boiler is probably needed in the long run but it is not practical before the winter. In that she agrees with the hospital as she is similarly in agreement with the hospital's time line as far as how long it takes to replace a boiler in a permanent setting. However, the solution that she had used when she was confronted with similar problems in her professional career was the use of a rental boiler and a quick search of the Internet found at least 50 companies that are in that business of providing rental industrial boilers. One of these companies claims to have been doing this business for 90 years. However, tonight someone gave me a package of information from one of these companies called Nationwide Boiler, Inc., and I have here some of the letters they've made photocopies of so that Aldermen can see. I want to call attention probably first of all that they provide boilers with capacity up to from 100 horse power up to 200,000 pounds per hour which as he understands would be equivalent of 6,000 horse power which is 10 times larger than the hospital's primary boiler. You will note in their letters they are quite proud of the fact that when the 911 Disaster occurred in New York City they were able to provide backup boilers to ComEd to run their equipment because one of the things that was damaged in the destruction of the World Trade Center was a very large steam pipe which basically put Commonwealth Edison out of business, or a big part of it. They were able to bring in 140,000 pounds per hour, again that would be a 4,Z_ - ' terse power steam plant and was brought on line within a matter of days. All of these better boiler companies provide emergency service and promise to mobilize boiler systems for you Page 33. within 24 hours if' needed on that basis, but my wife said that her preference would be considering that it appears that the hospital's redundancy is minimal at best it might be better to bring new sets of boilers in in mid December and keep it running though March, or at least keep it available through March. A properly sized rental unit would provide far more sense of interrupted steam than the undersized incinerator with its intending maintenance requirements. Another option which occurred to us, and which merited some discussion, would not involve a rental boiler but would merely involve taking the incinerator out of daily service keeping it shut down or possibly in a standby mode. It is correct it is run in the evenings you have to keep it up to temperature so it can be fired up first thing in the morning so that it is available on short notice if you keep it at that temperature. It could be kept either shut down or in a standby mode and used only in the case of an unexpected failure of a primary boiler. This would involve no change to the boiler and therefore presumably no registration with the IEPA orwith the Public Health Services since there would be no real change in the configuration of the hospital's boiler system. I gave you a good operation to perform which my wife refers to as monthly priming for emergency recovery. The rest of us would probably refer to this firing up the incinerator once a month to make sure it still works. This would involve running it basically for one day per month to verify that the personnel and the equipment are ready to go if there is an emergency need for this incinerator capacity. This minimal operation could be sustained through the cold months and would most likely result in being propped up to 5 additional days of incineration after the routine operation had ceased. A by product of running it in this way would be that the incinerator would require less maintenance and therefore be more like a backup if it were actually needed. There was reference to the phrase 100% reliable, I would mention that there was a time in the spring when both 600 horse power boilers went down at the same time which again emphasizes that it isn't like they arejust running one of these is not always in reserve as we see it but in fact both of them are used periodically. A couple of things about that is at the time that those two 600 horse power boilers went down fortunately was in June when there wasn't a major heat requirement they do use them for air conditioning but the fact is thatwhen those two 600 horse power boilers went down the incinerator happened to be down for maintenance as well at that time. Another comment made was how they had to have this up and ready to go. It's not like electricity where the lights go out and they remain out until that source of electricity is replaced. According to my wife she felt a boiler failure doesn't result in an instantaneous emergency you have a matter of hours to rectify the situation before you start losing so much heat that it would jeopardize operations. Obviously that assumes that you've retained at least some of your capacity which with 4 boilers available to them the hospital surely would never lose a significant amount of it. The other aspect is in the loss of those we understand it was a chiller that failed and as a result of that the 2 boilers overheated but in fact there wasn't a simultaneous failure of both boilers, Both boilers shutdown because of an external piece of equipment. It's noteworthy that if you're trying to power that chiller with boilers you could have as many boilers as you want when the chiller was defective all of them Page 34. would shut down because of excess heat as a result of that chiller being unavailable to use the energy generated by the boilers. In summary, %%v believe that the use of a rental boiler would allow immediate and permanent shut down of the incinerator while insuring that the hospital's technical and legal obligations would be met. Furthermore those needs could be met without the use of a rental boiler with a very limited use of the incinerator solely as a backup unit to get them through the winter months. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Peter Orls, Alderman Tisdahl I'm glad we have an opportunity of finishing our rather brief conversation as when we met some time ago when I was getting on a plane. I am a Professor at the University of Illinois Environmental Occupational Health Sciences and I direct the Occupational Health Services Institute at the University Of Illinois School Of Public Health. I'm really very happy to be invited here this evening, I'm happy to be invited recently by Mr. Gallagher and then also by No Bum Evanston even though i think everybody in the room is nervous about what I'm going to say as revealed over the last days of discussion about this. I usually open up this kind of a discussion because I'm tough speaking in general about incineration and the toxicology of these chemicals and about our global burden of these chemicals. I guess speaking at this point in the evening I will make this brief but I think that kind of conceptual understanding is very important. Let me say some more nice things about the community, I'm terribly impressed with Evanston. Having watched this processing communities all over now going from initially raising some of these issues at a small community meeting in January, early February to a City Council resolution, a hospital committed to closing their Incinerator and the community is educated on these topics as it clearly is a very exciting process and a very rapid process here and I really want to cor+gratulate all sides in these discussions. Let me pay attribute as well to the team that the hospital put together, we always like it when the hospital chooses very impressive professionals like Dr. Hogan and Dr. liken. I apologize when .ferry recommended me I didn't feel it appropriate to take a position since I'd first been invited to the dance by a No Bum Evanston Group. Let me say now our contribution here from the University of Illinois is as a general consultant to whosever interested and very happy to be here as part of that. Let me also say one final thing I'm very excited about the commitment that the hospital's making because it will move the hospital page to the forefront of thinking about these issues both on a national and international level. As you know we are debating here end of the pipe solutions and end of the pipe solutions aren't just fought with problems one side or another but the hospital's commitment to discuss this thing's ability, to discuss purchasing, to phase out mercury within their use, and to re -conceptualize and try to educate the staff. As a physician, and i practice at Cook County Hospital now Mr. Wandolowski's Strogger Hospital of Cook County, I understand how difficult it is for us to be self educated on the issue, but that's another discussion. The hospital's commitment to do this is very impressive and they're showing Kaiser's Hospital system, Catholic Hospitals east and west, Premier and several other large networks of hospitals that are similarly committed. I think getting the community involved here, getting the hospital's commitment. This certainly can be a leading Page 35. community for this kind of thorough approach going to environmental control and if you will a no waste, or a zero waste, longterm commitment to haw do you proceed with human endeavors. That's very exciting. I'm only a little nervous when Mr. Grady says that he's only doing this for you all, but I'm happy that consensus within the community will move a hospital as clearly as community commitments and community endeavors says they will accept the consensus of the community. I hope I'm able to convince you now that there are some problems with the continued emissions of these materials. That brings me to the contents of what I'm going to discuss. The issue that you have to debate here, and of which I have no position on, is how soon technically the hospital can close that incinerator. That is a technical issue and an engineering issue as we just heard from the hospital consultants before about mathematical issues that you have to handle as lay people, but I think Evanstonians and elected officials that's your responsibility. Coming from Chicago t might have the same responsibilities there but despite the fact that what's admitted here affects my life as well and my family's life. I think that's an issue that has to be handled here and locally. I would guess some of that issue has to be balanced against the critical component of how you look at a little more. I'm going to make some discussion here about how much of those materials we are already exposed to and what is emitted because of the advisors and the hospital's recognition itself that nobody in the community, I think, is debating the actual issue about the incinerator emitting a little more and that's agreed by everybody. Now the question is, is a little more too much or is a little more insignificant. That's an issue that you all will need to discuss along with the engineering issues here. Let me for a moment discuss why, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do this with slides but I threw together a couple of slides for you to see the different grand rounds. (At this time Dr. Oris preceded to show the audience some slides.) Dr. Oris showed one on the question of dioxins in incineration that was shown up at Evanston Northwestern Hospital which we did on mercury a few months ago, as well. Why are we in this City concerned about the healthcare industry because it's huge and it's all over the world. It's a major generator of waste a lot of it because of all the explosive use of the devices that we've seen over the last 30 years none of us thought about it. As physicians these are wonderful devises and I could go an for 10 minutes about how satisfying and comforting they are as a physician because you only use this on your own patients. You can't have to worry about sterilization or anything else. The problem is that it is creating an explosion of plastic and other waste that we're really concerned about and the healthcare industry is becoming concerned about it on an international level. What's unusual about hospital waste, well we've got a component here that's infectious and we have to treat that special. That doesn't mean there's not infectious components from community waste especially in different areas in the world, but the hospital waste will be identified as known infectious and will be a threat to the health of others. The question is how we identify and separate and make that infectious waste as small as possible. Another slide showed a transfer out of waste from one of his sister hospitals in Chicago. The red bag on top is the infectious waste, theoretically that's what we put in there. We're looking at that bag that looks pretty infectious, looks like it's got a lot of bodily solutions, etc, But additionally in that bag is other stuff that is clearly not infectious and should not be in that bag and it costs the Page 36. hospital a fortune. At least three times as much to get rid of infectious waste as it does regularwaste so if you shrink this bag you're saving money and Beth Israel Hospital in New York saves about $600,000 a year and we hear stories like that from all over the country. We really do save waste and its not so easy to train people because when they're talking about fully trained people running the incinerator and handling their waste being sure, but as was stressed that's not the medical staff, that's not the doctors, that's not teaching me which bin to put that in that takes constant work, it takes the nurses who are the keys to this waste. The doctor never come to it right away the nurses come to it and when the nurses get it they make the doctors get it, that's another issue. How much of this stuff are we really concerned about, well it's about 7 or 8 different waste trainings. Almost all hospital waste is hotel waste we don't have to worry about it if we do segregate it out and t would only say again that I'm told that our sterile -cycle contract at Mr. Wandolowski's Strogger Hospital doesn't burn any of the stuff. I don't know if that's virtually any but it's certainty not 16%, so we could talk about that some later date, we've got folks that know about that stuff much better than I do about how to reduce that amount. What we're worried about in the waste is dioxin and mercury that has been used and that's our major worry so all of their problems may be burned and these huge amounts of it that we're generating. Dioxins, chemicals talked about before, unwanted byproducts of chlorine chemistry create most of them when you heat it up. But you bum and you create it other times also. Its general consensus today is that the red box (Dr. Oris was referring to the one in the slide) is on a microwave incineration that's going down. Why, because we're closing medical incinerators all over the country and hopefully when Evanston has finalized the discussion about its docking limits incinerator is closed then we will go to Maywood. You will come with us to Maywood and convince Loyola that they aught to close their incinerator also because it turns out that there are about 3 remaining in this area that we really aught not to have generating this kind of pollution. What's concerning about dioxins on a global level is its long range transport. Sure some of it deposits out locally but a lot of it goes up into the atmosphere and leaks out and finally really deposits in the northern polar regions or the southern polar regions primarily northern because we generate most of this stuff in activities, in other words in industry etc. It is then they bio accumulate as Or, Hogan was so accurately saying a hamburger you eat is certainly containing much more dioxins than you would get by eating dirt no matter where you eat it or by breathing air because this stuff bio accumulates and concentrates at least 600,000 times as it moves up the food chains. Its lipo-flick, it loves fat so most of our exposure occurs through the food chains. When you reduce the amount that you're creating here in Evanston, f'm doing much better, but more importantly people than who are living here with people from the North Pole are doing better. Yes, it's not just an Evanston problem its one of those globally not focally problems because this is without question one of our global issues. Here's why it remains an issue when you talk about just a little more, the per capita amount that has been estimated a few years ago was put in the air in various countries. This isn't going into the individuals but this is what's going up in the air in these different countries and this is per capita. Whether or not you agree there' is a threshold where you don't see any health affects any more they've already dealt with 22 mammograms per year. If you look around the United States it was producing 2,000 mammograms per year and in Belgium 6,100 that's a little bit bacteria tic because they had a food scare in Belgium so they did a lot more testing. That's the Page 37. other thing a lot of places in the world we don't know about because it costs so much to test for dioxin. The EPA estimates that we're all getting overdosed by dioxin so the levels are going down very nicely. It shows when you have consciousness about this stuff, when you pay attention to this you begin to have your levels go down and we're beginning to see that now in the national surveys and background levels. Of course there's a differential in adult cows than in adults, they get more of a dose and may be more sensitive. Dioxin is one of the few long hanging carcinogens associated with a number of different cancers that's along with cigarette smoke, asbestos and a few others and is a multi system toxic because it works through endocrine destruction which makes the poison not only more accurate but more complex. If it means you may get an effect at a low dose level, when we get a high dose level you don't see it for a variety of toxic logic reasons and that's why with dioxins we're worried about parts per trillion level and we never were worried about any of that stuff before at those levels. Mercury is another concern here most of it coming from coal fired utilities. We have a good number of them in Illinois as you know that we can deal without as well, another question. About 10% used to be coming from medical waste incinerators. Again 1 think that's less today because of fewer and fewer incinerators and because the healthcare industry as a whole has decided to move away from the most common uses of mercury since thermometers and others and we're replacing these at a rapid rate. Mercury also bio accumulates but the issue with mercury is more complex. Why, it isn't the metallic mercury that we're concerned about we are concerned about that going into the environment. What we're concerned about in toxic effect is when micro organisms within the environment with lakes or rivers convert that metallic mercury into organic mercury, missile mercury primarily vancimural toxin that's the mural toxin at extraordinarily low levels of which about 7.8%, according to the EPA, are above the range that they estimate may cause neurotoxic health effects as documented by the Pair Allowance Study here with ranges about 6.7 in the same general area. That has caused our thinking over the years to reduce the levels of safe exposure to mercury, like lead, the same sort of thing is happening with lead. We understand lower levels and lower levels causing toxic effect. We are still in a situation today where the International Drug Commission the Health Professionals Task Force, where I have the honor of Chairing the U.S. section, has just released advisory about how they can instruct Great bakes states advisories with respect to warning women of child bearing years not to be eating certain kinds of fish because of the toxins in it. Again the question of fish and the question of breast milk in other sources of dioxin to children the answer is never stop eating the fish as a whole or stop breast feeding the children, it is how do we get the toxins out of those materials because breast milk is very important and fish of very efficient types is very important for heart health. The question is how do you balance it. how do you stay away from certain fish and not others? The fact that we still have to do that today due to PCB's and mercury means that we are over exposing ourselves and we don't want to be owning to that in the general situation. I'm glad that this community as a whole agrees about incineration, I'm a physician 1 confront this daily but I tell you I've certainly been convinced by the engineers this is an obsolete technology for getting rid of our waste in general. It does 3 things for us, it homogenizes the waste, it sterilizes it, and most importantly it compresses it to about 20%. That compression is better than we can do from any other technique. We all have techniques that sterilize Page 38. waste, that burn it up, that homogenize and compress it. We get cloven apparently about 30% of the size of the waste. What we do with incineration is we take one waste stream and convert it into 3 toxic waste streams, one at the top, another one flies out of the middle and the third one on the bottom that you have to find someplace to put because its also a toxic waste stream. What do we know about it, we know that there are the contents that we've been talking about so far as well as a variety of other chemicals in that waste stream. We know that the incinerator workers incorporate those materials into their bodies. We know that people, literally communities, rely on those incinerators apparently incorporate some of those materials as well into their bodies so that's a much harder thing to estimate and these studies can be criticized on one level or another. We also know from a number of ecological epidemiologic studies that a variety of incinerators have been associated with a variety of types of cancers because there are so many types of cancers and because there are so many different types of incinerators that minuet the waste, etc. Thee are many incinerators with no affective body house like this one has, with no affective controls or control on the burning process, so these kinds of studies are valuable for incinerators in general and may have no relevance forthe specific levels here. Finally we know that it's been put out in ads from incinerators that people with respiratory problems in your general area, and I don't quite understand and I was going to try to ask Dr. Hogan in the interim about what is meant by the 15 feet away. If we're talking about standing at the bottom of the stack 15 feet away then I would hope that stack works better than that because that's why you put a stack in there so it doesn't blow on you right next to where you're buming the stuff in hopes that they modeled where the plume went to. if you talking 15 feet away from the top of the stack that's a very interesting measurement but then again doesn't necessarily have application to the local community. Again I would say in terms of application to the local community much of this stuff is radiated through food and only through the air, and we don't know how much through the air factually. I'll stick to the alternatives as they've been discussed here. Let me just say one thing conceptually because this is sort of a recurring scene behind the scenes in the number of the comments and questions made. Just because you can't measure an effect doesn't mean it doesn't exist, doesn't mean it's insignificant. If you were smoking cigarettes for the last 30 years and you say I'm going to stop smoking cigarettes in 9 months or a year, in fact when you tell me if t smoke for next year that that extra year is going to cause my cancer. I can't tell you that. But I do know every additional year you smoke the more likely you are to get cancer and smoking is far more dangerous than any of these exposures. The issue once again is a lot of times when you start to talk about a clinical paradox we don't understand it and we only begin to understand it when talk about population size issues. Let's look at the toxic effect for a moment, what we're talking about is maybe a 5 point drop in IQ, maybe. A 5 or 6 point drop in IQ related to the mercury, etc. in the environment. With a 5 or 6 point drop in the IQ none of you are bringing your children into the pediatrician and saying to him Mr. Wandolowski'sny has got a 6 point drop in his IQ its not measurable. On the other hand if you sift the normal curve down 5 points from 100 in IQ to 95 you create in this country substantially more people who need remedial help because they have moved down to the lower end of the scale into areas that can't take care of themselves, etc. 'These are Page 39. population based toxic issues that are quite important. Again on an international level 120 countries have gotten together, 50 of them are now ratified in the Stockholm Convention on proficient data pollution in dioxins pledging the world's message to moving away from this use. In the incineration of dioxins I would congratulate again the community here for all aspects including the hospital's for committing themselves to move away from incineration. No, this will not be the only solution, it is not the ending of the issue, but the fact that you as a whole are concerned about it and the community as a whole is interested in how to understand these issues which you all will put together and understand, I think deserves tremendous applause. I really congratulate all of you and not having made any comment on 9 varsus 12 months what is technically possible here. Again, I think that's engineering and a local issue I thank you very much and 1 hope I made everybody in the room nervous after that. Thank you again. Alderman Tisdahl called for any questions at this time. Hearing none called upon the next speaker. We appreciate the level of support of Dr. Ods, my name is Matt Wynia, I'm a physician, I have a degree in Public Health and my other specialty is actually is Medical Ethics which means I never see anything as a black and white issue. It's always a little bit of this and a little bit of this and things are complex and difficult. I'm not a tree hugging eco-environmental extremist. i am a regular person like the rest of you with a family in this community and a little bit of training in this area that made me worried when I heard 6 months ago that i was living 2 blocks away from a medical waste incinerator and I think we do have a miscommunication or misunderstanding as to what a reasonable time line is for closing this thing down. I think this sense of urgency in the community is substantially greater than the sense of urgency we have seen so far from the hospital. As pleased as I am to hear a commitment tonight to actually shut the thing down within 12 months that's not the same sense of urgency that I sense in the community and that I personally feel living a few blocks away from the thing. I think it's absolutely true that this hospital has a top of the line incinerator, I know the emissions are extremely well. i want to say a couple of words about the specific local issues here. Number one, I just want to reiterate and I think Ms. Delgado mentioned this, we don't actually know what the emissions are. The only time - emissions have actually been tested from the stack of this incinerator was in 2000. Their emissions were tested at an optimal time of function, some people in the industry call it a beauty test. Everyone knows you're c going to be tested, you make sure that things are going to be running really well and that's when you check your stack. All the subsequent numbers that I'm going to tell you are based on calculated emissions from that - one stack test. It is also true that there had been malfunctions and the management at the hospital is correct, _ many of these malfunctions result in shut down in the immediate feed to the waste incinerator and so probably nothing of harm happens, But there are also many instances where the line feed is slowed for some time and we just don't know what's going up the stack. Over the last couple of years there have been at least 42 times that the bypass stack has been used and if you add up the time that's 224 hours of burning through the bypass stack. We have no Idea what goes up the stack during that time it would depend on what was being fed. Another thing has been just glanced at but is worth while remembering is it is also true that the hospital operates well within the permitted limits, but permitted limits are not based on health standards they are based Page 40. on maximal achievable control technologies available in the late 1990's. In fact it is the case currently today that the Environmental Protection Agency the Federal EPA is undera court order to strengthen those limits and for 3 years have ignored that court order. But be that as it may the limits are not based on what we know to be healthy. I will say a couple of words about spec emissions. The emissions of dioxin are as we've heard already measured in parts per trillion but they are dangerous even at that very low level in particular because they build up aver time. I think we need to recognize dioxins are not created in cows. Hamburger isn't developing dioxin on its own. Hamburger has dioxin in it because dioxin was created from burning plastic it settles, it's eaten and accumulates inside living things. So Starbucks is not creating dioxins by brewing a pot of coffee and I think that's important. We were talking about very tiny levels and it's tree that the levels are very low, but no emissions would be better, and these are elective emissions. We don't have to have these emissions. Nitrogen oxide causes smog, clearly cold power fired plants a much more important source of nitrogen oxides. But ENH last year chose to emit by this incinerator 11 tons of nitrogen oxides. Mercury is a mural -toxin it has as we heard specially potent effects on developing fetuses. Today Evanston's residents are told not to eat fish more than once a month, in fact pregnant women are told not to eat fish at all. Since Chicago has recently been named a mercury 'hot spot', where nearly 213 of the mercury comes from point versus within the state, again ENH's medical waste incinerator is not the largest source of mercury around but is a source and is a source that is entirely elective. It's not a necessary source. An again with the hazardous dioxins, very tiny amounts can pose serious problems. A 70' of a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate a 25 acre lake and render all the fish therein unsafe to eat according to the National Wildlife Federation. ENH emits very small amounts and in his calculation figured about 113 of a pound of mercury per year maybe a few ounces one way or the other. In any event that's a small amount but if a 701` of teaspoon is enough to contaminate a 25 acre lake that's too much. I do have a closure from Mellony Mardy who is the Toxicologist who chairs the EPA's Environmental Advocacy Committee on Children's Health, she was interviewed by the Tribune in April about the local nature of mercury buildup. She mentioned about a 113 of mercury emitted form a stack falls within the local area and she says for something as toxic as mercury we think local hot spots area pretty big concern, and I think she's right. Lead, no one's really mentioned lead, again emissions are no doubt very, very low but they are not zero. Since there's no compelling reason to have even low emissions of lead it seems like it would be important to eliminate them. It's low level long tens exposure to lead that we know causes problems in terms of learning disorders and developmental delays. Small particular matter hasn't been mentioned much. Last year ENH emitted 3 tons of small particular matter. Small particular matter is soot, it exacerbates asthma it could even cause asthma in high levels although studies are not as solid as I'd like them to be. In soot, as a result not of burning medical waste but just burning garbage, I think we need to recall, and Or. Oris alluded to this, the majority of what's going into this thing I presume is just garbage which the rest of the community is not allowed to bum. In fact the reason we can't bum leaves is because of the soot that would be released into the air. Last Page 41. year ENH emitted %: a ton of hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid has an acrid kind of smell and it's a repository and has other toxic affects. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and it's the current focus of regulation in several large states because of the damage it can cause at long distances from the site of emission. Again. ENH is not a major source of sulfur dioxide but it fast emitted about 200 pounds of sulfur dioxide. All of these emissions are elective. ENH is not a power plant, ENH isn't a car, it's not a toxic waste disposal site, it's a hospital that by the choices it's making is also the single largest point source of pollution within probably miles of here, almost certainty within Evanston. Make no mistake, there is need for ENH to dispose of its medical and other waste through incineration. There are options available that are used by almost every other hospital in the nation. And this is the part that is most bothersome, this is pollution by choice and it's not like this just arose in the last few months, these issues have been in fact on the table for years. I thank Clare Kelly Delgado for bringing them to my attention because I hadn't realized this was going on. But there have been people in this community trying to get the hospital to close this thing for years. I'm grateful that they're wiling to close it now but I think that we can work on a much faster time scale than 9 to 12 months. Those are the comments I was charged to make and if it's okay I'd also like to say one thing about the loading bays issue because we heard about the voluminous loading bays that you will see when I do my own clinical work. Our research on this varies a little bit from what hospital administration has told you. ENH has about 400 beds, they have 3 deep bays, one shallow bay and 1 waste compactor bay, and they have 1 new bay that will be in the new building. I hope those are accurate numbers. Dr. Wynia was told they have 3 full bays and 1 shallow bay that has a compactor in it. St. Francis Hospital has to 2 deep bays and 1 compactor or waste bay. Rush North Shore has 2 deep bays they are a 275 bed facility, they're smaller so is St. Francis. Advocate Lutheran has 508 beds, a larger facility, has 3 deep bays and they're over a 1,000,000 square feet as well. St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago has 3 bays, Swedish Covenant Hospital 320 beds has 3 loading bays total. Illinois Masonic has 425 beds and they have 3 bays so they're sort of a comparable facility. The other hospitals as well tend to have shorter hours of operations of their loading bays, ENH loading bays are operating 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and these other hospitals by and larger ran 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I could be wrong, I'm not in management at your hospital but just gauging by looking at how other hospitals have been able to figure this out. It seems like it's possible to do what needs to be done without incineration and to use 3 bays to get it done. Again, I'm a reasonable person, I'm not a maniac here and I don't think Dr. Oris is a maniac, we want this thing dosed as fast as possible and we think it should be done faster than the time line you guys have given us. Let me stop there, I know we're running over. My name is Bruce Nillus and I'm the Senior Midwest representative for the Sierra Club, I oversee the clean air policy in 2 states including Illinois and Wisconsin. I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. Couple of points to underscore, every single lake, river, and stream in this state is unsafe to fish in today. So when Dr. Oris talks about every piece makes a difference he's talking about the fact that we can't eat the fish in every water body in this state. So the notion that this hospital is only putting out a little more means that we are creating a health hazard for those millions of people who enjoy going fishing and eating the fish in this state Page 42. every year. I want to address one specific point, the hospital underscores or reiterates the fallacy that the regulations they are complying with ensure that this incinerator is safe, that is simply unequivocally incorrect. In 1991 Congress amended the Clear Air Act and wanted to do something about the most dangerous sources of air pollution on the most dangerous chemicals that we know to science, dioxin and mercury. They required the USEPA to do 2 things, one, require every large source of mercury and dioxin and other chemicals be put on the best available controls, secondly to then do a residual risk assessment and eliminate any remaining risk. That is what Congress mandated EPA to do back in '99. But here we are today and USEPA hasn't even gone to step one. They issued regulations in 1998 to require the best available controls, those are illegal. The following year the DC Circuit Court of Appeals says those rules don't meet the Clean Air Act. What EPA is requiring of hospitals doesn't even meet the minimum technology standards required by the Clean Air Act. What has happened since 1998, nothing. So the hospital is saying we are safe when all they are doing is complying with illegal, unprotected rules. We have never had the second part of the Clean Air Act enforced which Is to make sure that we are actually being protected, they haven't done step one. 1 think that single point is really important when they run around and say we are safe because we are complying with the regulations you have to answer the question, well the regulations are illegal. The regulations have never been established to protect anybody from, as Dr. Oris so eloquently described, as the most dangerous chemicals known to science. One of the points we know is when we reduce these pollutions at a local level we have significant local health benefits. The results of a 10 year study in the Florida Everglades looked up last year what happened to the mercury levels in fish when they shut down a bunch of incinerators. The fish in the Everglades were unsafe to eat, you couldn't eat the fish in the Everglades 10 years ago. Today most of those fish are safe. Why, they concluded because they shut down most of the incinerators. There is a direct correlation between stopping incineration of medical and municipal waste and dramatic reductions of mercury level In fish. So we knowthat when we reduce this pollution at a community level we will see dramatic benefits at a community level. Right nowwe could go on about the fact that we're not getting protected by the federal government. We could go about the administration in Washington, but that's not the point. We know that they're not protecting us. We know the state's not protecting us. There is one entity left that can be responsive to the community and that is you. And so I would urge you to listen when you heard the Doctors' explain, it's unsafe today, you are the ones with the authority and the ability to close this and protect the residents of Evanston I would urge you to not let this linger any longer. Thank you. I'm going to cut my remarks short because I think many of us would like to get to a vote. I'm an Evanston resident, my name Is Ann Southworth. I live with my husband and two children a half block from the hospital. I'm also a Law Professor and I just want to speak very briefly to the question of the legal authority and obligation of the City Council to act on this proposed ordinance. I gather from the discussion today and maybe from your questions that you don't have any questions about your authority so I'm going to make my remarks Page 43. very short because its very clear that under your Home Rule powers you have a broad authority to regulate activities that affect the local community and this one clearly has particularly profound affects for the local community here. As Mr. Nillus has pointed out the federal standards, the state standards do not even purport to set safe levels of emissions from hospital incinerators. in the face of this local problem this City has unambiguous power to act. What I've said 1 think is entirely consistent with my conversation with Corporation Counsel last week in which he indicated he had a similar view of the Council's legal authority. What legal standard then should guide the City's decision, the Council only needs to find that banning medical waste incinerators in Evanston bears a substantial relationship to the public health and safety or welfare. Certainly it's enough to show that there's basis for concluding that hospital incinerators may threaten health and welfare of Evanston residents the City doesn't need to supply or show or have definitive proof that the incinerator causes illness. it need not refute all contrary evidence submitted by the hospital. It is enough that the evidence presented tonight is clearly sufficient and a compelling basis for passing the proposed ordinance. The Council is also not required to answer the hospital's logistical problems in order to act that is not legally required. It's too much to ask Evanston residents to wait for the hospital to close the incinerator on its own terms, on its own time table. The hospital has failed to justify its claim that it needs more time than the ordinance would allow. Many of us quite reasonably fear that the incinerator's emissions have made us ill or that they will do so. On a personal note, I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 40. 1 know 4 other adults within a block of where I live who have also been diagnosed with cancer in their 30's and their 40's. But mostly we worry about our children who live and attend school in our neighborhood. Children whose illnesses may not become apparent for many years. And on a very personal level I fear that the decision that my husband and I made 10 years ago to buy a home adjacent to the hospital, a location we chose primarily because we thought it would be such a wonderful place to raise our children, may have been the worst decision of our lives. To many of us a little more is not enough and we urge the Council to act on this ordinance. Alderman Tisdahl asked if that concludes the No Bum Group's presentation, she would like to you know she promised the No Burn Group that there would be equal time between the hospital and the No Bum Group and there will be. You may finish but then the hospital will get however many minutes, we are timing it to make sure that is equitable. Good evening, my name is Janet Walker, i live at 732 Colfax Street and I want to thank you for the opportunity to appeal to you tonight as a neighborhood resident, as a parent of 3 young children and as Co - President of the Orrington Elementary School P.T.A. Our school. the one you've heard about a few times tonight, is located 1 'l: blocks from Evanston Hospital and its large medical waste incinerator. More than 300 children attend Orrington School and because they come from all over the City what happens in the Orrington neighborhood affects families all over Evanston. When parents leamed there was a medical waste incinerator burning in our community and that our children are breathing air laced with dioxin and mercury, when we learned what scientists not only industry says about the hazards of dioxin and mercury and cadmium. When we learned that regulatory standards are designed not for the optimal well being of the population but rather as Page 44. a sort of compromise with what is affordable for industry, and finally when we learned that the hospital seems to have a fairly cavalier attitude toward reporting on their emissions, we got involved and our children got involved too, as you've seen tonight. We've been learning a lot lately about participatory democracy. You've seen the kids joining in the fight to preserve our local environment, marching in the 4" of July Parade, making signs, appearing at rallies, even writing letters to the newspaper. The kids care about what happens here tonight and I can tell you the parents care even more. As P.T.A. President I am very concerned about the health risks to our school's children. Though the hospital says in its most recent message to the neighbors that the risks to children are not what they would call acute. I'm concerned too about the message being sent to these same children if the hospital is allowed to continue incineration of plastics and medical wastes for several more months. What would the message be, would it be its bad to litter but its okay for the hospital to do it. Or, all these adults know the air is being poisoned but are powerless to stop it. Or is the message that our community leaders will allow you to breathe dioxin or mercury and other pollutants a little while longer because it's cheaper and more convenient. These aren't very positive messages. Please support our plea, please force this incinerator to stop burning medical wastes and plastics in our neighborhood and around our school immediately. Let us send our kids back to school on August 30"' without the unseen settle of a large medical waste incinerator. Please pass this ordinance banning medical waste incineration in our community tonight. Ms. Delgado said she wanted to wrap up and talk quickly on the practical issue of getting this ordinance passed. We do want to address what she spoke of before the resolution, we do feel we have a resolution and a possible clause that we would attach to the ordinance that we presented you all with. We insist that they stop incinerating immediately that they use the 200 horse power boiler attached to the incinerator as a backup. As Mr. McGrew said, if they need to prime it for emergency recovery once a month, meaning maybe all toll 5 days, in order to keep it ready for backup, rental boilers would be better but as another option we're putting it out there that they stop using this incinerator immediately. Use it as backup if they need to prime it once a month, if they need to fire it up to keep it ready. So be it, but we would also insist that they put on there some sort of use that's monitored which we understand is very inexpensive, $100, $200, so that all parties are protected. Meaning the hospital is protected so there couldn't be false claims that they're firing it up more than that one day and the community's protected and we know that they are using it as a backup and only firing it up if necessary for maintenance. Again, I want to reiterate we would prefer that they would bring in rental boilers if there was an emergency need for backup. Also when we drafted and planned this ordinance, when we asked for an August 30v' deadline we expected this meeting to be happening in July and we're now in August so we understand the political practicality of having this happen on the political calendar may not be feasible. We would absolutely stick to requesting and demanding the hospital stop using that incinerator immediately, however, in terms of an ordinance we would be willing to amend it to September 30'' so that it can go through the proper political process meaning we understand you have to introduce it at the City Council meeting and that the next meeting would be voting on the ordinance. We are willing to make those compromises, so be it, but nevertheless we compromise that we still demand that they stop incinerating before our kids go back to school. Are there any questions to what we would consider a clause, yes. The clause that I'm referring to is Page 45. the same ordinance that we presented you with, it would have a clause that would be specifically for the remaining time for Evanston Hospital allowirg it during this transition period only, until March or February when they would have it removed. There would be a clause allowing them, providing they're using it as a backup incinerator if there was an emergency need they would be allowed if they in fact need to prime it and they chose not to bring in an emergency boiler that would be okay. But again we're talking all toll maybe 5 more days of burning. Is that clear, I just want to make sure, and we would present you with that clause. Please ask me if I'm not making sense. Alderman Feldman asked Ms. Delgado to repeat that as she said 5 more days that they would be allowed to bum during the winter if they need to. Ms. Delgado said we're saying we don't believe that would ever arise, from the history it looks like that situation has never come up. We feel confident that chances are pretty good that we wouldn't see that incinerator being used, that's what we're asking they stop using it immediately as their primary source of steam. They don't need to use it, they've admitted, they don't need that 1800 horse power daily, they don't need to use that 200 horse power boiler. What we're saying is, yes, we'd rather they brought in a boiler but if they don't like that option we're giving them another option to use it as a backup. As Mr. McGrew explained sometimes, but maybe not in this case, they don't even need to do this but if they did claim that they need it in order to have it ready for emergency feeding it waste once a month to make sure that its ready and maintained, we would like to discuss that. We would like to have that as a clause or amendment to this ordinance so that we can get moving and vote tonight to get this thing closed and then we don't have an incinerator burning any more in our neighborhood. Does that make sense, Alderman Feldman? Alderman Tisdahl thanked Ms, Delgado for her explanation. Alderman Tisdahl asked if there were other questions for any of the speakers. Alderman Newman's question was for Dr. Oris, he asked if it was correct that there's been this trend towards - closing medical incinerators to which Dr. Oris responded, yes that's correct. Alderman Newman went on to say as far as hospitals go it's a very small number that now continue out of the entire hospital community to use medical incinerators, is that correct. Dr. Oris responded, yes, it's about 112 now nationwide it was 6000 or so about 5 or 6 years ago, its not quite as good as it looks some of it was discussed as centralization an incineration central facility. Alderman Newman said then the real movement to start closing these incinerators started about 6 years ago. Dr. Oris responded, more or less it was very rapid. Alderman Newman then said and I know this is from your perspective and not Evanston Hospital and I'm sure the hospital was aware this was going on in the field and they made the decision to upgrade the quality of their incinerator potentially, he did not know when that happened but it seems like they did that instead of eliminating it. Have they had a long period of time to consider getting rid of the incinerator? Dr. Oris said most of the hospital incinerators in the state the individual incinerators that hospitals shut down when the EPA and the state EPA came out with their - new requirements for measurement of dioxins and other things of the sort and new levels. That was the impetus for most of the hospitals to get out the business. Alderman Newman asked when that was, exactly. Page 46. Dr. Cris said 1998 going into 1 999 exactly 5 years ago, no longer than that. Alderman Newman said if you're going to be a good citizen and you're going to join everybody else and try to make the world a better place, the City a better place. the state a better place, you need to join because if you don't join you're just continuing something that when you accumulate it all really makes our health go down to a somewhat lower level. is that what you're getting into? Dr. Cris said yes, in general, but just as things are unsafe in the world, we're learning more and more in this day and age, go through terrorism and a variety of things there's hoards of unsafe things. The same thing is true with respect to a lot of the chemicals that we're commonly ready to use and this dioxin issue is one that will take us 25 or 30 years just removing PBC as a source of dioxin. It's going to take a tremendous Icng time. There are 11,000 chlorinated organic chemicals that we have to figure how to handle and use. So it's going to take us all a while. From his perspective he's seen good environmentalists in various places but most of them don't live in cities in these houses, and the way the rest of us live. We all make compromises with the toxins in our environment. Hopefully we're all making progress to move away from reliance from these toxins and that's what he is calling for here and in all other aspects. None of us are going to be perfect for the foreseeable future. Alderman Tisdahl asked Dr. Cris how long he thought it would take to teach the staff to handle medical waste. Dr. Cris said what we've learned is that is you have to have corporate commitment which evidently is certainly manifested here. You have to have a fast person on a fairly high level according to the issue and designing educational programs, etc. So it's not a single step. The first several steps are the hardest. For instance, in his hospital before we got our beautiful new facility that has just been build, we had a situation within his clinic in his examining room the only waste receptacle there was the red bag receptacle and the way he would throw away his paper, if he wanted to throw it away property, is he'd have to go all the way down the hall and throw it away. He wouldn't do that between patients which he wouldn't have the time or inclination to do, so he would throw all of his paper in the red bag receptacle. Now in the facility we did some thinking about how you create it so he can do the right thing if he wants to. The first stage is how do you create systems that allow people easily to do the right thing after that you need constant attention to reeducating, educating, finding incentives, and making systems constantly better. That we feel is one of our poster children for this. There is now something called Hospital for a Healthy Environment that is EPA Healthcare Without Harm, American Nurses Association and other groups that are working on those issues every day. So it isn't that one time how long does it take, it is a beginning now and a continuing process. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Dr. Oris and said she knows he does not want to help her with but is going to ask him anyway, what does 6 month, which she believes is now the gap between the September 30°7 No Bum deadline and the March deadline when the hospital hopes to stop incinerating, mean in medical terms to small children who, like my granddaughter, live within blocks from the hospital. Dr. Cris said again, being within blocks he does not know because it's a question of where the wind blows, how high the stack is, where the materials are going, and what are the activities of the particular people you're talking about. Again, the primary Page 47. force of this is not that it comes from the hamburgers but that it gets into the Food chain and then moves up the food chain and as Dr. Hogan had so clearly stated gets into things that we are all eating on a regular basis. The unfortunate part is though it is voluntary to have a hamburger or not it is almost impossible, as he's sure Dr. Hogan would agree mth him, to avoid dioxins in the food chain completely. Even vegetarians have dioxins in their diets that build up in their body because of the long half -fifes. Having said that he can't answer that question for any individual, for any population and he couldn't answer the question if you asked him what about liver asbestos. Even filable asbestos in the environment, could he identify the cancers related to that, probably not. If we're talking here about the probability of less than even 1 for 10,000, the EPA requires 1 per 1,000,000, he does not know if he'd be able to identify that. He certainly would never be able to identify the neuro-toxic effect of mercury in any individual because we would monitor where they were eating, where they were from, etc. It's not answerable and he thinks that's what we've all been saying, it's not answerable. It's a little more, Is that little more significant or that is little more too much and then what does it balance, its all toxic therapeutic rations. What do you have to balance against it. he can't answer that question He thinks if you could answer it easily somebody would have answered it easily here and that's the dilemma you're in. Alderman Feldman remarked this has been a very meaningful night for him. He's been fascinated with this evening and the dynamics and the kind of information that has come before this committee. He should confess that there were times during the night that he was leaning one way or another way and as each eloquent person spoke and as the pendulum of logic or commitment seem to come from one way or another. He really understands the hospital's position and thought they made a marvelous case forthe deliberate way in which they want to approach this, very deliberate, very special and very well thought out. He also realized that anything less than what they had would be a source of discomfort, irritation, difficulty and problems. As a matter of fact there has been nothing he's heard tonight which makes him certain that he would be able to with any degree of comfort articulate a path for the hospital to follow whether it's what we've heard about the toilers or whether they could bum 6 days of the year. It would be hard for him to impose that on them because that's not his job. The contrast to that, what he's become convinced of, is that there is enough of a case on the part of the people in this community to require some action of the City Council. He says that because, while he understands the discomfort that the hospital will go through, and by the way he must qualify he has the utmost respect for every single employee member of the hospital, he has a son-in-law that works there, he has children that were born there, he's had a wife that was taken care of there for 9 months she had cancer. If you can make a person's life with added hope and treat them with dignity and times humor, with great confidence and professional attention, this hospital did that. And so he considers it to be a hallmark of pride forthe City of Evanston to have Evanston Hospital and the doctors and nurses and administrators there. The idea that anything that he'd do would be in conflict with that is disturbing to him and somewhat regretful. He knows they have a job to do and they have to do their job, but he has to do his and thinks very clearly what is needed is a representation of people that come to the Council because there is no where else to go. With no where else to go it's up to the Council to respond and he wants to start the debate and start the discussion and he'll do that by making a motion. At this point Alderman Tisdahl interjected to remember that the hospital still has time left Page 48. if this is going to be fair. Alderman Feldman then said he would wait with his motion. Alderman Newman remarked didn't the hospital get a significant amount of time in the questions that were answered. Alderman Tisdahl's response was they did but she promised the No Burn Group, who were the ones who specifically asked her to be sure that the hospital did not get more time than they did, there would be equal time for both. Questions, she said, were not going to count against either group but they both would have the same amount of time for presentations. Alderman Feldman said he had no objection to that providing that hewas recognized immediately after they're finished. Alderman Rainey said she wanted to know exactly what the impact of the State of Illinois bureaucracy and the approval and licensing process will have on this. There have been illusions to it going to take months for this, months for that, and we've all read in the paper lately about the problems of the Hoard, political issues raised by the hospital approval group. She's just very curious about the role the state is going to have in either expediting this or delaying this. Alderman Feldman noted a point of order, Alderman Rainey's question is reasonable, Iegifimate and that's all part of the debate that might occur as a result of our discussion of this. That information is important for him to hear as well as the rest of the Council. He does not think it precludes a motion. Alderman Rainey said she did not say that, she just wanted to make sure when they talk that the problem here is we've heard details about everything except we haven't heard details about that and she's not sure about all the different points that have to be covered and all the different bodies that have to be approved inspections, etc. Somewhere along the line she would like that clarified. She did not mean to interrupt Alderman Feldman's motion, but if somebody else is going to get up to speak maybe they can deal with that. At the point Alderman Tisdahl announced the hosp'dal will now have 19 minutes and they can answerAlderman Rainey's question. Alderman Rainey remarked some neutral party could answer the question she did not care who answers. Mr. Grady said he agreed with Alderman Feldman that it has been an interesting evening. He thinks both sides have done a very credible job in addressing the critical issues in resolving this problem, but wanted to bring you back to a couple of questions, first of all, is the hospital doing the right thing, the answer is yes. He mentioned in his opening comments we are willing to look at other options as we pursue this plan. Are we willing to look at other options, the answer is yes. Dr. Oris spoke to you on a macro level he had no specifics on a micro level. You heard our Board's commitment to addressing this problem they are the stewards that represent this community and if their commitment is there this job will be done the right way. We presented you with a very thoughtful plan that everyone acknowledges reflects the challenges that we face. Dr. Oris spoke to compromising the dioxins in our environment, we do that every day. The examples that he pointed out to you in his original presentation about the hazardous materials that our employees work with every day, the Sierra Club could make the same effective argument about exposure to radiation and other elements in the Page 49. hospital. But as he said, we manage it effectively, You saw a picture that Dr. Oris presented of a red bag in a trash bin, that is a perfect example of what happens when you don't train people appropriately. Those red bags will end up in the wrong evacuation chain. Dr. Wynia planted a fact that we have 3 days just as some other hospitals, if we do this we will be down to 2 days because I will take one of those days to put a truck in to handle that trash that needs to be evacuated from the hospital. You heard that the primary source of dioxins is food. You heard that Evanston Hospital maybe putting that dioxin in the food that cattle eat and that's how the hamburgers get it. You heard that Evanston Hospital may be putting in an ounce of mercury in contaminating the lake. This is all very effective from a perspective of having a bad problem but there are no facts that suggest that case. You heard that the question is unanswerable as to whether or not there is a threat to the immediate health of the people in this community. Our position is that we are willing to work on a solution that meets everybody needs. We each can't ignore the things that we have to get done at the hospital to make this happen. He is not going to discount things this evening that are important to the people from the community that you have heard speak. Conception is reality and if in their mind there's a problem then, yes, we are concerned about it. But we are committed to working on this problem effectively and logically. We've already pushed up the date to March when we stop burning, you heard that in the presentation. We're only 6 months apart, he thinks we're making progress. if there are other compromises that can be made in this discussion we're willing to sit down and talk about this and resolve it in the best interest of the community. Thank you. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Mr. Grady and asked if Mr. Gallagher wanted to answer any questions there is still time. Alderman Tisdahl asked about putting in a temporary boiler and also that Alderman Rainey's questions be answered. Mr. Gallagher said the hour is late and he would try to be as distinct as possible. In terms of the questions that were raised, the issue on a temporary boiler, we can pull in the experts here if you want more details. His understanding is that temporary boilers like any other boilers have to go through some approval and acceptance process that does involve the state. Does that mean that it would take 6 months, he does not think so, but it would take some period of time. There is a logistical issue for us in terms of where that temporary boiler would reside. There is no place in that video quip that you saw of our structure where the temporary boiler could be housed, therefore it would be someplace outside. if you go back in that area and you look at the loading dock and you look at the driveway that all the trucks access it's a very confined area and we have, he believes, legitimate logistical concerns. The temporary boiler is something we can explore but we do know that there are some legitimate issues that need to be addressed in that process. As far as the environment in the state and what that means he does not know that anybody in this room has a definitive answer in terms of all the steps that need to be gone through. We do know from our track record in dealing with state agencies that it can be time intensive. However, this certainly has a lot of visibility and has a lot of support and we anticipate in our time frame we expect that to be condensed. There are some things beyond our control that we can't forecast all that accurately. Mr. Gallagher asked if you would like more detail. Page 50. Alderman .lean -Baptiste said his understanding is that there is a representative from the Environmental Protection Agency and asked if she could shed light on this issue. My name is Julie Armitage and 1 represent Illinois EPA. I'm the manager for the Compliance and Enforcement Section but I can probably respond to some of the permitting questions. Regardless of what boiler option the facility would pursue, whether it be pursuing the rental option or whether it be some usage of existing incinerator in a power supply type mode, we would have to undertake permitting. Statutorily we would be afforded a minimum of 90 days. One of the issues that would have to be presented to our Director is whether the matter needs to undertake an additional 90 days for a total of 180 days to accommodate public involvement in the process. Potentially we might consider undertaking public notice and hearing on the matter. Of course a lot of whether we would undertake public notice and participation would be dependent upon perhaps the Council, perhaps the interested citizens, it would really be in the general public's prevue as to whether that's something that we need to undertake. Again, it's a minimum statutory time frame of 90 days, if we can avoid the public notice and comment period we could probably see fit to do our best to minimize the 90 days. Another issue that warrants mention is that the permitting transaction that we would first undertake for any of the boiler options would be a construction permitting transaction. In that permitting transaction we would afford, probably at most, the facility 180 days to operate the boiler for the limited purposes of testing and demonstrating compliance with applicable limits. At that point the facility would have to return to us and secure an operating permit considering it's a Title 5 source. There are two permitting scenarios for incorporating the operations of this boiler into its Title 5 permit. These modifications could constitute minor mods or they could constitute significant mods. I'll have to see an application from them before I can decide whether this is something that constitutes a minor mod or is something that would constitute a significant mod. If it's a minor mod upon submission of the application they could actually commence operation under the Title 5 permitting authority. if it's a significant mod we have up to 9 months to process that permitting transaction and during that period of time the facility would once again be in a position where they would not be in a position to operate those boilers for the purpose for which we had granted the construction permit. There are certain ways we can potentially deal with this but these are some of the issues she thinks you need to be aware of from a permitting perspective. Alderman Rainey said to Ms. Armitage, you are different from the Illinois Hospital Boards that approve hospital uses, are you not. Ms. Armitage said she is with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Alderman Rainey asked if their approval processes run concurrent with yours or do you do your stuff first and then they do theirs, how does that work. Ms. Armitage said she could not speak to anyone's processes other than hers, hers are not dependant on anyone else's, whether anyone else is depended upon hers she can't speak to. She would think that they're probably independent but she really can't speculate as to that, all she can say is she can process an application without regard for a DPH or other process that may be an issue here. Mr. Terry said he did not believe there's a role in this process for the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, Page 51. that should not be a concern here. However, there is a role of the administrative staff for the Illinois Department of Public Health who are the ones he talked about earlier in the evening, A member of the No Bum Group, said with all due respect for IEPA he spent a lot of time reviewing permits. He was not aware of any permit ever being required for a facility put on backup and that's what we the community of No Burn Evanston is proposing. No modification to the unit just putting in backup does not require a permit, is he correct. Ms. Armstrong responded, you are wrong, you are flat out wrong., and that is not the first misstatement you made this evening so she suggests you not attempt to speak for the Illinois EPA rules. It is absolutely incorrect, absolutely incorrect, in fact we have recently sued at least one hospital for proceeding to install a backup. (At this time there were disagreeing comments that arose from people in the audience.) Ms. Armitage responded no, no, what you have to understand is they will be totally changing the characterization of that unit, the characterization of the usage. Right now what she has permitted is_.. (Again, at this point in the meeting Alderman Tisdahl informed the audience they would have to hold on and allow Ms. Armitage to answer. Ms Armitage came from Springfield and Was invited by Mr. Terry and she is going to be allowed to answer the question that you had asked her.) Ms. Armitage thanked Alderman Tisdahl and continued saying, the reality of this may seem bureaucratic, it may seem horribly administrative, the reality is when we switch the characterization of the boiler, the use of that boiler, it will require permitting. What she has the unit permitted to do is something different than what she believes she's hearing it will be potentially used to do. At this point a woman in the audience asked is that the authorization of this or the character of it to which, Alderman Newman said it's more of same. At this time Alderman Tisdahl announced we're going back to Aldermen asking questions to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste also remarked to let Ms. Armitage finish. Ms. Armitage said she was finished with that point and again she's not the head of the permit section but she is the head attorney for the bureau, and based on what she heard tonight and the potential usage of existing equipment and the potential usage of equipment that will brought in she has not heard of a scenario under which we can have any incineration unit or a boiler that would be supplying powerwhere we currently have that scenario property permitted. We would have to undergo construction permitting. That's definitely her opinion based on what she's heard tonight, Alderman Newman asked if we could have somebody from the group respond on this now because they're dying to respond. Alderman Tisdahl said that was fine if we could have one person respond. Ms. Delgado said it was nice to finally meet Ms. Armitage and asked Ms. Armitage if she is suggesting that any time they stop feeding that incinerator medical waste and its just running on gas they're in violation of a permit because that's what we're asking. It's that simple, we're just saying since they sometimes stop it and they keep it heated to a certain degree with gas does that mean they're in violation because they're not burning waste. She just wanted to make it clear because we're not asking them to reconstruct anything we're just simply saying do what you have to do and not feed medical waste but keep it as an emergency. We're not asking for any reconfiguration and she senses a lot of times they do that anyway. Page 52. Ms. Armitage responded she thinks it's a matter of perspective but it's there now regardless of the frequency with which it operates as a hazardous medical waste incinerator. What we're contemplating, at least as she understood it, is no longer using that for incineration purposes but using that for heat supply purposes. (At this time another audience outbreak occurred.) Mr. Louis Stem of 2760 Garrison Avenue a block from the hospital said it was nice to meet Ms. Armitage. This incinerator runs on gas 7 hours a day, without incineration they don't need to get a permit from you to stop incinerating if tomorrow they want to stop incinerating for 6 days like they do, for 6 or 7 days every 6 weeks, they don't need to get a permit from you. They're not going to change the nature, the structure, the function of anything. They're just going to stop burning, they don't need to get a permit from you to stop burning. The permit will come when the construction and the nature change, its not going to change its simply going to go out of use. Could it possibly be interpreted that way? Ms. Armitage said she did not think so, no, but said she would draw upon something in the permit and maybe that will help and she proceeded to read from her state regulations. 'Non -applicable Regs of Concern, the effective large Hemey Y is not subject to the emissions standards for CO and PM established in a couple sections of the Pollution Control Board's Regs. A Part 216 standard for CO and a part 212 standard for PM. The emission standards for CO and PM in 229 are more stringent and supercede those limits." 229 applies because it's a Hemey Y, if this unit ceases to function as a HemeyY it needs to be subjected to entirely different emission limits. Mr. Stern asked for how long of a period of time, because it does cease for several hours every day and for several days every 6 weeks. Ms Armitage said the other scenario is it's simply a Hemey Y that is not being operated. The way it is, no, it's an incinerator and there just may happen to be periods of time when there's no waste to be burned or there's something else to be done or something like that, but it's still an incinerator, The hospital is using it largely for the purpose of waste incineration and any result from this incineration is extremely incidental. But here is what we're talking about, what you all are seeking is to no longer have this unit operate as an incinerator. You suggested that perhaps for a period maybe up to 5 days you would allow them to flip it on, fire some waste, and that would be the scenario where they needed this unit function as a supplier of heat. It's totally going to cease as this unit. So it's totally going to cease as a 229 unit of heat_ She knows it supplies heat now but that's like the incidental result of the unit its not the predominate function of the unit. (At this point there again was an outburst from the audience and Alderman Tisdahl announced Ms. Armitage has answered this question. ) A woman from the audience said she could actually simplify this question a lot if she had 30 seconds. What we're asking is that this 200 horse power incinerator be declared a backup rather than a constant use incinerator until such time as it can be decommissioned and replaced which will be sometime in March. Until that time it is still whatever name used for the incinerator is the Hemey or whatever it is, it's just not being used every day. Its being held in reserve so that if an emergency comes up that "X' more power is needed its there, its being maintained, its being kept warm, if necessary is being fired up once a month if its needed. But it's not going to be in use every day it's going to be a backup incinerator during this whole permit process that needs to Page 53. go on in order to change the boiler out. Ms. Armitage said the interesting thing in this and maybe is how to look at it, in many circles there is a fine line between what constitutes a boiler and an incinerator. What she got from a technical perspective to look at this unit, to took at what it does, is they both combust, so what's happening here is she knows you are all trying to suggest that you want this unit to continue on as a Hemey Y one that is just infrequently used. Your suggested purpose here suggests an alternative here isn't to use the Hemey Y just as a backup incinerator. It's to use this unit as a backup source of power. It will no longer be characterized by the Illinois EPA as a Hemey Y, it is going to be characterized by Illinois EPA as a boiler. Its just one of those things where its not a huge deal, its not a huge consequence, if anything she just thinks we need to properly document what they have there and how they're going to use it on a piece of paper. It's just not a huge deal it requires an administrative reaction by my agency and that's it. The audience again spoke out and at this point Alderman Tisdahl said she is now going to regain control of this meeting. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said with the knowledge that this incinerator is also being used to heat the hospital for which it was not permitted, to which Ms. Armitage interjected, that's a secondary purpose so its permanent in the fact of what it serves now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said serving as a boiler is permitted, right. Ms. Armitage said it's largely incineration devised but incidentally produces power that she has permitted. If we switch gears and its primary purpose isn't to incinerate waste but rather to produce power she will stop calling it an incinerator she will call it a boiler. All she has to do is note that on a permit and apply a different set of regs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said with the knowledge that the hospital's insistence that this machine continues to operate through March because it has the need to use it as a boiler and not an incinerator, would that then be something that the EPA would see as a not permitted primary use. Ms. Armitage responded, she believed so, yes. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then the hospital, for you at least, could decide to stop using this machine to incinerate and just stop without having to go through a lot of hoops with the EPA, right. Ms. Armitage said correct. It can cease usage of the incinerator. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he had one more question and that is for the group. We have been on top of the hospital during this deliberation asking a lot of hard questions and trying to press them because of the concerns of the community. He does have a question for the No Burn Group. Based on all the research you have done so far and all the experts you have presented, and he thinks you have done an excellent job and so has the hospital done an excellent job as well, you have not been able to link anyone to any kind of health condition actually in the community with this incinerator,. Is it correct that you have not been able to make that linkage? Dr. Wynia responded he did not know if you are familiar with epidemiologic research but it's not easy to make Page 54. an epidemiologic study of a community to determine whether the cancer risk in the 6 blocks around the hospital is higher in any particular way. You certainly aren't going to be able to draw any direct lines from one person to one incinerator because every thing is a multiple risk. We did see in Dr. Oris's presentation that over the years. using different incinerators, so we're not necessarily comparing apples to apples here, there have been numerous studies showing that people who live in the vicinity of the incinerators are at risk for diseases for adverse outcomes for higher levels of dioxins in their bodies and so on. This is one of the fallacies; of course, anyone can say there has been no proof that there has been any harm done. Well of course there's not, that's a very difficult study to do you would have to survey this entire neighborhood, you'd have to adjust for all the other risk factors that we all have for illnesses and statistically that's going to be very difficult to do. It's not impossible, but those are difficult studies to do. Mr. Gallagher said as a point of clarification he thinks the last 10 minutes shed a lot of light on some of the intricate details that we need to make sure that we are hearing too as part of this process. When we talk about the incinerator moving in sort of a backup mode so to speak and access it as needed, what we would then need to do is also get the endorsement from the Illinois Department of Public Health as it related to their standard requiring heat redundancy capacity and the way we are currently configured. In other words as we spoke about earlier, the incinerator, if currently on line as one of our sources of heat, its heat that is not always necessarily accessed but it is always on line. That N+1 redundancy requirement is that 600 horse power boiler that is off line its something that we can explore with IDHP but their regulations, as they are currently drafted, are consistent with the way that we've run that. When you talk about bringing the incinerator into that backup role that needs to be interpreted by IDPH in light of the guidelines that they've had. Alderman Tisdahl said then IDPH might tell you it was alright or they might tell you it was not alright. Mr. Gallagher said as we read the guidelines thatwe've been provided we believe itwould not be alright but someone from IDPH would need to defensively answer that. Alderman Newman asked if the hospital, over the course of time, going to last 5, 6, or 7 years had this discussion internally about this combination of incinerator and backup power that you've been doing. It seems that you didn't have to use the incinerator as a backup source of power you made that a decision to do because at some point in time and he's just thinking to himself, as the trend began medical incinerators should go. You're sitting there using this as a backup power and if you weren't using it as part of your backup power source this is really a much easier thing to handle. Do you at least agree with that? Mr. Grady said the answer to your question is no, we have not had a discussion to the degree that you have outlined here this evening. When we upgraded the incinerator in 1999 we were aware of the emission controls. Several hospitals chose to get out of the business because they didn't want to invest the money to bring their equipment up to the standards that needed to be met. We made that investment consciously; we made it recognizing that we could still operate that incinerator safely. What you heard here tonight and what the lawyer from the other group very eloquently expressed the concern that she has and what your responsibility is as a Page 55. group. She also asked you to ignore one of the basic tenants of our legal system, there is reasonable doubt here that there is a problem. If there is reasonable doubt you can't accuse us of, at this point Alderman Newman interjected reasonable doubt doesn't apply to this. Mr. Grady went on to say we're not discounting what they are saying, all we're asking is to let us work this out in a reasonable way, a rational way, consistent with where we want to go. Alderman Newman asked if he could follow up on that and asked if one of the factors in making your decision to maintain the incinerator when you upgraded the equipment was that you were using it as a backup power supply system. Mr. Grady responded, yes. Alderman Newman asked if trying to maintain that backup power has been one of your main goals. Mr. Grady responded, absolutely, when we filed our permit, at that time, with the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board we specifically stated that that was the purpose of the incinerator, to serve as a backup source of heat for the hospital and that's stated in in the public record at the state. Mr. Gallagher said, Alderman Newman as just an additional point of clarification, when we made those modifications in 1999 we actually didn't change the nature of the way the incinerator functions mechanically. What we did was we added some alarms and some monitoring mechanisms that allowed us to more thoroughly capture what we've described as those preventative warnings. Alderman Newman asked what would have been the cost to the hospital if instead of using the incinerator as your backup source or one of your backup sources of power, if you would have just gone and expanded the boiler system something totally separate than using the incinerator. What would the cost have been to go that route as opposed to the decision you made. There must have been some type of savings here because you made that decision. You get a 2 forwith the incinerator, we get rid of the medical waste and we get a backup source of power and there had to be some economic savings. He is just wondering what the hospital would have had to spend to put in beyond the incinerator. He asked if anybody here knows. Mr. VanderMolen said the costs then would have been very similar to what they are now other than what inflation has done, because we've got a limited space back there so the incinerator would have had to go and we would have had to have another place to put the boiler just like we're talking about now. Right now we are estimating that this whole process is going to cost in the neighborhood about $1,50t),000. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if they are able to operate the boiler now without the incinerator. with, as say you use natural gas now. Mr. Gallagher responded when the incinerator serves as a source of heat it is fueled by the waste that is put into it. There has been some discussion about ovemight when it's not being charged there's a minimum level of natural gas that sort of keeps it warm but once we charge it up to use it as a source of heat in addition to managed waste that's all done through burners. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if you can use more natural gas to provide an adequate amount of heat, to which Mr. Gallagher said that's the question we mentioned earlier and will require a more thorough review. We believe it will result in some modifications to the incinerator but we will be able to give a more definitive answer of this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it is possible that it won't require any modification. Mr. VanderMolen said we talked to the manufacturer of the Page 56. equipment and he said he thought it was probable but he needed to do some research on it and that's what we're waiting for, for him to get back to us and obviously we need to talk to ]EPA and IOPH to make sure that what we're doing is compliant. Alderman Bernstein said he's been under a misconception that there are two fuel sources in your incinerator. one of which is natural gas to the extent that you use it overnight for heating and the other which is the waste. He thought you'd have to retrofit the whole thing but it's already taking gas as a fuel source. Mr. VanderMolen said there's gas there and the gas is also obviously used to ignite the garbage. Mr. Gallagher thought the clarification we're looking for is confirmation and why we're talking to the designer because when it's serving as a source of heat it's at 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and it needs to consistently a that to maintain that level. The question is can gas be supplied in a way that works within the way it's designed to do that. Alderman Feldman said if he understands correctly the issue before you is whether or not the alternate fuel besides the incinerator waste would be able to get the incinerator up to the temperatures that are now presently generated by the waste, but not by natural gas. Mr. Gallagher responded that is the fundamental question. Alderman Feldman went on to say the incineration produces a temperature that is able to function as a backup. It incinerates the product but the byproduct of that incineration is a heat level that you can use as a backup if you want. Mr. Gallagher, responded, yes. Alderman Feldman continued to say the only fuel you have right now without that would be gas and he can't imagine a substitute for that, although he does not know whether or not there would be one. The issue before you then is to get that incinerator up to temperatures that would duplicate the incineration process, to which Mr. Gallagher responded, yes. Alderman Tisdahl said as she understands it from what you said if we pass an ordinance that said,'Rending incineration as of September 307 `, is there any possibility that you could be able to comply with that and maybe IDPH requirements. Mr. Gallagher responded meeting a deadline of September 30'" we would not be able to check off all the boxes so to speak and have the assurance of all the agencies that we work with by September 300'. Alderman Tisdahl said you wouldn't have the assurance that you could do it, is there is a possibility that it would work. Mr. Gallagher said we could submit all the documented material as we've been working quite a bit on this issue and we will continue to do that. But in terms of the specific time frame that would be involved he does not believe that would all be completed to the satisfaction of those organizations by the end of September. Alderman Tisdahl asked if there is a possibility that you could end the medical waste incineration at Evanston Hospital in 90 days. Mr. Grady said to guess to speculate on things that we haven't had a chance to study given the other altematives that you've asked us to look at, he thinks by September 30" no, we cannot stop incineration by that time. Our preferred date is March because it fits in with all the other things we have to do to manage the litany of challenges we're going to be faced with in evacuating 280,000 bags of red trash. Alderman Feldman noted its now twenty minutes to twelve and we haven't said a word to any member of the Page 57. Council. He's sorry but we have a lot of the evening ahead of us. He knows there would be a comfort level on the part of the Council if we could put together the jigsaw puzzle to provide the solution to the problem. That's not going to happen, as a matter of fact he doesn't even knowwhether there's a jigsaw puzzle that could be put together but he knows that's not our job. It could be IEPA's and that's the hospital's issue while we have to understand fully what they're going to go through we can't solve it here and we can't put it together. If they need legal help we have that here. What we can do, and he fully understands the hospital's time line, but that's what they have to do, and we have to do what we have to do. What we have to do is to pass an ordinance that restricts incineration very soon. Alderman Feldman made the motion that we Instruct our staff to craft an ordinance usina this suggested ordinance when appropriate, only when appropriate, for submission to the Clty Council for Introduction at Its next meeting with the condition that Evanston Hospital cease burnina waste on October 15'". Alderman Tisdahl called for a second to Alderman Feldman's motion. Alderman Bernstein seconded the motion. At this time Alderman Tisdahl announced that the EPA would like to leave as they have a 4 hour drive back to Springfield and asked if anyone on the Council had any other questions for them. The Council members greatly thanked the EPA representatives for their attendance. It was suggested that the representatives stay overnight as guests of the City but they declined the invitation. The members of the EPA left the meeting at 11:45 p.m. Alderman Tisdahl called for discussion of Alderman Feldman's motion. Alderman Feldman said there isn't a date for this that he thinks is in any way magic. it reminds him of questions his kids would ask him when he would tell that they had to come in by 11:00 and they would say why 11:00 because other kids are coming in at 12:00. and he would say there's no magic reason he can't even defend that time except that it makes him _ comfortable and if you want to make it 11:15 he wouldn't fight much. Therefore, he picked that number because it's approximately 75 days and we've heard here 90 days and thinks a lot is going to happen in the next few weeks to clarify that. It will be introduced to the Council on August 16'" and then after that will be brought to the first Council meeting in September which will be September 13th to be acted upon. He thinks this is a way to crystallize the issue to let the people of this community know that we're responding in the only way that we can which is to pass an ordinance. He respects Mr. Grady's position that nothing has been proved, but has to tell you that nothing has been proved in any way here. The only thing he's convinced about that he knows for sure is that there is serious, dramatic, monumental concern in this community about their own safety. Enough to create amazing skepticism, great fear, and anxiety about what's going to happen questioning what we've heard tonight about whether or not people made the right choice to move into this community. That's intolerable especially if its combined with what he thinks is a reasonable case to assume that it is better to close it than it is to leave it open. That's what we have to do. Evanston Hospital has to find a way, if it can, to -_ comply with that. He does not know how they're going to do it and knows they're going to have fights with other Page 58. agencies and ultimately is that maybe something we have to consider. But in the meantime he thinks we have to do exactly what he proposes to do tonight. Ms. Brenniman, Assistant Corporation Council, said she just has a timing issue here. As she understands and she has confirmed this with Alderman Tisdahl, no attorney from the Law Department nor our Corporation Counsel has reviewed any ordinance at this point. To do it by next Tuesday in order to get in the packet for next week she thinks is a time constraint that we shouldn't be held to. What we want to do is present you with an ordinance upon your direction that is legal and passes constitutional muster. In order to do that it would have to be reviewed by our Law Department and by Corporation Counsel, .lack Siegel, to be consistent with opinions that he has rendered so far. Alderman Newman said he had a problem with that, his problem is its August 2r4 right now. and our meeting in August is August 16'. All we are going to do is introduce the ordinance that night we have to have an ability to move and our Legal Department will have 14 days, we've put plenty of items on our agendas as addendums whatever the deadline was. We're not going to act on it that night we're just going to introduce it. He does not know what the rule is for open meetings as far as introduction. This is a priority, a major community concem, there are people all over town who are in fear over this incinerator whether rightly or wrongly there's some fear out there and we have to be able to respond and we have to be able to respond in a timely manner. He does not know what else the Law Department is doing but this is going to the top of the stack, literally. He thinks our lawyers can have something for August 16'h, if they can't then they should do what a lot of lawyers have to do in firms all over do, they have to work late. He's not trying to create any undue burden on you but we have to get it done. At this time someone from the audience said she had an announcement to make, to which Alderman Newman said to the person, in all due respects you can address that to the chair and then will be recognized. Alderman Tisdahl announced to the audience the Aldermen are discussing this and we're not going to get out of here if the Alderman are not allowed to discuss this. She asked the audience to please cooperate, this has been a very public meeting and they have had ample time, everyone who wanted to speak has spoken and run over time. Alderman Tisdahl asked if anyone else wanted to discuss this before voting on the motion as she had something to say. Alderman Tisdahl said she agrees that there is a great deal of concern in this community about the incinerator. She is furious with the hospital for not doing abetter job of communicating directly with all the homes in this community. Her daughter lives 5 blocks from the hospital and has never gotten a flyer a letter or anything. That being said when Ms. Delgado first brought her this issue some time ago, perhaps back in January she was not sure when, she had no idea there was a medical waste incinerator in Evanston much less in her Ward. Alderman Tisdahl is glad Ms. Delgado brought it to her and has worked on it since then. She appreciates all Dr. Miller's work and Joanne Bassilia's work and the hospital's work on this issue. She appreciates the voluntary decision to close and also appreciates moving it up until March. She does not wish to vote for an October 15' deadline without knowing if the hospital can run this thing on gas and can get the necessary permits by then. She does not wish to put Evanston hospital in a position where they are either in violation of our ordinance or in violation of the laws of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Page 59. Until she knows that the hospital can comply and that she is not putting them in a position where they are in violation of one law or another law, she will not be able to vote for this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Alderman Tisdahl when will she know whether or not they can comply. Alderman Tisdahl said when they come back say that they can run it on gas and then it will depend on the permitting process. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then said the question is how do we balance the issue, what is Alderman Tisdahl proposing. Alderman Tisdahl said she is proposing that she is going to vote no until she knows that she is not putting Evanston Hospital in violation of either the law or the Illinois Department of Public Health. It's possible that we can agree to disagree even though she has worked to get this closed. Alderman Feldman said first of all he does want to acknowledge Alderman Tisdahl's very tough job on this issue. He thinks this meeting and the amount of information given out tonight is due to her efforts in terms of organizing this and seeing it through. At any time this could have got mired down and been much less productive than it is now and really wants to thank Alderman Tisdahl for that. After saying this nice thing about Alderman Tisdahl he has to disagree with her because there is no end to what difficulty the hospital might have. They may find out that this is fine or they may find out that its not, then they may need 2 or 3 more months which we will find out This is stuff we have to live with and we're going to find all of this out, it will all play out. In the meantime, again, we have to do what we have to do and he thinks this is a way. Alderman Bernstein agreed with Alderman Feldman with respect to our job here tonight which he thinks is to move the process along to the extent that we can. Evanston Hospital to its credit has already conceived of a logical and orderly process to accomplish this. It's now contingent on us to make sure to the extent that there are permitting requirements in the City of Evanston they're good and in top priority, that we contact our legislators so that to the extent that they can move the state that they do that. Moving it along tonight is not the death bell. We will know on the 16' if in fact the ordinance gets introduced on that night we then have 2 weeks - thereafter to get it passed. We've often held things for one reason or another. He thinks its important and really does appreciate that the hospital came out and did what they did in terms of first meeting with neighbors and all the efforts that they have put in in terms of coming up with this process to close. His sense is the greater logistical problem is not going to be boiler usage, but rather the method of segregating the waste from the non waste. He has occasion to go over there and there are going to be some logistical problems. He can't conceive in his heart that intelligent people are going to need a year to learn that you put the stuff over here, versus the stuff in here. He's guessing that Alderman Tisdahl's grandson Hecky could probably know cans go in here and not over here. Certain of those things don't make any sense to him, but thinks it's important. Dr. _ Oris mentioned an unanswerable question with respect to whether there is the difficulty of environmental problems being generated by what the state itself caused, the hazardous medical waste incinerator. He thinks it's our obligation to owe on the side of conservatism and there is clearly emotional health problems and perhaps psycho somatic diseases that are now rampant in his Ward and throughout Evanston. To this =— comment Alderman Feldman jokingly said that's the character of the 4t' Ward, which Alderman Newman Page 60. seconded. With that Alderman Bernstein said he has said enough. Alderman Tisdahl wanted to ask Alderman Newman one thing first, why Sufferdin, Julie Hamos. Jeff Schoenberg, and Jan Schakowsky have all committed that theywill helpwith the permitting process in anyway that they can. Alderman Jean -Baptiste just wanted to also join in recognizing the work that Alderman Tisdahl has put into this project and the fact that the reason why this item is on the agenda and the agenda has been shortened to give it all the attention that it needs is because she has taken the lead on that. He wants that to be known because in the fight to move the process forward a lot of people would have made different statements but she has had the interest of the community at heart first. Secondly, he wanted to say to the hospital he thinks it's a win win proposition that we are all partnering to move the process forward. That your mission is being accomplished by participating in this process to expedite the elimination of this hospital waste incineration. He thinks it's a good thing and he would call on the No Burn Group to call off the army of kids who are walking around and raising the issues and let's share with them that through our collaborative effort, including the hospital, we are moving the process forward. So let's move forward. Alderman Newman said there was a little mention of whether this is a macro or micro problem and our community has benefited greatly from the macro approach of the Federal Government. The Clean WaterAct and the Clean Air Act have probably done more or as much for people as almost anything we've done in this country. He can recall the way the lakefront looked before the Clean Water Act. He used to come down here to go to that beach and all you would see was dead fish because that water was dirty, so we cleaned it up. Everybody has to do their part on the macro level and as a City we have to do our part. What's frustrating about this is that the incinerating medical waste problem and Evanston Hospital has all the expertise we can possibly imagine on medical incineration, they've known about it for a white. This isn't something that just crept up on us, they've made some economic decisions. He knows reasonable people can differ and also knows they're trying to manage a great hospital which is not so easy to do, but this has gotten out of the bottle. He thinks the hospital has really been way behind on managing this. This comes to us and we have a mess on our hands, it's not because Alderman Tisdahl hasn't been trying and you've been making an effort, but reasonable people can differ and this thing has taken one step at a time and the Council is now in the middle. What he's concerned about are these fears from people calling about this and talking to him at his work. They feel and think there is some type of definite health risk, which he won't get into, they're scared. The perception and the fear have not been alleviated, people own homes near the hospital and he thinks we're here because of the economic decisions the hospital made over the course of time. They didn't properly calculate what they needed to do with an incinerator, nor did they properly calculate how it fit into their role, and that of being a citizen In regard to the environment. Now here we are, it's out there and they're just now responding and having some meetings, but they haven't responded in a way to convince the community out there that there isn't a problem here. He thinks that we, on behalf of the community, have to push to resolve this thing. He Page 61. understands your concems about not wanting to put them in a position where they are in violation of any law and with reasonable people there's no doubt one can come to that conclusion but we have to push on behalf of the community to solve this perception problem, this fear problem, and he thinks by going with Alderman Feldman's ordinance we are definitely taking the right step for public health. Nobody can deny that we're better off without these dioxins and toxics in the air. Whether anybody can prove that somebody died directly because of this that's almost an impossible burden, but we are better off with this thing closed the sooner the better. He thinks they've known this for a while and they're playing catch up and does not think that's our fault. He appreciates they have come to the table with this and acknowledge it needs to be closed, which is a large step. 4 or 5 years ago there were 1 or 2 people in his Ward writing letters about this, or maybe going back even 7 or 8 years, you couldn't imagine the hospital taking that position so he appreciates that they've come a long way. But we need to push now and Alderman Feldman's ordinance is an action where we're responding to the community and that's why he'll support it tonight. Alderman Feldman said he really didn't look forward to tonight. It was an evening that he thought was froth with ail kinds of terrible peril. We've all been part of some really tough, tough meetings and he thought this was going to be one like that where people are angry and furious and won't let other people talk, where there's name calling and personal assassination and all kinds of things like that where you just want to get out of there and you're sorry that you're there. Considering the emotional quality of this issue he thought that's what we were going to have. He told his wife he'll be glad when it's Tuesday morning. It tumed out, and he said this before but wants to say it again, to be a real credit to this community. if he could be assured that all the controversial issues that this Council has to face would go as well as this and not just in terms of the respect that was offered to each group and each speaker as they spoke. The amount of information that was disseminated in a very peaceful and purposeful way that helped him make a decision, which he thinks is true of all of us. That doesn't always happen, the kind of information we need doesn't always come but it came tonight and he thinks it came in a manner that allowed us to do what he thinks is the right thing. Thank you Madam Chairman. Alderman Tisdahl called for a vote on Alderman Feldman's motion, motion Passed 44. Alderman Tisdahl voted nay. VII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjoumed at 12:14 a.m. Respectfully submitted, aazv-�( Audrey Trots y, Department o Ze.lth and Human Services i Page 62. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, September 20, 2004 Evanston Civic Center— Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Tisdahl Aldermen Bernstein and Feldman Judy Aiello, Neal Ney, Paul Gottschalk, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Linda Lutz, Vince Jones, Gavin Morgan, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin (Evanston Township Assessor's Office); (See Attached Attendance Sheet for other Attendees) Alderman Tisdahl Alderman Tisdahl called the meeting to order at 7:15 p.m. and thanked everyone for their attendance. It. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE AUGUST 2, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the August 2, 2004 Human Services Committee were called and unanimously approved (3-0). III. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP AUGUST 2004 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Newman asked if anyone from the Township was in attendance and was told Ms. Eckersall and Ms. Benjamin were in the audience. Alderman Newman then asked if there were any attorney fees on this month's bills list and was informed there were none. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved approval, seconded by Alderman Newman. Alderman Tisdahl called for discussion of the bills list, hearing none called for a motion forapproval, the Township August 2004 monthly bills were unanimously approved f3-01. IV. REPORT FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE DISTRICT TASK FORCE Alderman Tisdahl said since she chaired this Task Force she would begin by announcing John Macsai was not in attendance this evening and asked her to extend his apology for not attending as he had to be at his condo Board meeting. Alderman Tisdahl remarked she learned from chairing this Task Force that the Lighthouse area is an incredibly beautiful, highly and well used area that thrives because of the hard work of a lot of volunteers and the generosity of the people in the taxing district. She knows everyone has read the report as all our Aldermen read everything, which she greatly admires, and thought the best way to describe it other than the report itself is if some of the people who are on the committee talked briefly about it. Alderman Tisdahl called upon Daniel Weller to talk about the Lighthouse District itself. Page 1. Dan Wefler said he thought the report pretty much covers the situation at the Lighthouse. We've been Lighthouse partners because we've been managing it a very long time and have had considerable success in getting financial support. We are a minor taxing district, our tc;al revenues from taxes last year was about S60.000 which doesn't go very far. Although we've had great success over the years in raising money from various sources, a total in excess of S500,000 has been put into the property. Basically he thinks it's in good shape but there is aWays something in an older building that needs to be considered and we are considering these things. We have just improved our video and it is set up so we can do DVDs for our visitors with much better programs We have acquired, on loan, a model of the Lady Elgin, the vessel that sank off the point there and caused the Lighthouse that was originally built. It's a handsome model and we have to get a proper display case and so forth, which will be available for visitors next year. We are all very pleased with that and for a long time thought that is something we should have. As far as our situation. we, of course, lease this property from the City of Evanston and have for many, many years. We are now in the process of discussions and negotiations trying to put together a new lease and come up with a lease that maybe would cover a longer time period, 20 years he thinks is what we're now talking about. Also, a better understanding of who is responsible for what in this property as it's a little fuzzy in the old lease which goes way back and has been copied so many times you can barely read it. We're making good progress on a new lease and hopefully that should be finalized in the near future, and guesses that about all he could say. Alderman Tisdahl interjected except that you've won a number of awards. Mr. Wefler added we've won awards, we've published a book on the Gross Point Lighthouse and the film itself has won awards. We have won awards just for preservation for being there and we're very fortunate to have an outstanding Director who has a degree in Museum Science, has been there for a number of years, and deserves a lot of credit for all that's been accomplished, to which Alderman Tisdahl added, and so do you Mr. Wefler. Alderman Tlsdahl thanked Mr. Wefler and asked if there were any questions. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said just to get a better understanding what role does an Arts Center play in the whole complex, as Its separate. Mr. Wefler said we wish them well but would rather they keep their own problems. Alderman Tisdahl said that will betaken up next, Alderman Tisdahl called upon Pam Elesh to speak about the Garden Club and the role you play. Pam Elesh said she is a citizen of Evanston since 1965 and has enjoyed the Lighthouse Beach and Park for manyyears, especially since her daughter was born in 1970. She has been going to the parks and using the beaches since that time. Since becoming a member of the Garden Club, in 1990, she has worked in the gardens at the site. The Wildflower Garden was built in 1937 and is still maintained by the Garden Club of Evanston. We're still working there and we've also designed and created a Butterfly Garden in 1995 near one of the Fog Houses on the Lighthouse property and we're still working there. She is currently a member of the Lighthouse Planning Committee that oversees the maintenance and activities at the site. She knows and loves the property that we call the Lighthouse Landing Park. It is a very, very special asset for the City of Evanston and a very popular destination point for many of our citizenry. It's a place for recreation, a place to swim, walk, and bird watch and is sure you all have been there at one time or another. If not you should go because it is a very fabulous place. The open land and the beach are extensive offering numerous places for contemplation of beauty, Lake Michigan's beauty and the Gardens. The stewardship of each building, parks, beaches, dunes and Gardens have been the responsibility of a variety of Evanston Community Groups. There are a lot of people down there using the facilities, have been using the facilities for many years and she thinks they've done a good job with what they have. It's hard keeping up the property because of the extensive usage. Page 2. With this background she feels very comfortable talking about the Jens Jensen Garden which surrounds the Evanston Art Center. There's a lot of land there but she is speaking to the Jen Jensen Garden which was built in 1929, about the same time that the house was built by the Clarks. When the Clark House, now the Evanston Art Center, and she is sure you all know where that is, was built in 1929. the Clark's engaged the renowned Danish American Landscape Architect and Conservationist Jens Jensen. He designed the garden on the property; it includes the land that runs from Sheridan Road all the way to the beach from the tennis courts. which is now the parking lot, to the Lighthouse. It was an extensive piece of property. Jens Jensen was asked to do the gardens because by this time, in 1929, he was a very, very renowned Landscape Architect and had already to his credit the building of Chicago's Columbus Park, Franklin Park, Humboldt Park. and Garfield Park and its Conservatory He and Dwight Perkins, many of you might know the name Dwight Perkins a very famous Architect in Evanston and resident, created the Cook County Forest Preserves in 19t14. In 1915 the Garden Club of Evanston and one of its original members hlarjory Burnham, that's Architect Daniel Burnham's widow, asked Jensen to design the Shakespeare Garden at Northwestem University where our Garden Club has been working every since. For the Clark Garden, Jensen designed a perennial garden surrounding the home and the Coach House. He created a fire circle east of the house, a grotto, a pond with a waterfall to the south, and a sweeping lawn to the east where one could see 'The Water Through the Trees', that was a famous line that he set off as he wanted to see the lake and the water through the trees. What is now the parking lot to the north was a tennis court and the Art Center's Metal Sculpture Studio was Mrs. Clark's plant conservatory. It was quite a place. It was Jensen's philosophy to create a Midwest garden of indigenous plantings that would be informal and inviting with large pathways and intimate areas to visit with family and friends. Plans for this garden are now housed in the Architectural Library at the University of Michigan, so we still have access to the original plans. Our Garden Is of historic importance and is in great need of restoration. For anybody who has been down at these Gardens you know that as lovely as they are they are really in need of great restoration. Luckily though we still have all the components that make up the Jens Jensen's original design. We have the fire circle, we have the pond and grotto, and we have original plantings mixed in with a lot of invasive plants. When Jensen created the Garden it was for a private home owner. Since the house and gardens were first sold the property has passed from owner to owner eventually becoming the property of the City of Evanston Northwestern's Sorority House owned it for a time, and over the years has moved from person to person. The Garden continues to be a destination for those who wish to enjoy the beauty of the landscape, but it has come on hard times due to haphazard maintenance and much public use. Compared to the preservation of buildings or engineenng structures, landscape designs are prone to a unique set of problems. Landscapes constantly grow and change even without human intervention, add the collective impact of recreation, vandalism and pollution and it becomes a wonder that the Jensen Landscape survived at all. As Jensen said, -The characteristics of City environments needs the watchfulness of the practical and the artistic eye if health of people and beauty will dominate and the scenery be kept in tact.` Then he goes on to say, "The caretaker must be in thorough sympathy with the plans of the designer ' Although these gardens were planted with native plants and trees and bushes it is still necessary to regularly weed, prune, and clear out invasive plants. You could say we now have a jungle out there. We have strands of maples growing near the Great Fire Circle, buckthorn is running rampant throughout the property, weeds abound, and the view of the lake through the trees is threatened into overgrowth throughout the entire park. Page 3. Ms. Elesh asks the Human Services Committee to lock at the City's budget and to find some way to restore these gardens and save them for current and future visitors. We are very fortunate indeed to be the stewards of this very famous and histonc Jens Jensen Park. Every citizen from every occupation should be able to come to this picturesque setting to discover what Jensen envisioned when tie designed this beautiful space. Moreover, we need to do this restoration now. Respectfully submitted, Pam Elesh. Ms Elesh said she also has highlights of the Long Range Plan in case you don't want to go through the whole thing. (See Attachment A.) Alderman Jean -Baptiste said Ms. Elesh noted that there was a lot of utilization of the Park, and asked if he could have an idea of just hoer much use. Ms. Elesh said she guessed from the beach standpoint people go to the beach from the warmest and earliest day of the spring and are still there now, and everyone who goes to the beach generally has some way of getting to the beach through the gardens. Many people just come up from the beach at the end of the day and walk through the gardens. She does not think there's a clicker at the beach and wondered if we know how many people use the beach. Mr. Gaynor said there is a count of how many people use the beach, to which Ms. Elesh said that's just the beach then you've got the Art Center population of students and visitors, maybe we have a count of that. They paint in the gardens, we have classes that utilize the gardens because it's so beautiful that the students go out and paint what's out there. We have the Ecology Center down there. summer camps that many, many children use and she's sure we have numbers of children that go to the Ecology Center, we have community gardeners that go down there, we have our Garden Club that works there and has been there every week since 1937 and does not know how many hours as she has not computed that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he wanted to get to the revenue aspect of management of the Lighthouse and various components of it, and asked how much are we generating on a yearly basis from the use. Mr. Gaynor said from the beaches our revenue Is estimated about half a million dollars, that is all the beaches. The Lighthouse is probably our third highest attended beach of the five summer beaches. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then we generate some revenue from the Art Center as well, to which Mr. Gaynor said the Art Center generates that the City does not. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said, the City participates in the maintenance of the Art Center and throughout the report one of the issues that has been raised is the need for improvements and the need to find some allocation of funding to help improve and maintain the entire complex. That is why he wanted to find out how much is generated and how much money are we talking about that's needed on a yearly basis to maintain this. If after the reports are given at some point you can just talk about revenue versus expenditures and how do we get to access that money that is being sought. Ms. Elesh asked if that is wanted for each of the groups, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said each of the groups talk about the need for revenue and the need for improvement and he does not know how we would approach it. If we were to talk about a plan to allocate funds to do whatever we have to do he would like to talk about this in whatever way it is easier to understand. If we could talk about revenue from each one of the groups that would give him a sense as to what is going on. Ms. E1esh said we do get grants and we could get grants, we have gotten Founders Fund awards over the years from the Garden Clubs of American, there is the Garden Conservancy, and she has talked to some people down there and we are filling out forms now to see what we can do. So there is a possibility for our Club through the GCA and other groups to perhaps find some monies. There are lots of people out there that are very happy to give to conservation; it's just a matter of finding them Page 4 and writing the grants, but how much she does not know it's so up in the air We would make every effort to do that because we really feel the area warrants this. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Ms. Elesh and called upon Mary Ellen Schwartz, Mary Ellen Schwartz sa-d she sat on the Task Force as a Community Representative because she lives in the Lighthouse District. Since joining the Task Force sne also became a Trustee of the Evanston Art Center. Their leader, who is their Executive Director, is out of town so she is just going to give a very brief background on the Art Center. She is sure most of you know that we have been in the Clark House for a number of years now and are thrilled to use that property. At this time we are celebrating our 75" year of existence and a week ago Sunday we had a community event there, free to anyone who wanted to attend. We had children's activities, demonstrations of the types of classes that can be taken, art goods were for sale, an exhibit of children's works that had been done this summer at some of our youth programs, and gave away some candlesticks, and had food for everyone. We had a very nice turnout and used the whole property which is one of the things we always do use a lot of the property. We have the art exhibit that is rotating every year or year and half in front of the Art Center which always generates a little excitement in our community. There are about 750 students that attend the school each semester. We have morning, afternoon and evening classes which means someone is almost always on the premises We have a lot of community members that wander in that we answer questions for whether it be, how do I get to the Lighthouse, when is the Lighthouse open, what about the community garden, or questions about the beach. We are on the property and willing to answer community questions and let people use the bathrooms when the bathrooms aren't open. We also maintain the interior of the building and some of the landscaping directly around the Art Center building. We pay all the utilities and as you are well aware the City rents it to us at this time and the City takes care of the exterior of this beautiful landmark building and are thrilled that they do so. We work with the City on other landscaping issues as well as building maintenance which has been going pretty welt and are very thankful for all that they've done for us. We are a not -for -profit organization and get our funding from members dues. tuition, the Illinois Arts Council, grants, and obviously the City's maintenance of the building is another source of our income. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if this is operated at a surplus and is it correct that you pay one dollar a year to the City. Ms. Schwartz responded that is her understanding their current lease is one dollar. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste added with 750 students a year, to which Ms. Schwartz responded we have 750 students a semester not a year but our classes will go through from now to the second week of January. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then asked if they usually operate at a surplus, to which Ms. Schwartz responded no, because we also have a Community Outreach in which she thinks we have about $20,000 or so a year, they have a number of scholarships they give to students, and they have exhibits. Their exhibit that starts in a week, Dennis Kowalski, was listed last week in the Tribune as one of the top ten arts must dos this season. These exhibits that we have are free and open to the public at anytime and have to be funded. We fund those events out of member's dues, Illinois Arts Council Funds, grants and wherever we can get the money, also the exhibits outside. If we make money on the students, and she is not sure that anyone would say we do, that still goes to fund the rest of our operations which is after school programs and the exhibits both interior and exterior. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how long the lease is for and was told 25 years. Alderman Tisdahl added they also pay for a custodian and a half. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Ms. Schwartz and called upon Jean Esch representing the Ecology Center. Page 5. Jean Esch said the Ecology Center rt's a wonderful, wonderful place for the children's summer camps and we maintain a ratio of one counselor to eight children There are programs for three year olds and their parents, and some programs go all the way up to twelve year olds It's very, very well attended. This is a beautiful spot and in terms of revenue they probably put about S42,000 a year in for the Ecology Center. Some of the programs, of course, include school programs that we give at the Lighthouse District that kids come to from the various schools in Evanston. She understands that we have also done a couple of programs for the Wilmette schools as well and she is very impressed with these programs. She has lived in Evanston for a very long time, probably since 1944, and her general experience when we get into these grand discussions is its very hard for everyone to come to a consensus. This has really been an experience because the consensus is wonderful and she would like to congratulate everybody that took part in this. It was a lot of work, took a lot of time, and the outcome in her book is great. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Ms. Esch, and called upon Joe Behles who is on the Lighthouse Committee is an architectand has worked obsessively looking at the building. Joe Behfes, said he is the reverse of ids. Schwartz, he was a Board Member of the Art Center but no longer is. He does live In the neighborhood and in the Lighthouse Landing Park District. He would like to quickly outline the buildings as he is not sure that everybody is familiar with the actual structures. At the very northern end of the property there is kind of an inspired picnic shelter that was probabty your basic Cook County design maybe built in the 60's or 70's, of really no merit. Immediately south of that there is the beach, the beach house building that we all know as kind of a concrete structure that maybe is not large enough but is nestled back into the landscape, let's call it the toilet/rest room building. This is where everybody parks their bikes on the roof and is the building that is somewhat invisible to this site. The building that we talk about for the Art Center is a building that was built for a utilities magnate. Mr. Clark, it includes the Art Center building and the Coach House immediately in front of it and always commented on as the last building built before the crash. It was started in 1926. It is aTudor X type of structure. There was a point at which the Art Center expressed investigating the Coach House when the Coach House was no longer occupied as a residence. As a neighbor and architect he measured and drew the building convinced that we could find a much more beneficial or civic use for the building and is convinced that we really cannot. It is built in a kind of limiting fashion, although it looks like a big structure from the outside its got two very modest apartments in it with the Green House attached to the west side. He did meet with the Fire Department there and we spent some time looking at it He thinks the group feels that its highest and best use may be to restore it for residential use as apartments. He does not want to speak too much about the Lighthouse and thinks the building was designed in 1872. There are four of the five building components there, there's the Lighthouse which is a tower that originally was a brick shell structure. it has been covered in a concrete coating but that was many years ago. There's a Field Storage building and the base of it was the link to the Lighthouse Keeper's House. Some time around the turn of the century the Fog House buildings were added to help signal aid for navigation. There was a fifth building an additional Field Storage building that the Federal Government removed before the complex was decommissioned and became Evanston property. The buildings in and of themselves do not contribute measurably to our revenue stream, they are a destination for many people and he knows of people who come specifically to our area to see them. The Lighthouse is one of eight national historic landmark lighthouses in the country. You wouldn't think they'd be here but we have one here, and they are significant and important structures. That doesn't address the overall question but it does speak a little bit to the nature of the buildings and he thinks our mutual interest in keeping them. Page 6. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Mr. Behles and called upon Chris Carey. Chris Carey, Chairman of the Preservation Commission of Evanston is also an Evanston resident and actually volunteered to join this project just out of interest to find out what was realty going on with the Lighthouse area. It is pretty obvious that the area is a special place. The Clark mansion is an Evanston landmark, the Lighthouse is a national landmark, the Jens Jensen Gardens though probably not a landmark but are part of the landmark. When we talk about landmarks we talk about the site, it could be inclusive to this site. He lust took an interest in the area to find out more about the history of the area. Clearly the first priority should be to maintain the mansion, he knows they have a lot of needs as far as exterior restoration brick, roof restoration, and thinks rt would be most important to maintain yourstructure and the exterior shell first. At least you're preventing water and infiltration and you're maintaining the structure and the infrastructure. If you have ever been in the building it is still in tact, its a beautiful building and actually parts could use additional restoration. He is also a General Contractor, he toured the Coach House and can see things from the perspective of being a Contractor. The opportunity is there, to make that happen what we need is to spend some money to get back some income for that area. Obviously the Clark mansion does not generate a lot of income for the City. The Coach House we probably figure could generate between $2,OW to 53,000 a month in rental income for the City, which would certainly help in terms of the maintenance, at least that structure if not some other structures on the property. One of the things that got him most excited was an idea of turning the underutilized or almost unutilized Green House into or incorporating it even as part of the Coach House as a Visitor Center. It seems to him that this is sort of the northern edge of Evanston and as people travel through and down from the North Shore this would make a great spot to have an actual organized Visitor Center. Also, there's a lot of hidden treasures an the property where you see people walking around scratching their heads sort of wondering what's going on and he would like to propose that we took into the potential of renovating the Green House and/or adding space with the Coach House as a Visitor Center in Evanston. The Lighthouse and that area is the Evanston logo and is on every piece of information received from Evanston. Clearly it is seen as an important area. Having been through the hearings of the Georgian he sees there area lot of Senior Citizens and energy that we could harness as volunteers to help run or work at a Visitors Center. It could be a great starting point for anyone coming to this area as a point at which they could then be steered toward the Lighthouse for tickets sold to the Lighthouse, steered toward the beach for tickets sold to the beach, and steered toward the Art Center. It sits in an area where the Art Center does an annual sculpture installation. He can envision some seating out by it to take advantage of observing that. Handicapped bathrooms being essential are potentially being installed there. He sees there are a lot of advantages as well to directing people to these wonderful garden walks, and the Jens Jensen Gardens, or having weekend tours starting again at this point where people can approach the property then be pointed in the direction they need to go. This also sits right on the street: it would be a short walk up the sidewalk. Overall in terms of his view and taking on the preservation point of view obviously we have a very special property and one that particularly everyone's asking for funds but thinks funds should be directed first at maintaining the landmark and second upgrading and better utilizing them. Thank you. Alderman Tisdahl thanked Mr. Carey. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would like to understand what is going on with the revenues versus the expenditures and what's going on in the whole area, how we are funding them. Page 7. his. Aiello said we had money in the Capital Plan to do the roof at the Art Center to be put on hold until the whole Task Force report was done, which she thinks was about rAr, years ago We didn't want to spend the money if the Council wanted to change the direction there. We also have scene funds for the Ccacn mouse, but obviously not enough now that we're beginning to get into more detail. What we woulo do is based upon committee direction, we would begin to look at the various needs because there are also some needs at the beach that %T1 go into the Five Year Capital Plan. We would begin to work the funding request into the Five Year Capital Plan with the Council so that the Council could look at that when they look at the Capital Budget. In addition continue to work with each of the groups and the individual fund raising that they plan to do which is part of what we're working on. We'd be bringing to the Council a longer term lease that for the Lighthouse so that they have more time so for them to go out and do more fundraising in order to make improvements to their facilities. We have met with the Executive Director and given them a first draft of a lease so hopefully right after the first of the year we will be bringing that to Human Services and to the Council. Alderman Newman asked if we have records of how we use the income from the Coach House during the years that we were renting it. Ms. Aiello said it just goes into the General Fund. Alderman Newman said that's the problem, we absolutely became slum lords at the Art Center because what we did was we rented it to people who paid rent every month, we took the money and did not put it back into building for twenty or thirty years. He is completely opposed to having that money go from the rentals, if that's what we end up doing, to anysnere other than maintaining the building and the grounds and primarily the building. It should not go into the Facilities budget to be spent as an extra $30,000 a year, it should go into the building so the building is not a disaster and is painted and maintained. The other part of this is that he thinks for years the City was dramatically under spending on parks, mainly in the 80's and the 90's. What this proves is that we have been an equal opportunity under spender. This is wonderful property in the northern part of Town and we really have not spent any money on the parkland. The parkland is a resource, it's beautiful, it's a jewel that needs to be maintained and nourished and we need to be spending money on those grounds. Just as we literally did nothing in James Park for years and years and years, and unless there's advocacy on the Council nobody ever spends the money. The staff will never suggest spending significant money on the parks; we've sort of changed that and turned that around in recent years. We are now in a horrible situation and it's the worst time to come to us because we have a terrible situation with the lawsuits affecting our Capital Program. He's for spending money to maintain the Lighthouse Area, its just a question this year with what is going on with the trees, that's one item that is going to be substantial, we have the lawsuits affecting our capital spending, and he does not know in the short run how much money is going to be available there but thinks we ought to be spending a reasonable amount of money to maintain a wonderful area and does not know what promises we can make. He looked at this information and sees there is one project for S425,000 to propose for 2006 and you see another number. We have $173,000 for the Coach House and asked if that is what we're up to now. Ms. Aietlo said it's about $200,000 to S250,000 for the Coach House. Alderman Newman then said if we were to rent that we would have $3,000 a month in rent which would be $36,000 a year, we can use that money to renovate the Coach House which would pay for about S350,000 in improvements, which he would support all the way if we decided to do that. We should do all the renovation it needs, have the money stay in the building, pay off the bonds and at the end of the year 20 the money should stay there to start doing maintenance if that is necessary. Alderman Tisdahl remarked she agreed completely. Alderman Newman said the money should not go back to Facilities Management, to which Ms. Aiello noted it went to the General Fund and every year for a number of years there were funds. There have been improvements to the Page 8. Art Center over the years when we were the landlords, all be it we weren't great landlords but we did keep up the property as we did some improvements, also to the Fog Houses and some of the others. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how much we spend in maintaining the Art Center. Ms. Aiello said she would have to get back to him %mth the annual maintenance, they also spend money, 535,0000 Alderman Newman asked if we are spending any money above that 535.000 for just the maintenance other than the capital. Ms. Aiello said for routine maintenance if something gces down and it's not within their scope, the lease delineates what they're responsib!e for and what we're responsible fcr so if something goes wrong in that area Facilities Management takes care of it in addition to whatever we're able to put into the Capital Budget and is supported by the Council. But we have deferred for a number of years because of other issues that have come up and use Capital Budget. Alderman Newman asked how much we think we're projecting to spend on just Capital Improvements for the whole City venture. Ms. Aiello said six and a half is the plan and what we budgeted. Alderman Newman said for a number of years we were spending three and a half or four so we've increased that in recent years and the parks have been getting some of that money. Alderman Newman thought they should put their projects in they just have to match up against everything else that we do and does not see why we shouldn't be maintaining those grounds. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to ask Ms. Elesh, who talked about a number of grants that are out there, if the Garden Club has been accessing these grants or is she just talking about the fact that there are other sources. Ms. Elesh said a number of years ago the Garden Club did receive 510,000, two $5,000 grants, that went into the restoration of the Green House and she believes the City also put some money in there for restoration. Over the years, again because it wasn't maintained, it went downhill very quickly and is now unusable. It's a shame as that's something that should have been maintained all along. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said but you have knowledge of much more opportunities, to which Ms. Elesh said she believed there is money out there if you can just find the sources and get the grants. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked Mr. Gaynor if his grant writer takes on this particular area. Mr. Gaynor responded, no, we applied twice to State of America Grants S100,000 for National Park Services and were denied both times. We understand there is no hope for the next cycle, however we hope to submit again so that we keep that application in front of those folks for when funding is available. Alderman Tisdahl noted those are just for the Fog Houses which is where our camps are but there are grants for other parks. Alderman Jean-Bapbste said he was just asking whether or not your grant writer has turned her attention to that whole complex to see what funding can be accessed. If that was just for the Lighthouse that's great but what about the other projects. Mr. Gaynor said certainly they are looking for all different types of grants. As far as the Lighthouse is concerned it's a separate Park District and we don't have the authority or ability to find or do any of that. If the Lighthouse asked us for assistance for that Park District we could not decline but they would have to sign them and in most cases the grants that we're talking about are matching grants matched by the Park District or whatever entity. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thought some discussion should go on to explore to try to find different possibilities as Mr. Gaynor has a great grant writer who has been able to access a lot of money. He does not know whether she has the capacity to take on more responsibilities but as Mr. Gaynor said, if you ask. Alderman Jean -Baptiste had another question about the beaches revenue that goes in one pol, to which Mr. Gaynor said the revenue goes into the General Fund. Alderman Newman said it takes substantial expenses to run the beaches and whatever profits we make on the beaches go into other recreational programs, if we do make a profit which he does not know. Mr. Gaynor said all the revenues go the General Fund, the Department brings in close to $5.000.000 in revenue for Page 9. all the programs but that goes to the General Fund then it goes as subsidy of the Department for the rest of the City's budget, obviously the City's budget is up and the Department's budget is upwards of S12,000,000 so its not like it's overall profit. Alderman Jean-Bapbste noted this year your Department suffered a drop in revenue, to which Mr. Gaynor added we're down because of the cold summer and bacteria problems. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked it's really a Question that the senbment of the Committee is to try to find a way to do better. What exactly tr.at would mean will come out of funds available in light of priorities that we have but this is a worth white project and we should go forward, Alderman Tisdahl remarked, perfect answer. Ms. McMahon said on time issue of funding what she had suggested and talked about with Mr. Careywas the Preservation Commission or a subsidiary of them might took for funding to renovate the Art Center because they might have or know of sources. Alderman Newman said the Preservation Commission has no money, to which Ms. McMahon said they might know resources for grants. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. McMahon means they could suggest applying for grants, certainly, whatever ideas they have put them on the list to submit to, we have a grant writer. Ms. McMahon said she would think they would know those resources more than somebody else. She lives right next door to the Lighthouse Beach and the Fog Houses and she can tell you that this area is used 24 hours a day every day of the year. She wanted to especially commend the Police and the Parts Rangers for the job they are doing because when they first moved there from 11:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. there was a lot of activity. There were bond fires, beer parties, swimming, and in the last couple of years it really has subsided. They are very responsive, they are diligent, and are doing a great job. Alderman Tisdahl thanked everyone who served on this Task Force, you were wonderful to work with and did a great job. Thank you very much. V. DISCUSSION WITH LIBRARY BOARD REGARDING PLANS FOR YOUTH SERVICE AREA Jonathan Fischel, President of the Lfbrary Board wanted to make note of additional library members both Board members and staff that are present. Neal Ney, Library Director , also staff Paul Gottchalk, Jan Bojda, Children's Library Director, current Board members Judith Rosenthal, Karen Terry, Ellen Schrodt, a past Board President Cheryl Wollen and hopes he did not leave anybody out. He would like spend a few minutes talking about the current charge that the library has to move forward with. He is aware that you have a memo and a program that we've developed and wants to give you a little bit of background and then get into some of the details and give you a sense of why we feel that this is so important. We understand the Human Services Committee generally monitors library operations and we want you to be aware of this new process that we're starting. This will come before City Council in various forms over the next several months. What we're proposing is a remodeling of the children's area in the library. What that means is we would be expanding the children's area to encompass all the public spaces on the first floor so that the service areas and new book collections, the music collections, would all move to the second floor and be consolidated there. Key elements of this reallocation of space are to really focus on zoning for children and he would like to talk a little bit about that. He thinks current knowledge about libraries really talks about four separate zones, Preschool, Primary which is grades K-3, Intermediate which is grades 4-6. and Teen Zone. Very different approaches have a need for separation. We want to encourage teenagers to use the library and the best way to do that is to make sure they don't feel they're walking into a preschool area. For preschool and primary our feeling is their approach is reading is fun, there needs to be creative play space and Page 10. interactive exhibits. The intermediate zone, when you gat to trades 4-6, now reading becomes cool. It's a whole different approach, thef have homework assignments, and they have group !;turfy projects. The teen zone again coolness is important, it's Clearly not a children's space and we really need to think about having a separate entrance for them. In addition to that we're talking about expanded program space and the fact that collections have expanded to close to 100,000 pieces of material when it was originally programmed for 60,000, so there is a great need for space and programs and functional areas. Mr. Fischel said he would like to read a quote from the Librarys Strategic Plan, while this is in your memo he still thinks it's Important to share with everybody here and to reinforce now. 'Evanston's young people will grow up in an environment that is rich in stories, literature, and reading material. Library programs will support the development of skill, interests and passions necessary to succeed in school and other learning activities.' To expand upon that reading is the key to educational success and the early exposure to storytelling in books plays an Important role in a child's acquisition of reading skills. Leaming to read, however, is only the beginning. The ultimate aim of the library's work with children is the creation of lifelong readers. This requires a facility, programs, and a staff that can make reading intriguing and fur for Evanston's young people. We have great school systems here, we have a great library. This is a main aspect of the attraction of Evanston to new residents and obviously we want to transmit what we're offering to our current residents and we believe this is the way to do it. In the last 15 years there has been a significant population growth of children ages 5 through 16. The 2000 census showed a 16% increase in that 5 to 14 age group. Library attendance has grown accordingly; children's programs are up 133% in the last 4 years. The need Is there, the visibility is there, the best we feel we can do is to reinforce and build upon that. We put together a Library Renovation Committee, we took tours of live libraries with both staff and Library Committee members that included the New Museum Renovation in Milwaukee, the Vernon Area Public Library, Schaumberg, DesPlaines, and Oak Park new libraries, to look at what they're doing in children's spaces. In addition we set down with focus groups, they represented educators, parents, the teen advisory group, and got a sense of what issues concerned them and what they were looking for. At this point he guessed it comes down to cost. The overall projection at this point, and we know it's preliminary, is the cost of approximately 1.5 to 2 million dollars. We won't know the real cost until after the schematic design effort is completed which will identify a project budget. The schematic design effort is currently in the process of the RSP for the Purchasing Department, and the library Board is prepared to fund that first phase of the project. it is our expectation to forward a recommendation of an architect selected for that project at the City Council meeting of November 8th. Right now the RFP is out on the street. We expect submittals by the end of the month when we'll go through a review process and then an interview process, the plan is to have a recommendabon to City Council at that time. The Library is also planning a fundraising effort that will raise a portion of the money for the project. We understand that what we see as the bricks and mortar aspect that is essential needs to be funded through the Capital Improvements Program, but the library, as they have in the past in many areas, expects to provide the margin of excellence through private and fundraising. Page 11. Alderman Newman asked Mr Fischel if he is saying you can raise the entire 1.5 or 2 million privately. as is hejust trying to get an idea of what this is. btr Ftschel said no we're not sure, we know we want to raise some money but we believe that the majonty of that cost is going to be a request to the City through the Capital Improvements Fund. Mr, Ney said they did submit a proposal of this for ccisideration to CIP this year at 1.5 m+;!�on and S100.000 coming from private sources Alderman Newman said when � r'--u say this year you're saying for next y ear s CIP on the list with everything else. We're in the 1 Om year of paying off S22 :-0,000 in bonds on the library and we rave to be aware that we have 10 more years to pay off the $22,000,000. He thinks improving the children's library is a great idea and thinks we could have done a lot better at the beginning when we started in 91 and 92 but we didn't. Having three small children, not so small anymore, who like libraries he completely relates to your having to have zones. It sounds like the methodology you're using is excellent in terms of doing outreach, going to places, finding out what the community wants. It's just a question of how you pay for everything which is what it alw-ays comes down to. A few years ago we were entertaining a request for a west side branch that we couldn't really pay for and put that aside because we had no money Just to give you an example of what we're dealing with here we have a still have one fire station left on Central Street. where people live 24 hours a day that hasn't been touched it in 30 or 40 years and that is going to cost he would think 2 or 3 million. Mr. Fischel said now he understands and is aware. Alderman Newman said its just very tough competition but it will be interesting to see what's on that list this year in terms of raving 6.5 million where we are, we used to spend 3.4 or 4 million a year which we were doing for a long time which is a ndiculous amount to spend on a City this large. We'll just have to see where we are. It sounds great if you have the money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed that is sounds like a good plan, his kids grew up around that library and trying to target the different groupings is very important to maintain their interest. He just wanted to explore your plan on raising money privately and through fund raisers What do you have in mind, what's the projected kind of goal. Mr. Ney said they are still figuring out how one does this sort of thing, we do have a Campaign Planning Committee that's being organized, at this point we have about five people who have come forward with suggestions to work on this and we're at the very early phases of this. The other thing mat is going to be crucial is the schematic drawings. Until we actually have a plan that we can show somebody and have a budget stating what its going to cost its very hard to raise any money as people want to know how much of this they are paying for, what is it going to look like, and that sort of thing. The schematic drawings with be the key there and that's Y-by the Board agreed to go forward with that using money from the endowment fund. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the people who have volunteered to do the fund raising campaign are experienced people in raising funds and handling these campaigns or just volunteers that had time. Mr. Ney said they agreed to help plan the campaign, most fund raising is done by volunteers, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is not suggesting that but was asking if they were experienced fundraisers as you've not projected anything yet. Mr. Ney said he did not think they could until they have schematic drawings and a budget so we can have some idea of what we're talking about_ Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if you can come back and share with us when you have this committee set up and have a projection and your schematic drawing to give us a sense as to what you anticipate, what your target is, and how you intend to conduct this campaign Maybe we can all spread the word in the various wards as sort of an appeal. As Alderman Newman stated there are a number of projects that may be on the table, he does not know what Robert Crown will come back with it may not be on the table this year. He just does not know as all of these projects are significant so it will be good to find alternative doVars in whatever ways that we can. There are some consultants out there who do fundraisers that get a percentage. a possibility you may want to explore. Page 12. Alderman Newman said he hates to go back to an old subject but just to educate us we have a large number of users who are Northwestern students now using the library, or is that anon serious number. Mr. Ney said we knowwe have a fairly large number of Northwestern students who get library cards and he can find out what that number is because we enter them. Alderman Newman said that would be an interesting number to know, he'll bet it's over a couple of thousand. Mr. Ney was not sure but the level of demands that they make on the resources are in many cases using the library as a study hall. A service that we do provide to the University is the art books, the art books the University owns are non circulating and our art books can be loaned, that is something that is of interest to a relatively small number of students. On the other hand the electronic resources and reference resources that the University makes available sortof dwarfs ours. Alderman Newman thought we should make some inquiry with them to make a voluntary one time contribution, all they could say is no, but there are a substantial number of students who are very welcome in the library, its very convenient for them, as it's a great building. A lot of those people live off the tax rolls and aren't going to contribute to the Capital Fund which is all property taxes which is going pay for what you're asking to pay for this additional project. He does not think it hurts to ask and you should take a blue ribbon committee of graduates with you. It's in the mix and we'll just have to see what we have. When you get your drawings we can get a better idea of what it's going to look like. It will be nice to do that at a regular meeting of the Council as that is on cable. Now there is nothing for us to do but wait for the funding request. Alderman Tisdahl wanted to say this was a very clear and compelling report and hopes we have the money and thanked everyone for their attendance. VI. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 50-R-04 FOR THE INTERIM CITY MANAGER TO SIGN AN INTERGOVERMENTAL MUTUAL AID AGREEMENT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ILLINOSI PUBLIC HEALTH MUTUAL AID SYSTEM Alderman Newman moved approval for Resolution 50-R-04, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Motion unanimously approved f3-01. VII. DISCUSSION ABOUT OCTOBER MEETING ON THE MARINA ISSUE Mr. Terry wanted to clarify before adjournment that we have scheduled the majority of time for the October meeting on the Marina issue. People have asked him specifically what action may be considered, the record as far as he knows it is simply a reference following the last City Council discussion. There is no issue on the table per se. Its being built up as a major discussion but in terms of what will be on the agenda, in terms of any material you might want for the packet is there anything you don't have now that you want for that meeting. Alderman Newman thought what we really need is a little bit of history of howwe thought we were going to fund the marina when the study was originally started and its his recollection that when we got into the marina issue it was being represented to us as the federal government would pay at least 75 or 80% of the cost of building the marina. From what now understands, considering the Army Corps is spending so much time in Iraq basically there is no funding available. If we were to go forward with the marina the City would have to bond for whatever it would cost to build it and thinks we should have some numbers in terms of what we're talking about. He thought the number was in the area of S25,000,000. Page 13. It really comes down to are you going to use the City's credit to fund $25,000,000 in bonds for 309 boat owners, or whatever the number is. How much will they pay in fees and are we realistically going to get into that endeavor, that's the discussion. Is it truly a long term benefit if we pay off the bonds in 20 or 30 years then we get the revenue from the boat owners. We need that information and from what he understands now Jan Schakowsiry is not really gung ho on supporting the manna anymore That is something we need to clear up and we should probably get somebody from her office to be here to tell us what the status of this is. Alderman Ttsdahi said that is exactly what she wanted and she also wanted Julie Hamos to send someone to make it clear the state wasn't going to bail us out. Alderman Newman said we need to get an idea before this meeting as to what type of resources there are and that is what the discussion should be on. Alderman Tisdahl said some group will want to make presentations. Alderman Newman thought we already had some presentation, we had the Army Corps presentation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he'd be interested in the history of this discussion. He understands it's been up before and if we want to make a decision once and for all we need to either close the book, or put it off for a later time, or get a real understanding as to what we're doing. He does not know what planning for this shoreline has occurred before, why it came up, and why it was defeated. Alderman Newman was not sure we were in this before Alderman Jean -Baptiste was on the Council. There was a plan in the 60's to put a marina near the cemetery on the south end of Town, there were plans drawn up for it. Those plans sat dormant for at least 30 to 35 years. The site was resurrected and in the last 5 years it was thought that the federal government would pay at 75 or 80% of, then it sounded really good in terms of possibly being a revenue generating item. Right now the only revenue we will get is money after the bonds are paid off of what it costs to build if the federal government is not in, so if we give it to the marina we have a $25,000,000 bill which those boat owners may pay and he does not know how they will pay and what we should do is see what the annual debt service wife be for a marina and see what the revenues would be. The Army Corps people projected what we could get per slip and then we have to look at how those revenues compare to the potential debt, then we can see where we are. Alderman Tisdale suggested that everyone receive another copy of the Army Corps Report. Alderman Newman thought this report was on the website. Vill. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 8:40 p.m. Respectfully submitted, aaa-l-� --� Audrey Trots , Department of Health and Human Services Page 14. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEEG Monday, October 4, 2004 Evanston Civic Center — Council Chambers 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Feldman, Jean -Baptiste. Newman, and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Judy Aiello, Frank Kaminski, Doug Gaynor, Bob Domecker, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Vince Jones, Gavin Morgan, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Rainey, Alderman Wynne, Alderman Moran, Pat Vance (Evanston Township), Sharon Eckersall, Diane Benjamin (Township Assessor's Office) Sue Canter (Mental Health Board); PRESIDING: Alderman Tisdahl 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Tisdahl called the meeting to order at T05 p.m. and thanked everyone for attending. It. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE SEPTEMBER 20, 2004 MEETING The minutes of the September 20, 2004 Human Services Committee were called and unanimously approved. Ill. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP SEPTEMBER 2004 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl called for approval of the September 2004 monthly bills. Alderman Newman asked if this included the Hoover legal bill and was told it did. Alderman Newman then asked that the Hoover bills be voted on separately to be able to discuss this bill. Alderman Newman moved to approve the Township September monthly bills with the exception of the Hoover bill regarding the attorney's fees. Alderman Bernstein seconded the motion. Alderman Tisdahl called for any further discussion. Alderman Newman asked if the legal bill has been paid yet and was told it was not. He then said he did not think It's that unusual for a lawyer not to be paid right on time and each time we make a significant payment he would like to have Mr. Hoover be in attendance. Also, he expects Mr. Hoover not to charge us to attend a meeting because he sees that Mr. Page 1. Ha=.er chargcs `cr tra'.eI *J.r:= :a an:f frcr--, `pis ~cam a not al la,tlers do tliat Alderman Nc-4man said he ►':ants to knc:i at:::ut the progress cf the case ea:h fin-e :.e ca,, a c:�-,if,cant t.ill and Mr Hooter will is keen l:s informed He's nit in ary way sayin_ he "c* get caia :..:t C"e- cf 'r.in_s h,•s bill does nct shoes Is v.hat '.:F tn'a'ly pc'a to da:e He wc,1'a like to be able to me-.it:r this c=o_e ; teca_se "= does rict knc'.v v:here this !s all going, he does riot kr;zm hc':1 many more S8 JD'a or SiO.CC'O -a-.--e^t5 ,. N to and .. .,:d therefore like to held this bill c►er until t"e ner Serti'I_=s t Mur-an meeting, If Mr H:otier has a prcb!ern '..,th this Vs not the Supervisor's fault it's the Trustees' fault and we should be blamed not you Ms. Eckersall said first of all she offered to have the attorney come here tonight and nobody said they should be here She gave them the ►weekend, she called Mr. Terry th;s morning, nobody said anything, they would have been here tonight Second of all they have not been paid since June, and third of all her budget line item shows you what has been spent to them. You have approved her budget for X amount of dollars, that includes legal and she would like Ms. Brenniman to address that issue also. Alderman Newman asked if the line item includes what we've paid each year or just what was paid this year. Ms. Eckersall responded, v.hat you've paid this year, to which Alderman Newman said he would like the total picture as this has already been going into more than one fiscal year, if he correctly recalls. Ms. Eckersall said it shows you last year on the previous year, year to date, too Alderman Newman said everybody would have tried to accommodate Mr. Hoover here tonight except forthe fact thatwe have 100 people here who are waiting to talk about an issue that has already been put off for 3 months. The reason we couldn't get him in here tonight because was tonight the marina issue is the priority This is unfortunate but when you work with a municipal government that's what you sometimes have to put up with. We'd be very glad to get have him come in so lets get him in. Alderman Bernstein said he had another concern not necessarily not asking him to come in today because of the marina issue but rather because he does not want to pay his fee from his house. None of the other lawyers that we outsource cases to charge us for those services and most of them give us a reduced rate because they're sure they're going to be paid. He thinks it's about time we slopped the bleeding in this case and he would like to talk to Mr. Hoover, on his time. Ms. Eckersall said you have postponed your Human Services Committee meetings a couple of limes, therefore the bills have been pushed backwards and that is not his fault or her fault, that is the fault of the committee's rescheduling. Alderman Bernstein said he thought Alderman Newman addressed that, blame us Alderman Feldman said the declaration that this committee is not going to pay him for appearance here that's from our point of view What if he says he's not coming unless he's paid? Alderman Newman said he would like to answer that and said he thought that lawyers in general love to have cities like Evanston for clients and thinks he'll be here. Alderman Bernstein said it's also based on the representation and the analysis of his billing that the case is not farenough advanced that another lawyer can't pick it up readily. If he doesn't want to work for us we options. Alderman Tisdahl recalled Alderman Newman's motion, seconded by Alderman Bemstein, to approve the Township September monthly bills with the exception of the Hoover bill regarding the attorney's fees to be put to a vote, motion unanimously passed (5-0). Page 2. Alderman Tisdahl remarked it s ou• `au't arY w-•' cut him on t'.e acenda in November IV. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINGS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski said the comrn,ttee i-as be`c,e C R No. Ot and 03 that was included in their packets. also included as usual the letters and communica'-cr.s frcrr : ouchout the Department. Alderman Newman asked if the first case is the one where the complaining witness didn't fz�liz,v through and told that was correct Alderman Newman said he moved acceptance for C.R. No. 04-01 Alto—rman Feldman asked what SOL stands for and Chief Kaminski said it stands for Stricken Without Leave. if she ever :,,mes back or we could get in touch with her we would follow up with additional information and then reinstate the case Alderman Tisdahl called for and additional discussion, hearing none, recalled Alderman Newman's motion for acceptance of C.R. No. 04-01. Motion unanimously accepted ("). Alderman Tisdahl called for discussion of C. R. No. 04-03. Alderman Newman asked if the numbering 04-03 means date complete initiated June 7`", does that mean that as of June 7"', 2004 there were only 3 complaints filed all year. For the sake of what we do around here that's a very k:X number of complaints which he is just throwing out as an observation. Alderman Bernstein moved to accept C.R. No. 04-03, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to talk again about process. He knows we looked at process some time ago and Chief Kaminski indicated that complaints are reviewed internally. Ultimately the Department determines whether an officer has done something wrong against a citizen. His position has always been that it's hard to be objective about complaints against the Department when you're the Chief or are employed for the Department. He remembers the Chief mentioning we have a Citizen Advisory Committee that you interact with. Do you interact with them on anything having to do with complaints that may come in? Chief Kaminski said the standard item on the agenda for the Advisory Committee and that is in reference to feedback, positive or negative `or anything that may occur or is asked about he addresses. We do not review this issue. We talked about positive and negative issues that many may have heard about. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked Chief Kaminski if at any time he foresees the value of integrating private citizens in reviewing complaints against police. Chief Kaminski said that is why during the time he's been around has done it through the Human Services Committee as your representatives of the community to look at these complaints. This is the system we've come up with over time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked when you meet with the Advisory Committee do you discuss the number of complaints that may come before us Chief Kaminski responded, yes, we go through the whole annual report with them and other issues that are pending. The Board, prey much advisory in nature, he keeps them updated with everything that is going on in the Department personnel vase and issue wise and they give him their feedback as to what's going on and what they think. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if these citizens are usually chosen, to which Chief Kaminski said they are representatives from a lot of the groups that they deal with, a lot of the programs involved with in neighborhood groups, and are very well representative throughout the entire City. They are a very good group of people very involved and concerns AI arm.an� C aptist d he did not have y concc rns about the particular. .Tj.ta nt that came before us d. d Jean- a ,��,e 3a,� C ,.,., ,,.., d,e an tonight butjust wanted to get an update on the whole process as to how you see it and as to how we see moving forward. Chief Kaminski said the committee members have people they'd like to add to the committee because he has people that Page 3. come and go cerstant!y an:l he's ah.vzl5 ea_e- :c put some ne�v faces cm the ccrr,^^ :tea just recently when we had some cf :he arcble.ns at Nc"h:aesterri -_ v.cs ac'e',c pick up sane ^`the "c 7`t:_-s frc-Z :i'at group who have ro:., been ccr'ino and we ha'.e Been ta;r ra s:"a:=_ f an:ut that. It's always _ Od tc -:a. _ a v.-VI 'e:;resented group and if Alderman ..jean -Baptiste kncv:s anybccy •r.- ::.. c_Id I,ke to participate, we meet eery tr.ree months and please give him them na-es Alderman Jea--Bapt�ste sa _'e a-e arobably some names he the Chief. to v:h-ch the Chief said he r:ould late to have :her" Alderman Newman remarked since we're cn these complaints he thinks it would be helpful that at some time in the next couple of months the Chief can come to us and e),ptain what you're doing and the Department is doing in terms of training and raising consciousness It is a very high pno7ty •pith the City of Evanston that anybody who is arrested be treated with respect and dignity. Considering what's been out there, and he knows the Department was very aggressive in assisting the State in terms of prosecuting the offenders, but we need to know that we are developing a Department in which every single officer knows that the type of thing that went on or may have gone on is just absolutely not going to be tolerated. Chief Kaminski said Alderman Newman is richt and it won't be tolerated. He is glad that our checks and balances do work. Alderman Newman said he thinks we need to understand what goes on in training and how this is addressee by the Department because then we can answer guest cns in the communityabout whatwe're doing and what the Department is doing. Chief Kaminski said whenever you want to put this on the agenda he will be glad to do it, to which Alderman Newman said he would leave this to the Char to schedule. Alderman Feldman said Chief Kaminski is undoubtedly aware of a recent reference to the Administration and Public Works Committee with respect to the possible use of additional funds for the Police Department to affect the very kind of programs that Alderman Newman has suggested. To that effect it would be appreciated from the committee, if you have not already started thinking of new additional programs that might be used to benefit the Police Department on that subject. Alderman Bernstein thought that the agenda item is a misnomer when it talks in terms of citizen complaints against Police Officers because for the benefit of the public and hopefully the press in addition to any complaints that might be forthcoming we also get a list of commendations from people in the community, none of which is ever read in this forum. He would ask the Chief to get copies to the media so that they can see that we have a good Department and recent publicity, not withstanding, the Evanston Police Department is doing a good jcb for the citizens of Evanston. Chief Kaminski thanked Alderman Bernstein and said in fact he counted them before he came here and there are In the packet 116 letters from citizens. It takes a lot for a ci:izen to write a letter of thank you. Alderman Tisdahl added these are very impressive. Alderman Bernstein noted it's easy to be negative it's much more difficult to be positive. Hearing no further discussion Alderman Tisdahl recalled the motion to accept C.R.04-03, motion unanimously accepted (5.0). V. CONSIDERATION OF THE ANNUAL LEASE WITH THE NEXT THEATER Alderman Newman asked what they were paying in rent and what are they now going to be paying. He was looking at the lease and understands that we get more use of the theater and asked if that could be explained. Mr. Gaynor said there Page 4. are t:.a different pes cf }eases that we have a: the t2c; es Cultural Art Center, cne 's an annual lease and 1�,e other is a ease fcr ccrnmur,it1 s;a_e. There are t.:o rooms *,na! are used for con-munity rnee:Ings and the thea`.er is consider Comm-inay use and that is an a square f,;c'age tas;s :vi:^cut cornrnuri scry ce The annual leases ha';e a reduced rent and it's increased through the 15c,,: of the ccmrnun:ty ser:•ice requirement Vh1h the I:ext Theater Ccrnpanv lease they requested LS to consider square footage as it v:ould be an annual tease and include the reduction but they would do community ser.,ice •which is v: hat we're recommendiria Ifs still the same square footage formula t"at is used in all the other leases ho.4ever. there are two different.`,oes of leases and because this was a community space lease it was straight square footage There is a rate for the lover level of the basement, the first floor is different, and the second floor is different When they requested us to consider they would community service if we would consider reducing their square footage rate we said that's fine with us and that's what's being recommended. Alderman Newman said he's trying to gel a handle on what they are paying now and what will they be paying under the new lease or is it the same, has it gone up, has it gone down. Mr. Gaynor said they are not paying anything because they don't have a lease on the theater. The theater lease because it's community space is an annual lease. Alderman Newman asked what the part is that they owe us money on. Mr. Gaynor said that was combination of their studio lease which was an annual lease and the theater lease. a seven month lease. They have paid that off and we sent a memo informing the Council about this 2 or 3 weeks ago. Not only did they pay it off but they paid it off well in advance of the schedule that had been approved by the City Council, which we were very pleased had occurred. Their current rent based on this lease will be about $2,700 a month, $86 more this year than last year. Alderman Newman moved approval of the Next Theater annual lease, seconded by Alderman Feldman. Alderman Feldman said he was very happy to second this because he thinks the Next Theater is a cultural treasure for the City of Evanston and a matter of fact it is probably a treasure for anybody that goes to see their productions. He thinks this is one of the finest theater groups in the metropolitan area rivaling any of the dawntown groups in quality and artistic merit. We're fortunate to have Next Theater here and he's delighted that Mr. Gaynor and the Recreation Department has done so much to help support them in arranging for the delay and the payment of the loan which they paid off long before they were required to do He thinks good things are happening there, we should do everything we canto support and help them stay He's very happy to second this and it does us credit to do so. Alderman Newman said the lease says the rate per square foot is 10.76 and obviously there's no taxes paid. A lot of people become agitated with the City that we don'tspend enough money on the arts. This is a very low rate of a building of that quality and the expenses that go into maintaining it. This rate is a support of the arts and very often we don't get credit for it. People on our staff and Aldermen hear we're not sensitive to the arts, if we had more we could do more but this is not a rate that many people can get for the quality of the space that they have and he is very glad to be helping them, it's a great group. He's not sure on their end that people at the Center understand this is a supporting rate of the arts. Alderman Tisdahl called for a vote of approval of the Next Theater annual lease, committee voted unanimously for approval (5-0). Page 5. Yl. DISCUSSION OF POSSIELE CITY DEVELOPMENT OF A MARINA Alderman T;SJahl (harked everycne'.V ccm;ng a^C announced 1t1,5 is go;rg to to Gcnp a I:k ai`fErenttcnigra tecause we re gc"`g to discuss Vie money :n.'.,cl.e:. first before p..t !. c cc",rrents and that Tray pc.t rest to so .:e of the public corrfinents AIderrr;an Jea--Baplist=- askc-j that :his beg,n w;*,n a rerronder to pecp:e assembled here as to the t:ac%ground where, do we c: me from Inis This has bFE;, in tr,e Grote55 al disCl:ss on since 19-36 and on This was part of the repon tnat was prepaoed for tt'.e pacfet and t- - tmr,ks is important ceca�;se hopefui`y the d(scuss1cm tonight will either bring closure and put th-s to the sae as opposed to tabling it and having it repeat itself and brought to the table over and over again. There was an initial feasibility study done on March 28, 1966 so this interest has been on the table for a long period of tirre The Crtr t ui't the Boat ramp in 1982. Interest in a marina was first expressed by a Council member. Members of the Council had rnel four years ago and itemized a number of items that the Council wanted to address fora possible investigation feasibility in 2002. With the assistance of Congresswoman Jan Schakciv sky we received a positive response from the Army Corps of Engineers to initiate the preliminary study. After the initial presentation made by the Army Corps of Engineers staff followed up on a number of questions about proposed costs, the availability of funds and the next steps for the Church Street Boat Ramp evaluation. We had asked our Director of Parks, Recreation and Forestry to lead the charge and he has provided us vnth the necessary information for us to consider. Alderman Moran thanked the committee for giving hint the opportunity to discuss this. He distributed pictures to the Council members depicting one of five finalist plans submissions to the Chicago Park District on Request for Proposals from the park district to expand the lakefront park system from Holl)rvood Boulevard where it currently ends up into Juneway Terrace the northern edge of the City right south of Calvary Cemetery. It shows segments in each portion of this stretch by address. This fall Chicago Part District is anticipated to request feasibility study proposals for this expansion of the lakefront system that it would extend Lakeshore Drive north to Juneway Terrace. It would lead to the creation of bike paths, jogging paths, beaches, other park amenities and open space and green space, in effect expanding what we know to be the park system south of Hollywood all the way up to the north end of Chicago. It is anticipated that they will study the feasibility of doing that project this fall. Alderman Moran distributed another illustration to the members of the Council (see Attachment A) that he explained is a two part picture. The top picture was an aerial view taken of South Boulevard Beach. Calvary Cemetery, and then the lakefront on Rogers Park The bottom portion of this drawing is a depiction of this plan as seen from the same perspective running from north of South Boulevard Beach south to Hollywood, It is essentially from Juneway Terrace on down to Hollywood, but has one other addition to it which is a supplement to the previous submission it includes both a marina and lakefront park property to the east of the marina which would include bike paths, jogging paths, playing fields _ and other amenities that could be enjoyed by people who live in Evanston and Rogers Park. To the east of what we now appreciate is Sheridan Road and the lakefront there is a section for parking spaces for the marina The parking spaces are built so they are not seen from either Sheridan Road or any other perspective unless you actually go into the parking area because they're covered by a green s- and that would have grass and trees and which would in essence mimic a lot of the environmental projects that are being conducted in the City of Chicago right now including City Halt which as you probably know has a garden on its roof. The parking would be underneath that green roofing and would not be visible. IRV— Page 6. The feasibility study for the lakefront e), pa^s cn c` -e park system s^o::ld kick in scan. He :,:ould Ike to suggest that a feasibility study for ire establishment c`:`e rrarr-a _nd etheramenities that wou'd to determinous of tl e City of Chicago Lakefront park expans ::n in ene s' :eeainc `ashion and allow fo• the `.rher amenities that are depicted on this pla-i The concep, cra.vir) :.as put toget.."er .%�t";n :he last couple of da;s t::• .:as put together by one of the finalists in the Park Front Ex ;,s on F'a" and is considered by t`,at arch-tectural firm become qu to renmvn in recent times and also is the `.•m tl-.at des cued tie ne-.v Levy Center in James Park, as a -.e r pcssible, positive addition to the Lakefront Expansion Plan tiat that f rm has put together over the course of the last ccup'e cf years. Part of the next consideration, it it is allowed to go forward -would be a feasibility study for the marina. It word to his suggestion that the feasibility study include not only a marina but the further parkland that would be adjacent to t' a marina to the east, the extension of bike paths and jogging paths potentially beaches, potent ally other uses on the 'and to the east. That would be a good thing to find out whether Nye could accomplish this both economically and in a way that would be environmentally compatible with the community values, which he thinks it could. We won't know unless vie continue to examine all the facts related to the issue and he would like to urge the committee and urge everybody here to keep an open mind, open ears, and open eyes with respect to the various issues that relate to this issue in effect allow us the possibility, not the certainty, of providing another amenity to the lakefront and in the words of a member of our Environmental Board, leverage the asset that is our lakefront. He knows that people have concerns of various natures with respect to a potential marina but in the previous study its clear that some of those concerns have been addressed, it's also clear that there are other concerns that need to be studied and addressed and resolved before this project can go forward. What he would like to urge people to do is to think on a broader scale what this could mean for a City like Evanston and give consideration to both its beauty, expansion of recreational uses, and he thinks a smashing addition to our lakefront. Just on a personal note, he has traveled to the state of Maine numerous times to vacation and sail there. He was there again this Augustwhen he stayed in a town called Camden Maine what is referred to there as a mid coast region. It's on a beautiful natural bay that has a marina, combination of sail and motor traits, situated in it. To live in and around that environment and to the town south of Rockport that has a beautiful bay, and the town south of that Rockland that has a beautiful bay, when you see it, when you feel it, and you hear it you know that it is not a detriment but leads to an environment that is peaceful, beautiful, useful, and really helps establish an identity to a place. He would encourage everybody, including the committee, to give consideration to the possibility that that kind of facility and that kind of asset could be acquired by our City for use here. Thank you. Alderman Newman said he had an opportunity to took at the information that was given to us and has some questions about the financial information. The reason he wants to get that on the table is because he wants to make sure he's correct in the understanding of the finances as it seems this project as proposed is cost prohibitive to this City. Before we spend 2 hours discussing what we can't pay for he would just like to ask some questions of the staff about their memos on marina slip and debt service so we can all get a handle on what this is going to cost. He asked if it is correct that starting in 2006 the City would have to find at least $400,000, and he's not talking about what the study would cost us. Before we got to one operation dollar it would cost us between S600.000 and $750,000 for the first 10 years that we have to come up within order to pay for the debt service on the bonds to build the 520,000.000 marina. He just wanted to get that straight. Page 7. Mr Gaynor sad tre c^,art Ina: Alderman Ne•.vrnan ,s 7elerr,^.g In s t,tie7 ri"arna S',-. Rentals and Cat: Serlice es::';"ates We worked ::j'h `.he Grectcr of Finance De *:rn S "� wh hes n r :.e used s:-re cthe, :.a a .,, -� -'a •d, •. o Cate 4s t e Lin e s ars nurrbers that :.e•e .n :he A -my Corps of Er_ -:ee•s Vie^_ . : s ,,L:e gnat t^e debt sera.=e to 2026 a s_heo :!e'^at :^ey li put toce:n er the first year alr�cst S670 = T ^e' ~rs to 51.500,QC0 de.t service all the v—ay dc;lrt to i':26 and Of that ..:raCO ^, ,Ir-e il ShC.'.5 O:hEf ,tian in 'e •5' ...-ea, * _CES 5 C:: a 5.y'•'I .Cant CEfiG.t haSeC :he e5 I"'o:Ev; slop rental teal at +C:''_ occupancy The nur^ter ;"at .as -se:: 's tr:e es:,rraled s!ip fee the average that was dcci ented from the Army Corps of Enclr•eers Survey tt'a:.-, C" _aro a certain amount goes to Chicago tut in this .acation Evanston wou'J re able to get an average of S2.CGB 50. 1: s a calculation that sho-.:s the revenue that :Auld be brought in times the number of slips, which is the number There are Borne footnotes at the bottom of the chart that shows it does not include our operating costs. which we really don t know tecause that would depend on the type of development of the marina. If you went in with star docks that come in and out. which some of the Chicago marinas have, which are less of a maintenance issue than other types. Alderman Newman asked if we're talking about $200,000 or 5300,000 a year, to which Mr. Gaynor said he would not speculate not knowing whhat the construction of the infrastructure is titre. Alderman Newman said his problem is when we started this project the Army Corps of Engineers was going to come up with a substantial portion of the cost to build the 520,000.000 marina. That has evaporated because the Army Corps of Engineers is doing things all over the world right now. He would just like to put this into perspective, we have a Crown Center, the most important building in the City for children, built in the mid 70's which we've been told just to keep the building as it is we would have to put in at least 57,000.000. To make the building something that it ought it to be we probably would have to spend at least $15,000.000 or S20,000,000 and we're going to have bond for it. We don't have any solution for that right now but on the table is a proposal that we would spend 5750.000 a year not including operating costs so that we can have a place for 309 boat owners That's what we would be doing. This 5750,000 a year, which doesn't include the operating costs, could fund 57,000,000 a year of improvements on the Crown Center. It seems to him that as a matter of practical common sense in terms of capital priorities in this town when we first got into studying this the federal government was going to pay for 80 or 90% and it sounded like a potential source of revenue. This is a substantial increase in the Recreation Department budget if we went forward with these numbers that doesn't help one kid in this town, except for the ones that are privileged to be able to ride on the boats. He appreciates Alderman Moran's pictures but he does not know what the rest of that would cost and where the money would come from. He feels the is much more than just whether or not this neighborhood in Southeast Evanston is unhappy with the proposal here. He wants to remind us that several years ago we were going to close the South Boulevard Beach because we didn't have 510.000 or S5,000 a year, that's how tight money is in this City. He understands people need to explore new ideas and to have vision and everything else, his vision is to be able to fix what we have wh:ch is taasiC and fundamental to peoples lives right now and believes the Crown Center fails into that category. While the Crc.vn Center is falling down we have to somehow find a - way to fix that To even go down this road with 5400,000 in a study it makes no sense and he could not support this in any way, shape or form without even before we get to the development issues. Our town has seen a lot of development which he has supported and from his paint of view tried to keep the development out of the residential neighborhoods to any extent that we can and thinks we've been pretty successful here. This is right next to a residential neighborhood. We just can't afford to let the priorities in recreation in Evanston be a slave to somebody's dream of a marina for 309 slips. He does not know what other people think, we could have lengthy discussion and it won't change what our priorities are for the City. If somebody thinks he's way off in terms of the priorities of our committee that we have right now and we haven't - Page 8. answered tie Crov;n question, set him straight He shes —e had the money to do ever,:,hing but .:e have to make choices. Th•s choice dces not rate any ::here rear sine of ti-e ctrpr cues that we have t efore us Alderman Feldman said he couldn't agree with A'derrr.an h'e-::man more and if you remember it was this committee, and has not even certain if of wash t the C:un~I in a ptili_;: s!atemert trial said ::= have rejected the idea of just repairing Crown. The policy was that that money • culd be cocd --cney t-rcv: n after bad, 57 ,OCO,CCDlust to repair it and keep the totally inadequate facilities it has in there novi Facilities that don't really reflect the needs of the community anymore, at the time it was built it did but no longer dces. We have aspirations for a Center that serves a broad specter of our kids in recreational needs is the single most important recreational building in the City. That's sitting there and hasn't been talked about for a tong time, every day that s�ts it gets worse. If you walk around the North Shore, Skokie, Glenview, etc., you see facilities that were built after Crev:n that cause us to feel great concern and distress for our kids. Crown has no dressing rooms for girls who ice skate there, its realty primitive and uncomfortable and unfair. We have this huge aspiration on our plate and nothing is happening and we have to start looking at that again and begin to bile the buffet. Its not going to go away, he may not be here to do it but this City and this Council will have to face this issue sooner than later. Looking at Alderman Moran's pictures he thinks they're marvelous if we were in a totally different position, if Crown was up and running, if the new Civic Center was there, if we met our needs for affordable housing in this community, maybe we could aspire to something like that. It looks lovely and maybe there's away to solve all the problems, but the one problem we can't solve Is getting the things that we have committed to first and indeed that we need much more than this. He does not know how other people feel but he is ready at any moment now to put this issue to rest and for us to discuss the merits of this plan in the face of what we have, as far as he's concerned is an unrealistic waste of time. In his discussion with members of the Council he does not find any support at all except for Alderman Moran to carry this forward to invest more money, to keep this kind of aspiration alive which he does not see. If in fact that's true we should just get on with If it is true then this sword of Damocles that is hanging over the head of the immediate community, which has demonstrated overwhelming opposition to, should be lifted They don't have to go through 2, 3 or 4 more years of wondering about this unless we're dead serious and following through with it. It's not fair, it's not right, it's totally unnecessary and thinks we should matte a decision now. Alderman Bernstein said he was going to echo the sentiments expressed by of Aldermen Feldman and Newman. He's been a poster child for the marina and people attributed things to him about himself that he does not attribute to himself. He likes to do his homework. The only reason he thinks he voted to continue on with any discussion whatsoever is because at the time it came up he hadn't read the Army Corps of Engineers Analysis. He does not know if we're going to get to this presentation put he found the analysis less than wonderful in terms of many different aspects including the methodology of sampling and things about which about he does not have a lot of knowledge but it did not seem to him to be the kind of explanation that he wanted when we initially asked for it. This idea generated back he even earlier than 1966. There were Aldermen back then who had the idea but didn't get even a second so it was abated prior to that time. It came up as a proposal for a revenue production and that is our mission as a Council to determine alternate revenue streams. it's not going to work. He's had a lot of conversations with people who are in the marina business and the slip fees might be diminutive relative to what the slip fees would be. The actual money is generated by the sale of gasoline and by other amenities that go along with the marina. In his vision of this atheistic attraction that would serve as recreational amenities to the City of Evanston he saw not a parking lot but tall ships as you came around the cemetery. He loved Alderman (.loran's rendition of this but does not know how we would pay for the eastern portion which would Page 9. generate no revenue and based on tr,e nurrters knows, :.e caret czrne close to pay+:to for the marina itself. In tt-a course of a caucle t!--ee r cnths cf ana�y 5 s t'e c d ^ave con. _ sat ciso, :" ceve'opers and -,v,th one creative arct.;:e:t v,nose plan was to create a marina which be -.noed by a se -es c` S2 E 00 C20 to 53,000 000 s+Hale family resi�,ent:a: family hc^'ies One of the concerns of the reiahhcrs with prope-,y va'ues evzLiId c_ dim,n;shed which is something about which he "ever hao any c'lestions at ail l^ his in nd the advert c! .r.e ^-a' na ..cu'd erhance property values which is lust his ser:se He did not have any problerns wliri t`e traffic irr::a_t e :^.era-:d a_reed with the Ncrinwestern traffic information because at that lacal en the heaviest days of t`;e use he d,:! na: th+;,r t would be a negative impact. Concerns have been raised and people have now been talking about it. He is glad A.1c'ermanWynne is going to create a path for us to discuss methods utilization cf our lakefront because he really does believe we have to use our resources to their fullest. He cautions people if you have an ice cream stand out on the point that attracts people automobiles will attracted to that ice cream stand and absent the land field to provide parking for that, its not going to work. Likewise the kayak facility, you have to be very mindful of the fact that anything you do that generates a critical mass of humanity to a given point is going to exacerbate the existing problem. Nobody wanted to kill Southeast Evanston. He's been there for 30 years and he knows what progress has done to the community because he now faces a brick wall every day when he goes to work so he knows that development is a mixed blessing. The initial concem he had is that we could perhaps find an alternate revenue string utilizing the available resources, one of which is the lakefront which he does not think we can do any more. It would have been close even given the information that we had about the federal government's participation. We're now told that there were some misstatements and in conversations with our Congresswoman's office. He does not know that the impedance is there for her to go forward although she's taken no action until such time as this Council would ask her to go forward. We did ask her to go forward with the analysis. $100,000 it's a tot of money, its our money, federal dollars its still our money, but he thinks it was a worthy effort and part of him is sorry that its not going to come to fruition. The reality is, as Alderman Newman expressed, we can't afford it and for that reason he would go along with those Aldermen who previously wanted to put this thing to rest. Alderman Moran said looking at the debt service schedule included in the packet and there's a very important footnote on it with a double asterisk, that says the debt service is based on S21.000,000 with no reduction for federal government funding. That's an important footnote and it realty calls into question the sensibility of the figures on this sheet. The S21,000.000 figure is the total figure that was provided to us as an estimated cost figure in the Army Corps of Engineers Study. He's assuming that we're relating the debt service to City of Evanston funds as opposed to federal funds. The federal funds would provide half of that $21,000,000 so in essence what's shown to be the debt service schedule here is twice as large as it should be. In the first normative year which would be the second year the slip rental total would be S781,000, it shows the debt service payment as 51,532,000 but if you cut that in half the slip rentals revenue exceeds the debt service, so on that basis it pays for itself. In the Army Corps of Engineers Study, and he will apologize in advance if he does not remember it correctly, he wasn't able to read through it entirely again today, but what has been referred to here is there are other revenues that he thinks were estimated to be at approximately 40% of the estimated slip rental revenue which would make it 140% of the figures that are shown here as slip rental. Of course there would be operating costs related to the marina but his guess is if you match those up wed be pretty close to either break even or possible a profit. He's talking about facts and figures that have been provided by a reliable source and we need to think about that in terms of feasibility because from an economic perspective the feasibility appears to him to either be there or is close to — being there. Page '10. Regard:r.o the discussion itc:.t Robert Crv..,n.:'.e'. e c _en to rcra a4'Gu; Robert Cm.. n for longer than he can remember He's been a'l'or fixing the prct;e"s in Robert a 'Y"p t'Te he's never heard such a rush to dis%ss f;x!^g V - r.rob+ems at Robert Crown than ta',�ight when it s a C f`= _ , sLt=e_t This project frc-n h's perspective pays f.-r Itself so if scrrebcdy;eVs ycu that Conti^;:irg to examine t`e fe=s _f .his project robs the ch,i^.ren of the use cf Robert Crown ,heyre nbt g.' :ng you straig~t scoop on that "':.A F_.._ f.X Rct:ert Crown. and v.e do need tc fix Rot_rt Crc:;n. we w it i do it but wt-eth.er we continue to examine this Frc;ect _r -c; shoLid not impact ;hat decision, that's a decys!cn that stems from the will of the Evanston City Council in relat;cn tc :ts perceived value of Robert Crown which he agrees is very high He thinks we can continue to examine this issue and'we can address the Robert Crown issue and all the other issues that we have. It's somewhat unusual to have a discussion of one particular project and references to the other needs that we have to say those needs would knock out any other project He mould encourage people, whether they're here in this chamber tonight or otherwise, to listen to the admonit.�cn of a former Evanston resident Daniel Burnham who had a plan for the lakefront in the City of Chicago some of which has been realized not all of which has been realized. In fact, the portion that has been realized has made the City of Chicago a world class City certainly to the extent we have a beautiful lakefront and was to make no small plans. These are not small plans, both for the City of Chicago or the City of Evanston but they are plans that are worth examining. The vote here tonight is a vote to cut off that examinabon which he finds to be extremely unfortunate, but be that as it may he would ask all of you to think about no small plans and as time goes by give some consideration to the expansion of lakefront amenities. This beautiful asset that we have we do have the ability to leverage and can convert into an even more beautiful asset than we have now. Thanks very much. Alderman Newman said he would like to have clarified if this is our debt service or are we apt to get S11,000,000 to make this half the cost because it should have been explained that way. Mr. Gaynor said in the Army Corps of Engineers report they indicted if there was a bill passed in Congress in Washington D.C. at best we might realize 50%. There was a great deal of reluctance based on the priority of what's going on right now at the national level which all he can really say. Alderman Newman asked if it's a low likelihood that we're going to get $10,000.000 to $11,000.000 or is it a high likelihood where we should start spending our money. Maybe we should get Congresswoman Schakowsky here and talk with her if we go should forward putting up money, assuming that we're going to get 511,000,000. If Congresswoman Schakowsky's party is now in the minority in Congress and he does not know if she herself would control whether or not we get that funding. His sense has been that Congresswoman Schakowsky is not that supportive of this right now so the idea that we're going to get this grant is really pie in the sky. We know that when we started this we were told we might get 80% or more, that evaporated very quickly. His sense is that it's going to end up with our community's tax dollars being spent here and he's not in a position to risk it. In regards to what Alderman Moran said about the Crown Center, first of all we've been talking about the Crown Center throughout the last year, but he says what we should do is just talk about projects not in the context of what we can spend or what we can afford we should just take one project at a time and if it all adds to a number that we can't pay worry about it later. Part of being in government is you have to choose your priorities and Alderman Moran wants to be a one man committee to go work on the S 11,000,000 grant, then he has a motion. Alderman Newman's motion would be that would be that we defer any consideration of a marina until we get some very solid evidence of what the contribution would be. Alderman Jean -Baptiste seconded the motion. Alderman Tisdahl said a motion has been moved and seconded and called for further discussion. Page 11. Alderman ,":yn'1e sa,d she v:,as not plarmng to speak t.n'c`: t%A lister,,nn 16 the discussion) it v.as just irresistible We're mixing a lot of different issues here She thinks fJnda-en:ally t's's number that this cebt service is based on is Z21.000,000 that ti%as the cost of t`e manna that the Arr-t Cz.,;s c` Engineers discussed in this extremely pre' rminary report At the first bne`.ng that A;nermen rece,ved accL.::7 s, A!derr'an Bernste n v:as ;,resent at that time and he 11 remember this -.%hen five questioned 1.1r Bernstein, ;:as r,ct:-.icer^ an Bernstein, about that number and she tiwmle this down as a quote. 'It .vas a 10 rr,rnute track cf the enve!c:r_ anal, s,s b y the Army Corps of Engineers of what the cost of the marina should be,- It may be 521,000,000 but v.e are doing this detailed anatysis about a number that really does not have a lot of firm foundation in research or analysis That numt:er may be accurate or that number may be s�gnif,cantly off, that's one fundamental issue. The other issue that we're looking at is the next step in any procedure forward would be spending between 5600,000 and $700,000 for the next step of analysis and that is money that comes out of Evanston's pocket. Alderman Moran interjected 50%, to which Alderman Wynne said that is not correct. The next step costs 5600,000 to do an additional analysis and we would have to request money from the Federal government to do any additional study. No matter what we'd have to pay for a significant portion of that. The 50% number being talked about is the amount of possible support we would get if we moved forward to construct the marina and that number has significantly diminished since any of the first discussions that we've had Fundamentally the federal government is not going to pay for the S600,000 to move forward with the next step. She thinks the committee has to decide and ultimately the Council, are we going to spend half of that $300,000 to study this question further. Then her final point is she would say no, because that's 3 small park renovations or 2 large park renovations right there and we know the benefit of what those do. Even if this marina came out in the black some -.,,,here down the road fundamentally the people of Evanston have indicated that they don't want a marina Even from a purely revenue side when you took at this from a dollars and cents point of view, but thinks that's not how we look at a lot of things that we do, we look at things from a revenue generation point of view. She thinks its very, very, very speculative here with many, many variables that would cost us a lot of money to figure out one way or the other and does not think its worth our dollars to spend that money to figure out on those variables. The citizens of Evanston have indicated, and she thinks most of the Council knows and feels this way; this is not something that Evanston wants to have along our lakefront. Her final point is that she thinks that Alderman Moran has raised a critically important issue for all of us here in Evanston that we need to start paying to attention to and that the Council needs to start paying attention to, that's Mayor Daily's plan to extend the lakefront. We need to very quickly understand the speed with which that's operating and what its impact will be because if we think that a marina and Calvary Cemetery will have a negative impact on the 3id Ward and parts of Southeast Evanston we need to very quickly understand what the impact is of the potential lakefront extension. Her initial reaction is worry, she does need to study it more but thinks that is something that we all need to turn our attention to quickly because we need to understand it and figure out what our position is on it. Thank you. Alderman .leant -Baptiste said while we're talking about all these other issues the bottom line is right now what our perception is of the impact of the marina on the quality of life of people living on the lakefront. This was guiding our discussion even though we talk about priority; we talk about debt service and all the rest of those things. Some of the report on debt service is somewhat confusing; he is reading one summary that says the Army Corps of Engineers determine that the annual slip rental revenues would fully fund debt service. On the other hand when you analyze the table you may be able to find different conclusions. The City's and the Council's motivation in putting this as something to investigate is that we face a mounting budgetary problem every year. We were looking at our resources and said it would Page 12. be good to investigate the pcss-tit1y of cons;•.:ctk^a a ra- na tc _e-e,ate long •.rm revenue `or the City cf Evanston to best se":e everybody m 11!,s C,`! tecause if you !'c^'.'e re':e^L'e --c- , �J ca" fun, all z»ds of serV ces for priv;leaed a7d non pm;C ged yids That was the motivation The st.:dy sofa, �7_s r_f ecte f that ;-,ere ;s a lot of cr;csitton to the manna right nc:': and the pie_es that .:e %warted to pLt ;o:ntner to zo `C'.•'a'c maybe lack;.,g `edera I cove rnc-ent contribution a ld at this tee^ =u!ST ,point in ti—e ^1r pc)cl!et is i:,.; That raises t"e oLest . *n of prior!:/, ho:. do you spend the money and is why we cet into the discuss on about Robert Crev.r, versus th s cr •; —sus that He wcuId say that the main issues of the impact of th;s marina on the r~uality of life of those who live on tt'e la'efront you have spoken and we've heard you, He's prepared to support a deferment of further action Alderman Newman remarked he thought the idea of the grant is corrp'ete pie in the sky. We started studying the marina when we thought the federal government was going to pay for almost all of it so the potential for income would be in the short run, this one is up to 20 years from now. Alderman.lean- Baptiste said even if all of the money was on the table right now the community is opposed to that but does not think at[ of the information is on the table because people are fearful of the impact of this project on their lives, which he understands. He does not know whether we understand the totality of this project. It Mayor Daily is seeking to expand Lakeshore Drive right up to us we need to understand all of that and he does not think we fully understand it without engaging in some further discussion and investigation. He does not want to create an illusion for people if this project is knocking on our back door and is immediately south of Evanston it impacts us to. He would be interested and engaged in finding what's going on. He's for saying we do not go forward until we fully understand the impact of the Chicago project, until we understand whether there's any funding that may be available, and it is then that we come to any kind of sensible conclusion to bring closure to this altogether. We may respond right now in the short term but he does not think that it's over. Right now we're not even having the discussion of whether or not you have support on the Council to further study it as a source of revenue. Right now we're focused on the concerns of the community. Are we to put this issue aside without knowing within the next few years what's going on Chicago? Whether we want to or not this issue may be back on the table and we have to continue to have full discussion. Perhaps the Evanston City Council can do something about what Chicago might do, he does not know. In trying to protect the best interest of the City of Evanston vie have to study what's going with the City Chicago, we have figure out whether the federal government is going to get involved and supersede what we do, he does not know any of that He would say in the short term, no, we don't have the money; it doesn't seem that the federal government is going to invest the money, but we have to be careful should we put this in the corner thinking it will go away. He does not think it will go away in the short term. He's supportive of the position right now but is just saying to people that you have to stay vigilant and on top of the discussion so that we aren't reacting to anything but are in front of it to be able to manifest the best interest of the community. Alderman Neuman wanted to withdraw his original motion and make another motion, Alderman Newman moved that we do two things, number one, that we terminate Investigation of the marina; number two, we direct the Parks Department to engage the City of Chicago and report back to us In 60 to 90 days and give us a full update on what they're doing In Chicago and what we need to be doing in order to stay and coordinate with them on what they're doing In their lakefront plan, Alderman Feldman seconded the motion Alderman NeKTnan said In regard to the money to study this he does not know it many people realize this but right now the Lakefront Bicycle Path is crumbling and there are buildings on the lakefront used for washrooms that haven't been fixed Page '13. over the last 43 sr 50 years. 0.1e have plenty of -:reds or, the %kefrcnt that he is nct sure are Co!ng to t:e fun, -led in the next year because of how tight Capital "coney is He ends this to be so pve in the sky and the reason. r_' t is rnOt(On He thinks Alceri-ran ,lean-Bap!-s;e * right that Vie st'=u'W study wat is gc�-- on in the lakefront but does not see v"em coming up 1 out 21 million out :,e ve never re:e.� e, ar);. here close t`',at as a grant from the federal gcvemment for any prclect In the 14 years ne s been on th_ Cc�jn-1 ,.-e recetve! notr,^_ near ttzat. Alderman Moran said quick'y to quote from a letter frzm the Army Corps of crgineers of August 2, 2004. -In relabon to the cost projection for the next phase of study it was estimated to be in the netght:orhood of S400,000 and with the model study it could go up to S600,000 ' in the second page of the letter it says, -There is a 50r o local contribution for the cost of that study`. So there is not a 100 Contrtbution City money, it's 50% local contribution In the same letter on the second paragraph B. Mr. Wickbolt, Acting Chief of the Planning Branch, points out that the federal contribution for construction cost sharing is 50% and he points out that the 50% is set by Section 103 C4 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, so according to Mr. Wickbolt it's set by statute. He also points out that local interest must provide all lands, easements, rights of way, relocations, and dreg material disposal areas and goes on to say that the value of all those contributions are given credit against the local 50% share. Any contribution of land or easements, rights of way, etc., that would be necessary for the full development of the program would be credited to us we and would not have to contribute cash for that portion of the construction project. He suspects it would be a ssgnificant cost contribution for that land located in that area and just wanted to point that out so that everybody understood what the cost implications were. Alderman Feldman said he indicated before that choices and priorities were influencing to a great extent his decision not to support further investigation. We do that all the time. we chose one thing over another and we defer things that even be entertained or dreamed about because we can't think about them now. He never received a single call from anybody saying to him the reason they don't won't the marina is because we can't afford it. We heard that from within City Hall and from other Council members but he never heard it from members of the community. What they said is no matter what it costs they don't want it, even if we could afford it they don't want that. He thinks Alderman Moran is right in a few things one that Chicago has done a magnificent job with its lakefront, its one of the things that makes Chicago great and it's indeed one of the few cities that has kind of a municipal treasure. To think that that expanse of the take is devoted to public recreatlanal and cultural purposes is astonishing and he's just amazed that they're even thinking of expanding that. We have our treasure too, we have our lakefront and we do adhere in one sense or another to Burnham's admonition to make no small plans to have no power to stir men's heart or blood. We didn't make small plans with the Levy Center and he urged this Council not to think of making small plans when it comes to the Robert Crown. We certainly did not make - small plans when we built our Library, which he thinks is a great credit and will be a great credit to us for a long time. We _— do subscribe to that and there's a difference between that and a lot of the work that was done with Chicago's lakefront was supported by private money, the museums were created by private money and if anybody is familiar with the Millennium Park you know how dramatic a contribution wealthy families in the Chicago area participated in that. We can't count on that and he does not know where the support is coming from for this, he has no idea what is generating this. It's certainly not coming from many people, not strong lobbying with placards and signs marching around City Hall saying we need a marina and we need a marina for those people that can afford boats. If it was a throw away amount maybe we could spend time and energy thinking about it and solving all the problems that might arise as a result of that but there's nothing WiEFk like that in sight. He is willing to support and heartily agrees at this moment in time that investigation into the marina should end and we should keep up with the plans being created in Chicago because they will greatly affect us. The idea Page '14, of the outer drive ending at J�neway Terrace is daunting to say tl•e ,east which is an onslaught that v.e ha%:e to prepare. If anyb.cdy in Southeast Evans:s- thinks the traffic issues gereratej t t^ s are w�— some we really ha-:e to O.-Crrj about that and from a pcMical standpot-1 -.:e better start tightening cur bets and lrgunng out how we're going to res; oral to that. Again. t'e suppors Aldermar Ne.:man's motion to end this and it donsn t mean that it one of our wealthy home owners in the 3 " Ward carr,e up t.,th $:0 000 000 or S30 000,000 v;e tn!aht not cons,' er it again Alderman Tisdahl said she has i:stened to everyone and knows you all are ceunting your votes which may i!rrit the number of public speakers but she did not do research into the next 10 or 20 years but went to the City Finance Director and did research into next year. She asked if we have $300,000 to pay for a study and the Finance Director said no. Alderman Tisdahl said she asked if she could quote the Finance Director and he said yes That is her research into this we don't even have the S300,000, our budget is very tight. If there are a tremendous number speakers who want to talk us into this she would encourage you to speak otherwise you may want to save your ammunition because while we will vote on Alderman Newman's motion then the Human Services Committee will recommend it to the City Council and the City Council she is told because the attorney's researched this will then have to vote. All of you may not want to talk tonight if you're counting voles all you could do is talk us out of a position that you want us to uphold. Alderman Newman wanted to go tack to Alderman Moran's statement when he read the letter that we got from the people at the Army Corps of Engineers. He read the part of the sentence that was supportive that they would get into a 50°% contribution. What he didn't read was, 'Additionally if the project were approved under the continuing authority cap is a 107 Project, the total federal cost is limited to $4,000,000.' A few minutes ago he was representing that we would perhaps get half of S21,000.000. They say later in the letter that Congress is considering raising that to $7,000,000. As the facts now stand the maximum contribution of the federal government would be $4,000.000 if it came at $21,000,000, if it came In at S25,000,000 we would till be on the hook for 521,000,000 As Alderman Wynne said the estimate of that $21,000,000 was a figure that we got and do not actually know what it is Then they say something about not wanting to contribute to whatever our problem is at the Church Street Boat Ramp. He asked if that means eliminating the boat ramp if we have the marina or is that something else, and was told that is two different issues. The overall point is the best that the federal government could do, if this letter is accurate, if S4.000,000. An alternative approach is to take it outside Section 107 with whatever funding ,s necessary this action would require strong Congressional support. Alderman Moran remarked, in other words it could go up to 50°%. Alderman Newman said it there was a special bill passed in Evanston and the chances of that happening is as likely as it's going to snow next July. To get our facts straight unless somebody has some really good information in Congress, he has not seen overwhelming support coming from Jan Schakowsky's office in the last three months and thinks we have to be realistic. Alderman Tisdahl called upon those citizens who signed up to speak. Cameron Davis, Executive Director, Lake Michigan Federation - The Lake Michigan Federation is concemed with the water quality, landfill, erosion, and other impacts that this marina proposal would cause. In short, the marina is proposed for the wrong place. We're also concerned that there was no planning that went into the decision to propose a marina for this site. No alternatives were discussed. There was simple a decision made somewhere at some time to propose a marina at this particular site. The Federation would like to assist Evanston in establishing a coherent vision for its lakefront. Chicago has its Lakefront Protection Ordinance. We'd like to see Evanston do something similar so that ad Page 15 � oc, rancom decisions aren't encouraged on Vie ',-*.ire Evanston can a'so urge Governor Elago;e. c; So rave 1H:ncis,:�.n th,e Costal Zone Management Program 111wo s =_ _Id be receiving an es:lmate d �2 mi'l,on pe, year `cr costal protect:en efforts, tuts not right now. In fact, Illinois is tna c- state of 35 el,gib'e costal states to be turning its back on funding that could be co:ng to help the Evanston lakefront Tr s-,k you. (See Attachment B) Janice Loughlin — Evanston Environmental Eoard - 10s Loughlin sa-d she had originally intended to summarize the Evanston Environmental Board's comments cn t; a Corps of Engineers' Marina report. However, since the committee had already indicated an intent to vote against the mania and since I had been given only one and one half minutes in which to speak I will speak on behalf of the Evanston En. uonmental Board and remind the committee that they have in their packets copies of our full comments. After revre hir c the Army Corps report and after doing some additional research the Evanston Environmental Board recommends that the City abandon the Marina Study and the expenditure of any more resources to pursue a marina at the site. Marinas, -,nile not inherently evil, do pollute the air and water. The Board's full comments detail the various pollutants which result from marinas and we feel that the Army Corps had done a very poor job of discussing the environmental impact of these pollutants. Our greatest concern and the Army Corps report was its misleading nature in that it appeared to contain an environmental analysis when in fact it did not_ Ms. Loughlin mentioned one point from their comments. because she had not heard this point discussed. If the City had decided to go forward with the marina project, it would have had to obtain a wetland permit in order to fill in Lake Michigan for the parking tot. However, according to the Clean Water Act and EPA regulations, no wetland permit can be issued unless the permitee can show that there is no other location for the project which would require a lesser impact on the water body. In other words, if location of the manna elsewhere in Evanston would involve a smaller landfill, then the permit could not be issued for the Calvary site. The reason this requirement is of particular concern here is that the comparative analysis that was done as part of the t %_56 study did find that location of a marina in the Church Street area or in the Dempster to Lee Street area would require less of a landfill than in the Calvary area, since those northerly areas offered some land for parking whereas the Calvary area did not. Consequently, the City could not potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars studying this marina project only to be told, at the permitting stage, that the City would have to take it north. 'Thank you. Fred Ash— Citizens for Lakefront Preservation - Mr. Ash's commented on an economic assessment of the proposed Evanston Marina Project. (See attached C for Mr. Ash's summary.) Jack Darin - Director Illinois Sierra Club — On behalf of Sierra Club members in Evanston, thank your for the vote your are about to take to protect our lakefront, which is perhaps our most precious municipal asset. Sierra Club is not just against the marina, but for the lakefront. We urge the City and Community to take advantage of the public attention on the lakefront raised by the marina proposal, and focus it on improving the habitat and recreation potential of our lakefront open spaces. Sierra Club member in Evanston stand ready to help with the Alternatives Task Force organized by Alderman Wynne to identify habitat and recreation improvements that can benefit all current and future residents, not just the few who could enjoy a marina. Thank you. Don Gordon -Citizens for Lakefront Preservation Rogers Park 49u' Ward • Mr, Gordon's comments are attached. (See Attachment D) _ Page 16. Ramona Ideher - Co-founder of Citizens for Lakefront Preservation - Ms Met•er sa,d she Ives at 482 Sheridan Road in Evanston and is one of the co-founders of Citizens fcr Lakefrc-,t Pr eserration. She wanted to thank the Aldermen for the vote to stop the proposed marina. Especially 3'` %'Yard Alder -an . jr,ne for working with Citizens for Lakefront Preservation to brin, t",;s to a vole and also for leading the re:: ,'oared Ta_k =crce for Alterrative ideas for the takefront She also ::anted to thank everycr.e who has v:orked to tang r...-s .ssu= tc a :.icse. It has been along haul but we can all feet great about refocusing the d,scussion through the task force for, alternative ideas that has grown out of our work. Finally, she wanted to echo Alderman Feldman's comments, tie lake is nct for sale. It is not a question of "wit it make money?". it is not a question of "can we afford it? The proposed manna is Vhe wrong idea in the wrong place and we can work together to come up with better ideas that are env,rcnrrentally sound and that create more access to the fake for mare people. Thank you everyone for your commitment to preserve one of nature's great wonders! Herb Harris — Evanston Representative for Proposed No Access for Boaters — Mr. Harris noted not all boat owners have large boats; his has a small boat on which he likes to go out into the take and fish. Mr, Harris feels having a marina here in Evanston would be an added enhancement to our lakefront, to the community and to those who enjoy boating and fishing. There are no longer many places where one can go out and fish, for the many of us who enjoy fishing. The marina would definitely add to the beauty of the lakefront for Evanston residents and those who come to enjoy the pleasures of the lakefront. Alderman Tisdahl recalled Alderman Newman's motion, seconded by Alderman Feldman, thatwe do two things, number one, that we terminate investigation of the marina; number two, we direct the Parks Department to engage the City of Chicago and report back to us 60 to 90 days and give us a full update on what they're doing In Chicago and what we need to be doing in order to stay and coordinate with them on what they're doing In their lakefront plan. Motion unanimously passed (5-0). Vill. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:10 p.m. Respectfully submitted, && 'o"-- Audrey Trotsky, epartment lHelthnd Human Services Page 17. SPEAKER SIUN-11i SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center -- Council Chambers Monday -- October 4, 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Name: Address/Organization: /N RS14 c'� i7i2-z�-r 106o�-if )9c;Vff6rVA-10 S/1 -F,��.,- k6Pp,IVA cm,�v /LOV rPOo-J L AS o 0- C`7 A 14 GLp 1�0RL[Q6 ZIQ ov ft-� 51-(O� � 7 An i,'I rf GUEST SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Council Chambers Monday - OCtober 4,, 2004 Name: Kl(-e ,'�yc.e. Ali a5 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: y9 D S C u q 0 15Z s���, � � 3.3.s Shemw I ',Lq -4j4qr,-% GUEST ,SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center Council Chambers Monday - October 4, Name: Uf 7 MAKIN).; ONAA��PAJ 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Address/ Organization: �Q G(/ V , tea -VIZ �-. CJ13o t" foob 3 Evoivs",N) I -t 7-\Phis+ �i-k. 5 f01� 6 d.2 t.� � !+✓'fir. � .r "'r`• " 3r� { 1 ...r" ii. ... - � ., •!R� ;3 ♦ Y + � • •� " ' � „^ � s ^ ..•^� ` �� ,Sn �^�" ram,/i wr`''+ `�•.. ,tea.;.:*'1` ry a� 4 ri.r,•f. •- ar.rt:�,�' ^`"' t��t�.:+'x:t,,•�R�••' y:�=_�:`" � 4' � '� ,. rf•q`*�^ ,.. # r�trs`.7..k�E�'. }l+ f t', .,ir:.,f i.- i� S Ile z. Xx P7 14 m i r S-Aw-%7m� mpk- If NEW LAKEFRONT AND MARINA VIEW 40111 wood aehrnen� a LAKE MICHIGAN FEDERATION PROTECTING EVANSTON'S SHORELINE Evanston Marina Proposal - 2004 Evanston's Coast is Priceless Lake Michigan provides an inestimable quality of life to Evanston and those who visit its approximately two miles of shoreline year-round. Its six beaches --Lighthouse, Northwestern, Clark Street, Dempster -Greenwood, Lee Street, and South Boulevard --attract thousands of people per year. Its lakefront parks offer year-round recreation, with concerts and picnicking in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. Sailing, paddling, and even diving to the wreck of the George Morley off of Dempster -Greenwood Beach all help make Evanston an attractive destination for people to move or simply visit. As a result, access to Lake Michigan from Evanston is important to fuel the quality of life for Chicago's northern Evanston Sunrise over Lake Michigan neighbor. It is also important for lake protection: for people to want to protect Lake Michigan, they need to access it. Boating access, whether by the Church Street Boat Ramp or more permanent mooring facilities, help people appreciate the lake. Background In 2002, the city recommended, among other things, a reconnaissance study of Evanston's shoreline to study the feasibility of a marina, partially to generate revenue. A June 30, 2003, meeting with city staff, Evanston Alderman Melissa Wynne, and the office of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky focused study surveys on the area of South Blvd. The study is to take place in four phases, each subsequent phase dependent on the successful completion of the previous one: (1) reconnaissance, (2) feasibility, (3) pre - construction, and (4) construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lead federal agency, has been moving ahead in this process. Since then, the location across Sheridan Road, east of Calvary Cemetery, and just yards away from South Blvd. Beach has been identified for the site of the proposed marina. Proper Marina Siting is Critical Because coasts are among the most biologically active waterways in the Great Lakes. and because coasts are attractive for recreation and residential areas, shorelines are under enormous stress both throughout the country and around the Great Lakes. Consequently, PROTECTING EVANSTON'S SHOREL!NE Evanston Marina Proposal Page 2 any major coastal development proposal --especially marinas —must be conducted with great care. Critical considerations for marina siting are: 1. Water Quality 2. Geophysical Factors 3. Habitat 4. Land Use 5. Quality of Life Factors More important than any of these individual categories of potential impacts, is the assessment of cumulative impacts. The Lake Michigan Federation believes that a rigorous analysis of the ways in which this marina proposal may have secondary and tertiary effects is critical. Water Quality A number of different kinds of pollutants can be problematic for marinas: pathogens, such as bacteria; low dissolved oxygen that starves aquatic life of needed air; metals from compounds used for boat maintenance, such as paints, anti -corrosives, and anti-foulants for hulls; and petroleum hydrocarbons.' Geophvsical Factors One of Lake Michigan's most important geophysical dynamics is "littoral drift," the crucial movement of sand and silt along the coast. Any coastal development, including things as small as breakwaters and groins, to large-scale lakefills, can disrupt this flow, allowing the collection of sand and silt in up -drift areas, and erosion in down -drift areas. Likewise, certain types of pollutants, such as metals, can settle into sediment to the detriment of aquatic organisms that help make up the building blocks of the food chain. Habitat Because coasts are among the most -biologically rich zones in the world,2 coastal development can disrupt or change habitat dynamics. In some instances, coastal structures can attract invasive species, like zebra mussels, where such structures have never existed. Land Use Land use patterns and the ecological health of Lake Michigan are intertwined. Public access is also an important land use consideration. Increased traffic can lead to increased air U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Management Nicasures for Marinas and Recreational Boating;' located at .%-�%uw.cna.eov/ON'OWiNPSih4hltii: Chanter5'ch5-1 .html. The Nature Conservancy. "The Consmation of Biological Diversity in the Great Lakes Ecosystem: Issues and Opportunitics." (1994). PROTECTING EVANSTON'S SHORELINE Evanston Marina Proposal Page 3 pollution and restricted pedestrian access to Lake Michigan. Likewise, traffic increases the need for expensive engineering to carry stormwater and other roadway pollution to already - burdened water treatment facilities. In other words, marina development can lead to a chain reaction of other secondary and tertiary ecological and economic effects that must be considered beyond direct impacts on water quality. An important example of cumulative effects that must be considered is not just in expanding the flow of traffic in the immediate marina area on Sheridan Road, but in the "side streets" that motorists would use to get to Sheridan Road. Another example of cumulative effects to be considered is that increased traffic to and from the marina occurs not only when owners put their boats in the water in the spring and take them out in the fall. It occurs when owners and friends drive to and from boats throughout the season. Quality of Life Factors While water quality standards and environmental laws require the consideration of many of the above factors, they often do not require the consideration of these factors in a holistic manner, meaning whether a coastal development proposal's effects go beyond the sum of their parts. Intangible effects, such as noise pollution, must be considered. Nor do such standards or laws provide strong guidance on other factors. For example, the importance a community places on the openness, spiritual value, or aesthetic beauty of the Lake Michigan shoreline are critical, even if largely ignored in official analyses. Potential Concerns Schematic of proposed 1966 Evanston The Lake Michigan Federation's Lakefront Task Force marina, just south of South Boulevard has a number of preliminary concerns about the Beach. proposed marina and its effects on the surrounding coast. These concerns are based on certain assumptions that a marina would be proposed in the vicinity of South Boulevard, with a similar design as that posed in 1966. As such they are preliminary and not exhaustive. Water Qualitv At a time when bacterial pollution is causing beach closings and swimming bans around Crake Michigan, but especially increasing beach closures in Evanston recently, coastal development that leads to the impoundment of water is of concern for lakefront recreation. As water becomes warmer when separated from cooler open lake water, a more accommodating environment for bacteria can be created. Even artificial flushing may be of limited assistance. For example, Chicago's shallow, north -facing 63rd Street Beach has experienced closures in the past, even after the city of Chicago placed a gate in wall on the PROTEGTiNG EVANSTON'S SHORELINE Evanston Marina Proposal Page 4 south side of the beach to allow for better circulation. The Lake Michigan Federation is concerned that construction of a marina at the proposed South Boulevard location may: (a) limit circulation of water at Evanston's South Boulevard Beach, and (b) impact water quality across municipal boundaries at Juneway Terrace Beach, Chicago's northernmost beach. Land Use A 600-800-slip marina built in the vicinity of South Boulevard could cause significant traffic problems. With Sheridan Road already at times severely congested, a marina in the proposed location will likely Increase traffic flow from the south and to the north, making pedestrian access to Evanston's lakefront parks more difficult, especially for families with young children trying to cross the street. Increased air pollution as a result of this Increased traffic is a virtually certainly. Public access to the lake is also a critical consideration for quality -of -life purposes. With swimming and wading east of Calvary Cemetery already severely limited, a marina would seem to exacerbate, not improve such recreation. Geoohvsical Factors A marina in the proposed location will also require the building of a substantial structure several hundred feet into Lake Michigan. The impact of down -drift erosion on Chicago's nearby Juneway Terrace Beach and surrounding properties, is of concern. Other Factors The Lake Michigan Federation's Lakefront Task Force is perhaps most concerned that no formal consideration has been given to other potential sites for a marina despite the June 30, 2003, meeting suggestion that alternative sites could be open to consideration. For example, the use of the North Shore Channel and the lagoon east of Northwestern University, among others, could be evaluated as options. Each of these sites includes their own advantages and disadvantages, such that their own analyses would have to be conducted. About the Lake Michigan Federation's Lakefront Task Force Formed in 1970. the Lake Michigan Federation is the oldest citizens' Great Lakes _- organization in North America. its mission is to restore fish and wildlife habitat, conserve land and water, and eliminate pollution in the watershed of the largest lake within U.S. borders. The Federation's Lakefront Task Force is made up of volunteers who assist in the formation of Lake Michigan Federation policy and are dedicated to restoring habitat for fish and wildlife, ensuring clean water, and securing ample public access along Illinois' Lake Michigan beaches and shoreline. The Lakefront Task Force usually meets at 6 p.m. the first Monday evening of every month at the Federation's Chicago office, 220 S. State Street, Ste, 1900. More information about the Lakefront Task Force is available online at www.lakemichioan.orci/iobs/lake taskforce.asR and about the Federation at www.lakemichioan.ora. AN ECO`O.MIC ASSESSME. 'r OFTHE PROPOSED i:%':%NST{1N .MARINA l RO.1171U ' r rtic i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The basis premise of the marina project is that it •sill provide n stcady (lots• of cash to the City of Evanston's General Fund. Examination of the project, however, reveals that the opposite most likely %vill be the case. • The construction cost estimated of the Corp of Engineers for the proposed marina is unrealistically low. Actual construction costs max• he tsso to three times the initial estimate. • If debt financed, issuance costs syould add to the principal amount of the bonds and total debt sm ice would be high. Ex en if, as projected, the direct construction cost of the marina were S20 million, annual debt service nt current interest rates would be S1.8 million. The total project cost, inclusive of financing charges, but excluding operations, %sill be over S40.7 million over 20 years. • PolIution. noise, and congestion from the Marina will lower property values and hence the Citv's tax base. Rouvh estimates place this loss in ad valorem tax income to [lie General Fund at S4.6 million over 20 }cars. • The diversion of retail sales to Chicago titi ill cause Evanston businesses lost sales. Sales tax revenues to the Citv will fait by a minimum of S500.000 over 20 years. These arc true cash losses that must he factored into the econoinic benefit/loss from the project. • The marina's exposed site %sill result in high operation costs relative to its peers. Moreover, revenues will he seasonal, cyclical anti bidhly risky. These swings will likely cause periodic losses to the General Fund and:'or erratic swings in property taxes. • Marina financing will require the issuance of General Obligation rather than Revenue bonds. This is an indication that the credit markets will not have confidence in the self-supportinp- nature of the project. The stewards of our community should he similarly skeptical. • While an annual G.O. debt service tax Icry could be abated to tite extent that marina income supports debt. Aldermen %sill have to eo on record as favoring a property tax levy on all Evanston residents to support a hobbv of the rich few. • To the extent that Federal and State funds are granted to support project costs, this must be viewed as a use of political capital. Better projects that inight benefit from outside support may have difficult;; obtaining, grants. The benefits„ drawbacks and risks of the marina should he hench:narked against alternative proiects. 14NITIAL CAPITAL COST The Corp of Engineer's preliminary report estimated construction costs at S15- S20 million. Further study would refine this number, but a mach hieher estimate is likely. The Corp's history of estimating project costs is scandalously bad. Ste-.tiart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior. stated the Corp of Engineers , "resembles a 1Jracluosaurus. a giant water loving dinosaur with less brains per pound of tlesh than any other veitebrte. 71he Corp sure fives from the Jurassic Age of AN E:CONO.MIC :1SSESSMEN;-r 01:111F NIOPOSF•:U F VA STON .MAM A PROJI:C ' : c:a-iat:i_ :,.er. Jce:i ed ni;m'. rr�atr�t t _ rtf to us:urc.' CPS, C;IIT IC5 %%Cr . e ;�"'-t::.1 ;�� •�• •..:..1:. ,i`..?t:,. .. •,..:C{;,�. s:�tC: i}: l`riYC.:S Bete �uir;h±Ctc'�l L':cn cc ohout a ttirtmai c:� r riernn�s �tu.i., it Is t:isz to scc that the CotP`s report is based upon m.anr.a design incompatib}c x:th the F%anston commun,n Rather, it i5 h turd tipnn a plan for Whmine. Indiana, an indu_r: ial of ca In addition to the Corp's general hwery of low -balling estimates, Ekanston's project '.would he inuir expensise for many reason;. • The studv calls for a Wee number of 20-10ot plus boats Such boats require expensive n:c+oriings and deeper credi!ing Attract. c.tpenaiti c facilities ate rcyuned by their affluent o%%ners. • The proposed Evans:on marina is cheek-and-lo%vl with tnvo residcrittal neighborhoods. The neighbors have reason to expect a park -like site consistent %%ith adjoining Lakeshore greenery. This is not contemplated in the Corp's rubble -pile construction methodology. • "1-hr site is next to 1« o popular bathing beaches and parklands. An active bike and jogging path bisects the site. This means increased security- needs,1-wh as design elements and as an oncoing expense. • Location at a major commuintty gateway is on one of'ihc community's most critical arterial streets. Traffic control and aesthetic enhancements will be well cxeess of those. typical for Stich projects. • Finally. the project has engendcrcd strongly felt and organized opposition -- a legal challenge to the project are almost guaranteed. Each of these factors would hat c a direct impact on project costs. Giver, the instability of soil cordit:ons of riparian sites such as the Evanston lake bottom and nature of a construction zone exposed to the elements, wide variances from budget are to be expected. A construction contingency exceeding IMs should be required. %%'title the City's General Fund could provide th:s function, prudent fiscal management suggests that an additional S2 million he Included in any financing, tip. ith the General Fund at risk only for amounts in excess of this cushion. The Corp of Frigincers were only charged to examine the constructtun ofamarina . Except for a cursory examination of vehicular traffic innmediatefy adjacent the site, the costs of integrating the manna into the community %%erc not within its pun•tew. Of particular note: • Sheridan Road has no water or sc%%cr tines extending the length of the project. • Prevention of South Boulevard and Junovay Leach erosion must be addressed. Marina construction would cause scouring of private property in Chicago and a plan to compensate property ou ncrs must be developed. _-- • Integration of one of the ar::a's most active bike%%ays must be addressed. Bicycic _ inicrfcrcnce with Vehicular traffic turning unto marina packing trust be included in congestion planning. • The traffic (lows at Sheridan Square and South Boulevard intersections with Sheridan Road must be re-engirerrcd • As a Locall, Unacccpiable I and i'.c tier "LULU"}, the city must expect contracted and expensne litigattun lnstttufed I"- local residents. The renovation of the public «ashroorns at South Boulevard Beach cacti is already overdue anti mutt he con idercd Bart of the proicct in light nt•additionni marina indiwed Imfiir 1 — conscm-ative estimate is that such considerations will require at least an additional S2 million, — - cost that should be Included in any proposed marina financing - AN ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF TIIE 11IMPOSED EN NNSTON MAIMNA PRO.IF-CT E%er. if the ,,•! _[ L; A.!SI: :''_ I is Used a, 3 ba-e, iI'-:, t_}c:t is t:nmirc:.. , , financed, the issuance co0c� Iin.:!.JJ;ni:.:c, , .•.t%:'is and in.e,tmcn:l-�: l.e:s. t�ti1 a! is=°aLni 4 diccoun.�. dc�t �crt;, c rer_. zipitall/cd vltere:0 '.k:+1 � �..C..I 1: , of project cosk. As calculated : r rr. _, the: all-mi u f - protect %tilt e\cccd S=-t ­.:!hon. tsst:ancr costs "ill he 53 G million and ti,us till' trn3l �:rc ..�: c,f bonds to be is�UCIJ tiau13 be as high as S2S million. The rough e5lmnate of S=S fu: the expected sszc of the 1,ond required Issuance is the basis for calculation of the annual dc`� requirement hOow First, tie till look at some of the operating issues that .vill deterrn:^='wc City's ability to repay this debt from project revenues. )Vote that our analysis looks or..'y to �. ar monetary risks and rcuards to the municipal government. It is not a traditional cos*. benefit the analysis that posits a "social cost" to the pollution, congestion or other zspects of the project. OPERriTING COSTS AND RISKS The proposed marina site is ur,:gi;e _=J problematic. Unlike other marinas on Lake Alichiban's western shore. the entire develo;7rncr.i projects obliquely into dw lake. As the prevailing southward current pushes lakec_d sa :d around the obstructing breakwater, it is Nicely that the manna basin hill require a much more dredging than comparable sites. Periodic dredging is expensive. but the Corp of'Eng:rice's own documents (Cf_RC49-1 1) gme little comfort that the tuning or cost ol" such maintenance can be accurately predicted. Their report states, "Sediment transport by %%ater is a coinplex phcao.mrnon that is little understood despite more than 200 years of intense study " It should also N_ ro:cd that if any clay or organic material other than sand is found on the site. it inay 3ccum.:1131c F:-uoleum-based pollutants. Such dredged materials must be sent to a landfill, rather than redis:ril u:cd on the lake bottom. Due to criviromnental concerns, dredging costs are skyrocketing T-re Marina Operators Association of America, as quoted in the May 2003 issue of Boal US Magaz:ne. says, " the marina industry is facing a nation%vide crisis. Costs are escaialing so fast that m--r:na; aie opting to defer needed dredging or get out of the business allogcther." Compared to other sites, the exposea nature of the basin %ill result in periodic starm dzimage. Dr, Orrin Pilkey, Sedimentoligist at Doke University, notes that nuiny Corp of Engineers projections t)picaily. "fad to account for the impact of natural storm actoity, saying such storms arc unexpected events," I le further stags that many Cory performance projections as so deceptive as to be "criminal.-' If floating docks or boats lose their mooring, they strike other boats and docks in a domino -effect of damacc. This imposes costs such as dock repair, reimbursement for damage to expensive boats and loci of moorage income. To the eztenl this risk is sell' -insured or exceeds the City's insurance cope:ace. operating expenses cw;ld he quite volatile relative to similar, better-desiencd facilities Sate «ealher e.tposure issues include the periodic repair required to reclrfp south side=ccuring effects upon Junn%ay Beach and upon privately owned property in the City of C'r.;cago Because of swirling cwt-ents related to the breakwater's protrusion into the lake, the rnariaa mzy be prone to harbor mouth fouling., tt hich �rould also increase operating expense The proposed inarina site is flanked by high -density residential neighborhoods. 1_akcfront recreations draw from still other high -density areas further %test While seseral Chicago marina's are in more densely populated ne:ghborhoods, these sites are sevicgated by Lake .Shore Drive and - -wide sitattis of parkland_ I lie pro, o,cd marina's lack of such a buffer zone raises issues of public safety, sanitation and sccur i y It =cents unlikely that pahcing and other expcnses can be AN' ECONOMIC ASSESS.NII:NT OFTHE PROPOSED L\"ANSTONMAIZINA PROJECT ri.:I.na I':.. _ .... `� is :C�4IIrl' 1.'l�:t'a�t'� to ;he {It'neral l'unu .nd l':.:k fund 01 t' '1!,:AiX CI - i- .:� ;. iiicurTed b•: ha\1nI: baihing, beaches .fnd ,} c z1hildren tht, tlra'.. ... ...:I:1C l ,t: .i .a._�; 'l: marina M_--nnas ate daniterous. Such _ 1-ll'c tll�S] \5 utlld he :;ni.l :_ ... ;he Chi ago are, i'L: it c.l*?G>es Uie citti to considerable habiiit\. It IS ;:1.most celtani ih:lt, o\e, the life U1 ho,, & _.-L :o iI:]a^CC the-narina, this fatal design Ilax t ill cause at least one ch;lei :o 'ro\\n I }:r d'c-.'--r t'aa ::e .\ould open Ohe flour to accidental death lau salts. 'I o the e\tcnt the; liabill;\. is nut 3uetiu_%-1V insured, operating, expvmws %\ ill be erratic_ C'hicago's cx]?cricnce in extracting a sizeable cr..n4_ streams from marina operations is not applicable to i=vanston. The bonds used to :' ..inze ;',zr docks also pledged nearby parking Ices and that the Chicago Park District could charge :high \chicular pat -WI ;ices. Many people \\-ho use these lots are not even going to the marinas. Lots such as at Monroe harbor support Soldier Field, the 1luseurn Campus. local resident parking reeds and special events. One lot further north is notable for being the site of choice fur local restaurant sale[ parking services. In Evanston. high parking fees would only push boat o,.\ ners to park on neighborhood streets. The Corp of Engineers demand survey indicated solid revenues, but there are biases this type of sur%-c%,. For example, other demand studies have recently been circulated for other proposed marinas. These surveys polled the same population as the Evanston sur\cy. Note also that Evanstort's marina will have major Competition not yet on the drawing boards. Chicago's inayor has announced his intent to build several miles of new lakefront parkland, a project terminating within feet of the proposed marina. Will this massive project contain competitive marinas and hum' would they impact demand in Evanston? Again.:\c don't know. Despite its seeming scicnitfic design, the Corp's demand study provides little comfort. In sum, operating expenses of the proposed marina will be higher than its peers and much more erratic in nature. It seems likely that many years could produce operating sur}ilusts sufficient to cower most debt service. Perhaps some funds can be transferred to the General fund, but it is just as likely that many years will product losses. The risks from the flawed marina site will be shouldered by the city General Fund and the taxpayers of Evanston. an impact opposite the stated goal of the project. OTIIER MUNICIPAL REVENUE STREAMS Release of the Corp of Engineers study has sho\\ n substantial public opposition to the proposal. It .could be easy to dismiss the combined objections of Evanstonians and Chicagoans as a concern for their "lilestyle." Concenis about the congestion, the pollution and the noise of the proposed marina, however, translate directly into the financial issues. Evanston properly values are high by regional standards. homes are the primary investnient of most Evanston residents and any threat to their nest -egg is guaranteed to raise public ire. Most South East residents belies a marina would materially dettact from their neighborhood and lo\,cr the value of their homes. To the author's knmwlcdee, no one in the municipal go\cmmerit has studied the adverse impact the manna will have upon the tax base. It is outside the scope of the Corp of Engineers study and this will newer be captured any direct analysis of manna cash Ilo\vs. Ncver-theless, reduced Equalized Assessed Value ("EA\"') has a direct link to lover municipal revenues. A reduction in EAV is insidious for two reasons. First. it affects every City levy, forcing higher tax rates to T-cover existing municipal obligations. Second, ad va'lorein taxes are an annuity streams to the City \\hose returns, once reduced. tend to decline at a compound rate. . , ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OFTHE PROPOSED I:VANS'hO\ NIARiNA PROJECT i•s;c t :1 I7:arina-irl.'I FAV dtll;ne '.[ URIC: r:}^}.!C 11Ut[[« �. [[ 1;� ..:�l�t, ft',,: ��r!:..i, ni)t all Ut its inipact confined 1h:rd Ward These t: no cr : r;ca] .rc,,hoi to decline indeed the resttlls ofa'.1 as those t:,cd by the C..rp of mure upt;n the inhtit We c,,-..>ct;a:t[el; .•tintstr i'r.a; t::c matuia [[nuld decrease cit[-u i[i, [AV b}' LM to one percent for ti;e _'�t;rars the ti; l•.Is v..:;tandmg bonds. Using the aniour,ts and growth rates used ;n the CiN's 200 + - 1005 Bl dget Presentation, the estimate F%ansion's GencraI Fund WOUld forgo S4 6 mi11ion in ad %alorcm property tax revenue over tucnty years and. if all other things remain constant, all City furls them %%ould be a consolidated shortfall of 55.6 million. 'The advetse imp act upon the v.,.o VB 2r .rton School systems has not been estitriatecl. Sonic Evanston retailers, especially restaurant owners. believe pro.mmiry to the marina will improve sales. The closest commercial district to the marina, hotvc[ cr. would be along Chicago's Howard Street. In addition to having the advantage of "location. location and -location," that area has a strong drawing cards in the form of an existing liquor store and a Dominick's super market. Currently the north of Howard area between the lake and the stipenr.arket is blighted, with a significant underdeveloped retail space. The marina could be a major impetus for development of a Chicago retail corridor - an area to compete with Etansion merchants 365 days a year, not just during the summer boating season. A competitive retail district;+ould decrease demand for Evanston commercial space, leading to reduced EAVs of conlinercial property and thus resulting to still lower property tax collections. Lost commercial property EAV and property tax revenue is not quantifiable, but the lost sales tax income could be immediatc. Impro[ ing Chicago neighborhoods is a noble gesture, but such efforts should be funded by the Clty of Chicago, not by the City of Evanston. We conservatively estimate the sales tar losses to b_• minor. ranging slowly upnard to a maximum of only ?r 10 of one percent. Yet o[cr the 10-}ear period modeled. this amounts to neatly S500.000. The marina will impact other recreational activities to Evanston. Noise and pollution from the marina, howc%cr, would make South Beach less attractive. The presence of large boats also presents a direct threat to sail boards and other very small craft. Revenues from beach tokens and rental of sailboard racks will, in all likelihood, decline. If the purpose of the marina is to maximize municipal revenue, it should be sated at the foot of Davis Strcct. At that location there is more parkland to buffer the surrounding community from the unsavory manna aspects that destroy property values. Existing parking options there arc greater and less infiil would be required. 'Iitis would reduce project cost. That site is better sheltered from the elements and Evanston merchants ivill capture all of the retail sales generated by the marina. Moreover. if the manna abutted Noriliwestem University, there wotild be less potential for loss of FAV. as the University is not a taxpayer. MUNICIPAL FINANCE CONCERNS Two characteristics of inarina finance should be noted. First, marinas are capital intensive in nature Ilistoncally. many municipal marina projects did «cli, but many [,,ere aided by a filling interest rates. Fees [\ere established at project outset and when the marina's debt was subsequently refinanced at lo;;cr rates, a [windfall profit;vas made. This m. ill not be true in the current rate environment. `tote. however, that even with the benefit of favor::ble rates. many marina projects N%crc fin7aricial fiascos. AN ECONONIIC- . % S S FS SA I E NT OF'I'llE: PR()I't. SVI) EVANS- ID MARI\A PROJECT' t,.crr Second. mar;ni upor. Is:....ai Q!,!i uon debt rather than Rcvcnac i l i l_van: tnri is 13:m.:ar ob;Igatio n I�- .I; _.. c; InlercSi rat: L-i �: r S ul ed tt7 :i . '�C .:t r i t ti r-prc►dticin�. assets It-LICS aS a - 3:i.:. : 7r .:.e inarina 1s a tril;ti. t animal ai'' .:r:, In .his L':ve there [5 no opporturitt• t(, i l: "or,.- -.'cured soIcI% b_, f ro_ :i revenuc5 and IaIIIII! agencIeS 1%Oil Id' e never r::::e-t: hie ulth the IUN Ica=oral cash :io•.%s znd e\ccssIve overall risk. Just as,vith a home :.orc3ge lenders. municipal rz%cnuc oon,'holdcr= also require security nt the fiorm of a mortcacc or zn'. rroiect so be financed. Few lenders .tiould consider a hole dug In Lake Michigan as cood cc 1:3teral. Dondholdcrs ;,,ill thus requtre:hzi 11 risks related to the operation of the i;:ar;ra `_c:-:galiy slotted to F,.anston ia�pa%ers Issuance of General Ob:iLation ("G.O." debt) for marina financing Is that it could Crowd -out" other neces,ary borrott ins: needs. Cranston is Messed with an Aaa bond rating. Only ten Illinois municipalities have simila.ly strong finances. Incremental G.D. debt, issued tar the marina could contribute to a ratings do, --:,grade. When the new debt is consohdated with existing and future bond issues, it cn.ifd push the aegrecatc aver the threshold allo•.sed by the rating agencies for maintenance of their highes: debt rating. The result is higher iss:I.ance costs for future debt issues or potential lack of capital a,cess «her, other municipal needs must be financed. Witlt any G.O. bond i=_t:e, pioperty tax levies cover debt service. To the extent that project revenues are inad qua:e s ;it taxes may he abated. Aldermen. Fo%%ever, %sill be required to go on record as voting for a prorc:ty tax Icty equal to annual debt serv:cc. Based upon the Corp's project cost and current In'crest rates. this exposes all Evanston Froperry o%xners to a tax in excess of 51.7 million per %ear. h %% Ill be a tax on all citizens to support the hobby of the rich few, EXTRANEOUS VARIABLES. The congesturn of Shcndaa Road caused by the marina will impose real traffic management costs on the City. 'there '.would be immediate calls for expensive Improvements to north -south arterial streets. Vehicular traffic. born the west would also increase, as marry boaters Would come to the marina along Oakmn. Main and Dempster Streets. The viaducts and S-curve at Oakton/ South Boulevard alrcad) constitute a notable bottleneck and a ith recent ;ncreases in the area's residential densii•:, a maior -ealignment of this intersection is alrcad% justified. 'the dual CTA and Tetra viaducts also lit -nit t 2f c capacity. The call to wulcn streets and to replace the viaducts at municipal (rather than RTA ) expense %% ill Increase if a marina is built. 'flue Chicago Avenue building boom is not %ct rue, Its course and already strained the South Etiansion's fabric. Adding to congestion with cor-strilc-uon of a marina before the full iinpact that several hundred newly constructed housing units h25 upon area congestion cannot be a Hise course of action. AN ECONOMIC ASSESSNE\T OF TEIE-: PROPOSED EVAN'STON IARINA PROJEC-T FINANCIAL SU.M.MARY An cs nin;t:e of the innr:na'� :umulativc cost in hard dollar= :o •i-c Goveminettt of the City of Evanston may be calculated a_ :oPows- Corp of Engineers project esurnate 520,000.000 Constru.::on reset ve (10' � t 2.000,000 Requrcid non —manna expenses (sewers. etc) 2,350.000 Cost of issuance (15`,) 3.650.000 Principal amount of bonds to be repaid 525.000•000 Interest and financial charges 12,6S2.575 Foregone Ad Valorem Taxes (General Fund only) 4.600,000 Foregone sales'faxes 500.000 Total Capital Cost $45,782,575 As stated above. this is a base case using conservative assumptions. It does not include: • Social costs of congestion and pollution as with a traditional cost -benefit analysis. • Loss of ad valorein tax revenues to the Cite of Esanston except to the General Fund • Loss cif ad valorem tax revenues or to other local taxini bodies, • I'lanninc • Cost ovcr-runs abo%c the Corp of latginecrs' estimate • Aesthetic or parkland improvements; street and road redesign; or project change orders. • Expected operating losses due to storm damage or high dredging costs. • Ongoing General Fund costs incurred due to increased policing, snow removal, street repaid, administration legal, insurance or other increased municipal costs. VA"I'p, Don Gordon Citizens for Lakefront Preservation Roqers Park 4911h Ward "Leave it as it is You cannot ir-crcve on it not a bit The Ages have been at work on it and Man - Man can only mar 1 would have loved to have au P:^ •ed those words but I didn't. Tney're the immortal words of Tedder Roosevelt, uttered from his bully pulpit nearly a hundred years ago in describing the Grand Canyon. So today, we too are faced with the challenge of preserving our litt'e stretch of wilderness. We're not done Fighting this marina, but the residents of Rogers Park have moved on — soon to publish our Rogers Park Plan, a grassroots effort to create a vision for our parks and beaches that when implemented will enhance and expand community green space and preserve and embellish our shoreline beaches. And Alderman Moran, Hell will freeze over before we consider a Lake Shore Drive or Lincoln Park North landfill extension as part of that Plan. One fundamental notion is that accessibility is the keystone of everything we do. One consistent theme has been the value of our beaches in defining the character of Rogers Park. And One recurring idea has been a continuous beach from Juneway to Loyola. Yes, Alderman Feldman, we too have our treasure — a mile and a half stretch of sandy beach from one end of our community to the other, Alderman Moran, do you see any beaches in this artistic rendering? If the City of Chicago has its way those beaches will be gone or severely restricted. And let's get one thing straight about Daniel Burnham, Alderman Moran. You'd think the only thing he ever wrote or said was 'Make no small plans.. " The fact is that he wrote the entire Plan of Chicago and that there was more in the draft that never got published than in the Plan itself. But most importantly, early on in the Plan — it's about this thick (show about 2 inches thick) and weighs in at about 3-4 pounds — on page 2 or 3 he very specifically makes note of the fact that the Plan will take years to implement and that he fully expected new ideas to come up. And he stated that new ideas, when justified, should be considered. He NEVER saw the Plan of Chicago — the Burnham Plan — as written in stone. It's been almost a hundred years since it was published and stilt much of the Plan remains to be done, but it's important to understand that he expected changes to his Plan and left it open that those ideas be considered, much as what we're doing today in Rogers Park. We are fulfilling his intentions. So, as a Committee, can you sit there and guarantee us, the residents of Rogers Park, that a marina and its concrete parking lot, jutting out at least 1/8 mile into our blue waters, won't restrict sand flow south and jeopardize our mile and a half of beaches? I doubt it. Can you sit there and tell us that you've considered the enormous cost of sand replenishment for that mile and a half stretch of beaches as part of the annual overhead in running a marina? I doubt iL And should your marina seriously diminish the beaches of Rogers Park, can you assure the residents of Evanston that you've factored in the years of litigation that will ensue from our community? (doubt it. The fact is. Marinas don't create open space. Marinas create private gated communities. The fact is, Marinas don't enhance public access. 1.1shr.as restrict a Thousand of residents cn ,' cur soulb-em b, ;rcer and thousa-as of residents on our northern border have litVia or no 'akefrcrt ac�ess - sa.e Soutn Beach, which you tried to close! — and June -may and Reefs beaches v.tich are far too small. Tnese residents need more space on our lakefront and a marina .sill only n,5` the amount of s_azze. The alternatives to a marina are so much more exciting, but more importantly, so much more accessible — and yes. they can generate revenue. We can recreate Calvary Beach, bringing back and preserving the sandy % mile of beach originally posited here years ago before the shortsighted and unnecessary expansion of Sheridan road to 4 lanes destroyed it. We can realize a spectacular natural setting of beach and blue water, migrating birds, fishing off a pier, swimming and sailing and kayaking. We can restore and enhance it and when we do, they will come — your residents and ours — and with them will come revenue from beach tokens, parking meters, sailboat and kayak storage, launch fees, fishing permits, shuttle buses and so much more. Yet — at costs to build that are far below the 20, 30 or even 40 million ftlars some estimate it wou;d cost to build your marina. And revenues -- revenues would be so much more predicable than might or might not come from what is left of the net proceeds of slip fees. Yes, it makes economic sense too. The citizens of Evanston and Rogers Park challenge you to seize the opportunity to create that dramatic shoreline open to ALL that, while generating revenue, respects the environment and the character of our two communities and provides open access for thousand of residents who need it, rather than a few hundred privileged non-residents. How can you NOT lake up this challenge we lay before you. It's TIME to leave the marina behind us. it's TIME to move on. `in wildness is the preservation of the world', so said Henry David Thoreau 150 years ago. The `Rough Rider understood that concept quite well when he delivered an Arbor Day message from his bully pulpit on April 15", 1907 to the school children of the United States. A message that so loudly reverberates in what we do here today... 'We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed, and because of that want, you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.. So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of fife." Will our children reproach us for what we do here today? Or will they thank us? It's your decision. Thank -you aaa0 1. Make Sure Your Elected Officials Pav Attention to Your Interests W.1h the nAxt aldermanic elections less than a year ay.ay, it is time to demand that those who represent our communih• be responsive to our no.-�-!s and concerns. As sic",ards of our envucinrnFntai and financial resources, Evanston's elected orficials are responsible for protecting the lakefront and preserving its use for all citizens as well as for investing our tax dollars wisely. if they are not acting responsibly —or paving attention to all our best interests --then it is up to us to hold them acccuntable. Thoughtful development can benefit everyone. A marina pill not. !►lake your voice heard. Contact your alderman, the mayor. and your congressional representatives to share your vimv5 about the proposed marina. Stay informed about what's happening on this issue and come out to City_ Council and committee meetings. For contact information and marina updates, check out w,itiv.lakefrontpreservation.org or call us at 847.604.0784. Marina Alert In the spring of 2004, the Army Corps of Engineers presented the results of its Phase t Marina Study to the Evanston City Counr.,:. Given the findings, 3rd Ward Alderman Melissa Wynne made a motion to put an end to funkier study of this issue•. Aldermen Feldman, �jNewman, and Tisdahl supported this motion, but aldermen Rainey, Eernstem. Moran,`and jean -Baptiste voted, along wah '.Mayor Morton, to continue discussing the idea of creating a marina in southeast Evanston Alderman Kent was absent. The City Council asked membe-s of the Health and Human Services Committee to recommend whether the city should invest more time, energy, and money in studying this matter. The proposed marina is now expected to be on the committee's agenda on Monday, October 4 Here are some of they reasons way all Evanston residents —not just those who live along the lakefront —need to join together t••, stop a marina from tTing built in Evanston. r'Alizens for L.akefrant_ Prose rvat,on P�o. Sox lac, . "Citizens for Evanston,L60204 - :�k�i�rtaEnt .;�reserviaticn - �.- ;" RO. Box 6401,• !=-vanstor►. tl_ b020A ct: `r:�.':•' ? 847.604.0784 r. wruwlakefrontpreservalimorg • thick emw.lakcfrontpresenation.o; If You're- Concerned About',-- Here's What You Should Know... Your heslth and :here ha.e rrc•e hrach closings the health' of - vi.ia N, ='• ;}ue t.; high te,r.s t,f e.col, and other bacteria. noun children 1, r:ailse e.rut. ^rot; in the •.,•arm, stagnant waters That nant 3 : marina, can [rraie• building a mans an EVanSIOn'S 01-ge, •,,Uu!c increasr tt,r thrt:.a: to sxirnmero' '« f,c:,4dt ,.ru:."C• f.,.aucncp rK �!•ad: rh.•tdo,yns. i;;c; and of s.:.i}s. [hcmr�ais used in - i.,at ci+- wcs-ti :. oo-1:.ls wj,:C and food refuse = _ ,}.tint rd rn;sn•,r! rna1 also enct-'Invrr people's health. 'foist!, traffic, pollution;, - , - and outer. J, environmental - issues Keeping ' •��.-sue. ,. lakefrocst,>,t{��. . accessilil, xo evcryone� " �" • TI,r I,r,,p 4j,erl marina v.-: tc -Pt he f; small saillvats. I:.:ou!� pro. rL!V SUPS fOr 352 OF m01C 20-50400t rnutorrzEt: ir)W_ and yachts and a 31 G-car parking t,-t ran a 24-acre landfill. Hun&tcis of loud engines •.. motel generate a lot o� Mlse and exhaust fumes. • A marina s.ould likely ircreas^ traffic along 9ieridan Road, Chicago A.e- uc, Oakton, and South Vuulevard—causing delays and leading frustrated' drners to use irss-congested residen!W sheets. • T he proposed marina and Iand''ill would bluck the ria'ural ertft of sand and other st�diment. This blockage could result in ttw erosion of beaches to our south and v%%:essive build up of sand and sedirnen: at beaches . iorthw ird. • If ,t marina is buill In southeast Evanston, there is no guarantee it would he open to everyonn_ in tact, boat siip% could he put on site as private property! • Ad,.Lng 380 or more large, motorized boats and yachts to our fake tisould create traffic and turbulence on the ,.titer. i oie-nt;ally threatening ti+p safehf and enjoyment ui Suntrsh anrf i.Jser 534015, kayakers, eanotrrs, and c: 111d) .Urfvrl. .tie- _•t:�"•-, h�^4:`� `r� -: IfrYou'reri -` Copt -erne �l :Hoff ddlIar'Y.�"�re i A �;.rr.. ♦ fir: rf _i. •. h..' --- Here's What You Should Know... SiG0,000 of federal taxpayer nionin lm% already urs'r, spen? studying whether to build a marina n Evanston. If our aldermen vote to study this project turther, it wnu:d cost at least another S300,t3G0--I1;11i or ;tihich must come out of Evanswn's pocket. If a rrohna is built, tax dalars that could h,;vc bM) ust:d to trn;yro.e scllools, roads, ur community i afety t.xruld be usrd to pav for marina maintenance ,anti policing, • A rna-Ina is not tlae anss.vr lu reirevrng nu• tax hurden !n fa,r, a marina count n�okv it ssurse. To i;et the mono to bu,td a marina, the city +could likely sell bonds But because there is no promise that a marina ++ould prmide a steady or adequate source of repayment, investors wyoutd almost certainty require c.ty officials to guarantee the bonds with the promise of a tax levy on Evanston property owners. That means that whenever marina expenses %vent beyond profits, +ot. Would titL1 stuck paying higher taxes, • A marina would not generate real profits anytime in the near future. The Army Carps of Engineers estimate, that it stiouid cost $20 million to construct the marina and a hefty sum annually to maintain it. 131A their estimates do not include all the marina cuistroctiun and maintenance expenses, such as the cost to create the landrrll and regularly dredge the harWr. • )ust as 's nth TIN, d profits were generated, they mulct still take }cars to begin offsetting the nrian:ial pressure. Evanston and its schools are iacartg. • E.anston citizens have alrq:idy said, `%Ve dun't s.ant it marina!' The survey results frunr lhr Arrny Curps of Engineers' study resealed that an oticri%helmiog rnajorl,v of Evanston resitien!s art strongly apposed to a ma•,na. • Nearly one thousand Evanston residents h ave signed petitions and expressed objections to sperding any more time or money on this project. But haif of our city's aldermen remain "undecided' on this issue — or, worse, claim that it doesn't affect thr:ir Community and therefore doesn't concern them. zvz,t7zv.evanstoilli-iiarina,,co-in There is rn important need in E-r ans.on for current, comprehensive and unbiased ir7f6077atiorl about ,he proposed Marino. The evonston marina. con7 website is dedicated to the open exchange of information, ideas and opinions on the subject. We claim no bias for or against, save a bias against any who are unwilling to at least consider the proposal. Our mission is to provide a fair means for all interested parties to discover the his- tory, facts and current status of the Marina debate. We promote the open exchange of information in the following ways: The Forum section is open the the public and the postings are unedited. (Please be respectful in your comments) The Image area offers the opportunity to download or upload any image that any visitor may deem relevant We offer you an opportunity to send a quick, pre -written email to our elected officials, either for, neutral or against You may subscribe to our email list for quick, important updates via our Evan- ston Marina Newsletter We offer an "Open Letter" section for those of you who may ivish to express a particularly well considered opinion. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBER ABSENT: CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, January 3, 2005 Civic Center - Roam 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein, Jean -Baptiste, Newman, and Tisdahl Alderman Feldman STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Ellen Szymanski, Harvey Saver, Sara Schmitt, Vince Jones, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Moran, Pat Vance, Supervisor, Rosemary Jean -Paul , Executive Director, (Evanston Township) Irwin Lyons, Township Auditor; Sue Canter, Jane Grover. Gilbert Krulee, (Mental Health Board); Steve Lufton, Derek Supple, (Evanston Environmental Board); Robert J. Romain, (Board of Ethics); Francis Seidman (Evanston Commission on Aging) PRESIDING: CALL TO ORDER Alderman Jean -Baptiste Aiderman .lean -Baptiste wished everyone a happy new year and called the January 3, 2005 meeting of the Human Services Committee to order at 7:12 p.m. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted before going forward Mr. Terry had an announcement to make. Mr. Terry announced that unfortunately this morning Mr. Gaynor had to attend a funeral in Detroit and for the last 4 hours has been stranded in the Detroit Airport. it has been requested that the Parks Ordinance, Item Number 7 on the agenda. be withdrawn from tonight's agenda to be put on the February Human Services Committee agenda. It. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE OCTOBER 4 2004, MEETING The minutes of the October 4, 2004. meetinq was called and unanimousiv approved 14.01. ill. CONSIDERATION OF FISCAL YEAR 2004 ANNUAL AUDIT OF THE TOWNSHIP Irwin Lyons, of Miller, Cooper and Company, noted that he would like to mention a couple of quick things in regard to the Annual Report and would identify the items by the page numbers. On pages 1 and 2, is their opinion on the financial statements, which is an unqualified opinion and the highest level of assurance that we can give on the financial statements. The rest of the report is basically management's representations and the financial statements. Also, under this new reporting format that took effect a few years ago the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) No. 34, changed the format at that time. There is also a management discussion and an analysis letter on Pages 3 through 7, which is basically an executive summary of the financial information in the report with some comparative Information Page 1. pointing out some highlights of some major changes bero%een Oe years The last thing he wished to point out is in the footnotes vehich cc from Pages 4 3-26. There is a substantial amount cf information on the Township accounting policies and detailed expanaticns of some of the accounts. Also. the conversicn bet,veen the modified accrual basis to the Fund Account+na and the full accrual basis that the entity wide statements presented, are to him the general accepted accounting requirements Tha: is just a general overviev: of the statements if there are any specific questions he can address those, if not there are tiro letters that go with this audit The first letter says, -This letter is intended to inform the Tc.vnship Board cf Trustees' these are required disclosures fro- the au:!itirng standards as the auditors reporting to the Board and they cover the various things as far as what standards we use. If there were estimates, and there were a number, on the audit that we assist the Township annually in adjusting from cash to accrual and some of the GASB 34 adjustments. There was one minor adjustment that was found during the audit but not recorded seeing that it was not worthy material There are highlights on some new standards that are going to be effective over the next couple years and some general disclosures that we didn't find any difficulties in completing the audit or any disagreements with management; those are the required disclosures to the Board. The other letter includes comments and suggestions and in effect our management letter that has three comments from the current year with one carry over and six items from prior letters that were cleared One of the things we do on the management letter is when we do the next year's audit we start out to make sure that the items that were in the letter, if they were going to be addressed, they were and are not issues any more, those are the items on page 2. The six items that were cleared and the one item that's a repeat comment. This letter is basically on the level of an audit, these are really suggestions, and they're not critical types of issues. If there are things that are not going to be implemented that management and the Board agree that may not be a cost benefit, if there can be some formal response in the minutes then we don't have to keep repeating the point. If there is no action then we just carry it over to the next year. If there are any specific questions he can address those. Alderman Bernstein referred to value of assets in the audit and asked if they are going to be impacted at all. Mr. Lyons said it's been there and it's also a change in basic accounting. There are different types of governments that don't have the infrastructure like the City has with streets and things. There were the other assets that have to be depreciated that were never depreciated before. Alderman Bemstein said his question was what are our assets, furniture? Mr. Lyons responded, yes. Alderman Tisdahl said she wanted to thank you because under the prior years comments you repeatedly say that we need to be increasing the amount to be raised by taxation in order to prevent negative cash flow situations which she thinks is a reasonable comment to repeat. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the Township is currently in a negative cash flow other than the tax assessments going out late and if you are impacted by that. Ms. Vance said money is starting to come in but the amount that's expected could be less because of the high number of appeals.. Mr_ Lyons noted one thing about the property tax that affects the Township much more than the City is the property tax is the main, almost total, source of revenue and since that only comes in twice a year its not like the other inflows of revenue that the City has where there is income tax and sales tax and those monies that come in monthly. It's a more critical effect on the cash stow and if that's out of balance then it would be to the general purpose governments that have many other revenue sources. Alderman Bernstein added, we loan the Township money to cover their short term cash deficit. Page 2. Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion of approval for consideration of the Fiscal Year 2003-2004 Annual Audit of Evanston Township. Alderman Tisdahl motioned for acceptance. Motion seconded by Alderman Bernstein and unanimously approved (4.01. IV. CONSIDERATION OF TOWNSHIP DECEMBER 2004 MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernstein noted a question was raised about Christmas cards and asked how many were distributed Ms. Vance said they ordered 100 cards which were mainly distributed to their clients and a few were personally given out by staff. Alderman Bernstein asked who paid for the cards and the postage to which Ms. Vance said she presumes the person sending them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for any other questions regarding the December 2004 Township bills. Hearinq none Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a motion to approve the December 2004 Township bills. Alderman Bernstein motioned for approval, motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl and unanimously approved (4-0). V. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 55.0-04 ESTABLISHING A TOWNSHIP CODE OF ETHICS Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Kathleen Brenniman for a general overview of why we need to address this issue at this time and to explain some of the main features of this ordinance. Ms. Brenniman said the committee packet contained a cover memo that was also in the previous Council packet written by Ellen Szymanski and herself. Attached to that memo are two ordinances 54-0-04 which is the City's Ethics Ordinance and 55-0-04 which is the Township's Ethics Ordinance. These ordinances are mandated by changes that were made in the State statute requiring governmental entities to have and include in their ethics ordinance, or pass one if they didn't have one that dealt with gift ban issues and politcal activity. In Ordinance 54 we already have the City ordinance that deals with ethics and is why you see this as an amended ordinance including parts that were mandated by the State Act In Ordinance 55 you see a brand new ordinance for the Township because we currently do not have an ethics ordinance Ms Brenniman deferred to Ms. Szymanski and noted a member of the Ethics Board for the City who could answer any questions regarding that, is also in attendance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked how does the Ethics Board see implementation process wise with the Township. Ms. Brenniman noted that in Ordinance 55 the Township Ordinance there is an Independent Ethics Commission established which is made up of five members of the Board of Trustees from the Township which would function similarly to the Board of Ethics that administers the City Code of Ethics. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. Brenniman is saying there is going to be five Aldermen on this Commission as the Trustees of the Township are right here. Ms. Brenniman said that is how it's written right now. Mr. Terry called attention to Page 2, of Ordinance 55-0-04, where it says "five members appointed by the Township Trustees," it does not say specify who they are. Ms Brenniman noted the correction. Alderman Newman said he wanted to clarify what was going in the first citywide ordinance 54, and asked if the only changes are underlines and cross outs and wanted to knowjusl what has changed ids Szymanski said she would give some background on that and thought with the background of the political activities and a gift ban She believes that had its strength in the Illinois Secretary of Slate's matters in Page 3. criminal Offenses that made headlines for the better part of two years in Springfield and statewide as well as in the Cook County offices wherein allegabcns surfaced periodically that empfc fees are fo,c_d to bui tickets to help supp wt ce?tam elected officia:s The State then era_:ed p-ovisions that relat- tc prehiba pol,tica' act, vaies a-d gift bans In the Evanston ordinance v.e already have a very s;nngent prohibition on gift ban It bas._a,ly says that no one may accept an !tern of value from an•, oody That is st- cter ,ran t,ie provisions in Stale'ar, and incorporated in the ordinance as recommended by Lisa Madigan The only thing tt-a;­.%e would need to do on the gt4 ban is to expend it in add t on to employees, elected officials and members of Boards an: C:mmissions, who if need== :o expa-,d it to -nave �t applicable to spouses of those persons just enumerated as well as certain relatives livrno with you For example an Alderman's spouse is now subject to the State Ethics Ban as well as the City Ordinance, in addition the Alderman's brother-in-law or cousin or grandmother living with that Alderman and a number of other close relatives on a long list are now subject to the ordinance. Alderman Newman wanted to be clear on items in the City Ordinance. On page 2 there are two things underlined and then on page 3 there is something crossed out, he does not see anything else highlighted in the rest of the ordinance. Alderman Newman asked it this is our current ordinance where you're only suggesting that we have to make these changes. Ms. Szymanski said she would actually start back on page 2. Section 1-10-2. Section D that is underlined Alderman Newman said the other five now exist and the only change there is in the PURPOSE Section. Ms. Szymanski said in the next section 1-i O-4(B). which is what she just explained about spouses and certain immediate family members. The underlined part there is new, -In addition to the foregoing persons, Section 1.10-4(C) 5ofthis Code shallapplyto the spouse or immediate family members Irving with any officer or employee,' Alderman Tisdahl asked if the immediate family has to be living wdh you, to which Ms. Szymanski responded, yes they do. Alderman Newman then said, now they're covered by the code and asked if that means somebody can't give something to them. Alderman Tisdahl remarked that her granddaughter got some Dunkin Donut holes but she wasn't living with her, to which Ms Szymanski said this is probably for other reasons but that would be one of the reasons. Alderman Newman asked if a person living with an officer or an employee gets something, who has then violated the code that person or the elected official related to that person Ms. Szymanski thought the person to whom it is given if that person accepts it, if it's prohibited by the code, that person does. But it depends on the facts and circumstances especially the recipient. If the recipient is on the list of prohibited people and the gift in question is prohibited then the recipient does If it's given to the spouse but is really intended for the Alderman or the member of the Board or Commission or the employee it's a subterfuge then perhaps they both do, but she thinks all the facts and circumstances are needed. Giving it to the Alderman's wife trying to hide it when it's really for the Alderman would only come out after some investigation or other facts came to mind, it could ultimately reach to the Alderman or employee Alderman Newman said the Aldermen or employees are the only ones who have the ethical duties, spouses and people they're living with are misrelated, they're not elected Alderman Newman then said, what you're saying is if an Alderman's spouse and the City Manager's spouse gets something from somebody who wants something out of the City you cant say the City Manager's spouse has violated the code. You're going to have to say the Alderman or City Manager violated the code, and would this mean whether or not they have knowledge. Ms Szymanski said this states what the State law says it does extend it and make it applicable to the spouses and the family members. Alderman Bernstein said we have the responsibility of signing an ethics ordinance indicating we will follow the rules and to his knowledge a spouse has never signed Now according to this ordinance will spouses will have to sign and if not how Page 4. - , will we have lures _�_ticn if they haven't been reached to kno-r., their rights. Ms. Szymanski said is something that the Scard of Ethics tias ^c: d scjssed and needs to Mr Romain a_ reed and said it is concelvab!e that maybe . e rr,^yht c_r^e -r-.:h something *,-a, s_;s :hat the spouse or the immediate relatives also has to sign this as well Alderman Jea-;•6acnste asked if it is being suggested that this is language from the State law. I' ls. Szymanski ss;d tha is language ta�.en frcrn Lisa Madigan's recommended ordinance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said he would like to make a suggestion !-at ;t =_ :cssible that many of the spouses would not sign an Ethics Ordinance beca.,se tf.eywould rc; subject themselves to any sanctions anybody would seek to imp✓se on them. If it's recommended do we have to accept this as a Home Rule entity :o which Ms. Szymanski responded H:;n--e Rule is preempted, it is mandatory Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he wou!o suggest that we find a way to communicate back to the state to Lisa Madigan's office that this notion of extending this to close relatives who live with the elected official may not be something that we can really enforce and creates undo fear and concern. If you can prove that it was subterfuge that's an entirely different story and he is not comfortable x?th gc:ng forward with an Ethics Ordinance that subjects and involves our relatives. Ms. Szymanski said she understood Alderman Bernstein noted, in regard to political activity the taw says during any compensated time, does that mean if we perform political activities on company time and in the case of an Alderman or Trustee who is on 24 -- 7, does that mean he/she can't support Congresswoman Schakowsky for reelection. Ms. Szymanski said that means a person does not give up his or her civil rights simply because that person is an elected official or for that matter a City employee. Certainty there is no dispute that In a person's off time the person has the right to lend support. Alderman Bemstein said then is this only on time, we are exempt employees and do not have a salary. Mr. Romain said you can't do that under the auspices of this City. Alderman Bernstein said that means we can't utilize our office. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if that means we cannot join a list of endorsers, to which Mr. Romain said it does not mean that but you cannot use your facilities. Alderman Newnan asked if all this is in our current ordinance. Ms Szymanski responded, Alderman Newman asked her that question directly early on and she did not answer It In retrospect she wished she had underlined more fully or explained what is new and she is now referring to Ordinance 54, page 5 which is new. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if Ms Szymanski means 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 Ms Szymanski said she now realizes why this is confusing without at least an explanatory note, but she started out underlining very line and it became almost impossible. Alderman Newman asked if Ms. Szymanski is saying from 5 on is mandatory upon all municipalities, to which Ms. Szymanski responded, yes she is. Alderman Newman said then this is mandated and signed by the Govemor and we are asked to look at that. Alderman Bernstein asked if this is extrapolated from that, to which R9s. Szymanski responded, yes verbatim. Alderman Newman asked if this also applies to the legislature, to which Ms Szymanski said all Stale government whether they're treasurers, attorneys, state troepers, or legislators Ms. Brenniman noted even Home Rule municipalities must adopt the legislation on prohibited political activities and gift ban at least as strict as the State statute, you may go stricter but you may not be less strict This Included Home Rule, so we are preempted from being less strict. Alderman Newman asked when was the statute passed and what amount of time do we have in order to comply with this new statute that none of us have seen but is evidently out there, also do we have the opportunity to further try to understand this, because it has some very interesting language in it. Ms. Szymanski said actually the Ethics Code was prescribed by the State to have been adopted no later than June of 2004. Alderman Newman asked if they could close us Page 5. down right r7A, : _cause -,%a did not do the ethics. i.1s Szymanskt thcught with respect our Ethics ordinance it is certainly on the use ta- a': -_ugh it does not extend to the spc::ses and family members living with you. The gift ban pretty much . complies ,%—n S:a:e ta:: as it is and as the ethics has ,nierwelad it f,-r you because it is a virtual ban on everything Alderman Ne.%--•an asked, in terms of getting the rest of tnese pr;hititive irclitTcal actiones, are they all part of the ordinance, a^-- ! *,t-en were • e supposed to have cone that ?As Szymanski said by ,tune 2004, to which Alderman Newman nc;_c .%e are already 6 months late Ms Szymanski sa.d v.e are except that our ordinance as the Board of Ethics has - :=rY.=t_. it .vas prohibiting using the po.%er of ones pclitical :ffice for imprcper purposes, so the sense cf the state la•,v is a'rea.y in there but we do feel that additional changes are necessaryto comportwith the state law and that we present this t: ycu i.is. Brenniman added, as far as the To�::nship is concerned they have not previously had an ordinance, this is all new for them. This is why the Township ordinance is fairly lengthy, because she included not only the requirements rcm the State statute but all the other provisions from the City Ethics Code in terms of implementation setting up the Board of Ethics so that both of the ordinances as far as their implementation and operation will be consistent. Alderman Bernstein said when he reviewed this for tonight he only looked at the underlines and whether he could live with those and wants to look at this further before he obligates the other vote. As far as we're concerned we're already 6 'l: months overdue Ms. Brenniman said if you look and read through Ordinance 55 of the Township, that will give you an excellent sense of exactly what the City Ethics Code is now plus the additions. Alderman Bernstein said he could see replicating the 0V/'s ordinance with the Township and was ready to say okay, with these modifications, but now you're telling us there are things in there that we have to consider and look at. Ms. Szymanski wanted to call to your attention that after you have looked at it and looked through the gift ban provisions in particular. You will notice there are allowances made for the acceptance of certain gifts, gratuities and benefits. In fact we discussed with the Board of Ethics that we believe the reason for that was a little more articulated underneath the legislation that we see is the violation of the gift ban provis-on in local ordinances as well as State law are now misdemeanors and do carry a possible jail sentence of up to 364 days in jail Alderman Newman asked if that was part of the statute that went into effect June of 2004 and thanks for telling us fv1s. Szymanski said she thought the reason for the State law having allowances for things that persons can accept is if you make a mistake you're subject to be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and in some cases that could mean jeopardizing a professional license Alderman Newman asked where the part that you can't accept is located, to which Ms. Szymanski responded Ordinance 54, page 8 and carries over to page 9 where Section C says the gift ban, " is not applicable to the foilowing " In other words on this list C- 1, 2. 3, etc, a person can accept these. This is straight from State law We can be stricter but we're presenting it to you again because the Board of Ethics was concerned that violations are subject to being prosecuted as a misdemeanor. We wanted you to be aware of what State law gives an allowance to the maneuvering of Alderman Tisdahl said that might be alright but questioned being prohibited from making political contributions. tinder 2, any contribution lav,iully made under the election code, to which Ms Szymanski noted it is not considered a gift, Alderman Tisdahl said if it is a contribution to a candidate who is running for office then its okay, to which Ms. Szymanski responded, yes. Alderman Tisdahl had a last question on this and asked if someone who is a City employee, for example a Fireman, helps in an Aldermanic campaign but not during the time he or she is working and being paid, is that ethical or unethical. Ms Szymanski said if it is not on compensated time then it is permissible. Again going back to what was said Page 6. earlier, Just tre:caose persons serYed in government does rot cars e thern to automatically I:se ail of their evil rights They can be limiter as to time that they can `-e eyercised butyou ton, ccmpl=_tely lose those rights Mr. Terry had mo comments, one on Ordinance 54 on beralf cf ether City staff •r:ho are staff to City Boards and Commissions ard the slippery slope that Alderman Bernstein ta'�red about w1nen you're weanrg your Aldermanic hats that strikes us as an p: en more slippery sore irJhen are you acting as a member of a City Board or Commission and when are you not it te-rns of the acn:.in,stration of this law. In terms of Ordinance 5 page 2, we probably should have some discussion about the mechanism whereby the Township Board of Ethics would be appointed because it says the Trustees appoint 5, the Supervisor designates the Chairman We currently don't have a mechanism •.hereby the Trustees as a body can appoint anybody Nis. Brerimman said if you don't want the Township Supervisor to designate the Chairman we can write that +n. She just put that in because that was a suggestion for Township ordinances, but there is no requirement that the Township Supervisor designates the Chairman and Were is no requirement that you have 5 members either. That was a model on which she based this Alderman Newman sa;d it replicates what the City Council does: lets the Mayor make the appointments Mr. Terry said the Mayor solicits nominations: the Mayor makes appointments which the Council advises. We don't have a similar mechanism in place for Township form of government. He is just saying the ordinance might suggest what that mechanism would be because we clearty do not have one. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste then asked that we receive a copy of the law, to vMtch Ms. Brenniman said it can be put into the packets for the Council meeting if you would like to have it ahead of time. Alderman Newman made a reference to Ordinance 54. page 10, number 10, and asked if this is a change from our present ordinance, to which Ms. Szymanski said, yes it is Alderman Newman went on to say there seems to be a lot more detail in this than there is in our present ordinance and there needs to be some education here We need something to tell us what changes are occurring to our ordinance in terms of what we have now and what we are going to have, as your said we do not have a choice we have to go to this because the legislation is applied to everybody. Ms. Brenniman said what you have in the gift ban section in both ordinances is really a more lenient version For Ordinance 54, on the top of page 9, subsection B, you have the straight ban and what you can't do then you have all the exceptions to that which are liberalized in that section As Ms Szymanski said the reasoning behind this is when the State legislators drafted this it was because you now have a misdemeanor penalty tied in here and they're going to be more lenient in the exceptions. Previously there were none. Alderman Newman said looking at number 10, what does that mean, you have to have more than 575 00 in a day to be a violation. his Szymanski said that's what the State law allo-. s, the current Ethics Code prohibits accepting anything of value and over the years the Board of Ethics in the absence of any dollar amount or other guideline in the ordinance has interpreted that to mean of a nominal value Under the current ordinance she does believe that a person who is attending a seminar could partake of sand-mches and coffee as those are available to all attendees. In this, however, they do put a dollar amount on it Alderman Bernstein noted looking at Ordinance 54, which he guesses is the same in Ordinance 55, the definition in A talks about having monetary value when indeed we can't accept anything of a valuable gift. You're not modifying valuable what does that mean, you're adding another element, he was referring to the second sentence of number B. Ms. Szymanski said she sees what you are talking about and will look into that and let you know her findings. Page 7. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste remarked it seems that we have certain thir,cs tat are mandated and as you said at this point are pr000sed. yet you also said uley are signed into law L y ;he government Alderman Newman said what he is not sure about is if we were to ador: this lieu of our present crdinance in scree ;.a; s 'eie might be liberalizing what via currently have because of the exceptior. to which his Szyr^anski said that is abso:uWy correct Alderman Newman thought we somehoei need to create a •.vay :hat we understand ;irere we are right now and,.,.here we're going and if you don't have the present ordinance it s preµj nard to understand that you're bas.cally saying is because of all the exceptions in C that might make it a less ordinance than EL anston currently has He thinks this needs to be explained to the Council so we understand it. Maybe this makes more sense than what he nove have, maybe it doesn't, but unless you have both of them you don't knee+ what you're doing. Alderman Trsdahl thought this would end up more restrictive no matter which one we have because of the jail time. Ms. Brenniman said Alderman Tisdahl is right the penalties are more restrictive, to which Alderman Newman added a violabon has more potential harm. Alderman Jean -Baptiste proposed taking 15 minutes of this Mondays Council meeting to explain the difference. Ms. Szymanski said it's a question of when you want them to be prepared to come back to you and asked it that is for this coming Monday. Alderman Newman said what you need to be ready to do is explain the legislative historyof this and also explain to the Council what the implications are if we adopt this in lieu of our present ordinance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we have no choice but to adopt it, to which Alderman Newman agreed but said we should understand how it's changing our present ordinance. One way is the criminal penalties, that's obviously a change, but in other ways it's putting clear definitions as to what you can and can't do and we should understand all those changes. In fact the entire staff should understand it somehow if they can because it applies to everyone who works in the City. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said maybe Monday the first 15 minutes of Council session you can do a presentation of the legislative history and the differences between the old and the new ordinances to know what we are looking at. Then at the next Council meeting we can deliberate over it all ask questions and move to adopt. Alderman Newman said there is also a need, if we adopt it, for an education program for the 800 or 900 City employees as they too have to understand what their obligations are. Mr, Romain did not think 15 minutes was enough time to go through this to which Alderman Bernstein added he did not think a week was enough time to get this all together. Alderman Newman thought an hour should be taken to enable us to understand this as this is important for elected officials as well as for City employees to understand this and the changes being made. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then said to Ms. Szymanski and Ms. Brenniman, you will not be prepared for this coming Monday to make this presentation, it will take place at the following meeting. Alderman Newman said he thought we need the legislative history, an explanation of how it is changing in terms of penalties and in terms of conduct that is acceptable and unacceptable. Then after that we need to hear some type of educational program for all the employees of the City because this also applies to them and they too have to understand what they're subject to and what the law is here. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this will come back in the packet this week He thinks we need to have a cover memo in terms of what was discussed today and if you have the State statute you can attach it for those of us to begin to look at this a little closer. Mr. Terry said Ordinance 55 was referred back here so you're holding Ordinance 55 in committee and Ordinance 54 is where we are right now. Ms. Szymanski said Ordinance 54 has been introduced and asked if there is something on that you would rather do at a committee level. Alderman Newman said the problem with doing it on a committee level is not everybody is at that committee Ms. Szymanski said they had hoped to get it on the Rules Committee. Alderman Page 8. Newman thought th-s aught to be dJ^e fir the entire Council Ms. Brenniman said both of the ordinances have been introduced to which Mr Terry, added O­1`nance 55 was referred back to this committee alderman Newman asked if there is any ccfference bere.een Ordinance 55 and the City's Ordinance other than the amendments fills Brenn-rian sa-d if you adopt the amendments tc Ordinance =4 and if you adopt Ordinance 55 in its entirety you will have hvo identical Ethics Ordinances cne that apples to the C-ry an:i one that applies to the Township except for Number 4 Alderman Ne;vrran asked why can't we say the City Ethics Ordinance is the Township Ethics Ordinance, to which Ms. Brenniman said you could do that Alderman Newman wman asked &hy we would viant to create another Board when have a Board as that makes no sense to h,m Ms Brenniman said the reason is the model that she used was written this way because we are unusual in that we are coterminous and the TcrmsNp for which this ordinance was ordinarily written is an independent and not coterminous Alderman Ne,.%-man suggested an amendment that the City Ethics Board also be the Ethics Board for the Township of Evanston to which Alderman Tisdahl agreed Mr. Romain said it was suggested in the committee on more than one occasion and was decided that it should be the Council's decision to do that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said then the members of the Ethics Board don't have a problem with that. Alderman Bernstein said if we do create two Boards then we could shop from over to the other. to which Ms. Szymanski said that is why it has to be the same Board. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to close the discussion on this issue as this will go in the packetwith the State statute and a summary of what occurred here tonight Two weeks from next Monday we will have a presentation on our agenda which should reflect allowing that kind of space and then we will go from there. Ms. Vance said before ending the Township business she just wanted to introduce the new Executive Director of the Evanston Township General Assistance Rosemary Jean -Paul. The committee welcomed Ms. Jean -Paul. Alderman Newman was pleased to seethe cases are down to 69 cases and asked how come we're down. Ms. Jean -Paul said a lot of clients aren't coming back and being dropped off and getting on disability which is why the drop in caseload Alderman Newman said that's about as low as we re been in a long time which means things are going good, thank you very much. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said speaking of things coming along good, those who are being dropped off are not being without services but being self determinative at this point. Alderman Newman said he was talking from a budget standpoint IV. DISCUSSION WITH MENTAL HEALTH BOARD RE: FUNDING ALLOCATIONS AND 2005 PRIORITIES Sue Cantor. Current Chair of the Mental Health Board introduced other members of the Board associated peoplewho are here tonight. Gilbert Krulee, member of the Board and Jane Grover, past Chair and Board Member, Sara Smith, University of Chicago intern, who is working with Harvey Saver this year and of course, Harvey Saver who everyone knows Ms. Cantor said tonight they would like to review the information in your packet to see if you have any questions which everyone is available to answer. First of all before beginning, she would like to say she's sorry Alderman Feldman is not here tonight as the Mental Health Board wants to thank him very much for his past support of the Board. We know he's going to be retiring in April of 2005, after 18 years of service, and part of that time he was Aldermanic liaison to the Mental Health Board working very closely %rth the Board, which was before she was a member. Alderman Feldman has always been a great supporter of mental health issues and the Board wanted to thank him for all his support and vnsh him good luck Ms Cantor asked that this be included in the minutes and perhaps we can thank him in person at another time. Page 9. Ms. Cantor noted the Mental Health Board adopted recommendatz,rs for allocation of $828,900 for Human Services funding for 27 programs rn 19 agencies. the same amount that was a!:ocated last year. We again found that the process was pretty diff-cu:t The requests for funding were :gyp in number and amounts with no increase in available funding. In fact in fiscal year 200-20 1 the total dollars available fcr the Carr General Fund decreased from S1,058.000 to the current level of $328,900. a reduction of 22% for each of the cast 3 years. Tne details regarding the funding of each of the 27 programs are included in } our pa_i.ets, b:rt at this t:M _ she is not gcing ,nta that. One of the th.ngs we would like to tell the committee about is the funding process itself This year it had several stages, and anew step was put in place where the Board met prior to the hearings to review all of the proposals and questions were developed for all the agencies from the review of the proposals. The questions Kere submitted to each agency prior to the heanng and at the hearings the agencies responded to the Boards specific questions when presenting their proposals. The Board felt that was a very helpful addition to the funding process from which the Board learned a lot of unique information about each agency that way. The questions were less global and more specific They then had two allocation hearings, one with the United Way for the agencies that we both fund and then one for each of these agencies just funded by the Mental Health Board. Of course allocation recommendations and the decisions that we made were based on quarterly report performance and also the ongoing liaison relationships we have with each agency. The allocations were not just based on the proposal presentations of such. We were very happy that we were able to recommend funding for anew program in Evanston, the Community Living Options of the Center for Independent Futures. This agency provides housing for young adults with mild to moderate developmental disabilities. These are adults who are not eligible for community housing supported by the state, As you know Illinois ranks 47" in the nation in providing services to this population and still relies very heavily on institutional care. The Center for Independent Futures program allows adults with disabilities to live independently as part of the community and at the same time receive the support they need to be as independent as possible_ As far as our activities and accomplishments over the past year, in the area of community education we're involved in sponsoring, coordinating, and/or assisting in the production of four community conferences. Again, specific information about that is included in the packet Also Mr. Saver developed a training program for uniformed police officers and library staff on individuals who are mentally ill and trying to get them involved teaching them how to act as emergency medical services in the community when necessary. This was quite successful Regarding the agency monitoring and allocation process, the Board talked about that for a couple of years but is currently focusing hard on increasing our objectivity in making funding decisions so that we can more easily track the progress of funding agencies This past year we completed a revision of the agency quarterly report format and made revisions to the funding proposal guidelines What the Board is looking for from the agencies are goals and measurable outcomes which would more clearly indicate how the work of the agency was making a difference for the clients they serve, rather than telling us how many they serve, and what they were able to change in the lives of their clients. This has become a general trend in funders due to more limited dollars and increased requests. The measurable outcomes allow funders to increase their objectivity when making their awards and agencies need to show how they make a difference in order to be competitive, In July of 2004 we held an in-service for the Evanston agencies requesting funds for 2005-06, at which lime we reviewed the changes in the forms and provided them information and some resources on how to develop measurable outcomes. Page 10, • We were quite pleased -.%nth the results Some agencies that had not previously presented outcome cl%ectives in their proposals used them for the first time Other a_enc,es that had previously reported data such as numners cf people served or that type of data. modified their goal- to describe specific desired changes and client oehavic• Another focus of the Board was Board development, part of which was brought on by the fact that after the consolidation we had a number of agencies on our plate that we were not as familiar with because they were not puretr mentat health agencies We tried to broaden our knowledge about numan sere ice agencies in general and what they do. Eight presentations were heard this year and fAr Terry provided us with a book about funding and nonprofits which the Board read and got some good ideas about funding, allocation, and objectivity in making decisions. The Board has two basic goals for the coming year, which is actually a continuation of what we've been working on and are directed towards further refining the funding process. The first goal is to review our current priorities and broaden them to more clearly embrace a wider vision of human services in the community and at the same time still want to keep our distinction as a 708 Board and the Local Mental Health Authority in the community. Pulling all that together is one big project the Board is working on The second goal is help us increase our objectivity in making funding decisions. We are planning to develop some rating scales designed to evaluate agency performance and hope to have those ready for the next funding cycle. Of course, we will continue focusing on Board development and the ongoing Faison work with our agencies. That is pretty much an overview of what the Mental Health Board has been doing. If you have any questions we will be glad to answer them. Alderman Bernstein asked when you've provided this model rate scale if Sally Lufkin could be given a copy for CDBG to incorporate it. Ms Cantor said the Board is just starting work on it now. They have set up a committee that will meet for the first time this month They received a lot of models from a variety of sources, mainly from Mr Saver and a few other people, that they want to review to find something simple but something that everyone can use Alderman Bernstein said he liked your idea not of how many served but how well they were served which is actually important and the most difficult thing to come up with. We try to get the best bang for the limited buck. Alderman Newman remarked in this report it sounds like the Evanston Community Defender eliminated their social service program. Ms. Cantor said they didn't eliminate it but they asked us not to fund that part. Alderman Newman then asked how this came about and if they are still doing it. Me. Cantor responded, yes, from what she understands they felt it was easier for them to obtain funding from other sources for that program and they wanted us to put our funding into the legal services program which apparently is much more difficult to obtain funding for, which is what we did. Alderman Newman said then they ended up getting a decrease of $14,600, to which Ms. Cantor responded, yes. overa:1 they did. Alderman Newman asked if they requested taking the $IS. 000 and putting into the legal services for them Ms Cantor thought that probably would have been their first choice, to which Alderman Newman said that was their choice and by making that request they ended up getting $14,000 less. Ms Cantor responded, yes, they received a cut and part of that was due to some of the things the Board had noticed over the past number of years. One thing was they strongly encouraged them to took for other resources for their programming, but have not made much of an effort to go for other sources of funding. It seemed they really needed to do this and we felt for the funding we're putting into the program we were not getting the best kind of returns, other agencies could probably use the money more efficiently. Also, their objectives were not very client focused and did not describe outcomes. There were a number of reasons for this action and this was a decision Page 11. made by the Board, it was a Board recommendation based on their performance over a number of years. Alderman Ne•.%-nan said gorrg back a coupe of years he seemed to remember, to=ause the Humans Ser%ices Committee used to do this that BE HIVs annual budget was s,cm, ,cantly over 51,000 r_O a ;ear and we're sti:l giving them 55.000 Alderman Newman as;e.ea 4nat their total agency budget is at this point to which Ms Grover said she thought 55 0:•0 represented less than 1- cf, its t:,tal agency budget Alderman Newman noted they asked for 512,500 and wanted tc know if they are still Iccateo in Evanston, and ::as told they are Alde^man Bernstein noted they come in under the umbrel,a of the entire o,—anzatisr. ;.hich is :. by yc , ccr't understand v.nat they have I& Saver said at this time the; are marginally in Evanston, they moved to Chicago in Rogers Park somewhere near Morse and Ashland and the majority cf, their services are based there They still do have one program here. Alderman Newman said he was just trying to get a sense of 55,000 out of their $1.500,000. He supports very much what they've done in the past and what they do but it never made sense to him why they were getting money from Evanston because in his view they are a rich agency and there were so many people who wanted to fund it Even when the number of cases significantly vent down in Evanston they were still being funded by us and always wanted our money. This is a lot less, but it's hard for him to tell if this is S5.000 from mental health, are they still also getting CD money. Therefore he asks himself what is the point of S5.000. not that they don't provide a great service and everything else but do they even need our $5.000, which they probably really don't because of their ability to get funds. Now if you said that in the past you are against AIDS education. Mr. Terry said the Board had those very exact discussions. There is a strong feeling it's symbolic to totally wipe out funding for BEHIV is to somehow reflect a lack of commitment to the HIV Program. Alderman Newman said he did not think it does Ms, Grover said she thought the process will be refined given the trend We always thought an agency's ability to raise money needed to be taken into consideration in funding and BEHIV always seemed to have the ability. At one point didn't they get a significant amount of federal money, to which Alderman Bernstein interjected they don't get what they once did, nobody does. Alderman Newman said you have to take into account above and beyond the services because the services are generally all excellent, who else is funding, and what the state, federal, etc., is doing. He could never understand why BEHIV kept on coming back for money from the City of Evanston other than most agencies who start to get to gel money never want to give it up, which has been seen over the years. Ms. Cantor said the Board talked about BEHIV for a long time in making their decisions and did want to keep even a minimal amount of funding just symbolically because we do so support their effort. She is also in agreement with Ms. Grover as she bets it will be different next year which is why they made that recommendation. Ms. Grover said they did identify 2 out of 3 of the allocations that generated the most discussions in our decisions, one was BEHIV and the other was the new proposal. BEHIV because it s symbolic and the money is lust a drop in the bucket. Alderman Tisdale wanted to comment on a couple of the agencies, one would be Trilogy which was tremendously helpful when there was a problem in her ward with a young man whose mental health was deteriorating and he was engaged in more and more criminal activity The neighbors wanted police services and they wanted mental health services. Trilogy came and was very helpful The other comment is that .lane Doyle and the Center for Independent Living has been taken very well and accepted in her ward. There was some initial concern about just who was moving in. We had an open house with the Center, for everyone, and they have become a terrific addition to the neighborhood. Her last concern is about Community Defender's legal services and wanted you to know that when she was on the School Board they came to expulsion hearings which was a tremendously helpful element at the hearing. She felt student's rights were being respected and they were a very strong legal advocate for the students. They do that and do it very well, Also, they did solicit her for money Page 12. Alderman Bernstein said he has Is make a d:sciaimer that he was about a dozen year member of the Community Defender Board and be!ie%es :n whatthey do Escecially in light of bureaucracy moving to the right in the United States of America, legal services for cccr people are s:-nett-ing we can't afford In terms of the symbolic gesture for BEHIV. at CD it was argued tha! an agency .%-hich v;ould affect even 3 employees 55,000 to them makes an incredible different impact than 55.000 given to an agency just as a tnbute That's the concern he has with BEHIV Alderman Newman said for 14 years he's had a concern about funding the very wealthy agencies that are much more global at the expense of local ones that have much more troub'e raising funds. To share with you on the social work aspect of the Community Defender, this agency has always been subject to criticism and charges of duplication. The idea behind the social work aspect was to try to aet some connection between other agencies in town and some of these families who had a kid. because they're mostly doing juvenile work, try to get them to operate in the network they have rather than just having them be in court with the Public Defender who is completely overwhelmed and might not know anything about Evanston. The social work aspect was always been a very positive part of the Defender because there was going to be this effort to work with the families and work with the kids to try to get the help that they needed rather than just putting them through a criminal trial Mr. Terry said he thinks the City is in a very difficult position relative to the Community Defender. The Community Defender had no real success whatsoever in attracting private philanthropy. As we start our longitudinal reviews each year there has been a marginal decline of productivity. While there are other legal divisions it is in fact an essentially one person office and they can't do or don't do professional fundraising, or a whole host of things that other agencies can do. As this gradual decline occurs at what point do you say that the future is not a good one. What is the City's role in keeping them afloat for an extended period or what is the City's role in cutting them and saying their future is very bleak. These are questions he knows the Board has struggled with, staff has struggled with, and he notices that CD did reduce them. What the impact of this combined cut will be he does not know, but what is the long term future of that agency. Professionally speaking he would have to say he does not think it's great because they have just not attracted any philanthropy at all Alderman Newman asked what is the total package they received from the City, CD, and everything else right now. Mr. Terry said probably something around S80,000 Last fiscal year they ended either in a deficit or broke even but he thinks ho'.v they break even on paper is staff takes salary reductions. Frankly they have been reduced to a kind of 'ma and pa operation' and how much longer does that keep going, he does not know the answer to, but knows those are the questions we as funders face in looking at them Alderman Jean -Baptiste said from the outside we can see the value but there is not a lot of clear presentation in terms of what is being done now The philosophy is there when we hear that maybe they just need help organizing their outreach effort because he thinks that is where the problem lies. He does not know how they impressed the Mental Health Board with the value of what they do. although the CD Committee wants to see more continued but there is something lacking in terms of outreach and the pulling of as much resources as possible. Then the competition for the money becomes very competitive. Alderman Bernstein said he judges an agency's work in terms of how they interact with other agencies and that is one thing he would urge you to place into your model When he was on the Board he had spoken to many agencies that were Page 13. quietly without money, that had ma and pa ties to our fund our budget by not cashing their checks The commitment is there but the comet ,meet is also to interact and they have relat,onships -..ith PEER Services. u,ih Y O.U., with Youtn Jobs . Services, etc Act.iaily if you surveyed 't-ern YOU find ihey',.e is te�acted v.4h more aaenc+es than anyone else and tltey' ►e tieing modified of ,ghat they do over the years Historically recp:e didn t want to give mzmey tc representation cf gang oangers. Now they are marginally ser,ing the juvenile pcpulaton and we're trying to serve the entire individual by addressing the core of the problem rather than lust the =;riz case v:hich is the result of the problem. Those kinds of 'pings don't necessarily transfer or trans'a`e t:, cottom line b:;t •::hen he ,. -was very deeply m,.olved ,.%­ h them peop'e v.,hc they represented believed that they had their day in court, people represented by the Public Defender didn't. The Public Defender never kept any records but what vie tracked was far less than one's clients would believe, if they were given an opportunity. Maybe they messed up, but they paid their debt, they o•ere represented to the fullest extent. Legal services are not sexy to fund, AIDS research is sexy to fund. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is a marketing kind of thing to which Alderman Bernstein added the law firms are now stating pro bona sexist historically is used to give a bone to legal services. Even legal aid now sees what's happening with all the cutbacks in Washington, that to him is a real problem. In his practice he sees how many people are in need of legal services, how many people come into our offices and how much advise we give away free, probably as much or more than we get paid for. Mr. Saver wanted to clarify two things, in terms of discussion they're still functioning and one of the things they did was develop a funding relationship with Y.O. U on one of their family arraignments. They are providing a particular component and got some additional funding specificalty for the person who works the component which is why he felt they could leave that money out. They asked for significantly more than they actually had in hand from the Board. The Board did fund them which is what gave them more money toward legal services. Also, the Allocation Committee met several times just to go through this whole discussion Tt,ey had quite a few concerns about what was a significant follow up in the population that they re serving. As long as he can remember they always had a pretty steady population, between 120 to 140 people, projecting about 135 people. For the last three years that number dropped significantly and theywere down to about 70 or 80 people being served in the last year. Not only were the numbers down but they also didn't come anywhere near the projections that they kept reducing. Alderman Bernstein asked how much of that is a function of trying to make budget. He knows they've occasionally had volunteer services in there. Alderman Newman said they used to have multiple attorneys working at the Community Defender and if you don't have multiple attorneys working there anymore you can't possibly maintain a caseload similar to what you've had before unless you want to be a walking malpractice case. The numbers of people you're going to be able to represent is going to go down He does not know what's going on, whether it's that the Board is weak right now, although they seem to be doing this collaboration with Y.O.U. and thinks the Mental Health Board's report is an overall very thoughtful report Mr. Krulee said in their discussions they tried to have some impact on the objectives of the agencies. In addition to that they are reasonably sensitive to the possibility of collaboration with another agency which in certain fields that makes perfectly good sense Alderman Bernstein said he is not at all critical and finds this to be a very thorough report. You've done a tremendous job, this is a difficult job to do, to which Alderman Newman added this is an excellent report, Ms. Cantor remarked when she said they had a very difficult time they really put a great deal of time into this. The other thing is the Community Defender did say in their presentation, a number of times, went back to the fact that they were hurting Page 14. for legal volunteers and that was one of the things that they were going to try to get. Maybe they just don't have the manpower to pull it together, as you said to pull off sane kind of a formal funcraising campaign or engaging volunteers She does not know that can do that because they a'e very very small A!derrss-n Bernstein said they can't do both they can t have a fulltime fundraiser on their budget ar.d the Board does v.hat they can but they're a bunch of lawyers and they go tc their different taw firms and we got a pittance Alderman Newman said the Mental Health Board sutmitted an excellent repo^ and he appreciates all the Board's time He lust wanted you know when you talked about the decrease in funding you can rest assure that Evanston has in every conceivable category the highest lax they could possible have. Just so you know we can't raise our sales tax, we're tapped out on that, also the utility taxes, and our real estate tax increases have been significant. They have a new tax on the board for food that they're putting into the new budget. That's just to keep up with paying the employees so there is no money around and it's a frustration that there's not more because there's a lot of good things that could be done but there's just no money for. Alderman Newman said these fiqures are in the budget and this seems to be a thoughtful report and moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Bernsteln and unanimouslv Gassed. The committee thanked the members of the Mental Health Board for their attendance and excellent report. Mr. Terry said, a little different subject, something that may be on the Board's plate this year is that the City and the Board received notices that two agencies in the community Housing Options and Connections for the Homeless have begun merger discussions and at some point they may seek input from their funders as to how we feel about that proposal. Ms. Cantor said she wished to comment on one last thing. Alderman Jean-Baptiste's reference to the Human Services Committee for the review of the history of the youth services in Evanston. If that is to be done and you would be interested in assistance or collaboration from the Mental Health Board we would be happy to participate in that- V. PRESENTATION BY THE EVANSTON ENVIRONMENT BOARD ON THE NORTH SHORE CHANNEL Steve Luhon, member of the Evanston Environment Board introduced himself One of the areas of concern that the Environment Board has been addressing is the Upper North Shore Channel and some of the implications of the channel to the City of Evanston. (At this point Mr Lufton proceeded to show a power point presentation, copies of which are attached) Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked Mr. Lufton for his excellent presentation. Alderman Bernstein said it's really frustrating reading this little report to find that they put in raw sewage here. He knows it's treated but its raw sewage. In terms of a public relations or a tourism tool, driving by the plant on Howard Street he wonders where the stench is from as he thought they already cleaned it up and they weren't doing any more of that. When he hears that the river now sustains life and there are turtles in there, fish are there, the birds are back he just assumed that that over time that has been dissipated and the water was being cleaned. Mr. Lufton said the RFP's do meet federal standards for pollutance but what they don't do is disinfect all the federally acceptable levels of habitants of potential bacteria. The reason they can getaway with that is the channel was once part of the great system exposed to the public It went on down to the Chicago River and connected further on to the Illinois River before it was regarded as being public access to be protected. What has Page 15. happened is people started to use that fa-_ifity and the destsion was made to let Skokie develop the Dammrich Rowing Center and let Evanston have access to the channel to bring in some of the new programs 1n doing that they have a responsibility no:: to get to the next step and incorporate the disinfection so that people can paddle there and not ,•sorry about getting infeVed ,%:th tetanus or s.rne other horrible disease as a result of being in the channel. It's obviaus'y a question of fur:v -_ ycu need funds for t1ri.tionsng and then it's the questing of finding those funds. Alderman Bernstein said it's a catch 22 and he would be retj_ent to let handicapped people ao boating in a polluted 4aterway. Mr. Fulton said you're not supposed to sr:im in the r:t:_r cr have any contact with the raver. The bare assump:,on is of yo.4 re canae,ra you're not even in contact with the river With kids and the aver, obviously they're going to end up in the water or get splashed. A member of the Evanston Environment Board said one the of primary motivations here is the Illinois EPA did structure this study and basically they're saying they're going to start disinfecting on the waterways and designate them with these different uses. If the surrounding communities Evanston, Wilmette and Skokie don't show an interest or commitment then there is no political pressure for MWRD to do some more of this disinfecting. By letting people go to the river they start to create a problem but now that people are on the river and if we can continue to use the channel, they're going to be forced by other agencies to do more cleanups Its beholding to us to show if we want the channel cleaned up to continue to show interest in the channel thereby raising the level of use from just looking at it to actually being able to use the channel which Ail) then cause them to start to clean it up. This whole thing started when they said they were doing this report on what's going on, and we were surveying all the channels and the whole sanitary district to find out how people are using the river to know how we can clean it up. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it's not the - hole channel that is a dump for disinfected sewage because his understanding at the last presentation you made was south of Howard Street is disinfected, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste was told no, that is not correct. Alderman Jean -Baptiste then asked what about north and was told that is stagnant, the water is not moving but there is no dumping. Mr. Fulton said there is no dumping but there are bacteria. What is worse are the odors in the Evanston part because there is no movement downstream. The plants are a little better because there is water movement from Howard. Still water has potentially disease causing bacteria. Alderman Newman said it's interesting when you see Skokie spending money because one of the things about Evanston that he happens to feel is for the last 15 years we have been dramatically outspent by our neighbors on recreation parks and everything else Skokie in the 94's put in pools, and the Weber Center, all from the same pot of money. They have di arfed us in terms of spending. Chicago spends a lot of money. Wilmette has spent a lot more money than us, and when you talk about this plan this is a great presentation Who wouldn't want to have the bicycle paths and all the things you're talking about but in Evanston we have found if you went from 1988 to 1995 the parks here were being basically ignored. Gilbert Parr has finally been fixed up This park, on Church, sat there about 20 years and nobody did anything to it. We literally were not spending any money on parks for a long time and began to spend some money in the mid 90's When he says we're spending monies, we're spending money to get up to average. We don't do anything exceptional although we have creatively at James Park and that's because we do not have a separate park district the way Skokie does. Skokie has a much more diverse tax base, they have had the ability, at least on their Parks Board, to raise money while we're sitting here struggling with our streets, we have a firehouse on Central Street where people steep and live 24 a day, 7 days a week that hasn't been touched in 40 years. It's a situation where if we had it we'd want to spend it. In Page 16. almost every category Evanston's taxis the highest Th;s year the City Manager has a proposal to increase the tax on the best part of our eccnomy, whi_h happens to z_ -_s;a.•ants because we have no money Tins City has 800 or 900 emp?ogees v.ho want to be deco-:'y paid. we na. _ a :.-c2 range of social services that people tr'ni, aught to be funded Therefore .%hat has happened c.-er the years +__ Sic% e ':.Ymette and Chicago spends on par-:s Cntcago, where ever they get their money, has a lot c` sources. they ra,e an a:r:,crt. and numerous other sources If ycu go by our lakefront we have these little ►:'ashrooms mat have been 1 ere for 40 years and our bike path needs a lot of improvements. The ideas you're putting on the tab a are all exce!`.e!-; —e guestiun is where does the money comp from, considering in Evanston we pay for capital improvements 'rrith prcz¢^ty tax That's the only way we pay unless we get some grants and our property tax levy has been going up sionificanay in the last few years A lot of people in Evanston feel the taxes are too high It's frustrating when you have a plan c• scr^e ideas that are very good and would be of great benefit to the community which he thinks we can all agree on Where does the money come from especially at this time of the year when you go by and look at some of our streets which are absolutely dreadful Where the money comes from is the problem We have been successful in grants tut the amounts of money they get is not that great. The plan you are putting up seems to be a big ticket plan, he's net being cntical but is being complimentary because is would be great to have a waterway that you could be proud of in terms of offering all these opportunities. He just doesn't know where we'd get the money We have to figure out how to eet the money to pay for the people who go riding bicycles down James Park's Mount Trashmore and sue us because and some court decides we have to pay. The funds in our capital improvements budget compete with everything, fire stations, police stations, parks, the libraries, the Children's Library wants 51,500.000, they just built that 10 years ago and they want to redo it, streets, alleys, etc , etc., etc. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we should also consider where do we begin even if we don't feed the whole elephant can we begin somewhere Alderman Newman said we need to do something it's just frustrating when you have no money. Alderman Tisdahl suggested that where we begin is doing what we've been asked, which is to come up with a plan to utilize it and to tell the Illinois Environmental Prctecbon Agency we've got this plan that we want to use so please clean it up. She thinks this is the first step and agrees that Alderman Newman is absolutely right about the money. This can be our plan and can be put in the capital improvement and if lightening strikes we'll do it, but either way that puts pressure on the powers that be to clean up the water, which is what we're trying to do. We can talk to our state legislatures and to our Jan and Dick and Barack and coverall those bases and we'll have the plan Alderman Newman said who doesn't want clean water but he was addressing the goal and ccns!ders it worthy doing all these things along the waterfront. He wishes we had the resources for everything but does not know how we'd do that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said when we previously met with you we talked about the possible collaboration with Wilmette and other suburbs north of here to find a way to increase to increase the water flow. Once we do that then they begin to clean the waterways and then we can get into a lot of the other things that we may want to do Alderman Newman asked how do you do that, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said that is the thing we want to help ,&it`1 Mr Fulton said their response to the UAA proposal is actually to take the discharge from Howard, disinfect it, and more it further north so it actually comes in close to the Wilmette locks. Now we would have disinfected rather than non-dis.nfected waterways and have that water come down through the Evanston section not just where it's currently going in They can do that, they have the deep tunnel shafts running all the way along underneath the operation. They could use that to put in a pipeline to take that discharge all the way up to the northern part of Evanston That's one of our recommendations that's in the User Accountability of the Channel. The sewer would be a fairly expensive thing to do and to do that the state and probably even the federal government would have to identify enough money to enable MWRD to enact our plan. It would have to be political and the state Page 17. representative and federal representabr es WGu'� have to be supportive of that and suppcjrt the state and federal government cam?na c.t ,van bonds to rnaie tha: _~Ianne A member of tie Er r,rcnmental Board sa,a w.na: r.e : say.ng is theyre thinking about doing so-_tn,r_ ;.ttich is extremely expensive Running a c pe from Howard Street u^7ergrcund all the way to Wilmette Harbor is -c: cr.eap What they're talking about is if it's sholm that the channel is used and they've got to clean it up, they ha -.a t-. do some stuff which is just one of the orapcsa's An answer tv ic:i- :_ _s;ion, using surface runoff or getting cthe• ;,c_s cf aeration into the channel is the goal an7 d vie can do it cheaper &e can show them a cheaper way of doing it than running a pipe all the way north then they re going to be jumping on that because they're not going to want to spend a!l this money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is the cheaper way to do :his He was told we can't do the stuff no-w but cur intention is to get it into the designing of the new imp►ovements. We ve been talking to Streets and Sanitation a 1i:Ve bit about this. For example, when you redo McCormick Boulevard, wnish they're working on now, you could take that vater that's running off from the street instead of burying it in pipe, then off. shooting it right into the water you could run it en the surface through swales where it gets cleaned as it goes through the swales and use this as surface trenches wt',ch is a lot cheaper than burying a pipe, Then it goes through a series or planting and then it cascades down to the water against the waterway. That is more or less the same pace as the traditional engineering solution of putting in a pipe underground to the water but you're cleaning the aeration surface flow and things like that and increasing the flow of the channel. In trying to get into the engineering of the project we're taken 5 years anead in terms of getting some of these major infrastructure projects engineered in terms of what's coming from Evanston Hospital, and what's coming from Ryan Field to see howwe can take all this surface runoff and, instead of putting it into pipes keep it on surface and flow it all into the channel Some of these large 15 year storm banks we're flooding with a lot of surface run off which while its not clean it's a lot cleaner than sewage because its made of heavy metal that can be filtered out and goes through the plant. Alderman Newman said he would like to have that clarified snd was told that to treir credit they're doing a lot of sewer improvement plans for 7 years, they're running a tot of the water to the channel in areas where they can but they've been putting it in another place. We're trying to figure how we can get from the out flows through some wetlands to clean it up a little bit and then cascade it. We want to aerate that water and bring it into the channel. There's funding agencies that are amenable to this sort of plan because we don't want to take a whole lot of money, more money than Evanston has. There's big money in some of these grating programs but for a couple of hundred V,.ousand dollars that's a doable sort of grant that we might be able to tack that on to our current engineering project such as McCormick Boulevard or other streets and sanitary projects. Alderman Bernstein said, with respect to the political pressure to be born by adjacent communities if we take by part the sewage to the mouth of the Wilmette marina, what's Wilmette going to say about that because the Aater is sewage. It was noted this is not se--i%+age. but when you go down to the lake there's a terrible stench. A member of the Environmental Committee said they would have to disinfect the water and open the current in conjunction with the improvement in the treatment. Alderman Bernstein remarked you said there is not much current as the water flows scutn and in fact we're better off now having it at Howard Street and avoiding that irtr. Lufton responded, that is true it does silt fill and that's a problem for us as that's that stagnant water, it does smell a little in our section because it's not moving and aerating. What's better to reduce the flow or reduce the smell, the trick is to disinfect it. Alderman Bernstein said that would be the first thing but with respect to McCormick Boulevard, we're now designing that, unfortunately this community has spent 5190,000,000 on sewers to put water into pipes, now you're asking us to go against that concept which has been our Page 18. problem to the extent that we have already put the pipes in A member of the Environmental Board said they are well aviare cf that and there are other projects that they are also ,yorking on. fAr Terry sa;d it wasn't clear to him in terms cf the ±AAA whether IERA and MWRD are working in tandem and asked v%hat the re`a::onship is between these t:.o Mr Fu';cn said there was a public meeting in Evanston last May when a representative from EPA along with a representat:-. a of WRD Moth showed up together, as they are in pretty good contact w!th one another. He thinks it's a fairly cooperative relationship WRD is another government body limited by their ability to get funding. If there are some issues they say you have to do this so that they can fund by raising water and sewage rates across the entire system affecting the whole Chicago area and we'd be contributing to these improvements. However, if their offices say we have to do this as the state government told us we had to do it they'll build that cost into the fee structure which is their industrial use of fees and all the other fees which is how MWRD funds zero corrections. They wouldn't probably do it just because we wanted it done because we're such a small part of the overall Chicago NWRD system. But if it's the state that says you have to do it, it's the taw, you have to treat this to this quality, they have no choice they have to do it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why Lake Michigan water is totally untouchable, and was told so many people want to use the lake water for drinking water that other uses of the lake water such as flushing is not regarded as a high priority. Not only do we take water out of the lake, obviously Michigan does and even the Canadians take it out on their side which is by the international treaty. He believes each state is pretty much maxed out on their allotment of about 50,000,000 gallons that they're allowed to take out of the lake. We take that water from the lake not only for ourselves but we also sell it. Chicago takes out huge amounts of water and also sells it. People want lake water because it's better quality than ground water. Most people would want lake water as their drinking water supply and that probably has a higher priority than flushing the channel. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what specifically are you asking this committee to address today. Mr. Lufton said when they draft the report they would like the City to draw up a position paper on that and sent it back to work with the appropriate departments, Streets and Sanitation and Parks and Recreation. Even help the Human Services Committee make their comments on this study as opposed to the ways of improving the water quality as a team issue of interest to the City to protect the health of our citizens that use the channel. We would propose that they implement the recommendations that would provide treated surface run-off for supplemental aerations and use pumps to aerate the water. One of them would be to provide phyto-treatment of surface water to the top of the channel and entrapment of silt. We think you should take a position on that. Beyond that we would like to work with the Streets and Sanitation people to look at projects when they come up as we would like to be aware of them so we could have some input. We could help in considering easing some of the wetlands approach and would also like to work with the City departments to go through some of these grants to build the wetlands. Alderman Newman asked, to build the wetlands where? Mr. Fulton said it would be at McCormick Boulevard along the banks of the channel following the Ladd Arboretum. It was a project by the James Golf Course to improve that and we would like to work with them and come with a design for that particular area. A little bit would depend on what activities the City is planning to do, what road improvements, and what sewer improvements, as we'd like to be aware of the various City projects. Page 19. A member of the Environmental Board sa.d tney're working on this report and when it comes out the Environment Board - vr. l read it and have time to prepare scree �, oe of comments Not knahing the timing they have, they will circ:.'3te it to eiery'oody and would I+ire to turn that areur.. c for ouohc comments coming from the municipality who have an interest in the crianne; Alderman Jean -Baptiste thcsgrit it .tiould be helpU if you then propose some goals in a way that &e can ccnsicer Ar -aierrran Bernstein said we need to use input and make the pov:ers ;nat b: aware that we are in favor of clean water in that channel. With respect to interrelaticrships between the City departments it's not necessarily going to be done in a motion What we have to do is tell our City 1.11anager and our Director of Public Works that this is very important and we have a group ready and able to coordinate efforts. We have a proposal coming for the affordable housing and for the housing component and this is the same tming Alderman Bernstein moved that we request the Environmental Board prepare this analvsls for the purposes of havinq the City of Evanston sign alonq with adiacent communities to the enhancement of the bodv that waters the channel. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we have to start moving. Alderman Tisdaht said it has been her experience with these reports that we better be ready to move because they nevergive you ample time. Alderman Newman commented that he thought this report is great, very thoughtful and raising important issues and it's frustrating that there are so many governmental bodies to deal with. There's the MWRD, Wilmette, Skokie. Evanston, City of Chicago, the State of Illinois and it's difficult to get them to act in concert Regarding the ideas you're putting forward, especially prior to consideration of public works projects, he does not see why we can't do that. and we should consider it every time. The information for the Board, in terms of what the City's working on. should be readily available and he does not see why you can'tjust ask David Jennings or the City Manager what we're doing in terms of these projects Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a vote on Alderman Bemstein's motion, motion unanimousiv passed (4-01. Alderman Bernstein said his experience Wth the Federal EPA is their standards are too high to have a little guy like us qualify We had this situation with Evanston Hospital an admitted pollutant but not to the extent that the Federal government stepped in and stopped it. What are the chances, if any, of the Federal government saying, hey, its polluted and you can't use it anymore as opposed to providing funds with which to cure it He was raised a couple blocks away on the west side and is still blown away by the fact that they're putting in untreated sewage. What is the likelihood of that happening, saying we don't need this waterv.-ay for the few canoeiers that are making use out of it A member of the Environmental Board said it's our channel it's our land, stay off it. Alderman Bernstein said our relationship is good in regards to Skokie. we have a joint soccer Feld and dog park, to which Alderman Newman added we were supposed to own the land we gave away. Alderman Bernstein said his concern would be if you push something, in light of what's happening now, maybe they'd just go the other way and say forget about it. First and foremost you have to cleanup the water in good conscience he would not be able to sell anything if he knew there was pollutance in the water. He would not send any kid down there knowing full well he's going to get splashed or fall in then hoping he doesn't glow when comes out of there. Page 20. A member of t"e Environmental Boards aid she thir�s it's a desi:rated use that des ion ates what use the water will have any? the mere :s usea by communities the mere pressure and the mere the requirement is to clean it up. That's why he th;nk indicat rc to them with our plan that were going to be us,r,_ it a act the more the Iikel,nood of it being desiona!ed t1 be clears -rater Alderman Bernstein said ;ve can put Inat on the CI? out the fact is we have so many projects in the CIP that we ne-.er -et to Doree Stem a resident in the audience, a couple yeas back Evanston had high incidents of West Nile Virus in the area and the water was stagnant The Federal government and CDC are looking at that. They've got to do something about the stagnation anyway and disinfecting is a big problem. If you were wondering why the birds are back if you take the organic material out there's more oxygen in the water so the wildlife can comeback - She's been paddling therefor 35 years, it changed a lot. When she fell in, she was mu--h younger and healthier; she had to have her hand lanced three times and still has a scar where she got cut because the water was polluted. The Federal government is still looking at it because of the West Nile Virus and the water is still go:ng down in Chicago and Chicago is a lot more politically powerful than we are It's not disinfected, people use the river and it flows into a navigable waterway. The Federal government has not come dorm and said no. Mr. Terry said about six weeks ago the University of Illinois received a major grant to look at why Evanston and Skokie had such a high incidence of West Nile Virus. Since 2002 there has been great speculation as to what role, if any, did the North Shore Channel play. Two years later we still don't know. He has talked to every expert there is and we still do not know the role the channel may or may not have played relative to West Nile Virus. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thinks the argument is it's the stagnant water and West Nile Virus and we should do everything to the extent that we canto prevail upon the government Alderman Newman added if you think you can help us to figure what exactly we aught to be doing with the state representatives because he thinks they believe in clean water_ If you can tell us or try to figure out what grants are available or what we should be seeking through them at least we'd be able to have a dialogue with them which we occasionally do. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thanked the members of the Environmental Board for their attendance and excellent presentation. VII. YOUTH SERVICES OVERVIEW Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted he was surprised to see we used to do so much when there was a lot more attention given to City youth That is not to say that we do not have a great school system and community centers, but its still lacking compared to the kind of attention we used to give to youth. We used to have a youth center downtown where the Le%ry Center was where there were some programs and activities created for the youth. We don't have that kind of service any more. Looking at this current situation and at the Summer Youth Employment Program that is limited as they are not the ongoing kind of attention that has been paid to training and employment of youth. There are those youth who are not going to college, although we do have Y.Q.U. where we doing some things, and the Youth Job Centerthat provides some employment The way we pay most attention to the youth in the community besides the school system is from the Police Department where they have an outreach effort. but he thinks a lot more can be done. Page 21. Alderman Bernstein sa;d he thought v;e discussed earlier Cc,ng v hatever we can with the funds available w; h respect to the social servi:es programs V e tonk down the Levy Center, which Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought was used as a }-outh center, anc .ve',e taken down a skate park in favor of a basketball hoop, a skate park which served a ,ci:J i ids is gone We need tncse fa=ilities of Ncrtnwestem, we need a ;st of things as we all would like to see facilities a: J arnanced program situ aUors a! F'eeN.-Coci Cr ,r:n and aro,:nd the ':,vn Vie do have a Summer Youth Program Vat ne .:as amazed to see t';at r:e service as fevv yids as we do based en the job fair. He thought we had a higher pefcen;age of getting jobs but the 4La! `l of those jc-s is something `,e is of;;ads concerned a` =, and vihat they learn from these jobs There has to be a way to tap into the private sector He hopes that we can handle the jobs added to the jabs it we supplement the private sector. Apparently there has to be real attention given to that letter from the Mayor and there has to be somebody going out there for this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought we need to have somebody working year round on this project to really maximize what you can get. We mobilize to begin to open this project, its strength then has lost almost half of year. if you look back to when the City had a Commission on Youth that at least looked at the overall needs of youth. Maybe at some point it generated into service to a specific small group of youths. We need to go back to outlook where we're looking at the youth of the City to see what we're doing with them, where they're going, how our own programming is best serving them and what collaboration exists between the various agencies to maximize that. To some extent we need to have volunteers to pull together to have others focus try to resurrect that kind of attention. Alderman Bernstein said somewhere floating around there is a document done for the YMCA by Thomas Cook of Northwestern University, a Youth Services Study, which he is sure generically has to be updated. The study in effect says what do kids want and what do we have available for them to do that wasn't necessarily just related to the Y, because the Y was talking about interactivity as well. Didn't Paula Hayes tell us somebody in her department was working full time on the Summer Youth Program? Alderman Jean -Baptiste said, no, she has funding for somebody to coordinate the Summer Project, she wanted to have somebody full time year round. Alderman Bernstein said he thought we asked in light of her absence what was being done and she said somebody was working full time on the program. Mr. Terry noted there are two full time positions besides herself and her Administrative Assistant. She has two full time Human Relations Specialists and how they break out their time, fair housing versus summer youth, Ms. Haynes can answer that question Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he knows that at this particular time there is only one individual focused on the youth and he works part time. Alderman Tisdahl said when we talk about what recreation staff would need to get a review of what are the evolving tastes of today's teens and programming needs Years ago the P.T.A at the High School did that and the study came back far better than the ones we paid for, which she was a part of collating all that information. They went to the kids in class in home rooms and the only thing that was completely clear was whatever activity we came up they wanted food involved We did the drop in nights at the High School, the dances, and when basketball started did the games and it was very, very successful. Mothers Against Gangs ran it during the summer, then the Rec Department took it over because there was such a need and they moved it to the rec centers and had it at different centers and the kids couldn't keep track of where they were supposed to meet and the whole program ended. What she would strongly suggest is if you want to a survey that works ask the P.T A. at the High School to survey the kids, they found out what the kids said was absolutely correct that there was nothing for kids to do at night in Evanston, that is nothing that we wanted them to be doing so we better Page 22. provide something for them The other th;rg she wanted to ccrnm _^t on is the vocational training program it has v:o-=.ed out with employers in Town-, we had massitie meetings and ca- _ up with •.%-hat she thinks is a very good vccat+on program but that's a lig ,er level because .ou couldn't get ir,:o tre umans for some of the trade lobs and she thinks is teen pretty successful Her last comrr=^t is cn rec programs :7at have a',vays driven her crazy that ,%•e need to coordinate what we offer at middle schoc: %. tli some of what the -,ah school has in terms of teams For examp;e the Girls' Softball Team sometimes doesn't fill up and we offer in recreation from the City soft ball in third, fourth, and fifth grades then it ends, she kno:vs oecause s-e coached the third arc': ,In grade teams. Then there would be nothm:i for middle school so they're not thinking soft ball by the time they get tc� the high school. The high school never would offer double Dutch which she wanted them to ber..ause the kids in middle school were doing that. She therefore thinks we really need to coordinate because there's such a strong correlation betr,een participating in extra circular activities and success in high school and she is incapable of understanding why we don't coordinate our rec programs and ETHS's. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Terry when he started as the Human Services Director to which Mr. Terry responded, 1989. Alderman Newman said he was around when we went through this -6hole youth advocacy issue. At the time he was the Chair of the Housing Commission. He was on the Council in 1991 &hen there was the most sincere effort in the world to come up with a program that advocated for youth and everybody wanted this to succeed. There was one thing after another and eventually it sort of withered array It wasn't because the City didn't have a commitment to try to make a difference, it was just a difficult thing to do. In 1991 we hired a City Manager who got rid of S department heads and there were people advocating no increase in real estate taxes. The Mayor advocated that after 1993, we could not raise real estate taxes so we raised water rates incredibly high but money for things sort of disappeared and we weren't doing a lot In terms of youth he thinks we do a lot in our recreation programs and one of the things we had to get around to is actually improving our facilities To cite you an example, you want to have baseball, you want girls playing softball on the West Side of Evanston then you have to do something about Foster Park He's been pushing as much as anybody trying to get those fields fixed up so the Little League would have a presence not just on the South Side of Evanston but also on the West Side but we haven't been able to work that out. There are two more fields at James Park that if we fix up will have a much greater capacity for girl's soft ball. By fixing up our fields we've dramatically increased kids playing soccer, playing youth baseball which is part of doing things for youth In a lot of things where we've been limited because of funds and high taxation or we tried to do things and they haven't worked He asked Mr Terry if he recalls the Youth Advocacy Program basically wasn't having the impact and then it got rolled into the Police Department, Mr. Terry said in fact there was a significant evaluation which the City paid for in the Youth Advocacy Program Advisory Committee that was submitted to the Human Services Committee, about 12 or 13 years ago, and they felt they were not in a position to document that the program had made significant changes. The first 30 kids into the program got served and then it was gndlocked because kids never left the program once they got in because the advocates became like surrogate parents, getting kids to doctor's appointment, making sure they got fed on a regular basis, etc., etc it helped those 30 kids but the program wasn't around long enough to determine any kind of long term impact. The committee came to Council and said they weren't in a position to justify continuing the program as it was operating Alderman Jean -Baptiste said at that lime the needs were so great they were overwhelming which is why he thinks we have to do something and he is not suggesting spending any money right now but thinks the City should resurrect the Commission of Youth If the need was so great that it overwhelmed us, then we threw the baby out with the bath water and that was in 1990 or 1991 Mr. Terry said he was not here when the Youth Commission fell apart but he has read and Page 23. heard a number cf stories and the one common t`.,,,o be,.%,een the Youth Commission's demise and the Youth Advocacy Program's dernise %as the lack of a comm.cn ..s cn if you Were to ask 15 people what was the goal of the Youth Advocacy Pr:zram Mere is no question that ycu ..c;,'o ceE 15 diff-rent answers. Also. as he understands it the Youth Commission tencec to fall apart because it ::as u^are :; iden;i ; dear priorities and set goals and say this is what we want to accomn,is~; That is a common thing in tecause e.eryone has their own unique vision as to what youth need wt:ich he thinks is a real struggle in terr.ns of •centifym- successful programs Alderman Newman said about 13 years ago re used to say if you nad a progra-- ;re ;,crd,•cuth,;, it tie^ everyb: jy :wanted to fund it. The question was you vrant to fund something but d viihat you Ye-e gc,,rg to fund a was it going to have an impact, what kind of bang were you going to get for the buck One of the interesting tn,ngs, and he does not want to be negative about this memo, is something happened at Ben and Jerry's which is an examp.e of the most well intentioned people funding a well intentioned project and what happened with it. There were some pc;.ce reports in his packets about what was going on at Ben and Jerry's that was very frustrating to him, but the City tried ,.:e gave them some money because the idea was great to get some youth trained and get some jobs for kids. In so many ways we haven't been able to master as we wanted to get jobs on construction projects for about 15 years, one time the Council went out and did it with the Marino Corp, One half of the Council went ballistic because we didn't listen to the staff. We were trying to get Evanston kids jobs and training with dollars that were being spent by Evanstonians in Evanston. It was this terrible thing that was made into a scandal. Everybody on the Council has always wanted to get kids robs which is why we fund the Youth Job Center. He remembers when the Summer Youth Job Program got started about 12 years ago and we were going to get the private businesses involved and the private businesses went south on us, its frustrating. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he thinks there's a need for improvement in this area and not the need to just wash our hands of it Alderman Bernstein said it necessitates companies willing to and have the ability and time to get hands on and do it and have to commit to it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if we identify the need then we begin to assess it. Alderman Newman asked what we want to accompls7 Alderman Jean-Baptiste's said number one it would be good to resurrect a commission on youth that can at least lock at the various needs and bring various representatives from the community to be on that Board. Secondly, he thinks it -wou!d be worth while if we asked the City to provide greater support for the Summer Youth Job Program so that it could be almost a year round project and access the private sector with greater attention He does not think the private sector s be.rig totally resistant to opening its doors, we've just not given it adequate attention The fact that you send a letter one tame and have no follow up means nothing. Right now the Summer Youth Job Program has a process that it goes through training, not long training, but there is a vision as how to work this thing out. He's not advocating that the Human Services Department take that on as a responsibility but thinks there's room to work with what's working already and expand that and begin to access those other resources that we have in the community for talent The Commission on Youth, the jab training program. talking about the kinds of needs youth have in =- this Town. Other youtrns come home and maybe play some sports He frequents this barber shop, on Dempster, owned by some young men and he went in there and they complain about what young people can do in this Town. He thinks we need a way to begin to think and have some outlook, have some vision Not everything will be doable but we need to begin to look at that and took at the various agencies and how they interact with each other. Alderman Bernstein thought Alderman Jean -Baptist's idea of a year round program is a good one because in large part some of these employers say they're not going to take the time to train these kids when they're going to be gone next month. What we want employers to do and what we want our supervisor's to do is to train the kids more than just to get Page 24. there on time and show up every day, v hocn is important, tit rf tnat s our mission than we're ;,asting cur money If we could do that as the fact is the high school is now ait college c-ep and no vocation, to which Alderman Tisdahl interjected that is not f^_e Alderman Bernstein said his future son -in -;a;: is teaching shop courses there and is ready chagrinned by the fact *,rat s treated like a second class citizen beca:._e there certainly is no money to give anybody. espes!alty to wood shop ` asses Those things could be important an. ;,ith could learn there and ao on from there You reed a coordma:cr , ou need somebody and he viculd like to talk. to Ms Haynes because he remembers her saying something about that 9-.e c- Ms Haynes' components is Fair Housin_ and mE 1,aven't done much fair housing in the _st 15 ;cars in terms of any complaints made. Alderman Jean -Baptiste sad we shc, -id shift the attention Alderman Bernstein went on to say its important if you can mobilize and we have the res_ urges, we have the place at the high school and we the have the ability ',Ve have agencies here that are already loc' ing for jobs for kids, teaching jobs. We need someone to coordinate tnose things. A couple of years ago the Job Youth Center stepped up to the City and said we can do the Summer Youth Job Project better. They couldn't do it ct-eaper or better but in collaboration he thinks we could get something accomplished but we need a coin purse and the City could do that if we had the wherewithal. We need a resource F_rson to start that project rolling. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked for some clarification on the high school vocational program as he does not think kids get placed in it Alderman Tisdahl said there's a job placement part of the vocational program but it depends on what you study and kids do get placed in jobs. We can get them a job after they graduate or depending on how interested you are, you can go to a two year or four year school. Alderman Jean -Baptiste was interested in getting additional information about this program. Alderman Newman said what he would do is instead of coming up with a Youth Commission he would give the assignment to the Human Relations Commission as he has no idea what they're doing. Let them be the Human Relations and Youth Commission and let them evaluate everything that Evanston is doing in all three taxing bodies for youth, what our goals aught to be, what we need to be doing and whatever other issues need to researched Let them do it and report to us quarterly. Alderman Tisdahl said that's not what they signed on for she wants people who really want to do this, are really interested in youth and this is their focus Alderman Newman said then you can reconstitute it You're going to start a new commission and the Human Relations is already doing the Summer Youth Job Program so they've gotten into that bailiwick. Years ago you were always hearing from the Human Relations Commission about things going on with youth, i e., the public service announcements, etc Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we can engage Ms_ Haynes in discussions as she may be interested in looking at all of this and seeing what can be done, so let's do that Alderman Jean -Baptiste said maybe before the next meeting and the passing of the budget Ms. Haynes can submit a proposal to us so we can begin to look at it. Mr. Terry noted there have been a number of internal discussions involved in some of these as well. We've not had a clear internal plan as to how this would be handled and his own sense would be since we are two weeks from having a new City Manager that this is an issue that we would certainly want to consult with her about before going forward, how the staff would organize this issue, and what to respond to some of these concerns, Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought the discussion is moving us closer to making some sense of the issue, as opposed to the City Manager thoughts as you have the benefit of our thinking of this. He thinks it would be good for his. Haynes to take the information we have here and see if she can comeback to us with something to work with. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought that would be great. Page 25. At tnis time, (10:15 p.m.) the Human Services Committee moved to go into Executive Session to discuss matters of litigation pursuant to 5 Illinois Compiled Statutes 12012 (c) (1), of the Open Meetings Act. Motion seconded and approved. The committee then went into Executive Session. Vill. ADJOURNMENT The committee ended the Executive Session at 10.35 p.m. and at this time Alderman Jean -Baptiste adjoumed the human Services Committee meeting. Respectfully submitted, v Audrey Trotsky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 26. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: OTHERS PRESENT: PRESIDING: 1. CALL TO ORDER DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES C0144MITTEE Monday, February 21, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. Aldermen Bernstein ear+-Sact.ste, Newman and Tisdahl Alderman Fe?dman Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Bob Dornecker, Paula Haynes, Frank Kaminski, Aretha Hartley, Sam Petbneo, Dimetrius Cook, Jeff Jamraz, Bill Stafford, Neal Ney, Vince Jones. Harney Saver, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky Sue Cantor (Mental Health Board); Joan Hickman (Commission on Aging); Jonathan Fischel, Library Board. (See Attached List of Attendees) Alderman Jean -Baptiste Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 7:15 p.m. It. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE JANUARY 3, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the January 3, 2005 meetinq were called and unanlmousty approved f3-01. Alderman Bernstein was not in attendance at this time. III. CONSIDERATION OF January 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for approval of the Township January 2006 monthly bills, Alderman Tisdahl moved forapproval. Motion seconded by Alderman Newman and unanimously approved (3-0). Alderman Bernstein was not in attendance at this bme. N, CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED ORDINANCE 84-0-04 AMENDING SECTION 7-10.2(8) OF THE CITY CODE PERTAINING TO CITY PARK REGULATIONS Mr. Gaynor said from time to time they had a series of questions on use of the parks and after a full analysis of that request and not having clear direction of haw the parks can and should be used started an investigation into what other park districts do and found that Chicago had gone to the United States Supreme Court when they were challenged on the use of their parks which is the actually the reason we started to look at the menu of some our ordinances. They found that by categorizing their parks which we have done provides a clear designation of parks and to how it can be used. We developed four classifications, public forum areas, limited use areas, area or facilities not designated for public assembly, and special facilities, designations similar to the Chicago Park District's designations. We have had a number of other issues that over time have been questioned and decided it was time to take a look at the ordinance and make amendments which is what you have before you Alderman Newman asked what is different about these amendments. Mr. Gaynor said if you look at 87-0-04, 7-10-3, Tennis Court Activities. it is underlined because it is the new language. Alderman Newman asked if something was taken out of this and was told then there would be a line through it Ms. Brenniman did not think they removed anything, if you look under Subsection 3 there were additional General Regulations. Those were regulations that aren't in the Recreation Department necessarily but we felt that was the best section to include them. On page 2, under Section 7-10-2. Parks dealing with hours, this is where we're dealing with where fishing can take place at lakefront parks. We thought it was appropriate to put in that section. Mr. Gaynor said in addition to the new section that deals with permits and in the categories of parks we took the opportunity to amend various sections of the parks ordinance to make the changes that the Parks Department felt were necessary. Those are sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that you see in the ordinance on page 3. In Section 6 we have the new Section that deals with Designation of Public Parks and the listing of the parks. Alderman Newman asked if the only changes are in 1, 2, and 3 with no deletions. A new section is on page 7, under 7-10- 6: Permits that includes the Designations of Park Facilities. Page 1. Alderman Tisdahl questioned page 2. Aviation Acpara*-,s and asked if that --mains toy airp?apes. Mr. Gaynor said, yes it is, they are no longer lest toys, tney are fuel driven T nis has become a zig issue as we have incividuals who are shooting up rr_kets usirg a different type of fuel. AJoer man Tisdahl remarked tnis should oe publ,wized in schools. Mr Gaynor : 31d once the crt,n,ance has been amended a-d ad_pted this w;:i be put on cable Alderman Tisdahl suggested this be sent to the P.T A. Newsletter Alderman Newmar, referred to the tennis courts an.- as6,ed if all the ska*etcarding and roller skating is harmful to the tennis courts because tr.e-e seems to be a significant amount of damage. to .which Mr. Gaynor said that is correct and this regulation should he'p al;eviate that. Alderman Neo man ask_o if there in anything in this :rdinance that aff_as the policy done on the number of events lakefront events, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, abs:;,utely not. David Reynolds of 204 0a ris, said he wanted to make sure that the Special Events Policy that was worked so hard on by this committee and A & PW would remain in effect finder the New Permit Section, pagel1. 'The Director of Parks/Forestry and Recreation may. from time to time establish reasonable rules and regulations for the use of each facility in the Park System and for obtaining permits pursuant to this chapter ' There is no acknowledgement inhere that the current Special Events Policy at the Lakefront is part of the ordinance and it would seem to him that gives him the right or ability to the change the policy. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the Director of Parks/Forestry and Recreation may be able to make a decision but he does not think that would impact the underlying policy. From time to time the Director may need to make Certain decisions that does not violate th;s policy. Mr. Reynolds said the set of rules can only be changed by the Council_ Mr. Gaynor wanted to clarify that there is a policy set by the Council and certainly a policy set by the Council supersedes rules and regulations that staff would suggest Alderman Tisdahl moved to accept consideration of the proposed Ordinance 84-0-04 Amendino Section 7-10-218k of the City Code pertaininq to City Park Requlations. Motion seconded by Alderman Newman and unanimously passed 0-01. Alderman Bernstein was not in attendance at this time. V. ACCEPTANCE OF PUBLIC ART DONATION Mr. Gaynor introduced Barbara Goldsmith member of the Public Arts Committee, the individual he has been working with who was designated by the Public Arts Committee to work on this project. Mr. Gaynor noted the owner of the sculpture called Silver Wings is no longer interested in having the piece and would like to donate it. The sculptor passed away and his daughter lives in Evanston. The owner would like to have the piece removed as quickly as possible as he is renovating the building and is going to be leasing it. Ms. Goldsmith and he went out and looked at the piece and her in opinion thought it would be a great addition to the collection of the Evanston community of Public Art. It's a large piece.12 feet by 12 feet, and we might raise it so it will be 14 feet tall. It's stainless steel and has a shine to it that will reflect the sun, water and grass and whatever is around it It's quite a handsome piece. Ms. Goldsmith is a professional sculptor and teaches sculpture to the Evanston Arts Center, she was the curator at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center for 22 years and was fortunate enough to win the Mayor's Art Award in 1997, she is on the Public Art Committee and also on the Board of the Skokie North Shore Sculpture Park responsible for the setting site of a lot of the pieces there. Alderman Newman asked how the location wilt be selected. Mr. Gaynor said the past several months the Public Arts Committee has spent a considerable amount of time looking at locations within the City for various public art pieces. There was a great deal of discussion by the committee that public art would be a great mix if it's put in the park. Ms. Goldsmith and he looked at locations downtown and due to the size of the piece it was determined the best location would be in the park. They looked at Patriots, Lunt and Centennial Parks as three locations that would work out well. The decision hasn't been made as the Public Arts Committee will want to discuss this and make a final decision Alderman Newman remarked if it's going to be Centennial or Patriots Park he would want the neighbors in the area to be able to have notice and participate in this decision. He does not want them lust to be told where it's going to be, he wants to see what they think about it Alderman Newman brought up there is some public art behind the church between Lake or Grove, and wanted to know if the Arts Council is satisfied the way that's cut up. Mr. Gaynor said there has been a very significant concern on behalf of the Public Arts Committee that has not been maintained as it should be. There is an effort with Northwestern University and the Public Art Committee to identify public an and determine what kind of maintenance the public art people need to establish the cost and develop a budget in order to do that. The piece that Alderman Newman is referring to and some other pieces are currently being identified and will be evaluated by an expert as to the level of maintenance and what needs to be done. Alderman Newman said taking as an example the Silver Wings piece, and asked it that has been seen - recently. Ms. Goldsmith said we're going to have to do some maintenance on it before we install it, not just necessarily maintaining it. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted Mr Gaynor communicated the Public Arts Committee is looking at the Page 2. whole issue and will set a process to properly maintain public art and then we can talk about budget He supposes you will be back before us as soon as possible cn hov: to move forward Alderman Neuman need any p?ece of public art cannot be brought in and not be maintained and he was going to bring up as an example tack _•f maintenance. He personally Ickes public art but thinks we have to undersfand what public art a:tua,iy costs and we canno!;ust brrng publ,c art in and not maintain it because that par,!cu:a• s+t.:ahon was a disapp. ritment as compared tc what was being said at the dedication which he attended If it is ior_ated at Patriots Park or Centennial Park or even Tatlmadoe Park he feels there is a duty to the community to maintain it and wants to make sure we're doing it This is not the city area in the City where we're not maintaining art. Alderman Jean -Baptiste was not sure that the process for determining where we place this piece or any other piece of art is a public open process. He is going to let that committee make the decision it would be good to have the public be informed as to what we have coming and where the pieces will be placed and how you make your decisions He would at least like to get that information but thinks its important also to get some information to the public as to what's going on He asked that the Public Arts Committee come back to this committee with information as to where you will place it. Mr. Gaynor said in the memo the owner of the piece has to have it moved by the end of this month. We certainly have no problem trying accepting the piece and would have no problem trying to establish a community meeting to talk about it. Alderman Newman said they are contemplating picking a site and moving the public art from Alice Rebechini's relative to where ever it is directly to that site. The $15,000 will cover relocation, installation, and refurbishing and he would have to assume you would want to move it quickly from where ever it is to one of there park locations. Ms. Goldsmith said we will probably move it first to where it is going to be refurbished and that will take a little time. They have not yet decided where it will be relocated after that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this is going to be refurbished meanwhile we will get some information as to your process of determining where it aught to go and we will have a plan to respond to that. Mr. Gaynor said it may go before the next Human Services Committee meeting but there will be a written report before it's located. Alderman Tisdahl moved acceptance of the public art donation, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously passed (3-0). Vl. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski noted there are three completed C.R.'s for review, 04-04, 04-05, and 04-06 Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked the first C.R. 04-04 had to do with handcuffing. The complaint, the person who was handcuffed, was stopped and arrested because her license was suspended due to the fact that she had not complied with the emissions test. She complained when she came to a stop and complained she was pushed forcibly into the car and cuffs were placed on her even though she complained she had a medical condition that caused her to bruise, etc., etc. You have found that this was not the case. Chief Kaminski said it was unfounded in the information from the investigation. Any time we get any complaint first of all we gel the facts from the allegations to determine whether they are in fact true. Many times as we review a complaint we also review policy and procedure and continually review it for each complaint to know that the officers acted properly and followed procedure. We looked at the handcuffing because the officer did try to work outside the policy and try to accommodate the lady but unfortunately we had a mandatory handcuffing policy. We reviewed the order and issued a somewhat modified version so if there is a case where the officer needs to use greater discretion its more allowable. We did modify procedure here. Alderman Jean-Baptlste moved to accept the disposition of the C.R. 04-04, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion passed f3-01. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted C.R. 04-05 was the encounter that involved some suspicion of drug activity and the officers conducting a stop and search. In the process it was thought that vehicle was involved in some case related to that and the vehicle was towed. The complainant complained of harassment and it was found not to be sustained The towing itself was sustained but he does not understand the policy in regards that Chief Kaminski said the officers thought the car was possibly related and was in a mandatory tow zone without a permit which is why they towed it. The description of this car possibly was related in a case between some offenders. The police weren't chasing anybody it was offenders involved with guns and narcotics and the description of that vehicle matched the description they wanted They found that vehicle in that location in a mandatory tow zone so they towed. But what they forgot was that was a waiver zone during that particular time and therefore they were in violation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there was a sign indicating what that area was zoned for, to which Chief Kaminski said that's a restricted zone area but there's a waiver on the weekends for it it's posted on the sign but it is policy_ There are different waivers on certain areas and the officers should have checked that area which is why that case is sustained. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if the officers then determined that this car was not involved In the incident. Chief Kaminski said the officers were searching the cars in the area because of the allegation that two cars were chasing each other regarding some drugs and some shots had been fired and this was the description of the car that may have been involved. The officers knew from previous contacts with some of the Page 3. complainants in this ,ncident that they,., ere p--ssib: y related to that k.:-c cf activity previously and felt this vehicle may ha.e been involved The crcblem v:as ceca..se of .%here the car was par'red vrhich later turned out to be an inCS re~t assumption on their part. He credits tne officers for trying to do crWo c•olice work but tie decision tney mane has inappropriate Alderman Jean -BaGtis.e asked if the towing fee has teen re,mbursed to vihich Chief Kaminski sa,n they sent a letter to the ccn plainant to have it r.:m,bursed but they have r ct contacted us back yet We sent a registered letter to the complainant that v. as returned tao+ to us undeliverable so we re r,ct sure who is going to get the letter regarding the investigation. The caner of the vehicle has nct contacted us with any rnfcrmation. Alderman Jean-Baptiste's suggestion was that the ovrner of the vehicle be contacted to reimburse the a_tua} victim to rectify that and asked that the Chief update the commi tea on whether or n;.t *re person was reimburse! C.R. 04-06 was that Ime complainant had teen battered but no one adm=ed to that, the complainant made the charge and was not available for further discussion Chief Kaminski said the compla.nant has never been able to be located again. We've sent a registered letter, made tails, appointments were made and the person never followed through on it. The disroosftion of C.R. 04-05 and C.R. 05 4 were accented, (3-0). Vfl. REVIEW OF C.R. 03-06 Alderman Jean-Sapbste noted the complainant was not satisfied with the way this particular complaint was disposed. Mr. Terry said he included in the packets the follow-up to questions the committee raised at last month's meeting as no one recalled directly that they heard that case He went back and reviewed the history of the committee over the last couple of years in this case that was reviewed in the fall of 2003. The committee voted to accept the disposition by the Police Chief. Chief Kaminski said he reviewed and remembered the case based on the evidence we had where we did not sustain the investigation and what he stills stands on. Doree Stein said she was concerned because there has been variety of interactions that have gone on. She went to City Council and discussed the fact that the police did not come when she needed their help and when she came with her boyfriend to discuss something. At this point Alderman Newman called for a point of order as he wanted to try to be clear on what was done here before. There was a line from Mr. Terry's memo that says Ms. Stein attended the meeting and voiced dissatisfaction with the manner in which her complaints against the Police have been handled and hewas trying to ascertain whether or not Ms Stein ever made out a complain that was investigated by the office. Chief Kaminski said the complaint was filed by Ms. Stein's boyfriend (At this time 8:00 p.m. Alderman Bernstein entered the meeting) Alderman Newman said he was under the impression that there had been a complaint made by Ms. Stein which evidently did not happen and if it did happen he wants to be corrected on that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked Chief Kaminski based on his recollection of this case if he could inform this committee what happened in handling this complaint. Chief Kaminski said the complaint was regarding the conduct of Township officials and we tried to take the information where there were a lot of allegations against various Township officials on the part of the complainant. Ms. Stein was a witness to the information that was taken. The investigators took a report and tried to `+tier through the information then refer that _ entire matter to the Office of Professional Standards for review feeling that was the best jurisdiction to handle this type of incident. He understands there is currently some litigation going on in reference to this and does not know if our officers are giving depositions of some activities regarding these matters. He thinks every attempt was made to try to pull together the information that we had regarding these allegations and direct it to the proper source. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he was going to give some reconsideration to your issues last month when the committee went into Executive Session to discuss this matter because this issue is related to a matter that is currently in litigation._ The process by which the Police Department wanted to resolve it is something we would again have to consider in closed session because it touches and concerns a matter that is currently in court. At this time he is going to ask that Ms. Stein — to come back to discuss this in closed session to which Chief Kaminski said if it would help if it doesn't interfere with any litigation if there are other incidents unrelated to what you have before you that Ms. Stein has an issue with he will try to meet with her and resolve those issues for her If there are unrelated things we have not done he would be glad to know about them and deal with them. Ms. Brenniman stated since this is a complaint of the Police Department which is ordinarily discussed in open session — unless we are naming particular officers it would go into closed session for personnel reasons, if the discussion can be limited to the complaint and process of the complaint and how it was dealt with and not the case that is currently pending then it would be appropriate to discuss this in open session. If this discussion has to involve discussion of the case that is currently pending then it would be appropriate for that to go into closed session. It seems to her that the discussion here_ is dealing with how the Police handled the complaint and that process should be appropriate for open session. - Page 4. Alderrnan Newman's understanding was somebody else was with his. Stein when she made a complaint is Ms Stein corrp'amirp how that persor's complaint yeas handed cr !s she corn pla�nino 2bout how she was treated He was under the Impression that she made her own complaint Ms Stein said she went to f.!e a complaint and the suaer.fsor on duty askeo why she didn't file the comp'aint when the ncident haFaened She went to file the complaint the Sarre day after the shift changed when several e`f•_ers told her to aet the h---- out and take her t:-oilnend with her. she C d, nct argue and walked out She came back to file a comp;air.t anC'Pe officer on duty should rot take it Alderman Newman asked if iris Stem remembered who the officer was who told her not to make a complaint to which Ms Stein sand at this rrcment she could not say. Alderman Jean-Eaptiste said he would like Chief Kaminski to taKe the information no,.,., on what transpired during this complaint and then get back to the corrm:ttee Ms Stein said she is concerned about being told by the officers that she is not even suppose: to came into this building, she is to stay away `-,cm the Police Deparment, and tc stay away from the To•,vnship which makes A very difficult to make a complaint. She is also concerned when she is told there is nothing on tape as she believes there are cameras vfier. you walk into the Police Station that are taping Asa formed la.v enforcement official, herself, she's concerned how this was handled. She did not formally file a complaint because she was asked to leave the station She would like to come into the Police Department and not be told to go away, whether or not it had anything to do vAth the lawsuit that should not have happened. She's sorry she didn't come back nght then and there to file the complaint but she was in the hospital and her mother was very ill so she's coming back no'N because some other stuff is happening and she's still not getting any satisfaction. Alderman Jean -Baptiste agreed if you have a complaint you should be able to go into the station and talk to the officer and file your complaint. The encroaching situation is because it is not timely for us to give it all of the attention that you need because this occurred in 2003. that is not to say that we will not lake a look at the process in that complaint and make sure that each of us officials or whoever we are can access the Police Department to make a complaint_ We need to move forward and rectify whatever the problem is but at this particular time a is very difficult for us to address all of the issues that Ms. Stein has. We gave it some consideration last month and we are asking the Chief of Police to make sure he informs everybody that all citizens are to be able to come in and make complaints as they need to. Alderman Jean - Baptiste asked the Chief to took into this and inform this committee so they can be assured that this has been handled. Alderman Newman did not know whose fault this was and was in no way trying to minimize the Ms. Stein's complaint, but what was not clear to this committee at the last meeting was he was under the impression that a formal complaint was filed. The miscommunication is at the last meeting we were checking out a complaint that was not actually filed by her. We now know Ms. Stein was somewhat involved in the incident in question Alderman Newman asked if there is a time factor on when complaints can be made. Chief Kaminski said if Ms Stein has an issue he can address he would certainly be glad to do that. Alderman Newman said he would like Ms. Stein to have the opportunity to articulate her complaint in writing and also see whetheror not there is any evidence that she came to the Police Station to file the complaint and told to leave which is a serious issue. Ms. Stein should write everything that happened and have the Chief look into it; we can see where we go from there. The Chief said he would take Ms. Stein's complaint tonight. Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to acknowledge that the Police Department has a stack of complimentary letters addressing the work of the Police Department and wanted to bring out there may be complaints but there are also compliments Alderman Tisdahl noted in the Departmental Memorandum on the list of Number of Rule Violations, there were 2 Violations of Pursuit Policy which she is sure is a very small number but is just making her very nervous. Chief Kaminski said we have a Pursuit Policy and look at that to see that the officers follow it and review it constantly. We support it which is why those corrective actions have been taken to tell the officers if in any way they do not follow the policy we immediately take corrective actions. Alderman Tisdahl would like to see that get down to zero. Vill. OVERVIEW OF POLICE DEPARTMENT TRAINING Chief Kaminski announced there was a power point presentation on training done by Sergeant Aretha Hanley, Training Director, and introduced other officers in attendance, Commander OPS Sam Pettineo. Sergeant Jeff Jamraz, and Deputy Chief Demitrous Cook. Sergeant Hartley proceeded with the power point presentation that was for OIT which are Officers in Training commonly known as recruits or trainees. Officers Training. Supervisor Training, Civilian Personnel, and Personnel Assessment. There are three Police Academies that they select from, the Suburban Law Enforcement Academy, Chicago Police Academy, and the Cook County Police Academy. (Copy of Presentation Attached.) Alderman Newman asked if all the officers receive this training, and was told they do. A lot of people talk about the litigation that the City is involved with and the reality is the cases have cost the City millions are mostly all police cases. On the issue of pursuit and the use of force he would like to know whether or not we're giving training on those areas as a potential for litigation and what type of special attention we're giving. He would like to get a sense of what type of overall Page 5. training of,what we're doing so that we will nct yet a another S i 31,O0..CC0 perceived judgment such as we have pending.-) the AppeT":ate Court aga;rst the C)y aga-n, if v.e can do that He s not saying v.e should have Mad teat judgment as should nct but the real.r.f :s its there. Chief Kaminski ccmme^ted -..e do use of force training thrc;:,hout the year, that quahficat�on quaiifies our c`;Fcers rvice a year and not only do the; qualify they review use of force prc-cess and at firearrns training ,t is mandatory ano in service. we do reviews of every Rena of use of force, a report is required on every incident that we re:,ew We rot onl, do it department wise but do it with mdr r,dua: officers. Talk about our powers program we took at every cff,.er throuc^out our organization and if there is something there we see recurrent than we will move action against the officer and m,ti-gate that additional training or if there is some mandatory counseling needed we do it at several levels. Every year were t-amina on those important issues. If mere is a pursuit there is a mandatory staffing of the pursuit, the officers, the sic-Fnsors, we then review them independently There are many layers that everyone goes through as we are constan:ty revle'&7ng the changes. in service training is mandatory of every sworn officer twice a year in addition to the regular training and individual training we give an officer throughout the organization. We do policy after every incident if nothing occurs. if is wrong we go back and look at policy and procedure, do we need tighten up, do we need to change, do we need to review. We'll randomly do inspections to see if we're following the program. We have a lot checks and balances that we've put into place to try to make sure we are following the best practices in the department when it comes to pursuits. use of force. Another level of training is roll call training every shift on every bureau and department does monthly roll call training. We have brought in resources for the officers to review on landlord tenant issues. There a continuing on going basis that we review all those options We think we've got the best policy; we have a good review system and have checked it at every end. Unfortunately it's a big organization and sometimes in society people do bad things but we've taken action and will take corrective action even it means firing people or going to the next phase and criminally charging them which we've done in the past. That is why we take a pretty strong stand on training to try to correct action before it happens. We have a new policy procedure to do the best we can to make sure we're well trained and if that doesn't wrork we have a very strong disciplinary system. By and large the officers do a great job and are very receptive to the training. We also go on recommendations from them, it goes both ways not only what we see from management but from what the officers see. The best practices today may not be tomorrow, We continually have to keep on the issues and look at other ways for dealing with those issues and we're doing the best we can. At this time Sergeant Hartley continued with her power point presentation. The committee found the presentation to be most information. IX. FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSUON ON PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS TO EVANSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY CHILDREN'S SERVICES Jonathan Fischel, President of the Library Board wanted to take this opportunity to thank the Human Services Committee on the Children's Room expansion of the Evanston Public Library. tit►, F,schel recognized those members of the Library Board, Library staff and Neal Ney, Administer of the Library present at the meeting. September 200 of last year they came before this committee to identify their plan for this important project. He wanted to reinforce a number of points regarding the project. They want to create a learning environment rather than study space in the book stack improving youth services in the most effective way to improve library service to the entire community particularly to Evanston's low and moderate income residents. Creating communicative readers is the most important work the library can be about at this time. With Evanston's increased population of children the improved facilities are necessary to provide the service the -- community demands For our whole community of readers the youth service area needs to be an exciting and vibrant place. Subsequent to the September meeting with your committee we continue to develop the project. Following an FRP request for proposal process an architectural firm was engaged to commence with the process for this work. The City Council has already approved this process. The early stage of the project is funded with income from the library's endowment. The proposed funding in the CIP that we are requesting at this time is for the preparation of construction documents in the 2005-2006 fiscal year. The Library Board has proposed an unprecedented level of private funding for this project, $500,000 or about 25% of what we consider to be the maximum cost of the project. 5200,000 of that is - already in hand most of it income from the endowment fund. Planning for a private campaign is well underway. Toward =_ this end the Library Campaigning Planning Committee was established and is moving forward with fundraising plans and -= identified goals for support of this project. These unprecedented fundraising efforts demonstrated our commitment and willingness to share the cost for this project with the City. Please note this private fundraising campaign cannot begin until we have a commitment in the CIP to the project. Donors will not pledge support to the project until they see that it has the support of the City Council and why we request to include the project in the 2005-2006 Capital Improvements Program, In Closing we're here to request your assistance in the spirit of a collaborative partnership for this project. Our aspiration for this project is to provide a new Children's Library facility one that supports an important goal of the library strategic plan and he quotes, 'Evanston's young people grow up in an environment that is rich in stones, literature, and reading material Library programs will support the development of skills, interests and passions necessary to succeed in school and other learning activities Reading is keyed as educational success in the early exposure to story telling in books plays an important role in a child's acquisition of reading skills. Learning to read however is only the beginning -- The ultimate aim of the library's work with children is the creation of lifelong readers which requires a facility, programs and a staff that can make reading intriguing and fun for Evanston's young people.' Please understand that the library =— needs support from the City of Evanston in order to move forward with this project. With your assistance we can achieve Page 6. this goat Alderman Newman asked when it was communicated to the City Manager's staff office that the library was going to raise 5500.000 in private rescurces. Mr. Ney was not entirely certain when that inure was settled on They talked with the CIP Committee during the whole time and does not remember if they represerted S500,000 to them AldermanNewman noted this S500,000 is not what's in the CIP Budget as a matter of fact v: hat's in :hat budget is what was represented to us that you would put up S200.000 in private rescurces The figures are the w+,c4e project is S1,500 000. $550,000 in the 2006-2007. $550,000:r 2007-2008, and S400.000 in the current budget $200 000 of which is private resources. There is no mention ;whatsoever of another S300.000 co—fno and somet^ow that was not communicated to the City Manager's office prior to putting t`'is budget out. NoN that he hears S50C.400 that is a mach more reasonaole figure than the S200,000 that he saw in pnvate resources. Alderman Newman said he does not actually remember ever seeing numbers on the library's endowment and asked when was the last time those numbers were communicated to the City Council. Mr. Ney said they did talk about the size of the endowment when they were here the last time but the endowment is reported in the audit every year. At the moment it's S2.300,000. Alderman Newman did not recall that figure being discussed as S2,300,000 is a substantial amount of money to us. Alderman Newman asked how they would describe the efforts made to try to get grant money from the State of Illinois. Mr. Ney said over the last several years they received a couple S30,000 grants, but for this project there is no grant to apply for. Alderman Newman remarked the State Legislatures were in Evanston tonight and one of them specifically contrasted and was using the Parks Department as a model for grant money. you just ask for it. They contrasted how good a job the Parks have done in informing them of what the projects are looking for. This was actually raised tonight with the Legislatures and they basically did not know about his project until we had raised it. In your memo you paint the picture that isn't entirety consistent K ith what we receive from the Legislature You talk about the second mortgage in your memo and at the same time we are bonding because we haven't paid off the other bond yet. You have to make an all out effort with the State of Illinois for this project because they look for matches and the money is there for a match. In our situation there has to be an all out effort by every department of the City, not just the Parks Department to get money when they have a significant project and he would urge you to do this. They need a complete description of the project and what it will cost. Mr. Ney said this is the first time he was ever asked to provide a description; they've dealt with the State Library and followed their procedures for this. He has investigated every grant and this is the first time he was ever asked to provide a description to a Legislature. he can get to them tomorrow Alderman Newman said it might be the first time you've asked. but if we're trying to get money for grants we have to be talking to the Legislatures. Ms. Aiello said you're comparing apples and oranges, the grants have mostly come through the parks from the Department of Natural Resources when they have an ongoing program for capital projects. The library at the state level does not. The money that the State Legislatures have been talking about is if there is a Capital Budget and they have every year anywhere from S100,000 to S200.000 of discretionary funds that we have received when we give them ourwish list. On that wish list is what we did include last year, the library and some other things. The library does not have the opportunity as a state agency the way the Department of Natural Resources does for parks Alderman Newman said that is not exactly what was told to him by the State Legislature that he spoke to. but the point is all of our State Legislatures want to have a complete description when it comes up for them so they wi4l know that this a project Mr. Fischel asked if our State Legislatures identified actual funds for library projects and describe hour wewould go about receiving them. Alderman Newman said our State Legislatures did not discourage us at all to do this Mr. Fischel asked if they are aware of specific funds we should be going after. Alderman Tisdale said they talked about capital funds and a quarter of a million dollars and the need for us to match. We said we would match and she believes we need you to describe the project to each of them. What they talked about was the need for us to be in touch with them so they could steer us in the nght direction for projects Alderman Jean -Baptiste said going forward you will give them a description tomorrow. He asked if they have a grant writer to which Mr. Ney noted a library staff member does that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested they contact Mr. Gaynor to gain some experience from some of his grants. Alderman Newman noted the City funded a grant writer in the City Manager's office last year. Ms, Aiello said that person worked on the CIP, worked on the budget, and whatever time left she works through identifying Citywide grants. Again, citywide most of the money has been drained but she has worked with some of the departments who submit grants. Alderman Newman noted that grant wnter should be available to the Library Board. Alderman Tisdahl said she would appreciate it if every time you have capital needs you need to communicate that to legislatures they like to give money to children's libraries, if they have money to give. Alderman Newman noted one of the most interesting things about the information we got tonight is we're actually taking 26 years to pay off the bonds for the 1991 library. He knows in 1997 Eric Anderson did some type of refinancing, the policy of the City is to fund bonding projects for 20 years and this is the first one that he can't understand Ms. Aiello said we paid Page 7. the library bond for a few years and then we refinanced it,^stc a Z.p;_a' for ig term deft, to which Alderman Newman noted than we're paying interest for 25 ;ears instead of 20 Th:s .s one _` tr+cse things Mr. Anders^_n aid at the time the other members of this committee were not here. Alderman Ne:,rran said 'e would like to know h,.v much additional interest we're paying on the library bonds as a City because we're fur,:ing it c:er 26 years instead of 20 and that figure could be millions. He does not know why it was structures that wa f t-e ht:ra:, was built in 1991 and v;as going to be done for 20 years and there -was never an evplana'�on tc the City Ccur,_.I aC-out this This is someth.*ng he just found out tonight because they said the bonds go to 2017. Mir Ney said it ccened n 1994 to which Alderman Newman said we started building in 1991 and needed the money to pay the construe. _n ccripany at that time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remark=: A,e need tc find a wa, to rectify- that and not dwell on that issue at this time, towh:ch Alderman Neiman said he woulc l.ve to make sure that infc.^-,at on s received by the next committee meeting. Alderman Newman thought its much better that they're willing to cornmit to putting up $500,000 but he does not quite understand this because in tree memo you sari some of the foundation money can be used for capital purchases and that is how it is represented to the people who made the donations Are you orawing a distinction between capital purchase and capital improvement? Mr. Ney said there is $200,000 that is avai:atle for this project that is income form the endowment, it doesn't touch the principle. In that money there is a S 10,000 gift that was given to function as an endowment account with the income purchasing books for children until the construction for this project is ready to begin at which time that could be used as part of the construction cost. The rest of the money is :ncome from the endowment The S300,000 is money that we are planning to raise. Alderman Newman asked in what period of time you think it will take to raise that amount of money. Mr. Ney said they would hope to have all of their pledges in a period of less than a year but they may be paid off over several years and we may in fact even make a loan from the endowment to cover the cost until those pledges come in. Alderman Newman asked if you were to raise $500,000 instead of S200,000 that appears in the CIP we would not need to provide S200,000 this year. Mr. Fischel said it's very important that there be a partnership. There are two issues, one is showing City commitment so that fundraising can actually be successful and the other is making sure from the library's perspective that there is a commitment and we are not funding contract documents for a project that will not go forward. The S40,000 is our seed money, the $200,000 we see as a partnership. Alderman Newman said we did make a choice and built the library in the 90's while our streets were crumbling and even our new City Manager has pointed that out. For example, we have a building that is collapsing, the Crown Center that needs $13,000.000 just to do the minimum there We've made some mistakes around here, we're still paying on the bonds from the Recycling Center, a building we closed down years ago. In terms of priorities we're sitting with a building that needs S13,000,000 and we don't have S1 for it and now we're going to another building that wejust redid in 1991 and at that time we were asked to put in $1.300,000. The reality is if we put S200,000 in this year some other project in the City will not get done when the library is sitting with 52.300.00n He thinks there needs to be a partnership but can argue we should save S 1.300,000 for the Crown Center because he does not know how we're going to come up with the money for that. He does not think the City has to put S200,000 in this year to show commitment to the project not if you're going to commit $500.000 to the project. Obviously the City is going to participate but there is no need for us to put S200,000 in this year and start bonding on the money when it's not going to be built for at least 3 years Mr. Fischel said regarding the concept of the endowment, he knows $2.300,000 sounds like and is a tremendous amount of money, that money allows us to do is provide a level of excellence to this facility that quite frankly the City budget does not allow for. If we look at the per capita expenditure for materials for the Evanston Public Library its just under S8 per person, 25% of that is funded by the library's endowment and the fund for excellence. Cities in this general area that people consider comparable in quality and size to Evanston provide anywhere between 30% and over 100% more funding for their libraries than we do here. that's Arlington Heights, Wilmette, and Skokie. If we take that 2.3 million and put it into a project than we no longer have the ability to do that Alderman Newman noted nobody said that. Alderman Tisdahl said Alderman Newman might help as the alderman for the Ward for the North Branch Library, she would agree to the sale of the retail space adjacent to the North Branch and will never agree to the sale of the North Branch Library. She would agree to the sale of the retail space trial in theory would produce at least S200,000 and using that money. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said during a conversation last week you indicated part of the effort to renovate the library to better serve the youth would also appeal to minority youth of the City of Evanston and would ask you to clarify for him_ He does not understand how that is going to work with different programming, what is it that you're getting ready to do to appeal to that group of youth that has not been done before Mr. Fischel said currently we have in place a full time outreach librarian and his job is at any time to go to the daycare centers, go to the kindergarten classes around the City and go around and train voluntary story readers to promote obtaining library cards and tell stories and encourage you to get in touch with books and go to the library. Just today he stopped by the library community meeting room and there was a man running a program on children's music with a Caribbean twist, making children sing and dance. Reading starts sometime before access to books, it sometimes starts with simply encouraging people to come to the library for an activity. _- it could be a story telling hour, it could be a program like this, it could be playtime. The concept is the library is place to Page 8. enjoy and to come to if we open it up to the entire community we're not just talking about peocle .%ho ha-. a the ability to bring their child but,&e're reachrnd out to children who perhaps con't have that ability in a day care z nter Cr forwhatever reason they're at home with, their parents. Mr trey added when they hired the outreach l:Granan a",e) took the maps that were produced during the Hrmel Wilson Study ,.vhich showed the varied low use of the I,bra^, and i=teraCy drew circles around them told him that his lob is to increase Lt)rari use in these areas and we're uoin? to chock that this year by recasting that circulation 'we plot the circulaGcr, on a map The outreach librarian is out %%,crkrn2 vrit^ a lot of community groups and this sort of thing One of the things he needs to do is the facility needs to appeal tc t^e 4ids You need to be able to bring them somewhere and it needs t^ sp ear, to them which is part of what we're trying to address here in terms of creating more of a learning environment, a h;,�e {r%e4er. a !,ttle more colorful and a space that once we do get people there is someplace that they re going Want to come oa_'+ to An issue that .%e addressed as „e've b:en gc ^g forward here is some of the art or the decoration of the space wantng to be far more inclusive in terms of the kinds of art that's displayed We've had a committee looking into book illustrations and becoming much more inclusive than the art is at present. Alderman Bernstein said we've talked in leans of difficult plans versus an inferior collection or an absence of stalls. In fact if you build this, which he thinks is a great idea, how are we going to enhance the budget so that we can provide materials for this structure and the staff to utilize it, we're a wonderful physical library. It maybe adequate and he agrees with you. The question relates to the thing we've been discussing for years, people say we have the greatest, in fact we have 3 libraries in Town which is different than any of the suburbs that you mentioned. He's * ays heard a lack of collection and how are we going to enhance the budget so that we can pay for the staff and bring in more acquisitions Mr. Ney said ultimately that's your decision not mine the Library Board is doing substantial fundraising and we're covering 25% of the materials budget now the endowment covers almost all of our programming activities We're certainly planning to grow the endowment to also continue writing grants and obtaining grant money for the things that we need. The library's budget is determined by the Budget and City Manager's office and City Council. We make proposals Alderman Bernstein said his concern is we've had these issues raised before and he understands the need for a new physical spec that's more inviting to youth. Mr. Ney said with a drastic collection issue is pretty much ahead for 10 years and while there is plenty to be done we need to address the physical space issues before we can do very much more. This,& -hole discussion started when he went to his children's librarian and said he wanted to spend some more of the money we're raising on the children's collections and she said she did not have anyplace to put the stuff. Before we can even consider growing the collection a lot more we need to address the space issue. Alderman Newman said the argument about how we fund our library compared to Arlington Heights and Skokie depends how you look at the figures. If you take off the sheet what we're spending to fund the bonds on the library, to which Mr. Ney said actually that's not true we did a memo 12years ago and the difference remains the same when debt services is cut taking into account for the other libraries because they build buildings too. Alderman Ne-;,rman did not agree but said he'd be glad to look at that at the next meeting because he'd like to see how we compare with the libraries. One of the things in terms of funding is when you add the 1.5 million that we put in each year on the debt service on the library he thinks our spending is much more in line with the other libraries. If you look at how we're spending in the parks area, we're way below. Alderman Newman thinks transportation is a good part of one of the reasons for what children use the library. He's not sure how we can help children on the West Side to get to this to this library at night and is one of the reasons you'll find the library on Central is used as much as it is because all the kids have to walk by that library when they're going home. It's a walking thing, it's in proximity, and you get the users. He does not care if they sell the North Branch retail space and put up the S200,000 for it, they're committing S500,000 which is not in the book. By the way, 5500.000 is not depleting the endowment, nobody here was saying spend 2 3 million of the endowment on this project To him S500,000 is a reasonable contribution to this project, much more reasonable than 5200,000. What he is most concerned about right now is as far as he's concerned the library has the S500,000 and if you're saying the way we get the S200,000 this year is by selling that portion, which is fine with him as he's opposed to bonding for it this year Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to note he was not satisfied with notion that this initiative is going help non white kids get access to the library. He didn't introduce it you introduced it in a conversation we had. He's not satisfied that in this particular initiative the library includes some kind of effort to try to attract kids from the West Side. non white kids to go to the library. He's always thought that the initiative we talked about to open a branch on the West Side, was purchase a building, do whatever we have to do to minimize the cost of the rent which was the way that we get the library to kids and get the kids to the library. This is real to the extent that the library is in your neighborhood is to the extent to which you would use it more. He is open to doing whatever it is that you're proposing because he thinks that it's needed but he wants to make sure that we keep on the front burner the interests of all children in the programming and the outreach in whatever manner that is possible. As you look at people for the Library Board down the line he would suggest that you look for diversity. Mr. Ney said we do not appoint the Board, the Board is appointed by the Mayor. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said you do have people suggested as well and he is not saying you don't have people represented with diverse backgrounds on the Board but thinks the leadership of the library aught to also continue to think. of how best to serve the 22% of the population that basically has been underserved. Whether it is because of their fault or not you should continue Page 9. .o keep that on the front burner He's not sure wf� ,ether we got any enthusiasm at a1i from the Board including the adership when we ,:ere discuss,-ig the issue of a Vilest Side Branch t-_cause when he made a proposa' before the CDBG, CQBG &as ready to set as�cF ssme S300,ODO to try to put it into a pot towards the building of that library. The leadership came in ana defeated tr.at because basically you said you didn't have a way to use tnat at that time after he :worked to build consensus on that corrimit:ee. He does not think you have a pr:.gram to serve the kids who are not being served right now. He s supporting your initiative but does not think it represents all kids and to introduce that into the Discussion to give him something t= hold onto he's saying to you that's not enough. Mr. Ney said this is lust aside that whey did an exit survel last year and one of the questions we asked the surveyor to find out Is Ahether people using the ribraryhere representative of the ccrrim unity, whether the ethnic mix was roughly the same He can get those numbers for you We had a fairly significant numter of people vi 7o simply refused to answer the question about what their race or ethnic backgrouric was, much higher than any surveyor had ever seen anyhhere before, although that didn't surprise him in Evanston. The mix Nas pretty much identical to what you would expect with populations. In fact people coming through the doors are very representative of the community as a whole. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked but the undeclared population is mainly on the West Side. Mr. Ney said we do know that the West Side of Evanston is like a hole in the donut. When we cast our circulation on the map in 1996 there was considerable less use in the areas of West of the downtown, there's absolutely no question about it. Alderman Jean-BapUste wanted to continue that discussion in the other issues. Alderman Bernstein noted in your memo you say that at least $200,000 would be generated from the sale. What have you done by way of research to determine this? Mr. Ney said Paul Gottschalk has been working on this and is not here now, he's in New York. We had an appraisal on the full building, the space is smaller it's less than half of the building, it isn't as deep as the branch half of the building and we would expect that it would generate considerably more than $200,000. Hopefully all of that could be deducted toward the project and that would reduce the amount of debt thatwould have to be incurred. We need the go ahead to proceed with that and if you make that motion we will do that. Alderman Newman said looking at your memo it all depends on how you look at this and this is how we're spending on libraries, of the communities over 50,000 the one we are not as good as is Schaumberg, number one the sales tax they take is greater than our property tax that we take in. Then you have Skokie that has Old Orchard, I guarantee you if we had Old Orchard we'd be spending more on the library You then have Arlington Heights that has the race track. This is important because the impression that was being left was how we under spend, we don't actually compare that badly, in some cases we look pretty good in terms of how we're spending on the library. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked there was this comment that we are under spending, to which Mr. Fischel said absolutely that was his comment and thinks when you move into Evanston and you see how this library compares to others you don't say to yourself I can do without books because I know we have a lower tax base. He does not think that should be an issue, the issue should be are we buying materials, are we maintaining a first rate library and the endowment helps us do that. That was the point we were making. Comment for the audience by Junard Rrzki, he agrees that basically this money would be better spent somewhere else than the children's library or doing something different with the money. Too many dollars are going into this building that's less than 10 years old. It serves the children of the community very well, even all children. To him this seems to be a political waste of money and thinks we could spend less money doing Something different somewhere else in the community where there are children rather than in the downtown. He goes to the North Branch and there's one toilet in the building for everybody if you want to spend money maybe we need to renovate the North Branch a little bit and spend S50,000 to clean the place up a little. He thinks this is a train going in the wrong direction again, this is Evanston. Thank you. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said maybe we can take into account what you're suggesting with the excess money that's raised by the sale of the building. you're right if renovation is needed maybe we need to take a look at that Alderman Jean -Baptiste wanted to clarify what the Library Board is asking us to do, your proposal was that we contribute S20+0,000 to the renovation of the children's area from this year's CIP. The rest of the money to renovate the children's library will be coming from pnvate funds. Alderman Newman said they have a 1.5 million dollar project and at this point in time the way the project is laid out by the Library, the City Manager's office or the CIP team is the 1.5 million is going to be paid $500,000 for private sources and they want a million from the CIP budget over the next 3 years which is assuming where we are right now. Alderman Tisdahl added they're also going to apply for the quarter of a million from the Stale Legislatures, to which Alderman Newman noted they're not assuming they're going to get that. Mr. Fischel said to answer the question about the size of the project and the funding, our current concept of the project is that is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million dollars. We won't know what that value is until we get a cross estimate at the completion of the schematic design. At that point he believes we can dial it down if we need to based on funding availability. If the project was 2 million we're suggesting the first $40,000 comes from the library this fiscal year. The next Page 10. fiscal year this S200,000 from the City for cer-c'e�= of the contract c ,:uments so we ac out to bid Tner, the following fiscal year 2006-2007 hec,nnirg construct:cn S450 000 comes frcrh the l,brar; both the e"+dor.-rneet and private fundraising and 5800.000 canes from the Ci-. At V-. e completion of the project that last nalf mr:licn d-.liars from the City in 2007.2008. Alderman Ne-o.mars asked why ,';as communicated tc Ls teat only S550 000,.vas berg asked for in the second year. Mr. Ney said this is the budge: at r;e _,rovided in resconse to the request for the memo The notions of what the project was going to be nave beer, c':.^,, as ti%e've been gc,ng fcr.,:ard, these are the latest numbers tnatwe had Everything other than what the cost of ~e c::^st-uction documents are is to some extent u-sk^c,.n at th;s point Alderman Tisdahl wcnde•ed what this all aCc= Lc to now Alderma^ Newman said he's reading from the numbers of what's in the CiP, S400.000 in 2_05-2005'hr :n S202 000 was to come from CIP, GO bonds They say 5400,000 was going to be spent and he assu.,ies :ra other :_�; �C) ,:as frarn pri a:= resources which is in there T",e _econd year it says S550,000 in 2006-2007, no.; they're sa;j•rg S350 000. In the third year 2007-2008 it says S550 0-:0 for a total project of S1.500,000. What we're hearing is that V = project may be a S2 0J0,000 project irstead of S1.500,000 and we're hearing different numbers. Mr. Ney said the only number that is a solid known number is what the cost of construction documents should be and we know what our rnax:mum is which we don't think we're going to go over S2,000,000. He thinks there's a very good chance its going to ee considerably less, it depends on how much structural work you do. The way the funding is outlined in the budget memo that we sent in response to your request or as it's in the budget book is entirely dependent on the Council and the plan What you have before you at this point is the proposal Alderman Newman said we need to understand rf'he put money in this year once we put dollars in we have to finish what we start and we're stuck doing it for the entire project If we're going to fund this project we have to be ready far it to cost $2,000,000 and we have to be ready to sperd SE50,000 next which out of a S6,500,000 budget is a pretty substantial number. In the third year we have to be prepared to come up with between S500,000 and $1,000,000. Alderman Tisdahl would think we could say berg ,t on at S1,500,000, are you telling me that you would saywe're notgoing to be able to do it at that. Mr. Fischer said if he could speak as an architect he thinks the moist important thing you do first is start out with a concept and then you determine what that concept is going to cost. If we need to dial it down because we can't afford it, Alderman Tisdahl interjecter you do need to she is trying to give you the message the City does not have unlimited amounts of money. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste said this should go to the Council as he is not going to be able to support it going forward tonight. Alderman Newman wanted to say to everybody from the library that he would fund this project in 10 seconds if we were doing be::er as a City because he thinks the way you're going about the project is excellent and the project that you want to do is one that is going enhance the library, he also supports everything you're doing to make the library better. We who sit up here ride on the street scene and talk to the taxpayer who thinks taxes are too high. The reality of what's going to happen here is if we ever end up doing anything on the West Side we're going to end up doing everything instead of making chc'ces Alderman Newman made a motion that the library will receive $500,000 privately and the protect will be S1.500.000. The amount of money above $1,500.000 will also be raised by the library privately, $1,000.000In the CIP and whatever is raised from the sale from the retail portion only on Central Street. We will commit to funding the project and tied to that Is they will make an all out effort to get S200,000 or whatever they net from the State of Illinois, as he assumes they are goinn to do that. Also the 5200,000 they need this year would be not be generated by usinq Capital Improvement money but by the sale of the retail portion, then if the library needs to float it with their funds and then get it back they could do that. Alderman Newman noted that ,ray we will be clearing up the issues for Monday night which ,s whether the $200,000 in GO bonds goes to the library Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the information ,s very confusing and he is not prepared to resolve this tonight. He supports the call for this but in terms of where we are right with funds available, priorities, and where we've been over the last 4 years in terms of the issue of library services to the rest of the City a kind of lack of fervor had been manifested when we tried to take the initiative to bring library services to everyone. He's for having this children's room look better but the services is the bottom line and when we were try,ng to bring that service to the community the kind of support we got from the library was extremely lukewarm. In terms cf the dollars available, when we talk about the streets we are talking about dire needs. When we talk about other services to the community those things go unmet. A commitment for the next 3 years for 1.5 million or more to do this, he agrees would be great to do, but does not see it as the priority right now that he could match with that 1.5 million. That is his position. He appreciates your initiative on this issue but he will not able to support it in light of other priorities he sees, especially on library services because he also backed up all of this. He cannot now embrace an initiative that makes this room much better looking, super cooler. We know that target group that we identified needing more services still remains unmet, but we spend all this energy going to all these hearings to try address this. Mr. Ney said the plan that was brought forward by the Library Board was to relocate South Branch from its current location to the Dempster Dodge Shopping Center. Public meetings were held about that issue and there was absolutely no consensus of any kind. When the Board was finished they could not say that there was a consensus for moving it or Page 11. leaving it where it was so the 6e27d's pcsition-.vas'-.:;'ney .%culd nzt pre-__ed ,%rh reiocatinq the branch at that point Vie had made the proposal for the CDBG grant. he ,-.-c;e !'sat proposal an : su ;gin ;;ed :`at as part of the process befo'e the public hearing precluded Wren Ime publi_ hea-;-_ s v,ele concluded It siggested :rat we withdraw that appl•cat;en because the Board was not prepared tc go forh'arc casedon what they had neard v hjch was the community vras just about equally divided over that concept with a hanC`..' cf p_zp,le saying v;e':I,..s; open a third branch instead. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked, not a handful. As a result c` t-;ose hearings you gzt a ~tear response from the community that there was a need for that service on that side of T::.a -, Tnere was S300 .D; frcm CDBG ready to be allocated and basically you asked if you could use that. you said no Pe's not saying you =Jd build a space for S300.000 but you had that money and you could have accumulated more -:o-ey over time 'Ale,.:st sit here and embrace as a priority 1.5 m.11;on dollars right now, he understands that it's jrr=•:--_n; rut not in light c` ;~e l;mt=d funds. He ca- ;jnderstand and accept your leadership on that but does note see that as ;he priority rign; ^c.'r in light of other needs that we have identified. On that basis it does not mean the Counci; er.fl not vote to go forvard on this issue. Alderman Newman thought there would not be more usage on the West Side unless you have presence on the West Side. We had it there once. From his point of view where a West Side Branch needs to be tried, it we're going to try one, is when we rebuild, if we rebuild, the Crov:n Center. That's a natural location in a building that we need to rebuild and d0 something about That's stalled because we can't figure out how to fund the Crown Center which is almost an illustration of something not appreciated by a tot of people in terms of %hat we have to do We have to fund everything and that is the problem, its tight for us we're only spending 6.5 m;llion a year on the entire City including the streets and some people think that's too much. He does not think a West Site Eranch could have been built for S300,000 but thinks there is a potential for a West Side Branch if we somehow find the Crown Center money because that would be a natural place for it to be in addition to location. He can't blame that issue on the Library Board and thinks this is a good project and the children's use of the library is so central to having a great building and the fact that they want to enhance and make that a tot more appealing to children is a positive for the community. He would hate to see us not do this. If we were able to go forward with the West Side right now and were making a choice we'd have to think of Alderman Jean-Baptiste's argument but does not think we are going to be able to do that. On the one hand if he was being a true fiscal conservative he would go with you on this, on the other hand he sees the need here. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the reason we are not is because we have no proposal on the table to go by. Alderman Newman said he hopes in the future if the Council does Crown it will include a West Side facility. Alderman Bernstein noted the reason for the lack of consensus that Mr. Ney alluded to was largely because we were talking in terms of relocating a branch library from the South Branch to the West Side and that put people at odds. He does not think that there wasn't a cry from the West Side people that they need the same service as the people on the East Side. He agrees with everything in terms of the need we would love to be able to serve the population here to the extent of our wishes rather than to the extent of our pockets, that can't happen His question is if we can presumably put a capon the 1.5 million which is the total construction cost over the next few years. He's never seen a project come in at or under budget. From the audience, Cheryl Wolin said the library came under budget and on time. Alderman Bernstein continued to say in his experience on this Council he has rever seen it. Alderman Newman interjected, this library started as a S10,000,000 building in the original concept and ended up at $22,000,000 after everything happened and instead of it going to 522,000,000 it came S750;000 short which he admits good management vras there Alderman Bernstein went on to say, let's say we don't bring it on under 1 5 million and notwithstanding the good efforts of the Library Board they can't raise $300.000 we have to commit to the difference As nljerman Newman indicated once we're in, we're in. That's his concern. One offset is that $200.000 for the North Branch seems to him ridiculously light, if we can't generate a half a million dollars. If it comes in at 2 million dollars we're not going to say let's go away as we've already put S40,000 plus $200,000. He agrees its like the park system, we owe the crLzens the best we can do and would like to see some kind of outreach methodology to actually get kids from the West Side to this library. He does not know how that can be done. You may come to us with a budget request and hopefully whoever is sitting up here then will have the where with all to staff and put the collection in that library. As he has been saying the bricks that vie put downtown doesn't really enhance downtown, bricks and mortar to him are not as important as hands on interaction with the kids Alderman Newman did not think there is any way the Library Scard is going to be able to be held to the idea of getting kids from the West Side because there' a transportation issue They're not in the transportation business, they re in the library business and don't have that kind of budget available Mr Ney said they have in fact used both grant money and endowment money on occasion to lease buses. They had a $30,000 grant with the Foster Reading Center and provided bus transportation from the Reading Center to the library for a period of time There are those kinds of options, but you're right we can't run a bus service. Alderman Bernstein said we're talking about inspiring the kids to use the library. Alderman Tisdahl seconded Alderman Newman's motion for $1,500,000, S500.000 coming from private sources. anvthtno above $1.500,000 the library will make up with private sources and this Year's monev that we won't be using $200.000 for general obligations will fund our commitment. We are committfna as part of the motion at least $1.000.000 towards this orolect and we should make that commitment in the farm of a resolution since t we're not putting up $200,000 this Year the library can show their donors the resolution of out $1,000.000 = Page 12. 50% and gat ba-k very cc-:: e:ent reviews frc'n:t ern in terms of the program and the work the kids did The results were pretty posy rve. In rea!?ty :"e Cha-mber has r _; rea',y ever participated in the program erman ev:man interjected, tt:a: Is absolutely not true Ms !-'aJres went on ;•o sal the only time the Chamber has been =nvolve9 in the SYEP is when we used to have the aarage sale tu: we have rct had businesses participate The only thine that Comes to her mind is First Sank and Trust, they hire % .5 eery year A *man Newman said he was talking about the Chamber of Commerce and asked what ccmmunnca^.,1 t,as there beer, r.r;h them assisting you in placing children in lobs to which his Haynes responded, none Jean-?ac:!s:e asked if the-_ is r.ne where did the Chamber get its a va�uation A;Oerman Newman sa . the Chamber used SYEP a=c'j_ans on varc --s prejects that the Chamber does and the garage sate was not the only one Here we are asking for 5=3 02- ^lore and v-.e cea of having a split job person who will do what k1s Haynes wants him to do and part of the jcb w�" ce t:.. to the cis r_ss community to get mere,obs Alderman Jean -Baptiste remart;ed that the City Manger's office said the way she operates is she is making an assessment of all of the services that the youth have right now in the City of Evanston and will conduct that over a penod of time. He put that proposal to them to try to enlarge the services and make an assessment of what is working and see if they can get involved from the Ccty's standpoint as we have historically been involved. The response was they will make an assessment overtime and get back with a proposal that they believe can work. At this particular point in time we don't have that proposal before us to assess. Meanwhile, we have an individual who works part-time to coordinate the SYEP. A lot of youth are left behind in the summer when the program is in operation. Many are not hired, there are not enough jobs, or for some reason or another the program is not able to accommodate them. This is not necessarily because these are youths who cannot or vntt not work out but because we have not been able to get enough folks to buy into the program. This particular individual working full-time will be able to pay attention to contacting more businesses and finding ways to bring many more youth into the program He does not think S33,000 of our money is too much to invest in that area to try to achieve these objectives. Alderman Newman said 533,000 is not for the assessment, which Alderman Tisdahl thought it's for, its to be put into the SYEP to make their part-time position full-time. Alderman Jean -Baptiste sand SYEP is one aspect of the work, ultimately the process is to bung many more youth into to that service to benefit from it Ms. Aiello noted, however that position will be full-time and the person will do the assessment process Mr. Terry noted we're actually talking about a couple levels of assessment because as someone who is new to the Community the City Manager is interested in getting hard information. All too often what we do wthin Human Services is expos facto evaluations based on peoples perceptions of what an agency or a program was supposed to do and what we don't encourage is the job of articulating at the beginning what are the goals that a program is supposed to meet, later we can evaluate whether it did or did not meet those goals. We don't do that very often. Assessment number one, even d we just limit it to employment. you have the Youth Job Center, the SYEP, the Workforce Development One Stop At the State Department of Employment Secunty, you even have the Township and all these vocational programs at the High School which people have a wide range of perceptions either are or are not working. Hearing a lot of these perceptions the City Manager has said we need some factual information before we can go forward with an evaluation just employment related. You then have another whole step of all youth services that involve the Boards and Commissions and we are still having internal discussions in terms of how that will be structured. In the meantime there's a short term perception that the SYEP needs to do more outreach to the private sector. SYEP just evidenced, if nothing else, by the number of people that apply at the job fair and the number of people that actually end up with jobs that is the short term in an attempt to address some of the concerns that have been articulated that a full-time position can be created here, Alderman Newman asked when we are unatle to place a person �e.ho comes to the lob fair is the name of that person given to the Youth Job Center. Ms. Haynes sad the Youth Job Center refers kids to our program Alderman Newman said then you don't refer back, what you're saying is it sounds like we need a consultant to look into and evaluate this Right now we're being asked for $33,000 and there's the perception out there that somehow the City program is not dealing with the business community. What he said is the Mayor's letter doesn't gel us anybody, but as far as this particular program once we go S33,000 this is adding 533,000 to the budget of the SYEP. If we want to do an assessment we should figure out what consultant we're going to get as opposed to doing a full-time position Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what is the problem with this, to which Alderman Newman responded he just heard a second ago, SYEP doesn't even talk to the Chamber of Commerce The most basic thing if you wanted to get jobs for summer youth is to contact the Chamber. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we need someone providing leadership to that program for X number of weeks throughout the year. The memo from Ms. Aiello identifies some characteristics of kids who are falling through the cracks. Alderman Newman said this person is supposed to work out all of that. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said two years ago the Youth Job Center came with a program to transition kids who had difficulty being placed and through that particular proposal they'd continue their regular programming for X number of dollars, which we supported. They had a second program to transition kids. When he looks at some the community where the youth are hanging out he does not see the kind of intervention in their lives that will eventually get them some employment. This person in the City will have to take into account some of the youth in the sections of our population who need some special assistance to get training to get jobs to get access then those people will have to do some of that. That's not part of Youth Job Center's program and that is not a criticism We're talking about 533,000 that will go a much longer way in helping more youth the SYEP is doing such a special job because when people go through the orientation they see the extent of Page 15. the time and energy they put in the kids and the kind cf social skins they try to teach the kids Most that have ocr.e through that process have comeback say�nc that's a got-d program The perception comes from tl-,e relationship they hMd vath staff, that's a little different issue. He's talking about a program that has a particular objective Tnere are some sh_;1 comings which can happen, if we are not ,:lacing kids with the businesses we have to enhance that The percentage cf the kids that end up being turned away at ;ne job fair was about 75-80 ,, We need a full time person to expand tie market to get those jobs', and eu:reach to those kids to place some of mem Sc3,000 is not asking for a lot of money Alderman Newman thought gettng youths jobs is very irraortant and,.:nat s happening here is under the mantra of get,;ng those jobs so why don't vie just put another $33,000 into t Tne way t~is is being done is a waste of money, until that program is cleaned up until that program stars to lie a let more product;:e. until that program puts c-1 a perception to ire business community in this Town tnat the people in this program do a coot job. which thev don't have ri ht n v, you're going to have a problem. Aidiv i I.dn .lean-bapuste said wnen y rep acing kids you are always going to have a problem with perception. You're placing kids of need who need holistic assistance not just jobs and that is why an assessment needs to be made in terms what are we giving to the youth. Alderman Newman said what Alderman Jean -Baptiste is suggesting is we take the half-time position in the SYEP and make it a full-time position that will be full-time forever. That's another S33,000. in 5 years it's S165.000, in 10 years it's S330.000. It might very well be if you want to spend S33,000 more on job training maybe that amount should go to the Youth Job Center, he's not saying go spend it. Get the Chamber to endorse this program in terms and he'd be glad to say okay to spending S33.000that way. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said he had conversat+ens with the Chamber over a year and a half. Ms. Aiello remarked actually the whole employment issue started with meetings at the Chamber and just dropped Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the question is who is going to own it and he thinks the City is where you can have the objectives. The Youth Job Center is still an independent entity if we are going to set the objectives and monitor this, the only reason to make that kind of criticism and have this kind of interaction is because this is our program. Alderman Newman asked why can't we have the Youth Job Center and the Chamber here while we consider this S33.000. Mr. Cervantes of the Human Relations Commission said he finds it difficult to understand criticism of any program that places every single youth it possibly can in every single job it can find that can be considered fit for them. It may not be as good as it can get but how can you consider that a failure if every single jots you can find is filled plus 75 or 85% are turned away. if it's true then we've got to address the Chamber and that deficiency it seems to him can be easily addressed if that's Alderman Newman's primary concern It seems to him the assessment that is going to be done, which will also include the SYEP, is it we do finally have someone who can focus just on increasing the number of those youth for placements will be an excellent place to start out. Mr. Terry brought up goals, this is an opportune time to say how many jobs will this person add in the next year. You're looking for things to assess and it seems to him that's an appropriate and easily measurable process. You have two things going that will work together, the assessment which will include not only the youth program but' the Youth Center as well all those programs to see to what extent are they each providing the service they should provide. To throw a million dollars at the library and at the same time you don't think you can put $33,000 in this, as it's a risk, you just went through a number of risks with the library. This will actually improve all the things you're talking about and as Alderman Jean -Baptiste said is it going to truly serve the minority youth which is a risk. We are willing to take risks, it seems S33,000 to invest in a program, to which Alderman Newman interjected it's not S33,000, its $33.000 a year. Mr Cervantes added but you're going to have an assessment at which point you can decide whether or not it was served, if it's not then reprogram. Alderman Newman responded you might call the SYEP a success, all we have right now are funded positions. He asked how many positions are public and how many are private, aren't they almost all paid for by the public, to which Ms. Haynes answered, yes. Alderman Newman remarked to say it's a success simply because we've taken public money and given it to jobs for youth, that's easy to do anybody can do that The hard part of it was one of the goals far the program was to get the private sector, if you do not gel the pnvate sector you are not going to solve summer youth problems simply with public money supplying jobs. He has probably voted for more than $2.500.000 worth of summer youth programs that have been around for 13 years at $250,000 a year For the entire 13 years of the program they supposedly have been responsible to reach out to the private community go generate jobs They have not succeeded there and it hasn't been because they haven't had a full-time person If the program was so good over time the business community would be supplying more jobs, not less if it was succeeding. He was here when this program started and a major part of it was going to be outreach, they were going to get private jobs. It never happened. it's the public money paying the dollars per hour. What's happened with the business community is the performance of some of the summer people has not been acceptable and that is what is going around in the business community. That is why the perception of this program needs to be changed He sees an alternative to spending the $33,000 within the Youth Job Center, but first he wants to get them in here and the Chamber in here. _ Ms. Haynes said when the SYEP was created, some 13 years ago' its purpose was to provide jobs within the government The private sector had nothing to do with it, to which Alderman Ne an noted that is not true. Eight years ago the ayor got into the act writing letters asking the private sector to participate, the program was riginally designed to include the private sector it was called government based. In the first couple of years we spent $60,000 and the Township put in Page 16. $60.000 and we had a S120,000 a year for a couple of years to see no -At that worked In terms of invc'ving the prirate sector, if you have a person that is v.o-x,nq par -time their time is ccnsumed by p,.•ting the program together cle;�-=ra lco fairs, hiring supervisors, cleaning eg 1+: r-en; uniforms that sort c.:nina and they don't have the opportunity or t*e t-re to interact with the private sector to see f :ney want to participate Tra! s teen one cf her concerns since the Ma_, cr s t a ,ec writing her letters because we don't haze the abfi,ry or time to as _::! and interact with the private sector to get 17volv_7 Alderman Jean -Baptiste said every group t,"! comes before the COBG and makes a proposal you can bet a!mcs; 60°.. cf the funds they're asking for in them cuo_et gzwes to salaries for sta" and leadership We talk about the short :-=irgs of the program, but any dollar that rye 1n,. es; Intc the youth to try to ass st tr,em to learn, scme!n,no is well spent V.Iretner Gr not we are well organized at the SYEP :;-o"rarn level there's been interaction with the staff. we've raised our cntic!sm Y,e've raised our concerns, but v e t-ati -- r.ct'yet invested S1 rrc•= ;c try to make sure that proper stalling is prcv:,e� When talking about supervision, etc e!c a lot more can be dome gut there's something else going on out there and does not think whatever that something else is reaching a number of the youth who need to be served. If we say that 80 cf youth is turned away what can we do to embrace these kids and help them out. The only time you can really evaluate whether or not we're doing a good job is when you provide enough people to assist in what it is that you're doing $33,000 is a minimal investment to have somebody working year round to assist with that outreach, to make sure that the program is put together right, to look into the criticism that has been raised. and will it be effective for you. When you tarK about priorities it can be compared with the initiatrve vnth the library We're talking about investing to try to see if we can expand the services that we provide to youth He knows you agree %ith the broad scope of it but we can begin with this assistance to provide for youth employment, and maybe we can reach another 10 or 20% of the 75 cr 8G% that do not get jobs. Alderman Bernstein's frustration is that you start talking about youth services in the global kind of analysis and what it comes down to is this recommendation after all this analysis that says lets put S33,000 more in employment service. If that's what we want please do not tell me all these things are going to be addressed. His concern with the Youth Job Center is supervision, say about it what you will he does not know that increasing the term of somebody who's getting that is going to impact the supervision. The tack of employment is connected to many other issues that cannot be overlooked and ignored. When you started talking about youth services he thought you were talking about addressing the problems of youth. He's suggesting if you get them a fob penod, you haven't addressed a lot of these things. You may have gotten them a job that they mayor may not keep Doesn't call it an assessment because he knows its just trying to find jobs. maybe we will come up with more jobs for those S33,000 we should come up with more jobs The reality is a lot of the people don't want kids that are less than 16.17. 18 year olds, they don't want kids who are not going to be able to get into the workforce be trained and educated coming in. If you want to say let's add S33,000 to get more jobs for kids that's one thing. Alderman Jean- Baptiste said his discussions with the City Manager's office and this has been his concern that we need to expand and took at the global kind of assistance. Ms. Aiello said Mr. Terry articulated very well this position will be responsible for increasing the jobs that are out there from the private sector. That's not all its going to do, the position is also going to start to work with us, Mr. Terry, Ms. Haynes. Ms. Carroll, with herself, to begin to figure out what' the best assessment mechanism and bring back the recommendation for that. Alderman Newman remarked that is two different people Ms Aiello said we do not think so we think the basic first step of who ever we hire for this position can do that. Then if we're really going to get into the evaluation of these agencies, yes, that's probably going to need a different level and will be a mechanism that we will be able to design. We don't expect one person to spend full-time just taring to find more lobs because there' more time in a day than lust dcing that. Alderman Newman said a full-time position would allow more interaction with the business community. Alderman Bernstein said maybe if we took it out of the SYEP and creatively found these jobs and gave them to the SYEP he might have more confidence, He is hearing different things from Ms Haynes, Ms. Aiello and Mr Terry Mr. Terry's and Ms Aiello's global analysis are wonderful Ms Haynes is saying we're going to beat the bushes for more jobs. Ms Aiello said when somebody is working 37 % hours a week she expects them to be able to do more than just beat the bushes and get jobs. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the need is for the youth, addressing the global needs will come from the assessment of what's obvious. Alderman Bernstein said let's fund this through Human Services. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there are work related issues working with youth during the summer to get jobs, and the SYEP has a process for this. We've talked to Human Services and to other departments, nobody is disposed and inclined to have a process to do this. The history that Human Services had given us in terms of the involvement of the City with Human Service is we've done this and gone down that road before and come to a particular conclusion to choose other directions. Basically we've disbanded a number of things, he's not saying that department did that, but we're trying to assess the needs to provide more global services to youth and reach that group of kids who need a holistic kind of support. At the same time you have a program that is ongoing that also provides some assistance. You cannot have these kids come through and just let them go without doing more with them. Alderman Bernstein's concern was about what the program has done historically. Some kids who get into an area where they get good supervision have benefited, the kids that don't are diminished bvJhe4act that thgy think they can qet monad bultandinq around. He comes to the Crric C` e`nfer and sees a kid who is assigned to the City Clerk's office who is getting Page 17. ,supervision, he Sits in his office and wa;c:-es the super,iscr _I;,r.b uo on a liah r. a the light bulb wlhi;e the Errs lust sit around and goof off and plate+. ',he; a learning .nat tne, can cet money to stand around and p ay, a s nct .A .at ne Yediub to mi,uvaie Alderman Jean -Baptiste askeo A;cer--an Bernstein what he wants to do with the prcGrarn and Alderman Bernstein's response was he wants it to de what;-Joerman Jean -Baptiste wants it to do, ifwe're doing as these good things for kids by giving S33,000 mere it should expand whe pool of lobs, jobs is not the only thing. Alderman Jean - Baptiste said of you expand the pool of loos more kids will to placed to which Alderman Bernstein asked now do we r.nu.s that. Alderm man asked why vie can t yet the Youth Job Center and the Chamber in here and get the history o;-cause in view the h;storuiven b,r Ni ay nes zri the SYEP ma'j :e wrcrizi At the beginning of the program Northwti•ester r. w.as involved and they gave some lobs, whrcr, 4Y1tf7 and said they still participate. Alderman Newman asked that Alderman Jean -Baptiste not say tie-ause someone s against this program that they're' against spending money on youth. We learned from what the CD Committee did with the ice cream store, that was a bad expenditure of publ�: funds and the Youth Job Center and the reason that got passed was because anything in the name of creating jobs for youth gets voted for. If we have to vote on this tonight there is not enough critical analysis. For the same reason you want us to vote for this we voted for the ice cream store, which was a ridiculous concept to begin with. It was basically voted for because the idea was good. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said if that was our preference we would have chosen another program. Alderman Newman's comment was if you want a program to increase employment of youth and you want to spend $33.000 on it the Youth Job Center is supposed to have a person calling businesses all the time Alderman Jean - Baptiste noted the Youth Job Center is not the same entity as a program that the City runs, because if you have a program that's run by the City you can set the objectives, measure the deliverables, and evaluate the program. The Youth Job Center is an independent entity that comes before the CDBG and applies for funds. Alderman Newman disagreed we fund community service organizations; like we do with mental health, because there are things that the City cannot do and we think private people can do that better. We are funding the Youth Job Center to do youth employment here, Alderman Jean -Baptiste said we disbanded the Youth Commission and stopped the direct services we provided: it wasn't from an analysis that the private sector could do it better than us. You said that was because we made that kind of decision, we basically abandoned ship at that time. Alderman Newman asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he thought that we have ever done a youth service in the City that hasn't worked or did he think they all worked. Alderman Jean -Baptiste was not saying everything we touch worked, you have to go through evaluations and trials and changes to make things work in the same way if we have a SYEP we make it make much better than it is working. He does not think it's a question of abandoning what the Youth Job Center is doing. If you go on the West Side of the City of Evanston asking a random sample of some 10 to 20 youth, who they have gotten some assistance from to get work. Alderman Newman said this program is not going to interact with youth it is going to call businesses on the telephone. Alderman Jean-Bapbste remarked if we control it then we determine what it does Mr. Cervantes said he would not dispute that the SYEP should be more in touch with the private sector. His question at the moment and at the Human Relations Commission is there is just not enough resources at the moment to do anything other than maintain the program If you don't do anything more with it the choice comes down that whatever cnt>asm you have of it is going to stay that way until you decide to take it somewhere else. He promises to bring that up at the next Human Relations Commission meeting to see what addit*nal resources there may be. Alderman Newman asked Mr. Servantes to bring up why we have no contact with Chamber of Commerce, to which Mr. Servantes said he never heard that before. Alderman Newman said we're asking for more money to get to the business community but we're not talking to the Chamber. Mr. Cervantes said he would bring that up at their meeting to see how that can be addressea, but the point is he is still not sure what you would like to see happen. Alderman Newman said he would like to see us not go forward with this tonight and would like toget the Youth Job Center and the Chamber in here and to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded we can do that, the more attention we bnng to this the better. and we can hold this in committee. XI. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED ORDINANCE 2005-2008 NOYES CULTURAL ART CENTER RESIDENT ARTIST'S LEASES Alderman Tisdahl moved for approval, seconded by Alderman Newman. motion unanimously avoroved (4-0). XII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 11:15 p.m. Respectfully sugitted, Audrey Tr ky, Department of Health and Human Services Page 18. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, March 7, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Jean -Baptiste. Newman and Tsdahl MEMBERS ABSENT: Aldermen Bernstein and Feldman STAFF PRESENT: Julia Carroll, Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Paula Haynes, Rafael Molinary, Orlando Thomas, Harvey Saver, Alisa Dean, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Mayor Morton, Rosemary Jean -Paul, Evanston Township; Sue Cantor (Mental Health Board); Schona Buranda, Mavis Hagemann, Kirsten Fifles Rowe, Janet Sullivan, (Human Relations Commission); Frances Seidman. Joan Hickman, (Commission on Aging), (See Attached list of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Jean -Baptiste I. CALL TO ORDrR Alderman Jean -Baptiste called the meeting to order at 7:35 p.m. It. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE FEBRUARY 21, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the February 21, 2005 meeting were called and unanimously approved 13-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF FEBRUARY 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Tisdahl motioned for approval of the February 2005 Township monthly bills, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously approved (3-0). IV. 2005 SPECIAL. EVENTS CALENDAR Mr. Gaynor noted we are consistent with policy and have a new event this year, the Turin Bicycling Society, the International Cycling Classic. In addition there is an Art/Music Festival requested to be at Raymond Park. Alderman Tisdahl asked if anyone usually on this list of events who did not make the deadline, to which Mr. Gaynor responded everyone met the deadline but there are three events that will not take place. The Arbor Day Race sponsored by the Recreation Department, The Race to the Finish organized by Rotary International and The Rotary International Conference. Alderman Newman asked why Dillo Day is on this list Mr. Gaynor responded all of the events going on in the City that will impact Public Safety or any other City departments be made aware of what's going on in the City. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of the 2005 Special Events Calendar, seconded by Alderman Newman. Motion unanimously approved 13-01. V. FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS Alderman Jean -Baptiste stated this was a two part proposal, one part the assessment of youth programming thatwas an initiative on the part of the City Manager to launch and the other part a proposal to allocate funds to the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) to be able to hire the part-time SYEP coordinator on a full-time basis in order to facilitate greater success for the SYEP. He summarized the discussion of the events at the last meeting when there was an argument that we do not need any more investment in the SYEP because we already have the Youth Job Center and we should continue to outsource the task of providing employment services for youth. The were other views indicating that was not adequate and we need to do some other things and support the SYEP in an investment of $33,000 to have a year round effort to strengthen the program and to employ youth in jobs throughout the year. This is not an indictment against the existing Youth Job Center. This issue came out of the call for broadening youth services. Years ago there was Page 1. a Commission on Youth and a Levy Center that a"em,'e..i tc assist ycath to become more productive people in the cornmu•r.4, that closed down and we began focus rig Cn cu;scurcirg the services we p,o►ided. He does not think we are embracing the youth in an aggressive way to n ar.e sure we do all we can and h!s observation is that significant interven,jon takes place in the Pclice Department .0iEYh is no, the best way to do that We need to provide as many assets as we can ir. order to help these youtn wh: hare fallen through the cracks. P was at his urging that the City Manager submi,ted the proposal nvo %veeks ago and he wCj1d like to have her express what she was thinking and the direction in which she wants to ao Discussion ensued between Alderman Jean-Bapt.S,e. Aker man Tisdahl, Alderman Newman and tv1s Carroll regarding hirina a Coordmator full-time to do the Sum. mer Yc -, E^-:':, rrcnt Proc am do o:.,!reach to the business community to obtain j_5s for youth, both for the summer and year rc:.nd, and also do the assessmentof the Evanston youth services, or hire a consultant to do an assessment of the youth services and then proceed vrith those findings. Alderman Jean - Baptiste and Alderman Tisdahl were in favor of hiring the full-Ume coordinator, Alderman Newman's preference was not to add another full-time position to the City but have the assessment Ms. Carroll wanted to be done, and Ms. Carroll' suggest+on was to do the assessment. The discussion continued with each voicing their opinions regarding their views. Both Alderman Jean -Baptiste and Alderman Tisdahl did not feel 533,000 was that great an amount of money to invest in our youth in light of the City's investing much larger amounts of money in other endeavors such as redoing the children's library and the trees, which are also noteworthy investments. James Sibley, Director of the Youth Job Center spoke about his agency's services, their various programs, and the kind of outreach they do to the business community of the Cary to obtain jobs for their clients. He was not sure if there is any tracking of those who are turned away by the SYEP who come to his agency. Mr. Sibley was asked if he thought his agency and the City's SYEP were a duplication of services, a question Mr. Sibley said he could not answer. Mr. Sibley was also asked if his agency turns anyone away, to which he answered, they do not turn anyone away but they also may not necessarily place everyone needing a job, they continue to work to train the clients in preparation for employment. He noted they place 22 to 25% of the clients coming to them for jobs and the younger client is a challenge to place. Their target population 14 to 25 year olds, they have 1450 kids on file annually and have about 450 placements a year. Mayor Morton gave an overview of the Summer Youth Employment Program, how it began and her initiatives in obtaining private sector jobs for the youth. She noted the good work this program does and emphasized her support of the program but said she is not privy to the $33,000 problem. The Mayor voiced her distress about a reference at the last meeting to some kid in one our City Departments sitting around doing nothing, and said grown people sit around doing nothing, but this doesn't mean other kids are not working. The program itself is a good program, Ms. Carroll explained what the $33,000 figure was, if you increase the SYEP job to full-time you have to pay benefits and the cost goes up. She does not want anyone to think this is not a good program; her only point in making the recommendation for the assessment is to look at it in the context of entire money spent on youth services of any kind. It's a policy decision of the City Council whether you want to add more money. Mayor Morton asked what's wrong with hiring two half time people, to which Ms. Carroll responded for purposes of coordination one person managing the program would be better than two part timers. Jonathan Perman, Executive Director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, offered his perspective on the local labor market trends in terms of employment industries that are growing and the kinds of skills employers are looking for in order to move more people into those jobs being created. He cited the top industries and top occupations that do and do not require college degrees. The jobs being offered require more education and much higher skill leveis. That raises the question when it comes to summer employment, is it the employment first and foremost that is necessary. Putting a kid into the streets and alleys to clean, putting a kid into an office environment where they may do some copying or filing is not necessarily going to be preparing them, even though they are going to get some job experience, for what they're going to _ need to compete in the future. We're better off focusing on some resources of more education, more skilled training and specific programs for them to help enhance those skills rather than lust giving them hours of experience He would urge us to took at youth employment in totality, not just employing somebody but giving them the skills, the support needed not only to team for work but for life. Evanston has a number of very strong resources, the Youth Job Center, the One Stop Center, the City's SYEP, Evanston High School, and Oakton Community College. He would encourage asking the questions, is it simply employment that is going to be effective in helping youth though the summer or year round, is it the rote of the City of Evanston to provide a summer employment program, are there other opportunities that we can offer in Evanston beyond just employment that can engage the youth of Evanston. Nifara K. Ali, Ph.D., Youth Services Coordinator for Workforce Development, Inc., has worked with youth for a number of years and is responsible for coordinating services for youth for all of Northern Cook County, which Evanston is just a small part of, but has the greatest need. Dr. Ali noted it's not just about putting kids to work; it's about coming up with innovative ideas. Today she cannot send a kid out to get a job; she'd be putting on the road to failure because they need the toot to be able to stand on their feet anywhere. Her organization works with other organizations to coordinate Page 2. ser., ces to be able to better ser.,ice youth. Because youth do not ha•: e t'ie sk,'�°s needed to go out into the,rworkforce the prclrams funded by the Workforce Eoard were crea!ed to help them ty g :.^g them internships, mentoring, and tutonng. Shp partners with Evanston High School :n a pre apprenticeshcp program a-c has had numerous meetings vrth Alderman Jean -Baptiste, Mr. Sibley, and Mr. Perman regarding helping our youln. John Barer Williams, Fisher Memorial AM, E Zion Church works t-p, �c t= _e! j:0 for youth and adults or a daily bass. They support the Human Re.avons Commiss.on and the SYEP and tn,nr ^a r pr:,grams should to full-hme. they also work with Mr. Sibley. They offer their services and are wil4rg to work with the City and the Youth Job Center to provide jots for our youth in Evanston Charles Sheridan, remarked that all kids are not college material, he ;s a carpenter by trade, and thinks if you have a strong manual arts and medical technology program in the schools you w-,�� see those kids get employed There was a motion made by Alderman Tisdahl for approval of the $33.000 for the assessment, motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Ms. Carroll remarked we have to bring back budget amendments to pay for that. Motion called and unanimously aflproved f3-0t. Alderman Tisdahl made a second motion for approval of creatinq a full-time position for the Summer Youth Employment Program, motion seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Alderman Newman did not think is the proposal before the committee which Alderman Jean -Baptiste disagreed with, Alderman Newman asked what this person was going to do, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded that will be determined by the City Manager and the Director of the Summer Youth Employment Program, it will include assisting and strengthening the Summer Youth Employment Program to look for work so that the other 80% of youth who attend the job fair to work will have access to work. Alderman Newman asked Ms Carroll if her office is requesting to increase this posdion from half to full time. Ms. Carroll's response was the 'idea was the assessment for $33,000, and asked do you additionally want a person to staff the SYEP year round, or are you just saying you want to put more focus of hours in a six month period. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said they are talking about increasing the Summer Youth Job Coordinator's time from part to full time and how it's implemented is up to the City Manager He asked for Ms. Haynes' thoughts on this. Ms Haynes understood the proposal submitted on February 21"' was that the SummerYouth Employment Coordinator's position would go from part-time to full-time and would be responsible for administering the SYEP and conducting an assessment of the youth services, also that position may not be assigned to Human Relations. Assuming it is allowed to stay in the department that person would be responsible for administering the SYEP and working with businesses in town to promote the 50150 Program. This is a program she developed last year to encourage the participation of the private sector to pay half the salaries of the youth they hire. Alderman Newman asked what's the cost to the City for each 50150 position, to which Ms. Haynes responded the private sector pays at least minimum wage, this year its S6.50 and hour, and we pay the balance. She cannot give a specific figure of how much as that is solely based on the number of employers and the number of kids they hire. Last year was the first summer we had this program and there were 16 or 17 kids hired. Those salaries are taken out of the total program budget $253,000 that provides participants' salaries, supervising salaries, and support staff salaries. The private sector money came out of the community clean up part of the program. Alterman Newman asked if a survey of the business community was done to see whether or not there is any interest in paying 50% of these potential summer job salaries, to which Ms. Haynes said she does not know how many businesses are interested in the program because we haven't had the opportunity to co knock on the doors and ask them The full- bme person will facilitate that. Nis. Carroll voiced her concern about adding a program for which we have not defined outcomes and the purpose of the assessment is to determine if there's an interest in the business community to take on the 50150 Program. She has no problem if the assessment defines the need of increasing the staff next year but to add it now is not in the City's best interest because we have no idea of how many more people we'll be able to serve for the dollars that it may cost. Alderman Jean -Baptiste emphasized the fact that there is a need, the reports we've received from people who ran the program tells us they're only serving 20 to 25% of those who come for jobs. Ms. Carroll contended making a full-time person is not necessarily going to get the results you're looking for. We need to have the assessment done first then come back in the budget next year and determine if we want to add to the program, or if we want to do a training program, or we need to do an acid based program on skill building. It's not her recommendation to add the person for the SYEP until we have the assessment done which is where she's at from an administrative standpoint. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted we have a motion on the table that was seconded and are getting ready to vote on the motion. Alderman Newman asked what is the motion, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the motion is to expand the Summer Youth Employment Program Coordinator to a full-time position and give that person the assignment to do an assessment and other things. Alderman Newman did not think there was a need to move forward with this tonight and Page 3. said what you're planrir3 vn dzrig is exactly ;:hat the City Manager is not asking for. It's the job of the City Manager to administer City programs We con t nave oef•cre us wnat trn s person ,s goTg to do, or the budget of the program, nor do we have a full committee here tonight He ooes nct know why ue rake to create this position or what we're trying to achieve. We don't knovr -& at tr:e market is, whether the businesses in the community have lobs where they're gong to pay 50% of the salaries for y zu;h t: eriveen 14 and I E Also. if there ve, a five members present tonight this vote would not be the same. Alderman Jean -Baptiste saiY we do have a quorum The City Manage- may not be familiar with all the needs and you sti!I have the opportuntry to aYoeal before the Council and tr; to defeat tr s ,f you wish Alderman Newman did not know what we •e defeating because he .z_s not know :-:not ,r.e re ,ct rg on A'zerman Jean -Baptiste said at this point in time the interest is to continue to try to serve more of the youth This is not a !arge sum of money, close to a million dollars was appropriated to the library to make a library that's new. Getter. The ne=ds are there, how this gels integrated and worked out will be done by the Cq Manager. Alderman Newman wanted included in the minutes that he considers this action to be Irresponsible. Alderman Jean- 6apGste's response was you can think those actions are irresponsiole as long as we begin to find our direction in a particular way. Alderman Jean -Baptiste called for a vote on Alderman Tisdahl's motion, motion approved 2.1. Alderman Jean - Baptiste and Alderman Tisdahl in favor, Alderman Newman opposed. (At this time 9:15 p.m., alderman Newman left the meeting.) Schona Buranda, Chair of the Human Relations Commission, said a special meeting of the Human Relations Commission was called because of some concerns about what the proposal entailed. With the growing need forjobs and the lack thereof, this program is a jewel in the City. A great number of kids do need these jobs not necessarily because they need to pay bills as was remarked by one of the Aldermen as the reason he voted for this program, which was very disturbing to her. They don't look at family income when placing these kids and might add a great number of these are of different ethnicity's not just African American. The Commission agrees with the City Manager's proposal for an assessment to be done which the Human Relations Commission is very capable of doing but that might be a conflict of interest and decided it could be done by an independent body. She would emphasize they have a very capable staff and a combination of capabilities would ultimately help arrive at a more ebjective outcome. We have at feast 500 or 600 kids coming at 5:00 or 6.00 a m, to look for jobs because they want to v, ork, they're not lazy as commented by one of the Aldermen fast meeting, you can't make a generalization of all the kids She thinks that is totally reprehensible and would hope that could be corrected. Those are disparaging remarks which she thinks borders on racism and is indicative of these practices being the rule not the exception. N inutes from prior meetings always criticized this program and she takes offense to this program being classified as not successful. It's very successful; the kids have built work ethics and responsibility, that all merit them getting these jobs not to help their parents pay bills, which is not a bad idea either. Mr. Buranda wanted this to go on record as coming from members of the Human Relations Commission and she is totally disgusted by those comments. XavierArchey, spoke cf his strong and long background with the program and how he benefited from the program as it offered him opportunities in life he never imagined could come his way. Mr. Archey has come back to the program as a supervisor and has become a tool truck driver. He believes there is a need for the program and it should be offered year round. Anthony Norris, participated in the program 3 years before going into the Marines and spoke of how it helped him in the Marines. The program taught him to respect the dollar that you work for. He understands the need for youth to learn skills and they need something to do during the summer rather than hang out in the streets. Joan Hickman, Commission on Aging member, remarked anyone can get a job, you need to know how to keep a job and that's what working dunng the summer teaches you. As an adult it takes skills to get and keep a real job Cindy Reed, formeryouth worker, thought it would be a good idea to implement a program for elementary school kids for entering high school, as they are totally lost when they get there The high school used to have a lot of vocational programs that have been eliminated and are now all on computers She would encourage the City to get involved and collaborate with the high school to bring back these vocational programs; our kids are not all college material. Her thoughts were we need a full-time position, internships and other kinds of programs. Ms. Reed offered her assistance. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted this will close this particular issue, in summation this is about broadening youth services. He hopes we can reopen the discussion again as a hearing so everyone will have a chance to participate and share ideas. None of us have a monopoly on these things, we need to know what we can do, what ideas are on the table, and we need Page 4 tc pull together as many experts and non -experts as we can. This is a c ood beginning and maybe a bit rocky but hopefully will survive and good th;ncs will come out of it. Junad Rizkl, spoke cf ?:is concern with the Police Department and the commfyee not dealing with policing issues. An issue of particular intere-st was about the school janitor, anctner concerne-d defibrillators and that only the police should have them, and a thirc &as regarding police officers moonlighting in sores it Evanston and wanted to know who carries the liability for them Charles Sheridan, sa:c he has a problem with the local hiring prcgram wtiich he has researched for a couple of years He interacted with Llc,d Sheppard, Bobbie Tolston, and Bill Staffcrd cf the C+;y, regarding the hiring on the Sherman Avenue Plaza. This program is supposed to hire Evanston residents on TIF projects and also hire residents on municipal infrastructure projects Presently they are supposed to be hiring 15°: of residents on this project. which they are not doing. People are supposed to be hired at union wages and are being hired at substandard wages, besides giving them short hours; they're hiring apprenticeship programs that companies are alk7Ned to run which is in violation of federal law. A discussion with members of the audience ensued about the particulars of the local hiring program to which Ms. Carroll remarked the 15% goal is not something we can mandate by law. A job fair is going to occur on March 23rd before the Sherman Avenue Plaza Project where contractors and subcontractors will be present to meet with interested parties that want to apply for the jobs. Whoever applies will have to have the particular experience and skills related to the jobs available, this is not a guaranteed employment. We're trying to match the contractors and subcontractors with those Evanston residents seOing employment. There is a place where they can apply for the jobs and she will get the information from Ms. Tctston, who set this up, about the jobs available. A question was raised as to now this information will be disseminated to which Ms. Carroll responded Ms. Tolston is working on the publication of this, it will be placed on the web site, there will be advertisements in the Evanston Review, and flyers will be distributed. A comment of concern from the audience was wttien a lot of African Americans tradesmen go to thesejob fairs they onlywant union workers but the union won't sponsor them and they can't get sponsored to get the jobs. Mr. Sheridan said he is a member of Local Union 2, if you want to work and an employer is willing to hire you the union is going to take you, period. Ms. Buranda inquired if there are jobs for minorities as they have people coming to Human Relations saying they were denied jobs and try to register discrimination complaints. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted there are incentives for minority contractors and women owned Evanston based businesses if they bid on a job. Mr. Sheppard, Director of MIWIEBE is the office that monitors that. He hopes in some way to bolster our people to make sure they're not denied on the basis of not being members of the union and asked the City Manager to look into that. Ms. Carroll said she will talk to Ms. Tolston to get clarity on how this going to work. VI. ADJOURNMENT Alderman Jean-Bapbste adjourned the meeting at 9:59 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey tTroy,1 epartme of Health and Human Services Page 5. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday June 6, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:30 PJA. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein. Holmes, Jean -Baptiste. Moran, and Tisdahl MEMBERS ABSENT* Aldermen Bernstein STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Bill Stafford, Vince Jones, Frank Kaminski, Detective Jamraz, Harvey Saver, Alisa Dean. Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Bruce Lewis. Dan McAleer, Northwester University Police Department; Pat Vance, Rosemary Jean -Paul, Evanston Township; Sharon Eckersall, Township Assessor, Sue Cantor, Mental Health Board; (See attached list of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Moran I. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Moran called the meeting to order at 7:53 p.m. [I. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE MARCH 7, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the March 7, 2005 meeting were called and unanimously approved f4-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF MAY 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Jean -Baptiste motioned for approval of the May 2005 Township monthly bills, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Moran tailed for any remarks or questions regarding the May 2005 Township monthly bills to which Alderman Tisdahl raised a question on behalf of Alderman Rainey regarding a software purchase that was delivered to Ms. Benjamin's home address. Also how this was paid for? Ms. Eckersall said this software was needed right away and may have been paid for with Ms. Benjamin's personal credit card because they don't have a credit card. Alderman Tisdahl asked if the Assessor's office has Township checks, to which Ms. Eckersall said they expired and have to get them back on the computer. Alderman Tisdahl said the concern is to try to have items delivered to the Township and not use personal addresses. Ms. Eckersall's reason for that is they would not have received this when they did because sometimes they are not in the office as they work many hours a day out of the office. Alderman Holmes asked why it could not be delivered to the Township office right next door, to which Ms. Eckersall responded they have their address on the packages and the delivery people do not go around the corner to the Township office. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked it would be better to have it delivered here at the Civic Center to Mr. Terry's office. There are constant issues as to what we do there and your office should bend over backwards to make sure there is nothing questionable. Hearinq no further questions Alderman Moran recalled the motion to approve the May 2005 Township bills, motion unanimously approved {4-01. iV. CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 59-0-05 PROPOSED FY05106 ANNUAL BUDGET FOR EVANSTON TOWNSHIP IN THE AMOUNT OF $1,249,930 Alderman Moran inquired whether this is the first time this item is on the Human Services Committee agenda, to which Mr. Terry responded, yes, because of the lack of meetings and this must be adopted by full Township Trustees no later than June 30th. Ms. Vance addressed the proposed budget for the General Assistance office, the Supervisors office, and Community Action anfd noted some of the major changes. The projected number of clients, 85 this year as opposed to 100 last year. The current case load has a significant number of people who have records, ex felons, etc., and we want to concentrate more effort in working with our ex felons. This budget includes a $15,000 line item for a 50150 Program aimed at employers to consider working with these persons on a trial basis; the Township would pay 50% of their salaries up to a maximum amount. There is a reduction In the Personnel line item due to reformulating the new Executive Director'sjob description. The Executive Director now is also the General Assistance Case Manager. Ms. Vance is looking at adding another,a confidential accounts and human resources person who would relieve the Executive Director from dealing with all the paperwork. They are looking into replacing computers and software not only for staff but also for the Job Club. The Supervisor's office remains the same with the accountant and Township auditing as primary items. They are continuing the Community Action Veteran's assistance, buying flags to put on the Veterans' graves. We realize the Township Page 1. anticipates some income tnat may not come in which is why the Township always experiences somewhat of a cash flow problem and have presented a balanced budget that reflects exactly what the needs are within the General Assistance and the Superviscrs o`f .es. Alderman Tisdahl thought lDokrrg into catast,ophic medical insurance rs a wonderful idea. Ms. Vance said they had this before and didn't renew tie policy but are !ookrng into it again A huge General Assistance client's medical bills can wipe you out. Under the catas:rDphrc Dolrcy once the Township gets to a certain amount the insurance kicks in. Alderman Tisdahl questioned the decrease from 100 to 85 clients to ;%fiich Ms. Vance responded some clients go off and some comeback on the rclls They now have a cycle where people are losing their jobs and are coming back, also there are cycles where people come to them who are coming in and out of institutions. One year its high, the next year its low, they think we can handle that with their projected budget. Ms. Eckersall addressed the Assessor's budget and noted last year was a reassessment year needing additional staff, duplicating, supplies, etc. Over $4,500 was spent on a part-time aide which they do not have this year. This year none of the office salaries were increased. The only fee that went up was the legal fee. Dues and subscriptions have to be paid to several organizations and $2500 more was allowed for increases. She does not foresee any major purchases this year, likewise with supplies, those amounts are lower this year. Postage looks a little out of line but some petty cash receipts have not gone to Ms. Vance yet. Under contract services, Cook County is trying to coordinate a service for permits that can be put into our computer that will go directly downtown and save man hours for all 30 townships. We have 6500 permits a year, a tot of work generated by 3 and 4 people inputting it in different locations. The balance of $2500 for the forensic scientist maybe needed for court. Education will be up a little bit as she hopes to go to another conference this year. Classes for her continuing educations have increased and she has to take those each year, also it's getting harder to find these classes in the Chicago area and sometimes has to go further to attend these classes. Alderman Holmes had an inquiry pertaining to the dues and subscriptions item, $611 was spent last year but it's going up to $2500. Ms. Eckersalt said this year they listed of all their dues for Ms. Vance which got into the wrong categories and she is now pulling them out, these are warrantees and service contracts on different items. Alderman Holmes remarked if you are now correcting that then one of the other categories should be reduced. Ms. r=ckersall said she wanted to leave it that way because another line of software is coming in for the Assessor's office this year that could cost $1500 or $2000, in order to keep up with the state we either have to buy new software or buy Cook County's programs as they keep Instituting new software programs. Alderman Moran thought buying software shouldn't fall under dues and subscriptions. We need clarity on this line item. Ms. Eckersalt said we now have a list of different places that we pay yearly fees to and we can get a breakdown of these items to you. Hearina no further questions regardfnq the Township budget Alderman Moran called for a motion to recommend approval to the Township Trustees of Ordinance 59.0-05 proposed FY05106 Annual Budaet for Evanston Township In the amount of $1.249.930. Alderman Tisdahl motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Jean. Baptiste. motion unanimously approved f4-M. V. CONSIDERATION OF RENEWAL OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF EVANSTON AND EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE PROVISION OF EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $110,000 ANNUALLY Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted three or four years ago this was a collaborative initiative between the Departmentof Health and Human Services and the Township. Alderman Moran called for a motion for approval. Alderman Holmes motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste, motion unanimously approved (4-0). VI. CONSIDERATION OF RENEWAL OF THE ENGAGEMENT OF MILLER COOPER TO CONDUCT THE — ANNUAL AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2005 iN THE AMOUNT OF $15,100. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of the motion to consider renewal of MillerCooperto conduct the annual audit of Evanston Township for fiscal year 2005, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Mr. Terry noted the agenda says the motion is for a one year audit but the actual proposal is for an additional three year engagement with Miller Cooper. His cover memo questions whether or not at some point you would want to Initiate a revolving auditor policy. This is the eighth year that Miller Cooper is the auditor and another three year engagement would - bring them up to eleven years, There are no problems with Miller Cooper, it's just every once in while there are some policy questions on how you feel about rotating. Mr. Stafford, Supervisor Vance and he discussed this, there are no issues with Miller Cooper, it's just philosophical. Under the proposal the audit goes up about $500 every year, Alderman Moran thought Cooper Miller is a leader in the Field and has done good work for us and would not have a problem with a -- three year engagement, which is up to the committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted their work has been reliable and -_ consistent and he supports the extended engagement. Alderman Tisdahl also voiced her support of Miller Cooper. Page 2. Alderman Moran called for a motion for approval consideration of renewing Miller Cooper to conduct the annual audits of Evanston Township for the fiscal year 2005 and an additional three year engagement. Motion unanimously approved (4-01. VI. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Alderman Moran called for any questions in relaticn to C R 04-07 involving damage to a door. Alderman Tisdahl said she would question what happens to a police officer in a susta�ned complaint. Chief Kaminski responded there is a range of corrective disciplinary actions that can be taken but disciplinary actions taken against officers are not discussed. This action was not intentional. the officers were dealing with a difficult situation. Unfortunately the butt of the officers metal baton was used to knock three times on the door to get the occupants attention. This was investigated, it was true the officer did damage the door and the damage was paid for In this instance the officer was pursuing an armed robbery and was knocking on the door with his baton, which in the Chiefs opinion was not the appropriate thing to do. The complainant is working with the legal department to get this resolved. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved to accept the recommendation of CR 04-07, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, recommendation unanimously accepted (4-0). Alderman Moran noted C. R. 04-08 was for improper investigation, the outcome was exonerated. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked why this complaint needed to be investigated. Chief Kaminski said any allegations of misconduct are investigated. however bizarre or frivolous we may think. The police were called because the complainant, who was at the Department of Employment Security office, was becoming rowdy and combative with the people there. The initial of icerwho responded did everything he was supposed to do. The complainant felt he wasn't satisfactorily getting the documents he needed,but he was given everything. He filed a Freedom of Information Act to receive all the documents he had coming to him. There were follow up discussions with the complainant, and he was satisfied vAth the corrected and additional information in the supplementary report that he was given. Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved for acceptance of the recommendation for CR 04-08. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, recommendation unanimously accepted (4-0). Alderman Moran noted C.R. 05-01. related to unlawful arrest, the proposed action was to exonerate. The complainant, Mr. Phillips, was present and Alderman Moran invited him to describe the incident. He went into Dominick's on Green Bay Road and for no apparent reason was told by an Evanston policeman in full uniform, the management wanted him to leave and not return as he would be prosecuted for trespassing. Mr. Phillips reported this incident to the Evanston Police Department and felt he was not treated well by the department. Two weeks later he returned to Dominick's and left the store without purchasing anything. Several hours later was stopped by two officers and arrested for trespassing. Mr. Phillips believes this all came about because of the first officer's treatment and is suing the officer. Chief Kaminski said the Officer of Professional Standards reviewed all the allegations of misconduct The officerwas there on an authorized off duty secondary employment detail that was pre approved by the department. The allegation was the complainant, Dominick's, filed a complaint the second time Mr. Phillips was in the store and on the basis of that complaint the arrest was initiated. Mr. Phillips had been previously told about not being on the premises because there had been some problems. The initial complaint about harassment and defamation was unfounded and the allegation that the arrest was a result of any unlawful actions on the part of the officer there the first time was exonerated. Members of the committee were concerned about Dominick's grounds for having a list of names of people that can't go into the store. Chief Kaminski responded, these are people who have previously caused problems there, i.e., theft, rowdiness, etc. On August 281', the officer working at the store, as secondary employment, was advised by management that they did not want Mr. Phillips in the store. The officer, acted on behalf of Dominick's, advising Mr. Phillips to leave the store and not return. Once that warning is given if they return they have the basis to sign a complaint for criminal trespassing. The officers did not initiate the complaint. Mr. Phillips said he had never been arrested in that store before nor was there any record of him stealing anything there, he was arrested for trespassing because of what the first officer said about him. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if any establishment can ask somebody to leave even if they're making a mistake and would the officer have to implement that. Chief Kaminski said management's decision to ask him to leave was based on behavior. When Mr. Phillips decided to come back management then signed a complaint. Alderman Moran noted the complaint is for unlawful arrest and looking at the law in relation to unlawful arrest the question is whether there is probable cause, not whether someone is guilty or not. What we're looking at here is the supposition that there have been problems which Mr. Phillips disputes. This committee does not know that nor are we here to decide Page 3. that. In order to look at this crits=ally you have to determine whether the police officer, who was working in the store. was told the store was justified in excluding Mr. Phillips. This isn't a complaint against Dominica 's it's a complaint against a police officer. Alderman Moran asked Chief Kaminski to explain the rationale in reiaticn to an Evanston police office presiding security services to private organizations as secondary employment. Chief Kaminski said we have a very detailed comprehensive policy and procedure in secondary employment that has to be approved by his office Certain places are allowed to hire officers off duty to work in vanous capacities, for example at Northwestern, at Dominick s. they nde the CTA trains off duty. One of the criteria is this helps us relieve some of the pressure from regular officers having to respond to these places. An officer cannot decide at random he wants to work a secondary employment detail, it has to be approved and reviewed by his office, the Office of Professional Standards then it has to be determined if it is sorneth,ng appropriate that will meet our needs and the needs of the community. Every time there are calls about complaints an officer is taken off the street, this way it allows some of the places from which we get a lot of calls to handle those things on a part time basis. Alderman Tisdahl said she's having less trouble with what the officers did than with Dominick's policy. She can see keeping people out of the store if they shop lifted in that store and wonders what other possible grounds there were. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said this committee has some interpretation about what went on at Dominick's. We should not act on this because Mr. Phillips says he has an attorney and the matter is in court. At this time we do not have to accept or reject that particular finding. It's Dominick's business not the City of Evanston's business. Alderman Holmes asked to have the committee's role in this process explained to her. Alderman Moran said people have complaints and our role is to hear these complaints. This committee's jurisdiction has responsibility for police activity. Chief Kaminski advises us what they did in terms of their investigation. There is a disposition of the complaint and in looking at these complaints if we see something that we think is wrong or that there is some kind of a policy that led to a particular outcome that we disagree with and we need to make inquiry about we're entitled to raise that issue to discuss with the department. Essentially the recommendation the Chief makes is the disposition. Our vote is not to affirm or overrule the disposition. In this case the Chief is recommending exonerating the officer and he would vote to support that. Ms. Brennlman noted this function was originally assigned to the Police Services Committee, which is no longer in existence, now the Human Services Committee handles this responsibility. The committee's role is to review these complaints. If you have issues or want to look at something further you can ask the Chief to do that but you can't order him to do that and whether he does that is strictly up to him. It's his responsibility to make the final decision but you have an opportunity, under a resolution that was created for this function, to review, give recommendations or advise if you wish to do so. Alderman Jean-Baptiste's discomfort with this is it becomes almost mechanical. It there's authority on the part of management of the store to exclude somebody for no reason and then to order our police officer to implement that, he has a problem with that. Chief Kaminski said the store was the complainant and verified what they said in the complaint was true and signed it, we're obligated to follow through on that. The fact that we're already there because of a detail doesn't preclude that we don't do that The officers worked good procedures the same way they do for any one on a complaint. Ms. Brenniman noted, periodically over the years we've addressed this issue and she would be happy to resurrect her old opinions and put a packet together with this information. Mr. Phillips said when he went to court the Judge asked for anything in writing that violated Dominick's policy or any contractor orders of protection he had with them. The Judge threw the case out and said he had not violated the law. Chief Kaminski said the Judge dropped the case because the complainant didn't show up. That manager is no longer at that store. Ms. Holmes remarked it our officer was not detailed at Dominick's a different kind of process would have taken place which is the process that occurred the second time. Alderman Tisdahl would like the Chief to let Dominick's know we have had some concerns about their policies and having our officers work there in that fashion. If our officers are going to continue to work there she would like the Chief to review Dominick's policies of kicking people out. Chief Kaminski said they have a detail coordinator that he will call and meet with to make sure that they're doing their best from management's perspective. Alderman Jean -Baptiste would like some information as to the instructions of our officers working in those contexts, are they not part of the process of reviewing who is excluded or do they just roudnety move on this. He understands the reviewing process but when all is said and done somebody has been "victimized" by being arrested and maybe legitimately. People sometimes get profiled in some of these stores, they're followed, somebody points them out and then they get arrested. His recommendation is to hold this item to be brought back at another date. Alderman Moran asked the Chief try to acquire more information and bring this case back at another date. Alderman Moran thanked Mr. Phillips for attending and him if this was alrightwith him that this will be placed on the July 18" meeting agenda. Alderman Jean -Batiste wanted to acknowledge the large number letters of accommodation and appreciation letters from our community received by the Police Department noting the great job they are doing helping people in the community. Page 4 V VII. NORTHWESTERN POLICE AGREEMENT ANNUAL UPDATE Chief Kaminski noted that two years ago we changed the ordinance and the review period for the agreement with Northwestern that requires coming to this committee every two years for review approval. An agreement has been in effect since 1994 and was expanded several years prior to that. Things seem to be working fine for both departments and unless the committee has any problems or issues sees no reason not to continue for the next two year period. Bruce Lewis, Northwestern University Police Chief concurred with Chief Kaminski's assessment. He's completing his second year with Northwestern Universiry and without hesitation can say this mutual aid agreement is the envyof many of our colleagues across the nation. 'Ale have enjoyed a great partnership with Chief Kaminski and the Evanston Police Department yielding very positive results preventing additional crimes being perpetrated against members of our community. Chief Kaminski said they meet once a month to discuss the events in the community. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of renewal of the Northwestern University Police Agreement, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted the last time your departments were together at this committee we were trying to assess what was needed to make sure the kind of belligerence that was being manifested by the students towards the neighbors was controlled and property managed. Concerns were expressed from this committee as to whether or not Northwestern had a sufficient number of police officers to help meet the challenge. What has been done and what are the results of your initiative regarding this? Chief Lewis since that time they commissioned the Center of Public Safety to do a staff study to assess their police needs which resulted in increasing their police force by 15%, 3 additional officers. With the additional officers and following the lead of Chief Kaminski they implemented a Problem Solving Approach to policing and now have officers working from 8:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. on a special shift and have had some effectiveness in deterring some of the crimes against persons as well as some of the unruly behavior In the neighborhood. His first year they wrote about 130 tickets, this past year they wrote about 50 which is a result of increased participation from the neighbors, Student Affairs, as well as the effectiveness of the Chiefs problem solving team getting the message out not only to the neighborhood but also to the students on campus. Alderman Moran extended his compliments and congratulations to both departments the partnership is working verywell and the City is benefiting by the participation of Northwestern and he hopes Northwestern is benefiting by participation of the City. This is a good example of how the City and the University can work effectively together. Alderman Moran recalled the motion for approval of the agreement, motion unanimously approved (4-0). Vlll. CONSIDERATION OF STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE USE OF FY 06 HUD EMERGENCY SHELTER GRANT FUNDS IN THE AMOUNT OF $87,597 Alderman Jean -Baptiste moved to approve the FY06 HUD Emergencv Shelter Grand funds in the amount of S87.759. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Mr. Tent' noted the City gets about S84,000 a year from HUD specifically for homeless services to their emergency shelter grant program. We were notified that this year our amount would be $87.597. Our normal practice is to issue a full request for proposals every two or three years which was done two years ago and were prepared for this to be a renewal year of the three agencies identified in 2003. At that time employment of the homeless was Identified as one of the priority issues. Staff received a communication from the Youth Job Center, one of the three funded agencies, in which their Director, Jim Sibley, told us they have had great difficulty reaching the homeless with employment services and were in effect dropping out of the program There was no likeliness of success articulated. Rather than open up all of the $87,000 grants we did a small request for the Youth Job Center's allocation and received five applications for funding. The staff is recommending that a S10.000 grant be given to the Fresh Start Program. In the past few years we have heard from members of this committee and heard increasing community conversations about the issue of community reintegration which is a priority. Fresh Start is an organization directly working with that issue and we are recommending a $10,000 grant to them to work with homeless and particularly those that are trying to reintegrate into the community. Alderman Moran recalled the motion for approval of the use of the FY06 HUD Emergencv Shelter Grant funds, motion unanimously approved. IX. DISPOSITION OF PENDING COMMUNITY REFERENCES Alderman Moran staled the recommendation is to remove these pending references from appearing on this committee's agenda because of other actions that have been initiated and asked if the committee is comfortable with this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he is comfortable with some of them but is not sure whether we can remove the Ex -offender Reintegration as it is a Human Services issue and a matter we have to keep looking into. The HUD grant allocation to Page 5. Fresh Start does some of that work but he does nct knox whether that S10.000 rescues our problem. He would like to have a more in depth discussion of this particular issue to try to assess what we might need to do and what we may be able to do. Alderman Tisdahl had nothing against removing 7,e anti -roosting devices reference butwanted to know if there is anything happening at Lincoln and Ridge to fix up that v,a.uct aria would appreGate a report on that. Alderman Moran asked the committee if Ft wou�c to acceptable to remove all the references except the Ex -offender Reintegration. Alderman Holmes motion to remove all the references except the Ex -offender Reintearation reference. motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl and unanimously approved f4-01. X. 2005 HOMELESS CONTINUUM OF CARE Mr. Terry informed the committee that the Continuum of Care 1s the document whereby the community as a whole, not just the City, describes our efforts to address homelessness in response to a large HUD S850,000 homelessness grant this year. We are mandated by HUD to have a large community task force. HUD tries to designate who should be on that task force. Sue Calder is the Chair of the task force the Evanston Alliance on Homelessness. The Continuum of Care is a two fold document, one is called an Exhibit 1, which describes the process and all the efforts that Evanston makes to address homelessness. individual agencies in the community use that document to apply directly to HUD; the City does not approve or disapprove those funding applications they go directly to HUD. The Evanston Alliance on Homelessness ranks the proposals. The memorandum describes the ranking and review process. This is a very, very detailed HUD process with formulas and proportions, which he joked perhaps only ten people in the entire United States of American understand. Fortunately two or three of these people reside in the City of Evanston which is why our Exhibit 1 is consistently ranked among the best in the country and our funding proposals have been very, very successful. The proposals from Connections for the Homeless and Housing Options have been ranked appropriately and we have a request going in for S659,293. HUD is continually looking for permanent housing, which is one of the many factors that affects an agency's ranking, to be part of the community's application but there are few agencies in the community that have the organizational capacity to start and keep permanent housing going. Historically, over the last few years the funding has gone to Connections for the Homeless and Housing Options. We're lucky to have these two fine agencies, but there are encouraging other agencies in the community to get involved with as well. Generally the President makes an announcement around Christmas as to who received the homeless dollars. Alderman Jean -Baptiste would like to understand our current problem with homelessness in the City of Evanston, is it a growing problem. He has heard comments from people who say twenty years ago we didn't have all these shelters which means we either are attracting a lot more homeless people because of all the services we have for them or more of our people are becoming homeless. Also, how do the homeless evaluate the care that we give and are we being holistic in terms of what we do, is it an atmosphere where people are feeling like human beings. Mr. Terry responded there have been a number of changes and issues we're keeping an eye on. For example, earlier tonight we approved the Emergency Assistance grant, requests for emergency assistance are way down which is why we have not expended the upper limit of that contract as we have in previous years. The shelter itself is no longer an overnight shelter. The length of stay there is - quite long, it's not transitional housing but a transitional program in which if you stay there a long time you get employment and other types of counseling that you may need. As part of the HUD grant every year we are forced to count homeless, but there has never been a truly successful effort at counting homeless. Everybody has their own definition of who is homeless, its always a snapshot in time, sometimes its seasonal, Evanston's homeless problem is greater in the summer than it is in the winter There area number of factors that go into that and at some point we should schedule members of the Homelessness Task Force to come and do a homeless overview. In the past few weeks he has had a number of inquiries relative to panhandling concerns and issues and the revival of the panhandling policy, which perhaps could be = part of the review. -- XI. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsky epartment of He and Human Services Page 6. DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, July 18, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7.30 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Holmes, Jean -Baptiste, Moran, and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Julia Carrots, Judy Aiello, Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Paula Haynes, Vince Jones. Frank Kaminski, Harvey Saver, Alisa Dean, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Wollin, Rosemary Jean -Paul, Evanston Township; Sharon Eckersall, Township Assessor, Sue Cantor (Mental Health Board); Schona Buranda, Jan Sullivan, Michael Green (Human Relations Commission) See Attached List of Attendees PRESIDING: Alderman Moran CALL TO ORDER Alderman Moran called the meeting to order at 7:36 p.m. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE JUNE 6, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the March 7, 2005 meetinq were called and unanimously approved (5-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF JUNE 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernstein questioned the Assessor's bills regarding the 64 mile trip taken charged at40 1/: cents per mile. Ms. Eckersall responded that trip was when she and Jeff Whales, the part-time person, went to Countryside, Illinois. Alderman Bemstein also questioned the charge to the Township at 6:54 a.m. for coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Ms. Eckersall said that is considered training. She was on the way to downtown something she has done before. Alderman Bernstein also questioned the purchase of ice cream cones in the afternoon to which Ms. Eckersall responded that should not be on the bills list. There were two parking bills on the list for $14.00 each for two vehicles on the same day. Ms. Eckersall said it was for two days, one parking bill for each day. One day it was for training and the other day it was for a course at the Garden Grili which is why she expensed her lunch. Alderman Bernstein was absolutely appalled that coffee on the way downtown was charged for. Ms. Eckersall said if that was too expensive she would take it off the list She does not expense any ovemight hotels, she tries to find classes in the area and come back the same day. Alderman Bernstein had nothing further but said he will in the future. Alderman Holmes asked about the charge on the same day of mileage plus parking plus $3.50 for the C.T.A. Ms. Eckersall said the dates are different, that amount was for Mr. Whales to attend a class and the C.T.A does not give a receipt. One day she and Ms. Benjamin drove downtown, another day Mr. Wales went downtown alone and took the C.T.A. This was all for computer training. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his communication to the Assessor is try to manage conception differently to avoid the confusion regarding what you do and how you do it. Alderman Moran asked Ms. Eckersall if there is any expense she needs to withdraw from the process, to which Ms. Eckersall remarked it would only be the coffee for $1.74 if the committee wanted to. Alderman Holmes asked if could be possible for Mr. Whales to do his own expense report to which Ms. Eckersall said he normally has no expenses but will separate that. Alderman Moran tailed for a motion to consider approval of the June 2005 Townshlo bills. Alderman Jean - Baptiste moved approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion passed 4-1, Alderman Bernstein opposed approval. IV. FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSION ON CR-05-01 AND THE HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE ROLE IN REVIEW OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT Page 1. Alderman Moran noted there was one complaint that was discussed at the June 6, 2005. meeting that was not resolved at the meeting and Chief Kaminski has given the committee confidential background materials pertinent to the complainant in that case. If there is a desire to discuss the materials contained in the confidential packet it should be done in Executive Session, otherwise can move acceptance of this report. Alderman Bernstein moved acceptance of the Chiefs recommendation, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted when this complaint was before the committee the Chief and the officer serving as the security officer had information the committee did not have. The officer had taken some action that was not well founded in terms of any prior complaints of that particular individual. it is important that we understand that or else it seems that the officer is acting in a way that discriminates against this individual. This individual may have some priors that automatically empower the officers to presume that he not be able to be in the store. We have to be sure that we do what we do beyond reproach and clear instruction is given to the individual. He appreciates being given the additional information and in the future asked to have that information at our disposal to enable us to make the proper decisions. Alderman Moran called for the motion of acceptinq the Chiefs recommendation. Recommendation unanlmousty accepted 15.0). Alderman Moran noted the second aspect of this is the Human Services Committee's role in the review of the Police Department which was discussed in Ms. Brenniman's memo to the committee. Alderman Bernstein asked why we went from a Police Services Committee back to the Human Services Committee. Alderman Moran noted after the 1997 election there was a suggestion that we had too many committees, commissions, or agencies and the jurisdiction of the old Police Services Committee was dumped into the Human Services Committee which deleted that Police Services Committee but the function was still the same. Mr. Terry said the timing coincided after the referendum passed and we went from 18 to 9 Aldermen. There were a number of Council Committees when the Council went down to 9 members that the felt they could not sustain some of these special target area committees and folded them into the three standing committees. Alderman Bernstein wanted to clarify that Police Services was a committee of the Council rather than a citizen's committee. Alderman Holmes remarked when this was discussed this at the last meeting it should have been done in Executive Session. Ms. Brenniman said you never have to go into Executive Session, you have that option. Had she known that names were going to be used she would have definitely recommended going into Executive Session. When a complainant is here it is more appropriate to go into closed session then you're assured that privacy issue is being maintained. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if there ever was a review board of citizens to review the process of complaints against the Police Department Chief Kaminski said at the time of review you are the citizens. There are various levels of citizen review around the country but there is not one best method. This is the representative body of citizens that was established long ago. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted then there was never a citizen's review committee or a committee made of citizens who are not elected. In 2001 when he first came on the Council he raised the question whether or not the Police Department can remain impartial in its review of complaints. It seems to him that the best interest of the Police Department is going to be served and that's an interest that should be protected but he's not sure whether there is consistent objectivity in such a process. What has been found in the processes around the country, is anybody doing a mixed group review where citizens take part in the interviewing of the complainant and the officer in order to come to some kind of finding. Chief Kaminski said there is a great deal of research out there and does not think there's one best method. The best practice is to have some type of review, For the past 30 years he has been involved in reviewing committees and thinks this committee probably has the best knowledge and does a very thorough job of keeping the department in check. It's important that citizens understand the process as people don't understand the police process. There are pros and cons of many systems. A book was done several years ago on review systems across the country _= and our system was put into the book. We try to make sure there's a lot of checks and balances to make sure we're doing the right thing. Unless you feel there should be different system than what was proposed by the Council, this is what we should be doing. Alderman Moran remarked, as one of the senior aldermen on this committee, his view of the process is that it works. He can say that with confidence because over the course of time he has seen many of these done and almost without exception felt the findings in the case information were inappropriate. His confidence level is high in terms of outcomes that there is objectivity in the reviews. Alderman Wollin remarked having been a citizen representative for A years she can agree with Alderman Jean -Baptiste that he is a citizen and we serve as representatives of citizens so in fact it really is a citizen representative. When we first -- started there were only two Police Review Boards in the state of Illinois, Chicago and Evanston. You can go into Page 2. Executive Session even if the complainant is not here to discuss the case. She feels this review process functions very well and has been very effective. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked who does the interviewing when officers or complainants have to be interviewed. Chief Kaminski responded the Officers of Professional Standards, a Commander and a Sergeant, a separate body that reports to him and no one else. Alderman Jean -Baptiste did not think we as aldermen have the capacity to sift through and do the initial interviews of the complainants and the officers. If we had citizens willing to serve in the review that would add to the legitimacy. He respects the Chiefs work but those complainants, or those who might complain, think if they complain to the police about the police the police draw a conclusion that would not be the same conclusion as the members of this panel, it's a process that is objective. He's not saying good people are not working on this but this is an issue that should be looked at to see how it can be made better and more legitimate in the eyes of the people by opening the committee to appointment of civilians. It also gives us a different perspective to look the potential candidates coming in and understanding certain nuisances from our viewpoint. Alderman Holmes asked how does this committee keep the Council aware and abreast of police policies and problems and keep the City Manager and Chief of Police aware and abreast of Council and citizens' attitudes, concerns and problems with law enforcement activities. Alderman Moran did not recall a circumstance of where either the Police Services Committee or the Human Services Committee felt that there was something that we observed about the policy process through the prism of the complaints that we received was for alleged misconduct. He does not remember a circumstance where either of those committees felt that it was warranted that this committee submit its report to City Council saying there seems to be a pattern that we're finding disturbing and are not satisfied that the process is working correctly. Theoretically the Human Services Committee would issue a memorandum or report to the full City Council on this and maybe a matter of policy for full Council consideration to take that up. People who have always served on this committee are members of the City Council, not the entire City Council. The Chief is always in attendance and the City Manager has always been present. The notion of their being apprised of concerns that this committee has is they are apprised of it immediately. In terms of the Council conveying to the Police Chief and the City Manager he does not think has happened. The Human Services Committee has never deemed it necessary or appropriate to suggest to the full Council that there needs to be a change of some sort which is why the Council has never expressed to this committee, the Chief, or the City Manager that changes need to be made. Alderman Bernstein remarked what Alderman Moran said is part and parcel of what we do when we review a complaint. We determine whether or not, in our opinion there was validity to the decision made and the process used to the extent that if there wasn't than we don't think so, that's all we can do and really our role. Alderman Bernstein asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he envisions replacing or adding the voice of the citizens to that of the Police Chief, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said yes, but still coming before the Human Services Committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said keeping the City Manager and the Chief of Police aware and abreast of Council and citizen attitudes, concerns and problems with law enforcement activity is proactive and we ought to know what people are thinking. With the trend that exists and now the overwhelming majority of our police officers not coming from the community there are contradictions in terms of certain conceptions that certain police officers may have on how they approach resolution of problem interaction. It's a good program in terms of policing, we engage in problem solving all the time which is great. A complaint forthcoming where a parent had complained about their kid that had never been involved with the police was stopped by an officer while walking home. The officer insisted on the kid going a different direction and in the process of the interaction there was name calling and other demeaning treatment. The parent wrote to him and to the Chief as well. Sometimes it's a problem of sensitivity that we don't get in the complaint that comes to us that citizens who serve on the Police Board who also hear it from citizens who live in the community may hear. A citizen who is not a part of the police department may have a more objective sense of that review of the complaint. It's still very much entrenched in the police department. There are different models out there and we can improve the reviews by integrating citizens in the process. Alderman Tisdahl asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he is proposing that we move to that model, does he want to look at the different models, or is there one he's ready to move to. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he did not know what all the models are but the model he is thinking of has to have integration of citizens who live in the community. He would be attracted to models that also bring independent perspective to our citizens who are not part of the police force to review police conduct. Alderman Holmes asked if this is suggested as a replacement for the Human Services Committee, to which Alderman Jean -Baptiste said the committee will serve the same purpose it has done before. He hopes the citizens will work together with the existing committee and will take part at meetings that interview with the police officers in terms of conduct and process. Chief Kaminski noted there are certain legal requirements regarding the police officers civil rights and certain labor agreements. To make sure everybody is on the same page any other investigation has to be handled like any another criminal process, so we make sure we have all those safeguards are addressed before we do anything or move in any Page 3. other direction. Before you have citzens interviewing officers on citizens complaints there area lot of issues that you have to be very careful of if turns into a crirn;nal master. Alderman Moran thought we have to get same eelineation of some of these concepts and how they may or may norwork in terms of the various issues the Chef referred to. The Chief can give us some examples of other models consistent with what Alderman Jean -Baptiste is suggesting to review and the legal department can also assist in identifying the safeguards that aught lobe in place Alderman Moran was not suggesting there will be any changes; the Council will have to decide if there was to be a structural change on a collective bans. Chief Kaminski said the committee gets a synopsis that is nondescript as it does not identify the people. He has an Advisory Board, a group of citizens he meets with, and thought if he had a few volunteers t,':ere to review cases before coming to you it's a way to get some citizens involved. We might give it a pilot best to see the kind of feedback we'd get and if it works. Alderman Bernstein said we only have the paver to review the Chiefs actions. We cannot change the Chiefs actions, although we could be upset with the Chief for taking those actions Alderman Jean -Baptiste talked about having citizens serve with the two sworn officers in the Office of Professional Standards and there might be some legal implications that can preclude us from doing that and can see some real serious implications of getting a citizen involved initially. Ms. Brenniman said one of things the committee can do, and has done, is ask the Chief to go back and take another look at the situation, which he has done on many occasions. it is absolutely correct that we do not have the authorityto tell the Chief to change his mind nor the authority to get involved in the discipline which was made very clear in her memo. Betty Sue Ester, remarked she hears from individuals in the community about the police policing themsehres. What is the point for them going to the Human Services Committee because you can't change anything. She has never heard this committee tell an individual what their next step is. if the Chiefs decision is final there is no place to go. The community does not come as readily as she would like to see them come to make complaints because they say nothing is going to be done. A serious question to be looked at is what is point of the Review Board for the Police Department, because you do not oversee that board the decision is the Chiefs. That should be changed because a lot of citizens are being hurt by this process. Alderman Moran did not agree with Ms. Ester on a couple of different points. The first reason he disagrees is that if you follow the process closely you would understand that when there has been a finding by the Chief that there was inappropriate behavior which he and all the Chefs have done. There are disciplines meted down to the officers who have been found guilty of inappropriate conduct. The second point is it is clearly not within the jurisdiction of this committee to give out disciplinary measures against the members of our police department, that's the Chiefs job which he believes is the case by statute. Even if our committee wanted to it could not do that. An important part of the functioning of this committee is to look at these cases, we do not change the outcomes, but we see what the complaint is, the investigatory process is, and the conclusions that were reached. If we do decide something Is going on within in a broader framework of our delivery of police services that we feet something has gone wrong and we need to make changes. This committee has never surrendered that and would like to make it clear that no one should be discouraged to come before us if they have a complaint because this committee is ready, willing and able to hear those complaints. He does not want anyone to go away from this committee meeting with the notion that it's useless for someone to come here to express a complaint about police behavior. There are other steps that stem from findings of inappropriate conduct that are taken disciplinary measures are meted out not by this committee but they are imposed. Alderman Bernstein said on balance the Chief has done an incredibly good job. What we're talking about is setting up a policy that excludes the individual and talks in terms of a process. The cynicism out there about the police department would not be served by the objective appointment of these citizens because that cynicism would include the citizens appointed to that committee. He sees some problems with the way these appointments will be made. We are fortunate to have a Police Chief that has been fair and disciplined officers when they require disciplining. If people will be critical or concerned about the actions of the police department they will continue to be concerned and all we can do is get to a point where the policemen on the street do the right thing all of the time so there is nothing going to raise the concern of the citizenry. Janet Sullivan asked if this is a rubber stamp committee. Her other question dealt with the review of complaints and suggested an interim step be taken where the report comes to a sub committee where they review it. If the recommendation is already made and concluded and can't be reversed then there is Indeed no review here. Gentleman from the audience, maybe citizens could go over and read all the material and bring it back here. He believes that you believe you're ready, willing an able to have a change but does not believe all the citizens in Evanston believe that you want or can handle their situations. What would be the backlash if police officers did this too? -_ Where are a lot of citizens that have no confidence which he thinks is a real cultural thing. What are we going to get if you we talk to these people we'll get what we got for the last hundreds of years. You have confidence in yourselves, what you Page 4. need to gel is the confidence of the citizens out there wtthin your organization. If they don't you can have all the confidence in the world, that does no good to heap those citizens cut because they don't have anj confidence in you. Alderman Moran said he does not have a magic formula for making each and every person conf.aent in him but they certainty are free to come here. You mention backlash which he has never heard of anyone saying they were given bad treatment because they came here and complained about specific incidents of police conduct_ If rt happened he'd be happy to hear it. People have to participate for us to do the job we need to do. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there is no process that is fool proof. The Chief is a good guy and has an excellent record of commitment to the City and his process maybe the best process that he has. He is recommending that we take a look at the different models available and that our legal department give us more besides these safeguards and we put this on the agenda for further discussion. This was a healthy discussion where we were able to get different perspectives. Ms. Ester, wanted to clarify her statement she never said there wasn't recommendations that the Chief made that wasn't needed. When the Chef makes his decision its final. Is there another step that individuals are supposed to take and stated in that letter with his final decision? That's why they think there is nothing they can do after that_ We are talking about a process that needs to give the citizens more confidence in this City government not only the police department but the Human Services Committee. We need to get the trust back from our citizens in this committee. Print out what happens when people go through this process and what they're rights are. Our citizens are lacking information about a lot of services not only the police department. Ms. Brenniman wanted to speak to the comment made about the discipline and the concern for discipline. We have a procedure in the City where Department heads, the Police Chief, and the division heads who have a discipline issue are not the only persons involved in that. We have a Due Cause Board if they want to give a discipline of suspension of two or more days they must come to made up of a representative from the Law Department, the City Manger's Office and the Director of the Human Resources Department_ They come and state this is our position and what we are recommending and we listen to them and either agree or disagree with them. Sometimes we ask them to go back and take another look at their investigation. There is not just one person making this decision a process has to be gone through that is laid out in our Personnel Rules and in Union contracts. Alderman Holmes said since the Chief had been thinking about sharing this information that he shares with his Advisory Board why don't we let him go ahead and start the process to see what kind of feedback he gets. This would be citizens on the Police Advisory Committee giving him another view before it gets to this committee. Chief Kaminski said he was not going to change any of the process but you'd get the perspective of some other people. As another layer of review he thought he'd have 3 or 4 people look at this, which has no legal implications. Alderman Bernstein noted the real problem is we're talking about people's perceptions. The gentleman in the audience who talked about it said the people in the community have the perspective that it's a useless act to come to this committee. How does one change the perceptions of society, you would think education is a good way to start. It's not going to happen today as it has taken a hundred years to create no matter how it's going to be dissipated or diminished but it's a good step to take and we should be publishing whatever our processes are. This is something that maybe Human Relations can do if there isn't some publication already available. There is still another problem with perception in the next appropriate step, the courts of law, and a lot people do not believe they get their due in court either. This should be addressed in any and every way possible to eventually start to change this perception. Alderman Tisdahl said she would appreciate it if yuu would share the facts with your Police Advisory Board and let us know how that works. Schona Buranda, thought part of the problem is lack of knowledge in the community. She knows a Mot of the complaints that come to the Human Relations Commissioners and officers are because of lack of trust_ We advise them to go to the police department and file reports which she is very happy that you are also advising them to do and come before this committee and we are also having educational hearings. She made an urgent appeal to the Human Services Committee to consider a Police Civilian Review Board in an effort to deter any kinds of mishaps such as with those City law suits. Our Police Chief is doing a fine job and she's is very proud of the fact that our Police Department goes to other jurisdictions and talks about this practice in certain areas. She questions who picks the Police Advisory Board, is it in the same vein as an independent Review Board. !f it is not an independent civilian review board it will have little effect Alderman Moran certainly wants people to know what they can accomplish and if there are better and more effective ways to disseminate that information he is happy to encourage that. Policing is a difficult activity in many respects which he has Page 5. observed over time. We are committed to responsible, lawful, effective police enforcement. We will always be available and try to do that and open to any and all suggestions regarding that. Michael Green, there are certain people in this community that know people on different economic levels and ages. If you put a cable program together for a cerain aud,ence certain people won't watch it because something else is on TV but you disseminate this information at the same time and people will watch it just because a certain program is on ill and is a faatrtation of some information about that you can get people to actually watch and play it over and over and over again. Ms. Sullivan asked if it is appropriate for police hired by private entities to wear their uniforms because the perception is they are a City employee. Can a private business keep a list of people that have prior offenses particularly at a grocery store. can they track them a prevent them being on the premises when they are in need of groceries. Alderman Moran's response was if a person has committed numerous crimes on the premises of the store and they know that he does not know whether that would be called tracking. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said individuals have basic needs part of which is going to the grocery to shop for food. They may have in the past committed some offenses. He's suggesting that we not go into a deep discussion of this case as we have some feedback from the Chief on why a private business can use the apparent authority of the City. Alderman Bernstein said the reality is It's notjust tracking. In order to be convicted of a trespass going into a public establishment that person has to have prior knowledge that he/she Is no longer allowed on the premises and this party had prior notice. Ken Rogers, remarked about 5 years ago one his students got picked up for shoplifting at Dominick's and was told she could not go back in the store any more. This was a single mom trying to get some milk for her child. We went to the store and tried to talk to the manager and was told they do not let people who shoplift come back into the store. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said there are two proposals on this issue. One, the Chief will share with us and get some feedback on what the Police Advisory Board is finding. Two, this committee will review models for consideration that will include civilians with legal advise as to whether or not we can move forward. V. YOUTH SERVICES STATUS REPORT Alderman Moran noted the committee received a memo that has commentary, preliminary findings and recommendations for actions going forward. There is a recommendation that the City conduct an assessment of youth program services for young people aged 12 to 17 and 18 to 24 in the areas of employment, recreation, intervention/prevention with the following objectives: program identification, program assessment and gap analysis. Alderman Moran asked If it's the wish of the committee to follow those recommendations, if not what would the committee like to do. Alderman Tisdahl remarked that as she read the recommendations she thought It would be possible to go through all of these without ever talking to a young person. What concerns her is some of us would like to hear from some young people and her experience with high school students is they can give you a very good assessment. We need a youth advisory because she does not want to get all these recommendations back without hearing directly from some high school and middle school students. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented the report is the follow up to moving forward with the assessment which was approved prior to the budget. Alderman Bernstein said we have funds available the question is how to use them. Alderman Jean -Baptiste thought there should be some training programs in terms of program identification for employment, recreation and intervention and prevention. If we are able to integrate some feedback from some youth because the motivation behind a lot of the discussions are around doing something about youth. We should discuss what we have because unless we know that we may be redundant in some areas. The City Manager indicated she wanted to investigate those practices throughout the country and also understood that one of the analyses that has been made enhancing the lives of youth is to took at the support systems that you have built. Unlike some of us who have grown up in a village right now a lot of our youth have no oversight once they leave high school, some even leave while in high school. Whatever they're transitioning into if they don't go to college they'll go into some kind of training or vocation. The first question is when do we believe we will begin this assessment as it the time it was proposed. We thought there was a dire need for that analysis to get some programming started to enhance the lives of youth especially those who are falling through the cracks and eventually becoming a liability to us. Ms. Carroll said in March we originally talked about doing the assessment when we had the information in time for discussion and programming in the next budget cycle. That still fits within the plan. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked in terms of the framework how can we be sure that person is looking at evaluating what we have and has a sense of the community they are serving. Ms. Carroll said in the evaluation process and in our interviews the part we will be looking at is their experience, what kind of communities have they done these assessments for and are these communities that have similarities with Evanston. Plus, what is the basis methodology they are going to be involved with and the criteria that we feltwould take all of those phases into consideration. Who are they talking to, how are they assessing it and exactly what their experience has been which will all be part of the criteria. Page 6. Mr. Terry said not unlike the discussion just conciuced. one of the struggles we had as we look at this question is weighing knowing the community versus objectivity because ouite often we are all involved in some type of youth services. To find someone who lives in Evanston and knows our community characteristics and yet is not connected in many ways with the number of local youth initiatives he's not sure that arson or entity exists. Ms Carroll noted from staffs perspective we try tc _et as much background data as possible on the City to paint that picture to develop the interest for the right kind of cerson to do that work. We thought it's a combination of the written information as well as the interview process that ,Nil that draw cut. Ms. Buranda thought this was a perfect opportunity for the Human Relations Commission to get involved in. Ms. Aiello said they worked with Human Relations and Recreation as our resources and would invite others who work with these programs as well as job placement if they wanted to participate. Ms. Carroll spoke with Superintendent Alson as part of our beginning plan. Alderman Holmes asked if part of the plan is to have agencies that are funded by the City providing services be included in that. She can relate to the constant difficulty to coordinate roles in this community which she thinks we need to resolve as we have had this problem for years. We used to have a Youth Commission but had no one speaking for youth in the community. We've all spoke in terms of the services in the agencies but there was no voice. When there was a Youth Outreach in the Police Department it was because none of the agencies thought the other agency could do that so the Police Department got it by default. Ms. Carroll said you might be getting into a little different area than what was originalty envisioned. The original Human Services discussion was an assessment of the organizations that we were funding already because Alderman Jean-Baptiste's interest was to add more programming and resurrect a commission, etc. Alderman Holmes said there is conflict between agencies competing for funding or maybe there is duplication of services or something like that. The intent for this consultant is to talk to all of the providers and understand their programming and determine if there are redundancies and where there are gaps. Since the City is funding this better that we as staff stay out of that and let an objective parry come in to do that. We're going to hire the consultant and after he/she or the firm gathers the information that will be the methodology Ms. Aiello is talking about to determine a level of service, types of programming and services they offer and where there are gaps or redundancies and then present that information to the community to understand how that looks Citywide. The dollars we're putting in the community will indicate where there may be a need or maybe over service. Her concern when this began was we're providing a lot of services but we don't know what we're getting for that or if we're getting the right thing. We first need to assess what we have and then determine where we need to go to fill those gaps, if there are any. Alderman Bernstein added we have to get all the agencies at the table as he recalls an incident when there were competing agencies for the same funding and the fighting that ensued. Therefore, the person we select has to meetwith everybody and maybe meet with them together to get the best perspective. In CDBG we always ask for people to coordinate the services. The questions asked should be how you interact with other agencies, could you do better, what could you do different, are you doing the same? Mr. Green asked if after they find out what organizations are doing are we going to assess those organizations to see how effective they are doing what they do. Ms. Carroll said it's supposed to be an effectiveness study as well as identifying services. Ms. Aiello responded to a question from the audience about how we go about getting assessments from the agencies and businesses in the community. Our initial thought was from those funding by the City because they have a little more stake in working with us. Several years a go there was an attempt to try and get some assessments from all agencies and Cynthia Harris, of the Police Department, was part of our team and indicated if it wasn't a City funded agency they never got any response or cooperation. Part of what we tried to do was have anyone providing services to youth come forward and provide us with information. It's more difficult if we don't fund them. We will try to create some opportunity foranyone providing service to the youth. Comments from the audience included a suggestion that how to appeal to young adults would be by having a concert for them to attend. Vincent G111on, Care Point, said that if you want to look at effective programs you have to bring in special programs into the community because there are programs that the City does not fund that might be doing a great job and you would at least get to see them. There are things that would never be known unless you looked at programs that aren't funded by the City. Some of the work being done by them might free up some of your money to do other things. He did not think this is a difficult process a people who aren't being funded by the City are invested in the City. You can have some type of simple assessment that can be sent out by email. Page 7. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted the Chief has come before CDBG to get funding for some street officers working with youth a program that no longer will be funding and asked the Chief of Police how he sees this assessment helping us understand what we need to do. Chief Kaminski said he would hope the assessment would talk to the actual street outreach workers. One of the gaps they have seen for the past several years since starting the program was young adults hanging on the street corners with no connection. Five years ago they tried a problem solving mechanism for the pol,ce to go in with outreach workers and try to engage youths to try to change this behavior and move them in a positive direction. Initially this was a partnership with the Police Department and Y.O.U. Now that the money is gone we're tryiryg to make it survive. It's important that we took at the people that are not coming to the traditional offices and buildings actually hanging out on the streets in the neighborhood and try to get them connected to some of those good services throughout the City. We need to focus on those youths hanging out in the streets. We've had some great success stories with young people changing their lives connecting with the agencies that are out there. Alderman Moran called for a recommendation from the committee to go forward with this assessment as described in the memorandum with the additional recommendation of the process developed for communicating with young people as part of that overall assessment. Alderman Jean -Baptiste recommended they do that and added this area of work is so important for all of us for our quality of life that we need to say to the City Manager come back with a recommendation as to what you think it will take to do what we need to get done. Ms. Aiello said they will have the fees for each of the categories and bring it back to the committee to see what the total requirements would be and will then be able to make that recommendation. Ms. Carroll noted $33,000 is what actually got approved in the budget If it exceeds that amount we'll comeback with a recommendation with what we think should be funded. We won't not do the study as a result of not having the money. Alderman Moran called fora vote on the recommendation from the committee to follow what was recommending In the memorandum and supplement as was Indicated. Recommendation approved 5-0. VI, SILVER WINGS PUBLIC ART SITE REPORT The report was unanimously accepted as written without any questions from the committee. VII. UPDATE ON THE 2005 SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM Ms. Haynes reported on the success of this years program. The number of kids participating In City departments Is 104, in the 50150 Program 49, and in the private sector 12. She was especially excited about the number of kids in the prorate sector. Private businesses participating and paying the full cost of the teens hired are: Northwestem University, Evanston Hospital, and Papa John's Pizza. Ten businesses participated In the 50150 Program that pays half the teen's salaries. There are just a few more weeks left to the program when the businesses will be brought together with the teens for a reception and kids will be nominated for awards for their service. This year we will be doing some educations programs. The kids were taken to John Marshall Law School, and there are field trips scheduled for Cook County Jail, and Northwestern University. Because there has been much concern about the supervisors, this year we hired folks who had something to offer, who could even go with some of the clean up part time groups. In the afternoons they are. supervising the participants and in the morning are working on other activities like putting an educational program together. This has made a big difference in terms of the quality and the skills of the supervisors hired this year. The kids that painted all the traffic signals in town two years ago are now busy painting all the town's light fixtures. This year a team of teens will be creating a public service announcement that will address pertinent information for landlords_ and tenants regarding the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance pertinent to security deposits that hopefully will be used as a commercial for the Evanston Community Media Center. Alderman Bemstein asked whether the private partnerships or the 50150 are going to continue to have the kids working. Will there be jobs that go beyond the summer? Ms. Haynes said she thought there will be some that will offer kids jobs through the school year. We want these kids to be successful and would like them to go to school and apply for college. We'd also like them to be involved in extra curricular activities because it helps develop their skills. Alderman Tisdahl asked what we're doing to thank everybody who participated in the program particularly the private partnerships paying the full cost. Ms. Haynes said one of the things is we like to have some unveiling for the public service announcement which will be an opportunity to bring the businesses who participated in the programs together. In= the last two years we have given awards to participants in the program allowing the employees to nominate kids for Page 8. awards. Alderman Tisdahl asked if we're printing these businesses navies in our newsletters and thanking them at every possible opportunity, to which Ms. Haynes responded we definitely are. Alderman Jean -Baptiste commented on how well the work is being done by the kids this year. Ms. Haynes attributed :to the change in the structure this year having the supervisors meeting one on one with each young person that is going to work with them on their team before the first cay of work. This enab.ed the supervisors to develop a relationship with the kids and let the supervisor know who they are, what gets them going, with who they might have had some issues or concerns, and in that way got the group to work as a team. Alderman Moran congratulated and thanked fits Haynes on behalf of the Human Services Committee for the work tieing done. Vill. COMMUNITY REINTEGRATION HEARING AND STATUS REPORT Alderman Moran called upon Mr. Thomson for his comments. Mr Thomson said people ask him what organization he belongs to, one the one hand from the age of 13 to 33 he spent 17 '/: years in over a dozen state and federal prisons throughout a seven state Midwest area. On the other hand he moved to Evanston in 1978. He's been married to the samewoman for 25 years, raised 3 children, the oldest just graduated from college, he worked for several companies and even ran for City Council in 1993. The question we want to answer Saturday or approach as a community is how you get from here to here. The record itself speaks that he was as difficult as any case you come up. He does not necessarity agree with the reentry issue this is a recidivism issue. It might be pan of the same problem, what do we have to offer them when they come out of prison to our community. He's from the south suburbs so you don't necessarily have to assume that just Evanston people are coming back to Evanston. The thinking is there are more services here, he's not sure there are. It is more than just a job and a place to stay. He's been here long enough to know that there are some extremely good organizations here. Out of the 30,000 coming out of prison, 24,000 are coming back to Cook County, 20,000 go to fourzip codes in Chicago making their problem is a lirJe more serious than ours. Chief Kaminski says at any give time there's 100 on parole, if that's parole how many are not on parole. We're talking about people's lives here. For the last 28 years the prison system starting with the government down to effect state by state have striped our instrtubons of any rehabilitative programs. We have gone from rehabilitation 28 years ago to punitivsm. We took away the programs so people can't go to college, we took away the G.I. Bill benefits to veterans. Fortunately he was in prison when they had the rehabilitative program and was able to attend college and team bookkeeping and accounting. The Governor's Statewide Community Safety and Reentry Working Group will meet July 23, 2005 at the First Presbyterian Church and he would encourage everybody to attend. Mr. Terry noted the other part of the memo sent to the committee is just to reiterate that there is now this growing body of information about all these programs nationwide. The Mayor has provided him a lot of material, the City Manager went to a conference and came back with the Savannah, Georgia, and Las Vegas, Nevada models. The Savannah, Georgia is the gold standard of local programs. They commit over $1,000.000 in local resources to reentry. The principles of the case coordination and also the whole intergovernmental cooperation really doesn't work unless the state and county buy into whatever the City wants to do. One of the things he's working on Is getting contacts with the Department of Corrections, finding out how they organize themselves because there isn't an Evanston parole officer, there isn't just one person which is an element The other reality is the programs that work go to the prisons and begin lheirwork 6 months prior to release. If you wait until the person hits the streets with no housing and no plan and is almost too late. Those programs that actually reach out go to the prisons 6 months ahead of time to talk and ask what they are going to do on their release day, have a much greater likelihood of success. We probably have 4 or 5 entities in Evanston that already touch upon the issue in this program, Care Point, Howard Area Community Center. Churches, the Township, PEER Services who does a lot of work with the substance abuse treatment, and Reverend Lane's Fresh Start Program. We have a lot of smaller programs but the ones that really work do a lot of intense comprehensive case management particularly around housing jobs and substance abuse treatment. the big three. September we'll have a much more comprehensive report and we'll let what these programs cost and perhaps with an eye towards next year's budget to give us some direction as to where you want to go. Mr. Terry will be attending the Saturday meeting. IX. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:55 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsk , Department of H Ith & Human Services Page 9. GUEST ' SIGN -IN SHEEN' HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 Monday - July 18. 7:30 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Name: r5 C e cc Address/ Organization: ,,�,i /,v 4&kf. vz, bld,7o/ 8 GY. 01 / 72 6 � ,Z� 7 ?.,J f' Name: SPEAKER SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center — Room 2402 Monday - juiy 18. 7:30 p.m. Go r-E&) PLEASE PRINT Address / Organization: 1 �1(fl C d4o !6 C AVG "7� s N cr4c�fP�Nc RCS k I f3 r u5(f2 CCUAj l DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, August 1, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Holmes, Jean -Baptiste, Moran and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Doug Gaynor, Vincent Jones, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Township Assessor Sharon Eckersa!1, Rosemary Jean Paul Township (See Attached List of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Moran 1. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Moran called the meeting to order at 7:02 p.m. and announced the meeting will be moved to the Council Chambers to better accommodate all those in attendance. The meeting resumed in the Council Chambers at 7:19 p.m. IL APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING OF JULY 18, 2005 The minutes of the July 18. 2005 were called and unanimously accepted 15-01. III. CONSIDERATION OF THE JULY 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernstein moved approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Alderman Jean -Baptiste proposed a motion to hold the bills and not take any action at the committee level until some Information is received from the Legal Department reaardinq the status of the legal bills. The legal bills are included in the Township bills and he would therefore ask they be held to be finalized at Council level. Alderman Holmes questioned how the Assessor's total was arrived at The current sheet shows S4328.45 paid on June 21" and an amount of S2420.02 which adds up to $6748.47, yet the bits dated June 19"' shows new charges of S182.00 which includes S22.00 paid by Ms. Weidman for a deposition. Alderman Moran noted there are a number of questions regardlnq the legal bills and called for Alderman Jean-Baptlste's motion to approve the Township bills with the exception of the legal bills In relation to the Assessor's office for which further clarification will be sought In, consultation with the City's Leqal Department. Motion unanimously approved f5-01. IV. CONSIDERATION OF RESOLUTION 44-R-05 IN SUPPORT OF ESTABLISHING THE NORTH SHORE LAKE MICHIGAN CITIES INITIATIVES Alderman Bernstein asked Mr. Gaynor if there is anything we might have a different opinion on with regard to our use of the lakefront. Mr. Gaynor responded this is a resolution of cooperat on that does not obligate us financially or on any individual issue. Alderman Moran said his interpretation of this is by entering into this resolution we are agreeing to cooperate and collaborate with other communities, but are not bound as a City in respect to whatever those other communities think the City of Evanston should do with its lakefront. Mr Gaynor said Alderman Moran's interpretation was correct. Alderman Tisdahl wanted to know who goes to the meetings to determine what these positions are. Mr. Gaynor responded these are annual meetings and there has not been any issues discussed per se He attends the meetings on behalf of the Mayor. Alderman Tisdahl asked if there will be more frequent meetings after this resolution is signed, to which Mr. Gaynor responded, at the last meeting there was no plan on having more than one meeting, unless an issue arises that needs to be addressed. Alderman Tisdahl hoped the group would become more active. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested one of the issues we try to maintain is the North Shore Channel. The Environmental Board had been working to see how they can get greater usage out of the canal as part of the problem has been the water flow. There is not enough water flow to clean the water to allow for uses beyond what it's currently been used for. One of the problems with water flow is how much water is allowed to flow into the canal and he would suggest we put this issue on the table on behalf of Evanston. Since we have a number of potental benefits in participating in this collaboration he would add, as one of them, the exploration of improvement of the quality of North Shore Channel water. Mr. Gaynor said he will certainly bring that to the table and would point out the channel ends at the south end of Wilmette and is therefore a matter of Lake Michigan water and Wilmette. It does not affect all of the North Shore communities listed on the resolution, but he definitely will make sure any issues that would provide better water quality for the channel are addressed. Page 1. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked to make sure the Environmental Board is consulted, to which Mr. Gaynor added they will be invoived, Alderman Moran called for a motion in support of Resolution 44-R-05 establishinq the North Shore Lake Michigan Cities Initiatives. Motion unanimousiv approved f5.01. V. CONSIDERATION OF A REQUEST BY EVANSTON COMMUNITY HEALTH ADVISORY BOARD THAT THE EVANSTON CITY COUNCIL ENDORSE A PROPOSED INDOOR SMOKING BAN IN CHICAGO Don Ziegler, 1430 Elmwood, Vice Chalr of the Evanston Community Health AdvisoryBoard, said this Board passed a resolution to support smoke free Chicago and brings that information to the City Council urging that they do that as well. One of the rationales for Evanston to turn down the request of the Health Advisory Board last year for all businesses to go smoke free was the allegation that businesses in Evanston would lose business because smokers would go into Chicago. We're calling on the City Council to support a smoke free Chicago as many other organizations are doing that as a major effort by the American Cancer Society. Four organizations in Evanston have already endorsed the resolution for smoke free Chicago, Second Baptist Church, The Evanston Community Health Advisory Board, Evanston Northwestern Health Care, and the School Based Health Center at the High School. A sentiment amongst the City Council members last year was go to Springfield for a smoke free Illinois, one way to get there is through smoke free Chicago. Mr. Ziegler distributed copies of the endorsement that was signed by the Community Health Advisory Board (Attachment #1.), and urged this committee endorse and pass it on to the City Council. Alderman Bernstein said he has had lengthy conversations with Mr. Ziegler about this Issue when they have agreed to disagree and unfortunately he will do so again tonight. He was among those who brought up the concern about a lack of a level playing field if in fact Chicago was allowing smoking and Evanston restaurants across the border were to disallow smoking. It would be a bit disingenuous of him as an alderman of the City of Evanston who voted against this in his City to try to impose his will on aldermen of another municipality. The City of Evanston is a part of the state and in conscience cannot support this. He does not frequent restaurants that allow smoking, but we are not going to re -litigate that issue here. Hey would love to see a smoke free Illinois as that would take it off all our platters. Some Council members were in favor and perhaps you can get to the floor that way. Alderman Tisdahl said she supported this before and supports it now and could easily move that we sign the sheet for individuals to sign up. She asked Mr. Ziegler if he proposes that the Evanston City Council endorse the organization endorsement sheet as well. If so she would have to take out 'fay taking the smoke -free Chicago pledge I recognize that....' is okay, but the part she would take out is 'The restaurant business, bar business and tourism will not be damaged if smoke -free laws are enacted.' She could agree that tourism will not be damaged but having had our City Council vote that the restaurant and bar business will be, it would be hard for us to then vote, even though she did not agree with that vote. Alderman Tisdahl noted It would be hard for us to take that position, but we could certainiv agree to this and almost all of the endorsement and moved that we do so. Alderman Moran called for a second to Alderman Tisdahl's motion; there was no second to the motion. Alderman Moran told Mr. Ziegler his efforts are appreciated and everyone on the committee respects his statement. His own interpretation of this is we are not here to speak for the City Council of the City of Chicago they will have to address that issue in their own right. Alderman Moran thanked Mr. Ziegler for his attendance and said his advocacy which has been constant and enduring is appreciated and the committee understands his perspective. Vi. CONSIDERATION OF THE EVANSTON NEIGHBORS FOR PEACE RESOLUTION FOR WITHDRAWL OF TROOPSS FROM IRAQ OR TO END OUR INVOLVEMENT IN WAR Bonnie Wilson, President of the Democratic Party of Evanston, presented a resolution calling for the end to the Iraq occupation and withdrawal of U.S. Troops. (Ms. Wilson's remarks are attached, Attachment #2.) Susan Schell, Democratic Party of Evanston Board Member, began by saying although she is a member of the Democratic Party of Evanston this is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is an American issue. (Ms. Schells remarks are attached, Attachment #3.) Dkkelle Fonda, representing Neighbors for Peace a grassroots peace activist group formed In Evanston four years ago following 9111 and before the invasion of Afghanistan. (Ms. Fonda's statement is attached, Attachment #4.) Autumn Franger, representing Lake Street Church of Evanston, the Peace and Justice Committee, as they feel a profound obligation to go on record as opposing the undeclared Iraqi war. (Ms. Franger's statement Is attached, Attachment #5.) _ Marjorie Fulara, Pediatrician, mother, Evanston resident and a member of Code Pink, Code Pink is a grassroots peace and focus movement initiative about women whose goals are through non violent protest and direct action. They - Page 2. enthusiastically support the resolution before the committee tcnight arz they now know the case for going to war rested on falsehoods and resulted in suffering not increased security. Suffering fir wousands of Iraqi children and suffering for • American service men and women not tar from childhood themselves „s stated so eloquently in this resolution the war in Iraq casts an unfit burden on tax payers at the expense of cur scrc:,.s, i,t;raries and health care. It is critical for the citizens of Evanston to exercise their right to act to descent from tn!s ., c: ncetved and destructive policy and maize our voices heard loud and clear. They urge passing this resolution to tie "Lill Ci'y Council. Kyle Schafer, Co -President of Peace Project a Northwestern University's student group composed of Northwestern Opposing War and Racism, Students for Economic Justice, and the Protest magazine. (Mr. Schafer's statement is attached, Attachment #6.) Peter Green, 15 Martha Lane, agrees with about everything in the resolution except for one line, the Iraqi's are in the midst of negotiating a constitution. Something that can only succeed if it can be done in as much spirit as can be mustered of accommodation and compromise. The date on this withdrawal, as soon as possible, could have the effect of making some insurgents feel good towards us, but there is a greater risk of making them feel we are retreating under pressureof the latest events and will harden the line by causing more violence. To be most effective it is to be put on hold fora short time until that process is done and thinks it will gain more support from a lot of the public that doesn't support that position now. Dick Solen, 824 Ridge Terrace, Involved In Christian Social Ethics at Derek Seminary has been on the Board of North Suburban Peace Initiative since 1980. One thing we aught tote aware of on this issue is there is a commitmentof the majority of people in Evanston for this kind of statement In the fact of 2002 neighbors worked together getting signatures on petitions to send to Congress. Ina very short time they got over 7,000 signatures with very little opposition. They brought in speakers for forums that attracted hundreds of people. Last January they took a full page ad where people paid S20 each to get into all of the weekly papers from Evanston through Highland Park and suburbs to the west. In a two week period of tame we got 450 people signed up for this ad that said things thatwere not easy to sign onto in our society. (Copy of ad Is attached, Attachment #7.) He should say to the previous speaker that it is becoming clearer and clearer and there are studies based on interviews corning out of Iraq that everyday the U.S. occupation continues it draws more and more insurgents into Iraq and then into the troops of terrorists around the world. Most of those coming into Iraq, including suicide bombers, did not find themselves committed to At Maeda orthat process until wewere in Iraq. Then it became that the American occupation is creating the very instability thatwe are seeking to eliminate. Forthe past 15 years he has marched In the Evanston 4 h of July Parade under various peace matters and there was always a polite support. This year it was just one continuous applause all the way down the street, clapping, shouting, and waving banners. He trusts you will affirm this out of your own conscience and out of a moral conviction but also thinks you should adopt it as genuine representatives of this community Doug Hostetter, 731 South Boulevard, Lecturerin Sociology at Northwestern University, Is here this evening as a representative of the Evanston Mennonite Church at 736 Dobson, where he is Peace Pastor. Mennonites have been resisting wars and working to build communities for almost 500 years. He was a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War but chose to do his alternate service In Viet Nam by doing literacy work for 3 years. During that time he watched the American Air Force destroy many of his friends and neighbors and watched what it did to the American soldiers and to the Viet Nameese civilians. White there he started a literacy program for high school students teaching 4,000 children how read and write their own language. Today those children are friends of his, one of which he has recently seen and is a University Professor giving guest lectures in American Universities. The longerwe were in Viet Nam the more enemies we created. He thought by the time we left there America had learned something, now 30years later we are repeating it again. He has been to Iraq reaching out to help civilians and knows we will make many more friends in Iraq or anywhere else by meeting thereat needs of those people. Wars destroy peoples on all sides; there are more Viet Nam Veterans that have died of drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide after the war than were killed during the war_ Almost one third of all the American Veterans that came back from Iraq have serious mental problems within three months of their return. Malnutrition has doubled since the American war started in Iraq. The war is also destroying us here in our own communities. The Mennonites are involved in a community project for more than a decade dealing with Section 8 for the elderly. In July the U.S. government did not make their Section 6 payments and when they were called about it said the seniors would eventually get the money but they didn't have the money now. He knows where that money went, you know where that money went, it went to destroy the livelihood of the people in Iraq. We need to change that. Leane Casten, 1030Asbury, said a lot of you have talked about what the ethics or history does to people. She has not yet heard one person talk about the Downing Street Memo, something that was written well before Iraq was invaded. It was a decision to invade Iraq and when 9i11 came they had their excuse. It was an act of a profound lie and they went to war because they wanted to go to war from the get go. This is a war of opportunity, a war where millions and millions of dollars have gone into black holes for which there is absolutely no accountability. We have sprayed the areas with depleted uranium, a story that will not get main stream coverage. Little Iraqi children are not going to live till the age of 5 Page 3. because of childhood leukemia. We have a hiaher rate of relum of dying veterans than any war yet recorded because they have been exposed to depleted uranium. the milaa: y come back to poor care if any; some veterans wait 6 months before they even get near a V.A. hospital. The military has admitted to 500 deserters she knows there are 1,500 and more which the military is too embarrassed to admit. W`at eve are talking about is a war that is based on ties; it's an opportunity war that %ill allow some people to profit at tf =- expense of thousands. Iraqis and Americans, who will be permanently camaged by what we have done to this ccuntry who has never done anything to us She urges this committee to accept the resolution. John Bushnell, 1805 Crain, representing Northwestern University FacultyAgalnst the War In Iraq. He can agree with almost everything that has been said before and has tin getting email endorsements of the petition submitted to the committee from faculty as far array as South Korea. This is a gnevously mistaken war launched without provocation by an invasive government and a war that one retired general after another is now telling us we can't win. An issue already troubling many people is now that we have broken Iraq don't .N,e have an obligation to stay long enough to fix it this is a plausible thing to worry about. If we withdraw now won't that mean that the insurgents will get out of control takeover and make a government in Baghdad impossible to establish. Tile Curds will then succeed and form their own independent Kurdistan, that the Shiites in the south will then have very Ii °e choice but to form their own independent Shiite land and then there will be a continual conflict within the country. That maybe a bad outcome but that's probably the best outcome that we can hope for right now. If they can't reconcile the differences that they have there is certainly no way the United States can do it for them which now seems to be the reason why some people are dragging their feet in the hope that somehow we can establish stability that the Iraqis cannot do for themselves. He does not know if the desire to hold Iraq together as a single country is a reason to send Americans over to be killed and to kill more Iraqis which will only stir up more people against us. What is the point of City Council allowing a public debate and then voting on a resolution. A small majority of the American people are against the war and yet this opposition, if we go back to compare itwith the Viet Nam era, has been strangely muted. There are very few traces at the national level which are calling for any decisive action to get out of this disastrous mistake that we have created for ourselves. It is cities which are adopting a resolution calling for withdrawal that is our only hope. It is political leadership at the local level expressing the clear sentiment of the people where they live that may finally give our senators and representatives the courage to recognize that the patriotic and politically intelligent thing to do is to begin to attempt to force the Bush administration to break out of this war. Katie Oahising, 737 Reba Place, the organizerof the Evanston Women In Black Movement, which began In 1988In Israel and has become a global movement of women standing publicly mourning the death and suffering of women and children who are victims of war. Our numbers continue to grow and many women are coming out to stand and mourn silently and carry signs that tell our community we don't want to support this war. She has never seen a community so opposed to war and believes that it would be in the spirit our community to pass this resolution to bring our troops home. Madeline Goldstein, 817 Mulford, has a scar from a young man who came back from Viet Nam pained and dazed who beat her, raped her and left her to die. Her generation was ruined and her daughter's generation will be affected by the young people coming back to this country killing their wives and killing themselves. They all have post traumatic stress disorder, missing limbs, nightmares, and are not getting medical care. They are coming back full of depleted uranium and for generations to come their children will suffer from that. It is imperative thatwe get out of this illegal, immoral war that was created through lies to get the resources of the Iraq people. It is imperative that we take a stand for generations to come and supports the resolution to go to full City Council. Fortuno Leon, President Evanston Latino Organization, has spoken to several of his neighbors who all say we must agree to end this war. From his perspective he feels there are some agencies In our government that are miserably failing America. They need to guarantee our safety, certain rights and pursuit of happiness. These agencies have portrayed us before the world as an oppressive nation. He endorses the initiative of this resolution because he wants to urge the federal govemment to make better use of our tax money in helping people to implement skills, and to engage in dialogues with corporations and countries about their right to preserve peace and prosperity for all. Anya Cordell, lives in the 60203 zip code. After September 11- she became consumed with the hate backlash directed towards Arabs and Muslims and beyond that Shiites, Hindus, and Latinos, Just somebody that someone looked at irrationally. She became intimately acquainted with families of men who were murdered after September 11", portraits of grief which the media was not covering. There area lot of other portraits of grief that we should be focusing on that have been eluded to and also spoken about very eloquently tonight. She can't sit with the way we've gone to war in the past. We all know the names that were given to groups so that it was easier to kill them, names that demeaned and diminished whole groups of people. We're told that Iran and Iraq and North Korea are the axis of evil. We were told we don't do body counts in this war so many people had hideous atrocities happen to them. We are creating more Timothy McFays; we are engaged in an endless cycle of creating the things that we most undermine, everything that we care about in life. We are going to face a draft; we all know that's the direction that we're heading. We have to do something otherwise we =_ will be the ones looking back and saying what we did when this nightmare was being waged in our name. Page 4. Ellen Alexander, member of the Peace Dialogue of the Jewish Reconstructionlst Congregation. The message is Liis- s not a small part of Evanston. this is not a minority view, this is Evanston Sometimes you need to have courage this is not a federal case but a loll matter. You're being asked to be ccLrgeous tonight and reflect the will of this community and we hope that you w,. Schona Buranda, Chair of the Human Relations Commission, is here on behalf of the Comrn!ssicn and everything she would have liked to have sa,d has been said already. She wanted to rr't:'pte you and echo our sentiments already been said, we are strongly in ssoport of the resolution and urge the Council to :lease adopt this resolution for the betterment of everybody. Alderman Bernstein ccu'�d not conceive there is any opposition to a resclLition. In reflecting back to January 2002 when we passed a resolution asking to stop the war that was imminent. He has had conversations with some of the drafters of the resolution with respect to particular items of the resolution. He does not want to bog it down vnth subjective kinds of considerations. The underlying fact is this is not a courageous act, is something that has to be done. In his personal opinion the war has legitimized fanaticism. He would move that we forward a resolution of some type, but it will not get to the Council before September. We're living on an island in Evanston and have a tendency to forget what's happening in the rest of the world to t-e extent that our voice can be raised to create this critical mass that someone spoke about and which he thinks we should do. The only problem he has with the City Council is that we haven't done this sooner. He wants to convey that the spirit of the resolution is the people of the City of Evanston want us out of Iraq. Staff prepared the January 2002 resolution when we asked not to go into Iraq which was pretty generic to the extent that we keep it objective no subjective statements that people can deliberate about and diminish the effectiveness of the message. The message is the City of Evanston City Council should indicate its opinion that the people of the City of Evanston are requiring its government to get us Dint of Iraq. Alderman Bernstein moved to have City staff prepare a resolution, the Import of which Is that the Cltv of Evanston wants American out of Iraq now, which In principle says the City Council of Evanston wants America out of Iraq now. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would add that we take significantly from the resolutions that have been presented to the committee and craft somethinq as quickly as possible for us to deliberate over, discuss amonq ourselves, qet comfortable with the language, and advance. Alderman Holmes seconded the motion, Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked that some of us had some concerns about making sure that some of the statementsof fact were actually things that we can document in terms of cost of the war and the number of lives that were lost_ Alderman Moran asked if the suggestion is that this resolution that is to be prepared by staff will be returned to the Human Services Committee? Alderman Jean -Baptiste said he would not return it to the Human Services Committee as the next meeting is in September, but would suggest we get it to the Council and try to bulld consensus with whatever language is proposed and move the process forward at that level. Alderman Tisdahl thought we would build consensus a lot quicker with a lot fewer whereas clauses. Alderman Moran asked if staff feels comfortable with the direction that has been given. Mr. Terry said based on the comments the committee has made we can come up with a draft which he would then propose be circulated at first to the five members of this committee to let us know if there is some language they feel is missing or detrimental to consensus, then forward it to City Council under this committee's name. Alderman Moran had some comments but said he would withhold them and look forward to the resolution as it's prescribed and brought forward to the City Council. Alderman Moran called for a vote on the motion for a resolution to and the war, motion passed 4-1, (Aldermen Bernstein, Holmes. Jean -Baptiste and Tisdahl voted aye, Alderman Moran, the Chair, voted no.) VII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 8:55 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Audrey Trotsk epa rtment of Health and Human Services Page 5. SPEAKER SIGN -IN SHEEN HUMAN SERVICES COMMIT -TEE Civic Center -- Room 2402 a�Trdon air - AUgUSt 11 20(35 7:30 p.m. PLFAE PRINT Name: n -- a Address / Organization: 6P0,-'�_.4dav_Q-1 �_7Kk L� /0 q, 'CL, A C Ak Cs'-`i S ea LI-, P. 1 (717 i f" ot4 1 ter, Vic (0 T U i S � a R6A4. Idaym—, Wtrat r hlfww+ 1n Q,14L'tc. 7 A T1f1tiSD /�Yt}ug4 oa terra. L-4 I1 na dr FVC, ►tsj DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, November 7, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Holmes, Moran and Tisdahl MEMBERS ABSENT: Aldermen Bernstein and Jean -Baptiste STAFF PRESENT: Doug Gaynor, Paula Haynes, Linda Lutz, Neal Ney, Paul Gottschalk, Vince Jones, JayTerry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Alderman Wollin. Pat Vance, Rosemary Jean -Paul, (Evanston Township); Irwin Lyons (Miller Cooper & Co.); Sue Cantor (Mental Health Board); Karen Terry, Susan Stone, Brooke Roothaan, Mike Weston, Linette Murphy (Library Board); Steve Lupton, Len Sciarra, (Environmental Board) (See Attached list of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Moran I. CALL TO ORDER In the absence of Alderman Bernstein Alderman Moran called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m. and announced that Alderman Bernstein and Alderman Jean -Baptiste were unable to attend the meeting. II. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE AUGUST 1, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the Auaust 1. 2005 meeting were called and unanimously accented 13-01. fit. CONSIDERATION OF OCTOBER 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Holmes posed a question regarding the Hoover legal bills and asked if there is any light to an end to this. Ms. Vance said she could not answer that as those bills are all related to the Assessor's office. Alderman Holmes also inquired regarding a bill for the Holiday Inn, Ms. Vance noted that November 13th through the 16th is the Township Official Annual Educational Conference in Peoria and they are staying at the Holiday Inn there. Alderman Tisdahl askeo where people go when they can't pay their gas bills. Ms. Vance responded according to their income level they two options, there is the regular LIHEAP program, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for anybody who is 150% of poverty level or below can apply to that program for assistance. They can also come to the Township for assistance if they have not had assistance for several prior years. Also, the Salvation Army may have some money through FEMA. These are all one time assistance programs for a heating bill. It is recommended that people try to work out some type of payment plan or other arrangement with the utility companies, Alderman Holmes motioned for approval of the October 2005 Township monthtv bills, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Motion unanimously approved (3-0). IV. CONSIDERATION OF THE ANNUAL. AUDIT OF EVANSTON TOWNSHIP FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED MARCH 31, 2005 Irwin Lyons of Miller Cooper & Co., commented the audit report has an unqualified opinion which is the highest level of assurance that we as auditors can give it on the financial statements. The independent auditors report is our part of it and the rest of the report is management's representations that we are auditing as we assist in the year end closing and drafting of the statements. In the new accounting standards there is a management discussion and analysis letter that is a good executive summary of analysis comparatives that have been implemented for a couple of years. The foot notes are very lengthy for government units and they include the accounting policies and a lot of detail of some of the transactions, there are also budget comparisons in the detail. There are two letters, one letter is their management letter which is negative by its nature and does not point out all the good things everyone is doing. The one item on accounts payable is a system type item, and the other two areas regarding the investment policy is a little out of date based on what's actually happening to evaluate that. The Township is not Home Rule, and a couple of years ago the Township ran short of cash because the County was late and because so much of the revenues are property taxes they cant increase it other than within the tax caps they're covered by. The City is not covered by tax caps. If the Township is going to increase the tax caps, not necessarily a large increase. they should at least take advantage of the increase in assessed valuation because if you don't ask for it once you lose it you can't go back and get it. The other letter is the one that's required disclosures to Page 1. the Board since we're in effect hired by the Board and working for the Board auditing the staff. These are some standard disclosures as to what our responsibilities are, there are some estimates, the kind of audit adjustments we make, and some minor adjustments that we agree with management didn't need to be recorded but are identified. Also, highlights of some of the new accounting standards that are going to be taking effect in the next couple of years so we can be proactive in addressing those. None will be massive like the last change that affected whole format of the statements, they will be more footnote disclosure and some other things. We did not have any disagreements with management and there were no major difficulties in completing the audit. That is a quick overview of the documents in the packet and can be addressed any time not just at the Human Services Committee meetings. Alderman Moran called for a motion to accept the Township Annual Audit as presented. Alderman Tisdahl motioned for acceptance, seconded by Alderman Holmes, and unanimously approved (3-0). V. STATUS REPORT FROM THE LIBRARY BOARD ON THE RENOVATION OF THE CHILDREN'S LiBRARY Karen Terry, member of the Library Board, introduced the Library support group Board, Susan Stone, Brooke Roothann, Mike Weston, Lynette Murphy, and Junko Yokota former library Board member, National Lewis University School Librarian and recognized expert around the world in children's literature and library services. Their goal tonight is to bring you up to date on this project and to ask for your continued support with the hope that after this meeting they can go on to the Administrative and Public Works Committee (A&PW) to begin construction drawings. In 1994 when the current building opened the space dedicated to youth services was considered generous for that day but since then there have been big changes in thinking about children and libraries. if they were to rebuild the library today they would probably ask for twice as much space for children's services. A power point presentation showed the current children's room for children ranging from age infancy to high school which looked like a scaled down version of the adult space. The presentation then showed what new library spaces for young children now looks like, a whole different approach to library space. The new strategy is to create zones for different ages and different kinds of activities and to make the space livelier, more colorful, more interactive, not just places to read a book, but highly engaging learning environments designed to encourage literacy in many different ways. We are undertaking this renovation because a series of things are happening simultaneously. First, there have been big changes in how kids learn and how to build spaces that support learning. Second, demographics, between 1990 and 2000 and the number of children in Evanston age 5 to 14 increased 16% and they have seen attendance of children's programs at the library increase almost 500% over 7 years. Another factor is the growth in our collection. We currently exceed the staled capacity of the children's room by 30,000 books. This growth partly reflects growth in our budget for materials that has kept track with inflation but also reflects private gifts that the library has received to support the growing collections. To display all these books we have to put quite a few of them where little people cannot reach them. in 2000 the library adopted a strategic plan that includes a strong focus on serving all of Evanston's young people. In fiscal year 2001-2002 we established the position of a full time outreach librarian, Rick Kinebrew, that could deliver library services throughout Evanston. in 2003 they began thinking about how they could improve the facilities, which is what brought them here tonight. They aspire to a facility that continues to serve all of Evanston's young people because when young people come to the library they lend to bring their whole family with them. They aspire to an environment that continues to make reading and literacy compelling and engaging. Their work toward remodeling the youth services area formally began by creating the committee in 2003 when they first conducted a literature review to see what librarians, architects and educators had to say about literacy and learning spaces. They benchmarked their library against other comparable libraries to gel further data and visited children's libraries in other communities to learn what others had done. They also had listening sessions with parents, educators, children and teenagers to find out what they thought an ideal space would be. Ms. Terry introduced Susan Stone to talk about the proposed design. Susan Stone said in addition to serving on the Library Board she is a professional story teller and for 20 years has Wormed in libraries throughout the country, she is also a K-8 librarian in a Chicago Public School, Ms. Stone proceeded to show, on power point, what will be the plans by Nagel Hartray Architects of record for the current building and who are partnering with Architecture Is Fun, specialists in facilities for children. They added dynamic designs with modular components that can change to maintain a child's interest and can also be changed throughout the years as the library grows. The proposed plan is to make the entire first floor the children's youth services library that will allow the 30,000 books vrhich are currently not able to be shelved and will allow for growth as well. It can also be more flexible to allow for changing needs. There is an area for toddlers that has a garden theme that will be carried out through the youth services department with padded seats for parents of toddlers and babies with space for puppet shows and props allowing children to have the ability to imagine. Ms. Stone went on to show plans for an area for older children which doubles as a story telling space and seating for casual reading, There will be a craft area that will have classes where groups from schools, day tare centers, the YMCA, etc., can be brought in and where parents and children can work together, a way to bring in adults who might not otherwise come to the library and hopefully will also become patrons of the library. This is also a way to allow children to imagine and to visualize and respond to literature other than just reading. A plan for the second floor was shown where the first floor browsing collections will be put. The third floor plan shows where the young adult section will be as it is very important that teens have their own space for things like poetry slams and readings and group -- meetings. The periodical section can now be made smaller because the library has purchased so much electronic Page 2. resources that much space for periodicals is no longer needed. The space for the teen area is separated from both the children's room and the adult reading room which is the key to the plan as it will provide young people free space t-) congregate, read, study. and participate in programming especially for teens. There is a little stage in the area for reader's theater, poetry slams, etc., space for serious study, space for recreational reading. and multimedia facilities and computer space. Brooke Roothaan. Youth Services Pub!tc Librarian at Lincolnwood Public Library and a mother of a young child said they have already done some reductions and score to this budget. This schematic design pricing originally came in at 3.5 million dollars, however through applying value engineering we've done a reduction of 1, t million dollars to this budget. We've cut the budget as much as we can wsthout losing the integrity or the substance of the project. Currently our proposed project budget is at 2.4 million do0ars. We have come here tonight to ask for a proposed increase in C1P funding of 5440,000. The Library Board has increased the library funding by taking more than $60,000 more of our endowment income, $90,000 from book sale income, and increased our private fundraising goal by $100,000. We already have a capital campaign steering committee in formation chaired by Mike Weston, who has run other successful fundraising campaigns. Mike Weston remarked that most of the project will be funded from public and library sources. For the library to raise 5440,000 is a significant increase over the private funding that it has done in the past, although it's been done, its been modest and has been highly successful and very well supported. In light of that and the attractiveness of the project, as soon as we get the go ahead from the City that the public money will be in place, we are ready to formally begin the private fundraising campaign and he has every confidence that it will be successful. Ms. Terry thanked everyone for their time tonight and said their goal in this project is to reinvent a portion of the library based on what experts have learned over the last 10 years about how to serve our children better. They're asking for the Human Services Committee's support in the literacy of their youngest readers, the growing use of the library by families throughout Evanston, giving Evanston teens a unique place to gather and work and express themselves with the written and spoken word. They'd love to have your continued support and if they can answer any of your questions would be happy to do that. Alderman Tisdahl asked for further explanation of why a craft area is needed and how many of the other libraries referred to have this. Mr. Ney said he does not know how many but does know the youth space in Oak Park, Schaumberg and Skokie all have this. One fairly common practice is to actually have parent and child come in, get a craft project and put it together. Ms. Stem we are learning more through brain base research that children need to learn through their entire bodies. Ms. Roothaan thought our aim is to be a destination, we are competing against Borders and Bames and Nobel and the library is a place for learning and development with no money spent. Ms, Stone added we're competing with children's museums, shopping mauls, and places to have fun, and we need to be up to date. Alderman Holmes asked what if any effector impact would this have on the branch library. Mr. Ney did not know that there is any immediate direct impact, branch use dropped slightly when the main library opened. There might be a slight impact of use but there are branch improvements in the plans as well. When the space adjacent to North Branch is sold, early next year, $200.000 of that money will go towards this project and anything above that is reserved for branch improvements. Alderman Holmes asked if an)lhing is in the plans for the West Side to which Mr. Ney responded, that's what Rick's doing. Alderman Wollin had some concern about the lobby area being revised to make room for the children's room entrance, particularly the precious public art piece of glass in the lobby. Mr. Ney said it will remain in the lobby but the two window sections will be moved slightly apart to make way for the entrance. Alderman Wollin also noted the reference to the terrazzo flooring. Mr. Ney said some of the terrazzo will have to be taken out and replaced elsewhere in the course of the construction. Alderman Wollin asked how you're going to interweave your fundraising campaign with the capital campaign or do you think they can exist side by side. Mr. Westin thought the capital campaign is asking for significant one shot contributions, the fund for excellence will continue and its continuance is essential because at this point it's about a quarter of our materials budget. Alderman Wollin thought it sounds as if you don't need any more books because you have so many more books than you have space for and assumes the fundraising was for materials. Alderman Moran understands you're looking for an expression of confidence from this committee as well as the Administration and Public Works Committee to pass on your contract to begin the design work. In a relatively short time frame our library has taken on iconic status within the community and perhaps even outside the community. It's a tremendous facility to the City and the idea of providing library services is one of the great egalitarian acts that a City can engage in open and free to everyone. It's Gear to him that in order for us to engage our younger citizens and build a foundations upon which they'll go forward with and improve their lives we need to stay state of the arc. He would like to advocate to his fellow committee members that we make an expression of confidence in this project. It's an aggressive amount of money but feels this is money well spent. Page 3. He appreciates that there many different funding sources that will contribute to this and feels confident the amount of money needed to do this will be rased and he for one would like to be part of that from the City's standpoint and would suggest we express confidence ,r, that We're being asked to make an expression that we're vnlling to commit some additional, 5440,000 CIP funds in the near future. Mr. Ney said the CIP Committee laid out a plan spreading this over 3 years, 5800.000 was the original comrn+tment, plus an additional 5440.000. not all in one fiscal }ear. He thought the proposal for the CIP next year is $6.500.000 and then S10,000.000 the year after that. Alderman Tisdahl stated the most you can get from her is a tentative commitment, she would like to support this but before making any commitment needs to knowwhat it is that we're not going to do, what we're going to cut and not going to fund from the CIP budget so that we can do this. The plans are wonderful, but she has a no interest m reaching out to families who are able to go the Barnes and Nobel and combating Barnes and Nobel. She has a great deal of interest in reaching out to children who are not getting books at all and would like to see a third plan as part of this that will draw children into the library to be sure those children not accessing the library now are reached out to and brought in. Ms. Stone agreed with Alderman Tisdahl and said they talked about finding funds for getting busses for all Evanston Public School children K-12 to visit the new Children's Youth Services room at least once so they know wtiere it is and see how wonderful it is. Alderman Holmes said she also can commit to supporting the concept and the plan. Right now she can't support it dollar wise because she does not know what that is, it's a great plan particularly the areas for teenagers and early childhood. Alderman Moran asked what the time line is in terms of how you hope to progress. Mr. Ney responded they're ready to begin work on construction drawings but did not want to do that if there wasn't going to be the ability to do the project. They met with the City Manager who suggested they come here and if there was support for the project the City Manager said it could be funded over multiple years. Our next step would then be to go to the Administration and Public Works Committee with the contract for construction drawings. Alderman Moran gathered from those remarks you're ready to go now. Alderman Holmes said she needed to understand why the library has come to the Human Services Committee for approval. Mr. Terry wanted to clarify that the legislative history of this project is in this committee. It just occurred to him that perhaps minutes of previous discussions should have been Included, and he apologizes for that omission. The policy direction relative to this project has rested with this committee since its inception. Alderman Moran remarked Alderman Tisdahl is not prepared to commit, to which Alderman Holmes added she is not also prepared to commit dollars. Alderman Tisdahl asked Alderman Moran if he's saying that the three of us on the committee could okay $400,000. Alderman Moran responded we're being asked to make a demonstration of support for the project, but its not there. They need to know that this committee has the history of dealing with the project, the City Manager has told the Director of the Library if they can't get the support from this committee he should not come to A BPW. Alderman Wollin asked when the Library Board expects to come to ABPW with the cost of construction plans as you do not want to pay for the plans unless you are able to go forward, Mr. Ney said construction drawings are somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 and would be paid for out of the grant received from the Illinois State Library. We need to spend that money, if we do not spend that money we have to give it back. The next step would be development of construction drawings which could be used at a later date if there was a change in the CIP plan. At this point the project is in the proposed CIP for funding over the next 3 years that will be coming to the Council. Alderman Tisdahl remarked it's premature for us to make a decision not knowing the facts about the budget and CIP. Mr. Ney wanted to clarify if what he was hearing was that you would rather not have us proceed until after the CIP is approved in February? Alderman Moran said that is not what he's saying, that might be what Alderman Tisdahl and Alderman Holmes are saying. The other option is politically you get 5 votes to do this at some point before February 28m, then you can come to ABPW with a proposal for a contract on the plans. The City Manager's direction is sensible but the only other question is whether there is a plan B. Alderman Tisdahl noted she received this packet Sunday night and had no time to discuss with Bill Stafford or her colleagues on the City Council what we wouldn't do if we did do this. She can look at everything given her, she can listen to you're presentations which she thinks are good, your plan is wonderful, what she can't do is put it in the context of the overall budget as she has not had time to do that. Until she knows where the money is coming from she can't sign off on the money. Alderman Moran thanked everyone for their presentation; hopefully you will hear more from us before February 28L,. Alderman Holmes asked if they have the option of coming back in December when there will be all Five member of the Human Services Committee. Alderman Moran said if the Library Committee comes back to this committee before February 28'' we will make it a special order of business and you will not have to show the power point again. Page 4. Vt. CONSIDERATION OF AN AMENDMENT IN THE REGULATION OF USE OF THE LEAF BLOWER ORDINANCE 124.0-45 Richard Prince. 2823 Harrison, was prese, `rom the side of the industry and is for this ordinance. He's happy to see this is being looked at and brought more up to date but still feels inns it is the one piece of equipment used as a tool of the trade that is being singled out. Alderman Moran noted this was his idea and he has done a lot of background on this issue. Mr. Prince said we know this hasn't neen looked at for quite awhile and would like it to be understood that this is a single tool called the backpack blower. A lctVe tnsng the men walk around with that has a little tube and sweeps things up a lot quicker. This is not the push blower we use which for all intensive purposes is equivalent in decibels it is not higher. II's good to see that the City of Evanston is ta'K:ng another look at it. From the standpoint of a contractor we can't start using this until 9:00 a.m. where all other toots of all other contracting trades can start at 7:00 a.m. He and others in the industry would like the opportunity to open this time zone a little bit. In previous minutes he saw they started at 10:00 a.m. considered 8.00 a. m. and compromised at 9:00 a.m., and asks you to consider moving that start time back as it would help out a lot of people. From an economic standpoint the advantage of these blowers is about 10 to 1 for efficiency. For every hour those tools are bung used its saving 10 hours in physical man time and labor which is a more economical option for all the people who use our services. Mr. Gaynor recalled that Alderman Jean -Baptiste made a reference to staff to have the Leaf Slower Ordinance looked at. The Environmental Board originally looked at it in the 1990's. Steve Lupton, one of the Chairs of the Environmental Board, is present tonight and is happy to respond regarding the research that was done by a sub -committee. Steve Lunfnn. Co -Chair of the Environmental Board, introduced Len Sciarra the other Co -Chair. Mr. Lupton stated at the initiative of Alderman Jean -Baptiste they were charged to two aspects of this. Firstly. In 1996 technology on leaf blowers changed in the efforts to make them more efficient at a lower noise threshold. Secondly, to took at what other communities in Illinois and nationwide have done with regard to leaf blowers and the noise issue. There has been a response on the part of the manufacturers to the issue of noise with leaf blowers and a numberof manufacturers produce systems that have a decibel rating of 65 or lower. Tt;s rating is certified by the American National Standards Institute, if the blower is used with the correct attachments it will generate a noise a level of 65 decibels or lower. To put that into perspective a noisy office is about 60 decitmis so 65 decibels would be like background street noise on a busy street. Other communities have adopted the 65 decibel level and only allow leaf blowers with that rating or lower to be used in their community. Len Sciarra, Co -Chair of the Environment Board, remarked not all manufacturers need to make their equipment comply, if theydo make their leaf blower and test it according to standards that is labeled on the leaf blower itself which we felt was a fairly easy enforcement mechanism. All leaf blowers do not meet these requirements. Alderman Tisdahl asked if most of the new leaf blowers meet this standard and was told they do not but there is a big push to get them on this level as many communities are adopting a regulation similar to what we propose. Our regulations are a little unusual compared to other communities in banning leaf blowers outright between a certain period of the day. Most communities do a time restriction from early in the morning to the afternoon combined with the noise restriction on the blowers themselves. If Evanston wanted to follow along the lines of what other communities are doing, then it would be best to adopt a restriction on the type of noise blowers and some sort of restriction on the hours during the day. Alderman Moran questioned the trend toward these 65 decibels that is not now necessarily the standard in the industry. When we first started working on this about 12 or 13 years ago the Environment Board was frustrated with how to enforce this. If we pass the law we might also get some compliance. Alderman Moran asked if this is a standard and how long has it been the standard. Admittedlywe have difficulties with enforcement between the Police and the Parks Staff that do other things, we don't have enough staff to go out and find whether or not they're in compliance. The new generation of blowers has this stamp on them and we won't have anybody to check to see whether the stamp is on the blower. How can we be sure someone is following that standard? Also, were people in town surveyed about this? Mr. Sciarra responded there was no open meeting or public hearing as was done the last time; they just talked with a couple of landscapers. Alderman Moran remarked from the number of calls from his constituents this is still a noise Issue in town. Mr. Lupton noted at the moment there is no regulation on the noise level of the equipment that's being used or when you are allowed to use a leaf blower, in Evanston you can use any leaf blower you like. If you had a restriction on leaf blowers that would then set a precedent that at least landscapers would know that in Evanston you should plan on purchasing and using the low noise level equipment. One suggestion that was discussed, but voted down in their committee, was the possibility of the City registering landscapers. Then any landscaper that does business in Evanston would get an information packet outlining the regulations on the use of equipment, not necessarily leaf blowers, but lawn mowers or anything else, along with safety precautions and specifications. Anybody doing business in the City of Evanston could not say they did not know about the ordinance as they would have been given the regulations. Alderman Moran recalled that at one time they got close to adopting a licensing registration but that got into the enforcement issues and somehow could not get past the goal line. If you just write somebody a ticket they pay it and go on, but if they have a license that could be revoked through repeated violations you then have some leverage. Mr. Sciarra Page 5. said there were some who wanted to ban leaf blowers entirely and use rakes, we're trying to have a balance between businesses and home owners and think this is a happy medium. Alderman Moran was not comfortable going ahead wilh this vothout a tittle broader discussion within the community about what the significance of this change would be. Alderman Holmes asked about the registration, to which Mr. Lupton responded it is not going to be recommending because the majority of their Board was against this. Alderman Tisdahl said she has found this to be the most unenforceable ordinance we have in the City of Evanston and she absolutely hates unenforceable ordinances, therefore she supports these changes because it gives landscapers the option they want. Mr. Gaynor noted other discussions at the Environmental Board included the enforcement issue was going to be kept whether or not the ordinance is modified. If there is licensing it still becomes enforcement issue, which by the time the complaint is made the landscape company has probably left the scene. 1,7hether it's left the same or not enforced is difficult. Alderman Moran said it may be hard to enforce but he believes most people try to follow it because it is the law. Mr. Prince wanted to add technology is constantly changing and the blowers used are not long lasting pieces of equipment, they tend to get replaced every year. Homeowners will not buy industry specific equipment leaf blowers and the fact they are not turning over so quickly may help technology lower the noise level. There are no where near as many loud level leaf blowers as when this project began 12 years ago. Alderman Moran called for a motion to approval of the amendment In the regulation of use of the Leaf Blower Ordinance 124-0-05. Alderman Tisdahl motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Holmes. Motion approved 2-1. Alderman Tisdahl and Alderman Holmes voted yes, Alderman Moran voted no. VIi. CONSIDERATION OF CiTY MMBERSHIP IN THE LAKE MICHIGAN ECOSYSTEM PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM Mr. Lupton spoke on behalf of the Environmental Board and noted the Lake Michigan Ecosystem Partnership is composed of Individuals as well as elected officials and organizations including City governments that act in an advisory role in spending the State of Illinois Natural Resources Grants for ecosystem restoration. Membership in this partnership would enable the City of Evanston not only to be part of an organization that puts proposals to the State of Illinois Department of Natural Resources on the funds to spend on various projects involving environment restoration and improvement along the Lake Michigan shoreline, but also gives the City a role in selecting which of those grants get funded and where it would like the state to spend the money. It enables the City to be part of an organization to argue on the merits of proposals of other organizations or individuals associated with the City, such the Environment Board that make proposals to the state, to do restoration on. There is no monetary fees or dues to be part of this it is just the commitment on the part of the City to nominate somebody in the Parks and Recreation Department to be their liaison or representative on this group. Alderman Moran called for anv further discussion, hearing none called for a motion to approve City membership In the Lake Michigan Ecosystem Partnership Proqram. Alderman Tisdahl motioned approval, seconded by Alderman Holmes, motion unanimously approved (3-0). VIII. PROPOSED TENANT LEASE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF EVANSTON AND THE ACTOR'S GYMNASIUM FOR STUDIO 104 IN THE NOYES CURLTURAL ART CENTER At this time Mr. Gaynor introduced ,left Cory the new Cultural Arts Director to the Human Services Committee and those present at the meeting. Alderman Moran called for any discussion, hearinq non called for a motion of approval for the proposed tenant lease aureement between the City of Evanston and the Actor's Gvmnasium for Studio 1041n the Naves Cultural Art Center. Alderman Holmes moved approval, seconded by Alderman Tisdahl, motion unanimously approved ('0) iX. CONSIDERATION OF APPROVAL OF FIRST NIGHT EVANSTON'S REQUEST TO STAGE A FIREWORK DISPLAY AT THE LAKEFRONT (NORTH OF CHURCH STREET NEAR CLARK STREET BEACH) ON DECEMBER 31, 2005 Mr. Gaynor stated this is 7 minute display that will take place exactly at midnight. This is almost a carbon copy from last year, same street closures, there will be staff by the barricades for residents to get in or out of their driveways so there will be little if no disruption. Alderman Tisdahl moved approval of First Nloht Evanston's request to stage a firework display the Lakefront December 31, 2005. Alderman Holmes seconded the motion. Motion unanimously approved (3.0). X. CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED RESOLUTION 72•R-05 AUTHORIZING ACCEPTANCE OF A DONATION TO THE EVANSTON HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION'S HOLIDAY FUND FROM AMERICAN LEGION POST 42 Page 6. Alderman Holmes moved approval of Resolution 72-R-05 authorizinq acceptance of a donation to the Evanston Human Relations Commission's Holidav Fund from American Leoion Post 42. Motion seconded by Alderman Tisdahl and unanimousty accented (3-0). Alderman Moran commented thanked his. Haynes for helping us get some money to help out needy folks around the holidays and thanked the American Legion for their donation. XI. REPORT ON PRISONER REINTEGRATION PROGAAS (REFERENCE FROM ALDERMAN JEAN-BAPTISTE) Alderman Tisdale noted this item should be held until Alderman Jean -Baptiste was in attendance. XII. COMMUNICATIONS: A) SUMMER YOUTH PROGRAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS The committee congratulated Ms. Haynes on the good work done the summer. B) PROSTATE CANCER SCREENING (REFERENCE FROM ALDERMAN JEAN-BAPTISTE) Mr. Terry remarked that since this memo came out he and Alderman Jean -Baptiste had a discussion and there are no outstanding Issues. XIII. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 8:40 pm. Respectfully submitted Audrey Trots y. Department of ealth & Human Services Page 7. VrVEfo 1 SIGN -IN SHEET HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Civic Center - Room 2402 on ay - November 7. Name: �C SPrw�n , 7-er.� ti. A-1, JLkylko `{014}f, A/EPg4 Rcc) t qz, ixdNj -- r-o H�-v Vr -P_ - I cam/ 7:00 p.m. PLEASE PRINT Address/Organization: C�vcz oe'o 119 10 �_% lr. Tod -Au';-.r4 orl' /�� - FEP L ti-t * n LT (�' t 3Cr Nqk-_' DRAFT - NOT APPROVED CITY COUNCIL HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Monday, December 5, 2005 Civic Center - Room 2402 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT: Aldermen Bernstein, Homes, Jean -Baptiste, Moran, and Tisdahl STAFF PRESENT: Kathleen Brenniman, Julia Carroll, Vince Jones, Frank Kaminski, Sam Peltineo, Doug Gaynor, Bob Dornecker, Nancy Flowers, Harvey Saver, Paula Haynes, Christina Ferraro, Jay Terry, Audrey Trotsky OTHERS PRESENT: Rosemary Jean -Paul, Evanston Township; Sue Cantor, Mental Health Board; (See attached list of Attendees) PRESIDING: Alderman Bernstein f. CALL TO ORDER Alderman Bernstein called the meeting to order at 7:20 p.m. [I. APROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE NOVEMBER 7, 2005, MEETING The minutes of the November 7. 2005 meeting were called and unanimousiv approved (5-0). Ill. SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Mr, Terry recalled for the past 16 Yz years he's been staff to this committee and with him every step of the way helping us gel out of jams and advising us where to go has been Kathy Brenniman of the Law Department. While the lawyers to the other committees specialize in issues such as zoning and business matters a sampling of what Ms. Brenniman has done over the last 16 % years has included; food service regulation, Township law. Evanston Police powers, University Police powers, bed and breakfasts, group homes, nursing homes, tattoo parlors, fair housing, Noyes Center leases, Library Internet use, Americans with Disabilities Act, Immigration Law, smoking and tobacco use, and ground feeding of the animals. This is Ms. Brenniman's last Human Services Committee meeting and he wanted to note for the record all the great work she has done for the committee and publicly thank heron behalf of everyone. (Ms, Brenniman was applauded by the committee members as well as all in attendance.) Ms, Brenniman is retiring on the 13'"of January and January9" will be her last City Council meeting. IV. CONSIDERATION OF NOVEMBER 2005 TOWNSHIP MONTHLY BILLS Alderman Bernstein noted the lawsuit with respect to the Township Assessor has now been decided in the Township's favor and assumes there will be final bill from the legal counsel. Alderman Bernstein called for any discussion regarding the November 2005 Township bills. Alderman Tisdahl questioned the Township's purchase of flowers to which his. Jean -Paul responded they were purchased for the funeral of the mother of property owner. Hearinq no further questions, Alderman Moran moved approval of the November 2005 Township bills, seconded by Alderman Jean -Baptiste and unanimously approved (5-01. V. CONSIDERATION OF DISPOSITION OF CITIZEN COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS Chief Kaminski reported a new process that was discussed a few meetings ago was tried and which he personally thought worked very well. Three members of his Advisory Board participated in this new process. The citizens reviewing the complaints spent a great deal of time on each complaint and came up with the reported conclusions. The Chief said he would like to continue this system for the next year and then evaluate it. Alderman Holmes understood that members did not want their names published in a report and wondered if there would be a chance to get some individual feedback from them to find out what they thought about the process. Chief Kaminski thought that could be done after they get a few complaints through the system. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said it did not seem the Advisory Committee would be taking responsibility for anydecisions as they are not empowered to do that, therefore, this is almost a second opinion. What if they decide the contrary to what the Chie('s view is? Chief Kaminski said the citizens add an extra layer of analysis giving him the perspective from the Command staff, the Office of Professional Standards, and from those three citizens. There may be some feedback that could change his mind before he made a decision. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what information do the citizen's review, to which Chief Kaminski responded all records, except they do not interview complainants. Commander Pettineo Page 1. and Sergeant Jamraz are there to answer any questions about the investigations. The citizens get the facts of the case and make an independent decision. Alderman, Jean -Baptiste disagreed that it is an independent decision; they get to review what you have given them. Chief Kaminski said the investigataons are done by OPS. they put together all of the facts, statements, and information of the case which is not slanted or guided in any direction. The supervisors then make an independent revie.v of those facts and now a group of independent citizens also make an assessment of this information. Alderman Bernstein asked Alderman Jean -Baptiste if he is suggesting that the citizens should be part of the fact finding process. Alderman Jean -Baptiste responded it's a good thing that c4hzens are involved in helping get a second opinion, but it's a second opinion of what the Police Department has presented what the facts are. He is not saying it's a bad thing for them to be involved but it is not an independent review. Alderman Bernstein said it's never a bad thing for citizens to be involved, his question to Alderman Jean -Baptiste is, is he proposing their involvement should be in an earlier stage, something which the Chief has to be asked whether is appropriate. alderman Jean -Baptiste said the Chief has already said Union rules and regulations would not allow that to happen at th s particular point in time. if the supervisor in charge Is reviewing complaints against his department would he be totally objective. When a department is reviewing complaints against itself the tenancy would be not to be as objective as you can be. The Chief is going in the right direction but Nye should not characterize it as if we have an independent citizen review. We asked for the national format of doing that kind of a review and hopes in the future we can focus some attention on how that's done in other parts of the country and how we can improve our methodology. Alderman Holmes noted a few months ago the Human Relations Commission sent some information on projects around the country. Alderman Moran moved to accept the conclusion on C.R. 905-05. Alderman Jean -Baptiste noted in C.R. #05-05 a woman, small in stature, was left by the cemetery, past midnight, and allegedly asked the officer not to leave her there. She also indicated she was approached by some young men. Her story did not indicate she was offered a ride to the Police Station and he is not suggesting the officers have to be caretakers in everysituation. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked what the policy is in such a situation, Chief Kaminski said the officers try to make sure everybody is safe. In this situation the officer did everything reasonable that he could do, offering a ride to the station, even stopping a cab for her but she was on the cell phone and said her ride was going to be there in a minute. The boy friend was arrested for DUI and she was not allowed to have the car. The officer's version and the fact that we tried to get the complainant to come in a number of times to verify any of facts, is why the disposition was SOL. The complaint was dropped but if she ever comes back we'll reinstate the case. We could not move further due to lack of any other information to set up an investigation even after certified letters and personal calls asking her to come in. Alderman Moran thought it is important for people to understand that we do have a well organized process for citizens' complaints and our system works well. Once a complaint is lodged a process needs to be followed if the complaint is not pursued it frustrates the process because we want people to have an opportunity to make a case that there has been police misconduct. The Chief himself reviews all the information and delegates people in OPS to do the investigative work, Alderman Tisdahl remarked that she is friend of the aunt involved in this case and talked with both the aunt and the niece. She explained our process and that speaking at City Council was not following up on the complaint process. Alderman Tisdahl further explained the most we would be able to do was determine that there is a policy that you don't leave young women alone at night unless they insist that they have a ride. This was understood but the complainant did not choose to follow this up and this conclusion is the only possible result. Alderman Bernstein remarked this woman did come to a Council meeting and have a conversation with the Aldermen with respect to her rendition of the facts, which are diametrically opposed to what the officer's rendition was. The reason we're talking about involving citizens in the fact Finding process is there is a sense among some folks that they're not going to get a fair shake so why bother. For the record he does not think that happens and believes there was a statement from everyone on this committee that we have great faith in this Police Chief. Alderman Moran added when the Chief of Police makes a personal phone call to a complainant to please take advantage of an opportunity to come in and talk to him that's an important message for people to come away with from a discussion like this. He would not want anyone to walk away from this meeting thinking this is an empty process and a person cannot get the attention in a meritorious circumstance to have the Police Department acknowledge that there was misconduct, if indeed there was misconduct. He does notwant people to feel, why bother but they should act consistently with the notion they can come here and will be heard and when the facts merit it their complaints will be upheld. Alderman Bernstein emphasized not all complaints are judgments for the police officers, but this case is SOL to reinstate and if the complainant wants to come the case can be reopened. Hearing no further discussion, Atderman Moran's motion for acceptance of C.R. #05-05 was recalled, motion unanimously accepted (5-01. Alderman Bernstein called for further discussion of C.R. #05-05. hearino none. Alderman Moran moved for acceptance of C.R. #05-07. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. and unanimously accepted (5-0). Page 2. Alderman Bernstein noted there were two allegations of complaints against the Police Department and 124 letters of commendation for the department. We have an outstanding Pol,ce Department and a grew: Commander. Chief Kaminski said he will continue vnth the additional process, submit a reacrt after a year and have the people on the Advisory Committee, if they will, come and talk with the committee. Alderman lean -Baptiste suggested at some future date we put on the agenda some of the best practices being used throughout the country. Alderman Bernstein thanked Chief Kaminski and Commander Pettrneo for their attendance. VI. CONSIDERATION OF MENTAL HEALTH BOARD FUNDING ALLOCATION Sue Cantor, Chairperson of the Evanston Mental Health Board, introduced Board members Jane Grover, Carol Sittler, Randy Walker and Assistant Director of Mental Health Services, Harvey Saver. Ms. Cantor proceeded to present a brief summary of the Board's report. In November 2005 they adopted recommendations for the allocation of S828,900 for Human Services funding, for 25 programs and 18 agencies, which is always a difficult process. This year they started from scratch looking at the history of each agency's funding to get a fresh took at each one and try to be as fair and objective as they could in making the allocations which was also difficult as funds are down and some of the funding money has been diverted to Hurricane Relief. State funding is tighter and more restrictive and we are now dealing with fee for service for a number of the agencies, which has been quite costly to the agencies. The agencies had to spend a lot of money to restructure their billing and recording procedures which meant training their staff for these new procedures. With the new fee for service they will need to rely on unit cost and serve more people to get the same amount of funding at the unit cost than they would get from a large grantor causing problems for a number of agencies. Since 2000/2001 total available funding dollars has decreased 22% from S1,560,000 to the current level of S828, 900. With more competition for less dollars the Board has tried a variety of ways to make the allocation process as objective as possible. The funding process followed the same process as last year where they met before the hearings to review each proposal and developed questions that were passed on to each agency so they would know the questions at the hearings. There were two separate hearings, one with United Way and the other with the agencies only the Mental Health Board funds. After the hearings the Allocation Subcommittee reviewed the information and developed recommendations (included in the committee packet) that were presented, reviewed and then adopted at the November Mental Health Board meeting. During the year the Mental Health Board has been involved in a number of other activities besides the funding cycle. They were involved in planning and executing five community education conferences in conjunction with some other community agencies. This year the by-laws were revised, they began using an electronic quarterly report format for the agencies which provides more specific agency performance information to use specifically for measurable outcomes, and continued their liaison relationships with the agencies. They developed an evaluation tool, a rating scale to assist the Board in more objective evaluations of the agency performance, a sample copy of which was included in the packet. Board development continued on a quarterly basis and this year three presentations were made at their meetings. They worked with the Mental Health Association of the North Shore on their Street Banner Campaign, "Mental Health is for Everyone". the orange banners moving around the City since May. The taming year they want to discuss the possibility of a funding cap for the agencies where the percentage amount for any one program is capped with the hope that agencies will try to seek other sources of funding to enable the Board to free up some of our money for new ventures, etc. They may look at revising the contract policy guidelines and contract compliance. The Board will be participating in the development of the E-Plan with the Evanston Community Health Advisory Board. In late winter of 2006 a legislative forum for local state legislators regarding mental health issues is planned In conjunction with the Mental Health Association of the North Shore. Alderman Moran wanted to thank the Mental Health Board for the clarity and reasoning they provided in their spread sheets, which he found very helpful. He also wanted to salute the Board for their efforts of seeking objectives for criteria. As we all know the money that has been available for social services has been much more limited than we would like to see which emphasizes how important it is that we spend what money we have wisely. The best way we have of doing that is to be particularly objective about outcomes, making the evaluations and ultimately making the recommendations. Everything was explained verywell and the reasoning was cogent, thanks to the Mental Health Board for all their excellent work. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked for explanation of the criteria of responsiveness. Ms. Cantor said that refers to being responsive to the needs of the Evanston community and the needs of their clients. Ms. Grover added they d like the people served by the programs they fund to be reflective of the citizenry of Evanston and to touch a number of different resident groups. Being responsive to the needs of the Evanston community is a matter of relevancy it should be the program that this community needs at this time and if there is a need for the program. We don't do community wide assessments of the needs it's more anecdotal whether or not a program is relevant. Ms. Cantor added this is their first run through and they will be revising this, but perhaps a better word than responsiveness would explain what it means. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked one issue is whether it's a good representative cross section of the community, another issue is does it target the need where there's poverty. Is there a discussion among you as to whether or not the program is relevant and responsive? Nis, Grover responded our source of that information is often the agencies themselves to which Ms. Cantor added, one source is their liaison relationships, the proposal is another source, the quarterly reports Page 3. another source, also agency's activities in the community, the kinds of programs they run, the way they evaluate and change their cwm programs. Ms. Grover noted one of the questions fregLently asked agencies is if they can describe the trend, what do they see in their field, where .,s the need going to be developing, how are the demographics changing and how much they respond to it. Alderman Bemstein commented that this was Community Developr;ent's (CD) most difficult year in terms of need and dollars available to satisfy the needs and commended the Mental Hea:tn Board on an attempt to objectify the process. He does not know if you can quantify subjectivity or quality but this is a cood effort and given these parameters people can hone up on them, which is most imporant but very difficult. He's grateful this task was taken away from the Human Services Committee. Alderman Jean -Baptiste questioned the ra*ona:e for the elimination of Youth Job Center's funding. Ms. Grover responded this year the Board started tracking each agency's compliance with our contract whether bills and quarterly reports are submitted on time and Youth Job Center had some significant problems in these time limits. Mr. Terry commented, but not specifically to the Youth Job Center, over time one of the criticisms of our funding has been that agencies submit to two different City bodies with two different criteria and sense of expectations. Seven agencies applied to both the Mental Health Board ar:d the CD Committee. if both the Mental Health Board and CD recommendations are accepted there will only be three agencies funded by both committees. The CD Committee did not consider funding two agencies' and one agency currently funded by the Mental Health Board will not be funded; one Mental Health Board agencycurrentty funded by CD Is not going to be funded next year by the CD Committee. Overtime we have this great overlap which now appears to be the beginning of the separation of the CD Committee agencies and the Mental Health Board agencies. It is not yet totally clear but there will only be three public service agencies dually funded next year. Alderman Moran assumed when the Mental Health Board comes to this committee we vote to accept the recommendations and forward them to the Council. Mr. Terry said that has been deferred pending the City Manager's presentation of the budget. Tonight's presentation is information for the Human Services Committee; all the figures will be part of the budget process. Alderman Bernstein noted the Mental Health Board is not here for a decision, the decision will be made subject to the budget. Alderman Jean -Baptiste questioned zeroing out Youth Job Center for procedural reasons, to which Ms. Cantor noted that was not the only reason and explained there were certain things that didn't occur. For years they've been asking this agency to show us their success, specifically how they made a difference to their clients. They have just given us numbers, how many people they've gotten jobs. What we want to know is do they keep the job, how did they do in their job training, did the training make a difference for them in being able to retain a job. Even if they didn't retain the first job did they get a second job, were they using any job coaching, etc., none of this information was presented to us even though it has been requested of them over and over. Our decisions were made, to some extent, based on all those factors. Also, our funding is for the younger group of kids and they are now concentrating a lot on older individuals for jobs. It's more of a global problem; we would not eliminate an agency's funding because they didn't follow through on the paperwork. Ms. Walker added she served on the Allocation Committee with his. Grover and making a cut to an agency was a decision that did not come easily. Regarding the rationale Youth Job Center kept falling far below projections of the number of youths that they annually serve. There were numerous discussions on what it would mean to cut services but they all agreed that this is a service in our community and Youth Job Center cannot be the provider. Ms. Grover noted that a couple of years ago Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked the Board how they knew that the programs they funded were working and made a difference. At that time they were in the middle of retooling their effort to get the agencies to report their outcome objectives and show how they made a difference. They found it very difficult to get good information from the Youth Job Center, although there is great anecdotal evidence that they are doing a good job for some people. They asked for more information, more objectives to show them the difference the agency is making as a whole. It was difficult for them to decide to fund an agency that hasn't met projections, doesn't look to increase its projections, but is instead looking to dramatically increase the budget for the program without increasing the staffing. Some of the numbers this year did not make sense and the Board did not have enough confidence to fund the agency. Youth Job Center will be invited back next year to ask for funding from the Mental Health Board and vie would love to see them come back. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said his comments were based on the fact that at CD they had to evaluate their presentation and does not think any of us could bring ourselves to zeroing them out because of the void that they fill. He sees Y.O.U. requested S90,400 and you have allocated S90, 400. To him responsiveness is hard to meet and where agencies are failing short is in terms of process. He's not advocating for Youth Job Center, he's constantly challenging them be doing more. We've asked them questions about how they follow up on linear evaluations of people who come through and have tried to challenge them to deal with youth who may have some criminal background and help them in transition. This commentary will hopefully make them more responsive to the procedural requests that you have made about youth job training, skills training, job placement, etc. Youth Job Center may not be doing as well as they should be, but they are the only agency that has been consistently doing that. Alderman Bernstein thanked the members of the Mental Health Board for their presentation and attendance at the meeting. -_ Page 4. Vll. REPORT ON PRISONER REINTEGRATION PROGAMS Mr. Terry noted this was a follow-up to a reference made by Alderman Jean -Baptiste asking us to took at this issue. In the memo sent to the committee four components were addressed. We looked at some of the national models, as this is nationally a very big issue that a number of cities are looking at. All the literature and the best practices have been reviewed and highlighted in the memo. The gold standard of these types of programs for communities similar to Evanston's size would be Savannah, Georgia, which has allocated a great deal of resource and has reorganized their City government along the lines of providing a different type of program. In the State of Illinois the Governor has initiated a couple of pilot programs in the Department of Corrections and established a task farce that will have recommendations coming out after the first of the year in terms of what the state might be able to do new and different relative to this issue. Mr. Terry looked at a number of local in:tiatives as a number of agencies in town are doing something with the ex -offender population. No one is doing anything in a truly comprehensive manner. There are minimally five elements to a successful ex -offender program. The three issues ex -offenders present to a community with predominance are housing issues, employment issues and substance abuse treatment issues. For a program to be effective it has to work with all three of those issues on a comprehensive basis. All of the literature suggests there's a fourth element necessary to worts with that population, begin all these services and get them ready to go while the individual is still in the Department of Corrections. By the time the person hits the streets in the community it's too late. The fifth element in all of the model programs that work is co -location of services; it's not enough to give referrals from one agency to another. The places where the different services are housed under one roof seem to work most effectively. We have a number of initiatives in Evanston and a number of issues that we have to consider if we are seriously going to develop a new type of reintegration model. He awaits your directions on how you think City government should proceed in this. Alderman Jean -Baptiste remarked he has attended meetings with Representatives from Julie Hamos, Jan Schakowsky, and Lary Sufferdin's offices and the Minister of Ebenezer Church, that have looked into what services might be available. Fresh Start is an existing program that we fund $5,000 to help provide this type of service. The question that motivated his proposing to look into this is we do have some people who live in Evanston who have gone to jail and will be released. He understands that this coming year we are facing a number of people being released which is why Governor Blagolovich has started some type of initiative of moving ahead of this problem in order to accommodate the needs that this release wilt be creating. We are not creating a situation nor are we trying to invite prisoners to Evanston, we're trying to see if we can anticipate some of the needs and see what programs are in place to take care of those who %vill be coming here because they live here, get some data on who will be returning to the City of Evanston and when we can begin to target our assistance to those who will be needing that assistance. We don't know the ages of the people that we will begetting and to get that done we need as much of that information that we can get. Mr. Terry said of the things he highlighted in his memo was locally no one has a good relationship with the Department of Corrections, who are the keepers of that data. Thus far he has not had much success getting any kind of local liaison from that department, we continue asking our state elected officials to intervene on our behalf. Other state departments have substance abuse, or the employment service, the One Stop, has an employment counselorwhose full time job is to work with ex -offenders who said she has no relationship with the Department of Corrections. Alderman Jean -Baptiste suggested starting with Commissioner Larry Sufferdin; the Cook County Department of Corrections is directly under his governance collectively with the rest of the Board. The Governor is interested in doing something and has allocated some resources perhaps we can tap into his bank of knowledge to help us out. If we are to help people while they are inside or as soon as theyget out we need to have more information. Alderman Jean -Baptiste found Mr. Terry's report gave the committee some good information and as we do strategic planning we have to confront the truth about how we manage safety in the City. We manage safety by looking at that population that may come back and may become parasitical on the community unless there is something for them; we have to find a real way of addressing this. The first point is to get the information and continue to see what the needs are, maybe the Governor has allocated some funding that can come our way to support some of the job placement and training that Fresh Start and other agencies are engaged in, what we need now is information. Alderman Bernstein remarked the Police Chief has historically tried to find information from Parole Boards with respect to people coming back into the community and has not been very successful. Vlll. COMMUNICATION - GAY GAMES Vll SPORT & CULTURE FESTIVAL JULY 15-22, 2006 Mr. Terrynoted as a correction, the memo is asking for approval. Alderman Bernstein asked why you would need approval as this is on private property except for Crown Center. Mr. Gaynor said under the Special Events Policy adopted by the City Council any time there is over a certain number of individuals participating in an event it comes before the Human Services Committee, that number is 250. This is to advise the City Council this is going to be occurring and held at Northwestern University at Ryan Arena, the tennis courts and the big facility on campus. Minimal activity would beat the Crown Center ice rink, they will determine the need on a rental basis for practice ice. Alderman Moran moved aonroval. seconded by Alderman Tisdahl. Susie Arnold, Co-chair of the Board of Directors, Introduced Amy Pine, staff memberand Government Relations Manager, and Nancy Harris, Sports Director. Their organization consists of a 21 volunteer Board of Directors, and a staff of 23 housed in the Bridgeview Bank Building on Lawrence and Broadway. This will be the 25"' year for Gay Games VII. The purpose is to empower people through athletics and is open to people of all ages, race, athletic and artistic ability Page 5. and sexual orientation. The last event 4 years ago was in Sidney, before that it was in Amsterdam and now in the City of Chicago, and they hope Evanston is proud to be a part of this because of what this brings to the Midwest. The legacy of this event is very empowering and life changing for those who participate. They plan to host between 10,000 and 12, 000 athletes and artists, 32 sports, a choral band and color guard event and cultural events. They event showcases the entire area from Evanston to Hyde Park. They have been working 5 or 6 years with governmental agency sponsorships, community groups, etc. There will be 5 sporting events at Northwestern that takes place from Julyl5th to the 22nd. There's a large opening ceremony at Soldier's Field, a week later the closing ceremony is at Wrigley Field. They are working with the Evanston Chamber of Commerce on marketing. The City of Chicago has assessed the economic impact of around 580,000,000, Sidney saw S75,C00,000 there. Alderman ,lean -Baptiste asked what the economic impact w1if be on Evanston. Ms. Pine said she did not know but the Gay Games is an event s;milar to the',lasters World Championship, less spectators and more participants. Alderman Bernstein said once it's been approved here our name will be Listed in the marketing, something invaluable wh,cn a ,price cannot be put upon in immediate dollars. his. Arnold said they also have a media kit and development materials that has resolutions adopted by local governments supporting the Gay Games and they would love to get the Aldermen interested in their honorary board of local officials who support the games which are also vehicles to publicize the City of Evanston. Alderman Tisdahl said she was happy to support the ad. Alderman Bernstein said once you're finalized with Northwestern and the City Council gives you final approval maybe a resolution of support from the City of Evanston City Council will serve both of our interests. Alderman Bernstein recalled the motion for committee's aooroval of the Gav Games VII. motion unanimousfv approved (5-0). Alderman Bernstein thanked everyone for their presentation and attendance. IX. DISCUSSION ITEM: AGING/RECREATION PROGRAMS Sidney Zwick sent a memo to the committee regarding a program the Levy Center houses conducted by Northwestern University which is fee generating to Northwestern but the City is not paid for any of its rental services nor getting consideration for participation. Mr. Zwick had recommendations from a renewed Independent Senior Citizens of Evanston Organization, an organization representing the points of view from Evanston senior citizens. Northwestern is not a poor institution and in 1861 got this blanket tax exemption. We're concerned about the precedent this arrangement will make for future study groups at the Levy Center and if this proves to be successful others will follow in its wake. This program now at the Levy Center has the already generated from S3,750 to S6,000 for the University. He was told by the Levy Advisory Board that other groups use the facilities of the Levy Center for free but does not think any of those groups use the Levy Center for fundraising or revenue generating purposes what making this situation a little different. As taxpayers who helped pay for this 58,500,000 facility they feel they have a right to express concern about the arrangement that was made Jointly by the manager of the Levy Center working with the Advisory Board. This program was not designed to serve Levy Center members; it came from the campus already filled with 24 participants. Alderman Tisdahl asked if the 24 participants were Evanstonians, Information Mr. Zwick did not have. The Northwestern program does not require that you be an Evanston resident, most of them are non Evanston residents. The motivation behind the Advisory Board and Ms. Ferrara in working with Northwestern was to bring more senior citizens in contact with the Levy Center and thereby increase its use and service to the community which is a good tool. A lot of Evanston seniors go to the North Shore Senior Center for their wonderful programs and his suggestion is the best way to expand the use of the Levy Center is to improve its programs and particularly to add more cultural and educational programs. He is a graduate of Northwestern and is always reminding the administrators of their failure to live up to their proper civic responsibility to their host community and when he found out about this felt it incumbent upon him to raise this issue with the Levy Center Advisory Board and the Human Services Committee. in addition to dealing with this immediate problem he's trying to correct the arrangement and have half of the fees the 24 participants paid the University contributed to the Levy Center Life Enrichment Fund and also all 24 participants be required to become members of the Levy Center right away not at some indefinite time in the future. Northwestern has gone outside of the campus because they ran out of classroom space. They're using the Levy Center, the Georgian Hotel and the Presbyterian Home as off campus sites and the Levy Center has free parking. The participants on campus, in addition to the $500 a year they have to pay the University pay S103 a semester for parking. The Learning and Retirement Program is a wonderful program but he does not think the University is fair to the leaders as they get none of that money to pay for the materials they provide the participants in their program. The only thing the members get for the money is the use of the classroom on campus, the use of the University libraries, the use of the shuttle busses as they have to park at Dyke Stadium and invitations to the Learning and Retirement social events. Alderman Moran commented on the letter from the Levy Center Advisory Board that said they developed a marketing committee to establish strategic alliances with other agencies serving seniors which included Northwestern University. This committee felt attracting a top notch program such as this would be a draw to the Levy Center and is sure this is the kind of program we're looking for to improve programs for the Levy Center. He thanks Northwestern because it brings opportunities of lifelong learning out to our citizens and constituents who use the Levy Center. We can talk endlessly on Northwestern giving us money for any number of things including this program. Levy members were excited that this was being held at the Center. This was done on a pilot basis and the question will be do we continue with this at the Levy, it also says scholarships are available. This seminar being held at the Levy Center is a coup for the City, our Levy Center Page 6. members and is a great benefit to all of us and we should be proud a strategic alliance has been developed between the .Levy Center and Northwestern to do a program such as this. Mr. Zw+ ck thought the program is wonderful but if there was an imaginative and capable director of that center -we could do a program just like learning and retirement ourselves at a much lower cost, We don't nee: to bring in Norhwestern at a cost of 5500 a year when something like this could be done on our own. Alderman Jean -Baptiste %vas tr 1'^c to figure out if Mr. Zwick's main foc::s is Northwestern should share the proceeds titiIth the Levy Center or his focus is a ;udgment about the program not berg worth the money people are paying. Mr. Zwick said he would prefer we run it ourselves and not ctiarge 5500. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if due to this program (t occurred to Mr. Zwick that this is something we could do, or is your or!y concern they could hold this type of program at the Levy Center if they share tre proceeds with us. Alderman Jea^-paptiste wanted to add a commentary on staff creativity, that staff has been running an excellent center at Levy and by accommodating this it's not their fault that the Advisory Board decided to enter irto this alliance. Staff did not go our and seek out this program to bring in. Alderman Bernstein asked what our policy is with respect to utilizing cur facilities to anybody, for profit, not -for -profit, or fee generating. Mr, Gaynor sa,d we run programs ourselves, we develoo partnerships and rent the facility out at different times. On Thursday evenings we rent the facility to Weight Watchers for a fee, in this particular case staff met, there was a discussion that went to the Advisory Board which is part of an overall marketing strategy. The sense was by bringing Northwestern University in as one of our partners there was a very significant benefit of much greater visibility than we have been able to obtain. The benefit outweighed a fee, the North Shore Senior Center offered to take this program without charging a fee but we wanted to experiment with this as a pilot program. We felt it was beneficial for us to have exposure to bring more seniors throughout the area into the Levy Center. It's not just Evanston residents who use the facility; we have non resident members who pay a non member fee. Alderman Bernstein asked how many Levy Center members are participants in this program to which Mr. Zwick said none, but Mr. Gaynor did not believe so as this was set up as a pilot program to see whether or not it was beneficial for us to have that program. Alderman Bernstein said he appreciates talking about expanding the horizons and marketing of the Levy Center but wants some benefit given to the members of the Levy Center. He does not understand why we charge Weight Watchers and not Northwestern. His concern is that we have a wonderful facility available for various outside celebrations, Mr. Gaynor added it's available to District 65, District 202, for no charge, it's open to AYSO Soccer, Evanston Baseball, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Secretary of State, etc. Also, the Levy Center is not booked from the time we open until the time we close. This particular room was not being utilized, rented or not rented, giving us an opportunity to fill the space, provide exposure for higher visibility and run a program that we had no monetary obligations to. It does not cost us any money to have them there on that date. Alderman Tisdahl asked if other space is available if Mr. Zwick wanted to do a similar program that would not cost anything, to which Mr. Gaynor said we have to see what his program is and if it falls within the parameters. Alderman Jean -Baptiste asked if its part of the process that the Board gets involved in discussions of determining programs, to which Mr. Gaynor responded staff as well as the Board develop programs. Alderman Bernstein asked whose responsibility is it to set policy for the Levy Center and that would fall to City Council to which Alderman Bernstein responded, It hasn't happened because we have not been made aware of any of these programs. Mr. Gaynor noted these administrative policies have been in place since we were on Maple Avenue. Joan Hickman, member of Levy Center Life Enrichment Board and also a participant In the Osher Lifelong Learning institute. said as a Levy Board member she had expressed concern over the fact that the center was under utilized after 1:00 p.m. weekdays. She campaigned and was able to get the Open Door Ensemble of North Light Theater's senior outreach program, to use Lery Center for writing classes, acting classes, and business meetings, an arrangement that has worked for 2 years. There is a t,ionetary arrangement between North Light and Levy. The Levy Board decided to have a market analysis to determine tow to generate more activity for the afternoons and as a result of that proposed that classes from Osher Lifelong Learning Institute be held there in the afternoon. There are classrooms available on campus but the Issue is there is no parking on campus making it feasible for members to meet in off campus buildings where they are able to park closer. The Levy proposal was attractive because the classroom space is clean and bright and parking is available. She was surprised to learn of Mr. Zwick's protest but she was more surprised that under the guise of a reporter he obtained names, addresses and phone numbers and used them to inundate the coordinators with letters and harassing phone calls. He has every right to protest when he is not happy with a situation but he does not have the right to pressure people to his way of thinking. Mr. Zwick disagreed -mth some of Ms. Hickman's statements. Christina Ferraro remarked she's not sure where the letter Mr. Zwick received came from but it was well written andjust about states the facts with one or two minor differences in dates and specifics. Alderman Bernstein asked how many groups or organizations use our facility for no money generates revenue. his. Ferraro responded maybe a dozen, the Secretary of State's office for drivers' licenses. AARP, to which Mr. Domecker added none of the groups generate profit for themselves, they are organizations like Team Evanston or Evanston Baseball that might use it to hold a clinic, Weight Watchers if a for profit organization. his. Gaynor noted we also sponsor a number of programs that pay a fee, Alderman Bernstein questioned how many programs that do not pay anything at the facility charge people a fee and wondered where the S500 a person charged by Northwestern goes if they are not paying a rental fee or any instruction fee nor paying any materials fees, Page 7. Alderman Holmes thought we are making too big of a deal about a pilot project and Levy will not advertise this partnership until after the trial is completed. The Advisory Board thought there was a benefit for them to do this and will evaluate this after the pilot project to see if it was feasible and then maybe charge a fee or whatever they work out with Northwestern. Ken Schaffer, Professor of Management and Marketing at North Park University, and Chairman of the Marketing Committee of the Advisory Board at the Levy Center saic this was his brain child. The money charged for the program goes to the two admmistr a:ors who are full time employees at Northwestern and for the reproduction of the material as there is an enormous amojr.t of zeroing copyright materials Northwestern needs clearance for, there are also promotional costs. The S500 is not for a single course, but 3 courses a semester. He was very upset with Mr. Zwick because this issue has taken Advisc Board members and staff at feast 200 hours having to deal with this nonsense. Mr. Zwick has two points, he does not grant Northwestern to get the space for free, but we are doing this on a trial bass and don't know if it will work and therefore did not want to take money under a premises that we could promise things that we couldn't deliver. Also, we want to see if they are going to celrrer and do the promotion they promised. His other point is he wants to take the Levy Center off ne administration of the Department of Parks and Recreation and move it to Health and Human Services. How he made :hat quantum leap from a pilot program to this other point is mind boggling to him. Alderman BernsleWs concern was cur policy with respect to payment. Mr. Gaynor said if you area 501 C-3 non-profit organization you don't pay. Ms. Hickman said she was very concerned over the fact that the Center was dead after 1.00 p.m. where the North Shore Senior Center is busy until 4:00 p.m. Mr. Gaynor was not sure that we are not busy after 1:00 p.m., perhaps not as busy as in the morning. There are a diminishing number of seniors using the facility later in the afternoon because seniors like to get home before dark. Also, our Levy bus transportation leaves in the middle of the afternoon. Two weeks ago we were fortunate to obtain a second bus which came from a state grant that was applied for three years ago, and this bus will enable us to modify and enhance our system for seniors to stay later in the day. We do have other groups that charge but do not pay a fee. Certain programs that come into the facility such as Mr. Terry brings 1,000 people in for flu shots we do not charge a fee for. There are trade offs, AARP does a program they charge for but we do not charge them which brings more people into the facility. A jazz band practices in the facility that we do not charge for; however, they have a couple concerts at the facility and do not chargo us. Mr. Gaynor said he would like to provide the committee with the Recreation Board's rental policy which can be discussed at another meeting. Staff as well as the Advisory Board spent a considerable amount of time on this and at no time have we disrespected Mr. Zwick. Mr. Zwick has disrespected his staff and did in fact by name disrespect one of his staff tonight which is unacceptable from him and he would like to have it on record that as far as he is concerned Christina Ferraro our Manager of the Levy Center is an outstanding representative of the City and does a great job at the Levy Center. Alderman Jean -Baptiste said as a result of this discussion Mr. Zwick may be someplace else in his assessment of this since it is a pilot program. It is a program aimed at achieving other goals such as marketing and the Board itself may be able to evaluate the cost and benefits to make a decision whether to continue with the program as is, whether to request shared fees, or any other decision. Maybe Mr. Zwick's input to the Board might be taken into consideration in determining what the next step might be. If this were a general policy of bringing groups in from Northwestern to charge fees and pay no costs that might be something that the Council may want to step in and try to ask be changed. Right now the Board should continue to exercise their independent judgment with this limited set of circumstances and we should not be stepping in to make any determination. However, if it becomes a broad open door where anything goes, at that point we aught to step in and try to influence a different direction. Mr. Zwick's concern was we are estaa,,shing a precedent that would cause problems in the future and his understanding of pilot programs in other organizations is you're trying out something in the same fashion that you hope to continue with after the pilot program is completed. Alderman Bernstein thanked everyone for their participation in this discussion. X. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:38 p.m. Respectfully submitte Audrey Trotsw (/ Department of Health and Human Services Page 8.