Central Street Neighbors Association

When I was a kid and the other kids were home watching "Leave it to Beaver," my father and step-mother were marching me off to the library. -- Oprah Winfrey
 
What’s at stake here is more than access to a room full of books. -- Josh Wallaert
 
Our community is being asked this weekend to "vote" on 100 ideas in the evanston150.org process. Regrettably, we've had scant opportunity to discuss or debate them. Even the ideas' proponents have had little chance to explain them. If time permitted I'd venture thought on many. Since time doesn't, I'll use this bandwidth to urge a vote for one imperfectly phrased but critical idea, No. 27 on the original list, "Establish branch libraries throughout Evanston."
 
The phrasing is imperfect because unless you read the explanation, it might suggest, as one critic put it, "building a branch library on every street corner." No one proposes that. The better explanation, available in the "long" version of the evanston150 list, is as follows: "Evanston currently has only one branch library, and that is available only part time. This proposal seeks to increase the number of branch libraries, locate them throughout the City, and keep them open longer hours in order to make library services and programs more accessible to all Evanstonians. Among other things, the branches can then serve as community resource centers, and reach out to engage everyone in literacy activities, for instance, hosting One Book, One Community programs."
 
I urge a vote for this Idea and write this post specifically to counter one of the most inaccurate arguments I've heard about Evanston libraries, namely, that "bricks and mortar" are "so 20th Century" and the idea of buildings should be discarded as we think about a library system of the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. The concept of place is fundamental to the importance of libraries anywhere, and is a compelling argument for libraries in neighborhoods, that reach all neighborhoods.

A sweeping smorgasbord of changes to City Code, ranging from technical revisions to consolidation, elimination, addition, or increased penalties in other provisions, is on the City Council agenda tonight as Item H5, coming out of Human Services. The changes are summarized at pp. 581-590 of the Packet and the lengthy Ordinance 49-O-11 is itself a separate document downloadable from the Agendas and Minutes page.
 

On Mon., Feb. 14, in support of an amendment to weaken Evanston's Green Building Ordinance, the thrust from the City side was that LEED certification is inappropriate and/or too arduous for retail buildings and in particular for smaller stores. Leaving aside the serious process concerns over inclusion and transparency that the rollout of this proposed law change has raised, the erroneous premise requires correction. Green building for retail at the Silver LEED or better level is not only feasible, and economically sound, but is already happening in many communities where public and private actors are sincerely committed to the sustainability necessary for our future.

On this past Tuesday night, Feb. 24, attendees of the Central Street Neighbors Association aldermanic forum were treated to a demonstration of the better side of politics. In one hour and 45 minutes, six candidates for the two open  positions in the 6th and 7th wards fielded approximately 18 questions each, after first answering another 18 questions on a CSNA questionnaire.

Much discussion of Evanston's downtown has invoked a "wedding cake" concept, with the center tallest, and heights lower further out. Mega-growth advocates urge that an extra-tall building on the Fountain Square block will restore a cake-shaped "typical urban form" to downtown, which now allegedly resembles a "fallen soufflé." This is loaded language, meant to shame us as lousy cooks. I'd feel bad, except for one thing: it's nonsense.

First, since 1920, as one official Illinois publication notes,

Gun control arouses passions. But the Evanston City Council made the smart move in voting to modify its handgun ban. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling likely rendered Evanston's ordinance unconstitutional.

Some have argued that, because the Supreme Court case only dealt with Washington, D.C.'s ordinance, and the District of Columbia is not a state, that the reach of the decision is limited, and that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. That's a risky position to take.

My mini-tour of some of the local condo offerings led to some larger mullings. Altogether, the 4 developments I covered, representing nearly 100 new condos within a 9-iron shot of the Central Street Metra station, raise interesting questions. No doubt all will eventually sell; but at what price? One wonders if the demand for "transit-oriented" luxury condos here hasn’t been overestimated.

A frequent rhetorical trick is to oversimplify an issue, and then present to the audience, factfinder, or decisionmaker a false choice, usually with loaded verbiage. Henry Kissinger was a master of the "we have two choices" overdistillation; Donald Rumsfeld would frequently attempt the same thing by re-phrasing a question into an unpalatable option v. what the Administration was doing.

This tack is what one alderman employed in saying Evanston's only option is to "move forward" or else we "slip backward."

Both by nature and training I tend to look at multiple sides of issues. So, both to try and see if lemonade is extractable from the sour taste of the last Tower vote, and to try and extend some credit to Council members, I stepped back and looked at the punt to the Plan Commission in another light. One way to view it is that residents got, in part, what they asked for.