2019 November 11 - Council Meeting

Below see the Nov 11 City Council Agenda

2019 nov 11 CC Agenda with oct 28 council minutes 3pp.pdf

By a 5-4 vote, over continued opposition from citizens throughout Evanston Council passes the ordinance with language providing that the provisions in the amendment will expire on December 31, 2021, and the expired amendment "shall not create a precedent for future uses in the U2 District." The Council expresses the understanding and agreement that, if NU seeks to continue to host commercial entertainment or professional sports events after that, it must submit a new application to the City and go before the Plan Commission again as with any other proposes ordinance. Alderman Revelle refers two matters to staff: the creation of a formal impact assessment of the events held by NU under the new ordinance, and a special parking district on event days for residents of the neighborhood near the U2 District.

See below: November 11, 2019 Public Comment including NU's comments.

CC 11/11 CC transcript 2019 public & NU comment.pdf

See below: Council discussion on November 11, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbE5CvAHog&feature=youtu.be

YouTube Video time: 1:41:55 - 2:26:19

Video

CC2 11/11 Transcript 2019 Council Discussion.pdf

Highlighted in bold are a few of the false and/or misleading statements uttered during the discussion.

  1. Wilson's comments: "the existing permitted uses in 5, 6 15 7-2 include musical performances.... So there’s nothing in there that precludes profit making concerts, it’s just, it doesn’t say that.... And again: the concerts are already permitted"

At the time of the November 11 meeting, for profit- concerts, that is commercial events, are not permitted by the Evanston code governing the U2 District. Concerts, according to the code have to be University-sponsored events. Wilson is lumping together any concert that has ticket sales under the umbrella of "for-profit". Wilson's argument is analogous to lumping together professional sports with student athletes competitions, because both generate ticket sales.

See: 2019 Allowed Uses by Zoning Districts


  1. Rainey's comments: "whether or not there was any reference to a, for example, a traffic analysis.... There, there was, it may not be exactly what you wanted, and it was very brief."

There was NO traffic analysis submitted to the City by NU.

During the November 11 Council meeting , Alderman Revelle made a referral to the Rules Committee re. Public Comment format at P&D meeting.

YouTube 3:41:28 -3:42:48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbE5CvAHog&t=13287s

2019, November 11 City Council

3:41:28

Revelle: I, I like to make a referral to the Rules Committee. So, we, we’ve had an extensive discussion on the Rules Committee about how we were going to, how much time we were going to allow to, allot to Public Comment and our Standing Committee meetings. And we decided that we would allot 45 minutes to Planning & Development, and a maximum of two minutes per speaker. What we didn’t talk about in Rules was, sort of the format for how that covered comment might be handled, and I think it would be helpful to both members of the public as well as those of us who, you know, we rotate in and out of being the Chair, to have some guidelines about, you know, should, should the, should the residents be able to, out of that 45 minutes, for example, be able to to say, you know, we want 5 minutes or rather 10 minutes of that 45 minutes to go to a special presentation or something. I think the residents felt pretty stressed to try to make their comments in an intelligible format in just two minutes at a go. So, I, I would like the Rules Committee to discuss this again, this, this part of Public Comment again.

Hagerty: OK. We’ll get that on there. Thank you, Alderman.

3:42:48