Evanston aldermen may soon need to decide whether to lift the ban on raising chickens in Evanston backyards.

These chickens don't know they'd be contraband in Evanston. (Wikimedia photo.)

The ban, adopted in 1974, has recently ruffled the feathers of locavores -- advocates of locally raised food products.

And they may have found a cause celebre in the case of a Northwestern bioethics professor, Laurie Zoloth, who says was hauled into the city's administrative hearings court last week and fined for keeping chickens in her backyard.

"I made the case that it's a recession, poor and working families need all the food help we can get," Zoloth wrote in an e-mail message to supporters.

The Plan Commission voted 5-1 Wednesday night to amend Evanston's zoning code to ban churches and membership organizations from locating in industrial zones.

The City Council is scheduled to act on the proposal Monday night.

Churches and membership organizations have been permitted as special uses in industrial zones under the zoning code since at least 1993.

City Attorney Jack Siegel has told plan commissioners that changing the code would strengthen the city's case against an orthodox Jewish day school that has sued over the city's refusal to grant it a special use permit to operate in the former Shure Incorporated building at 222 Hartrey Ave.

The only vote against the zoning change Wednesday came from Commissioner Seth Freeman who had also voted in favor of the school's request.

City zoning officials have justified the change on the theory that churches and membership organizations attract large groups of people who might be endangered by exposure to noxious chemicals used in some industrial processes.

But paradoxically the city has also recently changed the zoning code to permit residential uses in some areas that formerly permitted only industrial uses.

Evanston aldermen praised the city's health staff this week for coming up with a new strategy for dealing with animal hoarding, after a plan to limit residents to four cats blew up over the summer.

"I think this is fabulous," Alderman Judy Fiske, 1st Ward, said of the new plan -- which brings together a team of city staff members from several departments to address hoarding complaints as they arise.

"Obviously there are many different strategies we can use, based on what's already on the books, to address this problem," Fiske added.

The plan, developed by Health Director Evonda Thomas and Division Manager Carl Caneva, brings together staff from the community development, police, fire and legal departments to respond to hoarding complaints.

It uses code provisions covering dangerous and unsafe buildings, nuisance premises, animal control and licensing, and cruelty to animals to handle the complaints.

Though Evanston leaders seem to have abandoned the idea, the city could benefit from hiring a lobbyist, officials from nearby municipalities say.

City officials toyed with the idea of a new lobbyist at a committee meeting last month, but the thought never crystallized into an actual proposal, despite the mayor’s support.

Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin used to work as the city’s lobbyist but dropped the role after winning his current position in 2003.

So Evanston scrapped his $20,000 annual contract and never replaced him, according to budget records.

Officials from nearby municipalities, however, suggest the city should bring the idea back to the table.

Of 11 other large Chicago suburbs checked, 10 spend money regularly for a little extra push in Springfield or Washington D.C., according to state records.

Evanston police say the CVS drug store at Howard and Asbury was held up early this morning.

Commander Tom Guenther says a man in his 30s entered the store at 101 Asbury Ave. around 1:45 a.m. Store clerks thought he was acting suspiciously, Guenther said, although he eventually picked out some items and went to the cash register to pay for them.

But when a clerk opened the register, he pulled a gun, demanded money and grabbed some from the cash drawer before fleeing the store on foot.

Two Chicago-area real estate firms with offices on the same block in Evanston have merged.

Chicago Real Estate Daily reports this morning that Prudential Preferred Properties acquired Rubloff Residential on Tuesday.

Prudential Preferred's Evanston office is in the Fountain Square Building downtown, just across the street from the Rubloff office in Sherman Plaza.

The combined brokerage, named Prudential Rubloff Properties, has about 900 sales and staff members.

Executives say there will be little change in staffing, but three or four of the combined firm's 17 offices are likely to close.

An industry source estimated the new firm would be the fifth largest in the Chicago area based on dollar volumne of transactions.