Evanston’s City Council has scheduled an unusual weekend session for 9:30 Saturday morning to talk about goals.
The agenda for the special meeting, released Thursday afternoon, says the only agenda item for the meeting is a discussion item titled “City Council Goal Planning Session.”
No supporting material was included in the packet for the meeting to provide any further details about what will be discussed.
The council last adopted a set of goals for 2019-2020, and then — with the pressure of the pandemic — opted to just continue the same list of goals through this year, despite the election of several new members to the council in 2021 and the replacement as a result of resignations of two council members this year.
Six goals were included on latest list:
- Invest in city infrastructure and facilities.
- Enhance community development and job creation citywide.
- Expand affordable housing options.
- Ensure equity in all city operations.
- Stabilize long-term city finances.
- Implement the city’s climate action and resilience plan.
That was a slight shift from the goal list the Council had used during 2017-2018 — dropping a goal to “Further police/community relations initiatives” and adding the climate goal to the list.
An Evanston Now reader survey in early 2019 indicated that readers felt the city had made the most progress on the police community relations goal in the preceding two years.
Of course, in 2020 the “defund the police” movement swept the nation leading to protests in Evanston, sharp reductions in the police budget and an exodus of officers from which the city is still trying to recover.