City of Evanston Blog
Articles Posted in: June 2010
Jeremy Piven Loves Evanston
Last night my wife Patrice and I attended a fundraiser in Chicago for the Piven Theater Workshop. The Workshop has been based at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center for many years and we thought we would attend the fundraiser to support the program. Also in attendance at the event was Downtown Evanston Executive Director Carolyn Dellutri and Bridget Calendo, NU's sustainability program director. Carolyn and I had talked about attending the event over the last few weeks and she shared with me…
Newsy Items on Monday City Council Agenda
All links to PDF documents 1. Consideration of future of Evanston Public Library North and South Branches. The City Council has funded the branches through August 31. Reports from the Evanston Library Board and Friends of the Library will be presented to the Council. 2. Consideration of budget for Township of Evanston. 3. Consideration of $50,000 grant for funding of development and land acquisition for future park ("Grandmothers Park") at 1125 Dewey. 4. The City Council's Planning and Development Committee…
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Problem with Comcast Channel 16
Channel 16 went off the air about ninety minutes through the City Council meeting this evening. There apparently is a problem with Comcast’s network and how it connects to the government access channel. The entire meeting was recorded and will be replayed as usual. We will also come up with additional playback times. Meeting will also be uploaded to YouTube per usual.…
ComEd Power Outages
Yesterday's storms caused havoc with power throughout the region. According to ComEd, approximately 500,000 customers were impacted. As of 8:30 AM, 904 Evanston customers were still out of service. ComEd is telling customers that it will likely take days to restore power everywhere. There is no timeframe for restoration of power to remaining customers in Evanston.…
Newsy Items on Monday City Council Agenda
The City Council is meeting Monday at 7 PM in a special meeting to discuss budget issues. Several items of interest (all links PDF): 1. Receive March 1, 2010 actuarial report on the Police and Fire pension funds. Unfortunately, news here is not getting much better. 2. FY 2010/11 First Quarter budget report. It is hard to get a good sense of where things are headed after only three months into the fiscal year. Better trends emerge during the second…
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NU/City Committee Meeting tonight
Agenda items include discussion of 1865 Sherman and the impact of a proposed traffic signal on Sheridan Road. Full agenda available here…
Budget Update
Here is the text of an email I sent to all City staff this afternoon: "The City Council will be having a special meeting Monday evening to discuss budget issues now that we are through the first quarter of FY 2010/11. I will be sending everyone the information that will be presented to the City Council once the agenda is completed on Friday. However, I wanted to share with you today that I have issued layoff notices to three firefighters…
Newsy Items on Monday City Council Agenda
All links below are to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files: 1. Consideration of new contract with American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). This union represents most of our non-public safety employees. Agreement represents 0% salary increase in current year and a 2% and 1% increase during the course of FY 2011/12 which will be offset by continued furlough days. More details in staff report. 2. Further consideration of addition of traffic signal on Sheridan Road at Garrett Place. …
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Code-A-Thon Great Success
Over twenty volunteers gathered today at the Civic Center for the City's first code-a-thon. The volunteers were asked to help migrate information from the City's current website to the platform for the City's new website which is scheduled to go on-line July 1. Volunteers were asked to choose specific assignments divided into three categories: computer user, designer and programmer. Each assignment was geared to an individuals strengths and backgrounds. I picked an asssignment in the "computer user" category and spent…