The Evanston Environment Board on Thursday got a preview of the long-discussed Healthy Buildings Ordinance and signed off on a Climate Action and Resilience Plan Implementation Task Force response to Envision Evanston 2045’s comprehensive plan.

The long-discussed Healthy Buildings Ordinance would require Evanston buildings over 20,000 square feet in to be environmentally friendly and energy-efficient by 2050. Since the ordinance isn’t quite ready, board members only got a summary of what the ordinance would contain. It would require larger buildings to become energy efficient, get rid of emission-producing utilities such as gas stoves, and secure electricity only from renewable sources, whether on-site like solar panels or from an off-site source.

Envision Evanston 2045, the city’s new comprehensive plan, was released on Election Day. In the months before the release, the CARP Implementation Task Force, an Environment Board committee, expressed concerns about how much of their input was being taken into account. Task force board member Katarina Topalov said while they saw some of their input included, they still had several concerns.

Health Buildings Ordinance

The ordinance is being developed by city staff members in collaboration with the Buildings Electrification Working Group, a joint committee of the Environment Board and Utilities Commission established in early 2023. While the group had hoped to have a draft ready this month, members ended up shifting the deadline to December due to staff workload issues. They still hope to get it before Environment Board and Utilities Commission by the end of the year, with the goal of sending it to City Council in January.

Cara Pratt, the city’s sustainability and resilience manager, told the Environment Board that staff is “moving as fast as possible” to meet that deadline.

In August, Evanston won a $10.7 million federal grant to aid in creating the ordinance; Northwestern University is a partner with the city in the grant. That money has not yet arrived, though, and it remains to be seen if the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump could impact its disbursal.

Ben Martin, one of the city’s sustainability and resilience specialists, said emissions emanating from buildings account for about 50% of all emissions in Evanston. Given “the city is already built out,” with many buildings being decades old and “we don’t have a lot of new buildings,” tackling large building emissions was a logical priority.

Those 500 buildings include municipal buildings, senior residences, affordable housing and buildings that house nonprofit organizations, including Northwestern.

Martin said the ordinance would set general policies, goals and priorities. The exact rules and benchmarks would be ironed out over the next two years.

‘Complexity and long-term nature’

“So to do this work, we have to recognize the complexity of these goals, and also their long-term nature,” Martin said. “We have to understand that each building is unique.”

He added “the ordinance, I hate to use this term, is the outline for the plan.” The rules would, for example, be used to outline exactly what counts as an outside renewable energy source.

To ensure that the community has a say in the process, the city will set up a Community Advisory Board and a Technical Committee.

Environment Board member James Cahan asked about community outreach so far. Pratt said that they have had one-on-one meetings with City Council members and stakeholders such as school officials. Sustainability and resilience specialist Kirsten Drehobl said there will be office hours.

Board co-chair Matt Cotter said he appreciated the overview.

“I know there’s a lot of support in the community for this,” he said.

CARP Taskforce letter

The task force was set up to help the city implement the 2018 Climate Action and Resilience Plan. From the beginning of the Envision Evanston planning process, they wanted the consultants to keep CARP in mind. As planning process got underway, there were growing concerns among both the task force and the Environment Board that they were asked to give input on something they didn’t even see.

After the release of the draft plan, the task force had a special meeting on Nov. 11 to formulate a response. Topalov said they agreed to the general concepts they would include in of a letter to the Land Use Commission, which is charged with refining the plan and which has previously asked Environment Board and CARP task force to weigh in. The commission is meeting on Nov. 20.

Topalov hasn’t finished the letter yet, so she was asking the Environment Board to give her a go-ahead to send it out. Otherwise, she would have to wait to send out the letter until the next board meeting, which is currently scheduled for Dec. 12.

Topalov said the task force flagged several issues.

“We found some of the language to be a bit vague,” she said, mentioning that they felt that the document “should be more prescriptive across the board.”

“Some of the chapters are better at doing those than others,” Topalov said.

Another issue was what she described as “a false dichotomy in the document, which puts protecting the nature vs development in the community.”

“We don’t think those two are [mutually exclusive] or need to be put one against the other,” Topalov added.

They also felt that the document didn’t delve into environmental justice. For example, Topalov said, the plan talks about the Solid Waste Transfer Station as a business use without considering the broader implications of this facility being built in a historically Black part of Evanston over almost five decades ago.

Topalov added that there were things to like, and that “it was also interesting to find some our own language in there.”

Cahan mentioned that, during the Nov. 11 special meeting, the task force debated how much the plan should reference CARP, with some saying it was important and others pointing to the fact that the plan was adopted in 2018 and may be do for an update.

Environment Board co-chair Michelle Redfield said she felt “it’s bit rushed to approve the memo that I haven’t seen.”

Topalov responded that the timing of the Land Use Commission didn’t give her any other option. The board could call a special meeting, but under the Open Meeting Act requirements, the earliest it could be held is Nov. 19.

“Bear in mind that there’s going to be ample opportunity to weigh in over the next several months as a board,” said board member and Council Member Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward), adding “it would be nice” to have the task force letter ready by Wednesday.

“it would be better to have the language to approve, but in the past, we had this board authorize [committees] to write a memo,” Nieuwsma said.

The other board members said they were comfortable with letting Topalov write the letter and Redfield joined them in voting for the authorization.

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