Evanston OKs $208,000 for track, lighting at incoming Foster School

Evanston’s City Council approved spending $208,500 for a track and lights for the incoming Foster School near Ashland Avenue and Simpson Street at its Sept. 23 meeting. The city plans to use tax increment financing district funds for the project, which officials want to make available for use by the general public on weekends and evenings when students are not in class.

Council Member Bobby Burns (5th Ward) brought the measure to the City Council for the first time at the City Council meeting. The measure passed on a 7-2 vote, with those in the minority calling it    with a rushed maneuver to spend taxpayer dollars.

Council Members Tom Suffredin (6th) and Krissie Harris (2nd) voted against funding the track.

“I don’t like being rushed,” Harris said after learning that the City Council would need to vote on the track on Monday or no track would be built at all. “I don’t like somebody telling me we need to decide something that just hits my desk Thursday night,” she said.

“This may be a good idea; this may be an amenity that all Evanston taxpayers can utilize, but there’s not enough specificity here. I’m not sure this is ready for a vote,” Suffredin said.

Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Director of Strategic Project Management Kirby Callam said the Council had to decide then because of permitting from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to create a water retention system.

According to city documents, the track’s projected cost is $160,000, and the city will cover 100% of that expense. The track’s lights are projected to cost $94,000, and the city will cover 50% of them. Callam said maintenance for the track and lights would fall solely on the school district.

Burns said the city could use funds from the Five-Fifths TIF to assist the school district in building a track because it would be available for the public when classes are not in session. According to city documents, similar tracks are available at Lincoln, Orrington, Kingsley/Haven and King Lab schools. “Why that would change with this particular school, you know, there’s just no precedent for it,” Burns said.

“In addition to that, with this school, we’ve always talked about it being a neighborhood community school. The foundation of it is kind of the idea that from the public’s perspective, this is just public land,” Burns said.

“This process has always been on a really expedited timeline,” Burns continued. “When the (school) district made the decision to go from K-8 to K-5, there was opportunity presented to myself and others to think about how the school could serve other priorities in the community,” he said, referencing a city study that showed that one out of three adults in the census tract near the proposed school reported they had no leisure/physical activity. That study, titled the Evanston Project for the Local Assessment of Needs, found that residents in that district have a lower life expectancy, by a 13-year gap, compared to a neighboring census tract to the north.

As District 65 gears up to build Foster School, the school district is also facing financial difficulties, which will likely see cuts in teachers, staff, schools and bus routes, according to the district’s superintendent, Angel Turner. A detailed plan on those cuts is expected to be presented to the district’s Board of Education in January.