The City of Evanston’s annual budget season is in full swing and this year we’re back to normal, without COVID relief funding to smooth the city budget’s rough edges. For the 2024 fiscal year budget, expenses will exceed revenue without a proposed property tax increase. And we’re all counting on the City Council to do what it can to avoid raising the city’s 19% share of our property tax bills.
So it only makes sense for the City Council to look for new sources of revenue to help balance the city’s budget – not just this year when we face a significant budget gap, but for next year and the year after.
The Ryan Field rebuild project and six-concert proposal offer both significant one-time fees for the city and sustainable new sources of revenue. At a minimum, the City of Evanston will get:
• $12 million direct revenue from construction fees over the next couple of years
• $2 million per year minimum tax and fee revenue from stadium events
Those millions do not include the additional sales tax revenue that visitors will contribute to Evanston’s bank account when they stay in Evanston hotels and spend at Evanston restaurants and businesses.
The Ryan Field project is part of the solution to the city’s annually tight budgets and can help relieve pressure on everyone’s property taxes (which also affects rents). Just a few more million reasons to approve the university’s proposal for Ryan Field.
Jane Grover
Former Seventh Ward council member
Editor’s note: The RoundTable welcomes letters to the editor on all sides of the Ryan Field proposal. We love hearing from our readers, and encourage a diversity of views and subjects in our letters. Here’s how to submit your letter.
Frustrating to see things that are 100% inaccurate being published.
It does make sense to bolster our commercial areas and look for new sources of revenue. But you should be aware your analysis is flawed. You omit the costs both financially and in livability throughout our town. And should this go thru, the downtown will be in competition with Ryan Field.
It also opens the doors wide to diminishing city protections in other parts of the city, influencing more city staff and officials by wealthy businessmen such as Pat Ryan.
NU’s PR machine has been churning out misinformation for over a year. If we really want what’s best for the city then we have to take a hard look at the facts; not repeat misinformation.
I still don’t understand, are these fees actual net positive for the city financials? I’d imagine most, if not all, of those fees are to cover the many added costs the city will endure for such an enormous endeavor.
Or better idea, NU could just pay a payment in lieu of taxes every year like many of its peer schools and stop being so damn cheap and stingy.
The permit fees will be paid regardless when they rebuild and will only be paid the years of construction. They only want the concerts to sell corporate boxes for the 1%. The 6 concerts that NU is purposing will amount to around 200k in tax revenue for the city. That’s not much.
The fact that stingy NU is only offering 250k per year to district 65 is flat out ridiculous and insulting.
Jan, we are disappointed with you for being so quick to sell out your town.
The economic impact is only $200,000 per the Johnson study for 6 concerts. That is not worth screwing over an entire neighborhood. It’s also no worth the impact to the city streets of all wards with concert attendee traffic and truck deliveries. The LUC pointed out while there is metra and cta access for north/south travel, there is NO good route for east/west traffic so anyone that lives along Dempster, Main, or Old Orchard/Central will be subject to continuous traffic before or after events. Those property values will undeniably drop due to increased traffic, pollution, and noise.
We as a city need to stop pussy footing around and make NU pay to the city and schools, just like other major universities do. And if they can’t do that out of the goodness of their heart, the City Council needs to acknowledge that NU’s lack of support is now going to bite them in the butt, and the city will withhold approval of the construction of the stadium without significantly financial support. The city has the upper hand, they better use it. So you bet, Ryan Field is the solution the city and school’s problem. But it’s the construction that is the solution, not the concerts.
– Property tax increase faced by Evanston homeowners: 7.9%
– Property tax increase faced by Northwestern: 0%
– Property tax revenue forgone because of NU’s property tax exemption in 2017: $28.8 million
– Annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes made by Yale University to New Haven, CT: $23 million
– Annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes made by Northwestern to Evanston, IL: $0
– Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s current deficit: $7.5 million.
– Northwestern’s proposed annual payment to District’s 65 and 202, to be split between them: $500,000.
– Northwestern’s payment to University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) for playing the Wildcats on Sept. 9 at Ryan Field: $1.2 million.
Whoa. Seriously? $1.2 million to UTEP for a football game? So THAT’s how it works. Well, well, well, if all my suspicions about this rotten proposal weren’t well-founded after all.
Exactly-the numbers don’t add to be a good deal for Evanston Residents.
Selling an unprecedented zoning amendment to a billionaire in return for a one-time payment of $12 million in construction fees is not a solution to any budget problem.
It’s abdicating government’s principal responsibility to its citizens and throwing furniture into the fireplace to keep the house warm.
The damage that will result from converting NU’s athletic facilities campus to a commercial district will
be profound and permanent.
And compared to the city’s budget, NU’s offer of $2 million from concerts that will forever diminish the surrounding neighborhood is minuscule – and insulting.
My good neighbor, I’m mystified why supporters of mega-concerts and practically limitless other mass events continue to cite discredited economic forecasts as anything other than wishful thinking or marketing hype. NU’s CSL/Tripp Umbach report, as well as the city’s Johnson Consulting Report, were roundly debunked in large measure because they used dubious methodologies to calculate benefits, and completely ignore costs and displacement effects. Why relentlessly tout those figures when virtually no serious economist finds these economic projections credible, and in fact say the opposite? My former Kellogg faculty colleagues (I was in admin) probably are embarrassed by NU’s hype. Why you parrot these discredited claims and expect others to believe them boggles the mind.