It’s a Monday night in Evanston, Illinois. To the average Northwestern student, that might mean they’re looking forward to a football game, the end of the week, or even Thanksgiving. But to a specific cohort of student reporters, and Evanston residents, it only means one thing: a city council meeting.
[William Tong] City Council is tasked with making all the decisions you can think of them as this legislative body, and then the City Council, the city manager, along with city staff.
Evanston’s city council typically meets in the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center. To get to the meeting, reporters walk around the back of the building, through two sets of automatic doors, up two flights of stairs, and around the corner, where the council room waits.
[nat sound of council meeting]
William Tong, Medill sophomore and a reporter for the Daily Northwestern, can take it from here.
[WT] There’s a fun little, I don’t know what to call it press stand back in that box. But there’s like seating for the press at the front. end It’s, it’s in front of where this dias that the city council members, city clerk, city manager and Mayor sit upon, I think that’s the right preposition. And we’re facing them kind of it’s an interesting experience. I mean, it’s quite a large room. There are usually going to be a decent number of people there.
There are nine members of council, one for each of the wards of Evanston, plus the mayor, who is currently Daniel Biss. Each member is elected for a four-year term, although some have been reelected for multiple terms. Every other week the council convenes to discuss city projects and vote on ordinances and other city business. If that was confusing, go back and listen to it again.
Biss: It all happened so fast.
And of course, there’s the iconic public comment section.
[WT] I will say that the people of Evanston are politically engaged. Many of them are very politically engaged, they will go to city council, they will go to public comment. And especially with a charged issue, people are going to talk and they’re going to make their views heard.
Alex Harrison started reporting on city council for The Daily Northwestern, and since graduation has started reporting for the Evanston Round Table. His beat still includes those biweekly meetings.
[Alex Harrison] I think it was kind of a natural progression of my interest in reporting on local government. But when you have a body of elected officials who really dictate the policy for a whole area, they’re going to be where the buck stops. And that makes for a lot of really interesting stories, especially around how personalities kind of interact up on counsel.
Although the stories may be interesting, the perception around the interestingness of council is… mixed.
[Lily Ogburn] I would describe it as well, I guess I would say it gets more entertaining, the more you know about it.
[WT] And they can be very long meetings very, very long. Because again, well, you know, there is a saying that all politics is local. And when people are really trying to hash out every facet of where municipal government can get involved, it can take a lot of time to discuss.
In fact, City council’s most recent meeting, on Ryan Field, lasted for the longest in quite a while.
[AH] Bestie, it was eight hours long. And it was October 30, of 2023. And the whole meeting was just about Ryan Field. Um, before that, I mean, probably three to four, maybe five hours, but that one just took the cake.
[AH] we are exhausted.
However, the cohort of reporters that are present at nearly every council meeting, including but not limited to reporters from school outlets like The Daily, and more recently, NNN and Inside NU, and local news outlets like the Evanston Roundtable, Evanston Now, and more recently, the Pioneer Press. Medill freshman Emma Richman reported on council for the first time this quarter, and had a surprisingly fun time.
[Emma Richman] you get engaged, and then when it ends, it’s like, I don’t know, it’s the end of like an episode, you’re like, wait, there should be more and then you come back the next week. So it is kind of like Yeah, it’s like a TV show. And and in some ways, like they’re the characters that you like, and they’re the people you like, you got to sort of understand the relationships between like, people on the council. At one point there was on I think, yeah, at one point. Mayor Biss like referenced something that happened in like a prior meeting, they all like laughed about it, and I didn’t know what he was talking about. And I really wanted to know because it was funny, apparently.
The reporters of city council are a group that is often in the same place at the same time, even as council attendance has grown due to the Ryan Field votes in recent months. Reporters know each others names, save each others seats, and share the 12 or so outlets available in the press box.
[AH] we all kind of stick together, we’re all in the same area, trying to do the same thing. So I’d say that it’s a pretty good help each other relationship, which I really, I really do appreciate. It’s not it doesn’t need to be competitive.
Student reporters especially have a higher rate of turnover from quarter to quarter – Harrison and Tong remember their first few times covering council and how difficult that could be as a rookie reporter.
[WT] It can be a lot of pressure to have to, like get to know an intricate, very local and oftentimes not personal but almost personal issue, right? That is very much rooted in the community, right?
[AH] it is difficult work at first to learn all of the intricacies and all of the lore and all of the, you know, just sometimes baffling structures that the city exists within. But it is worth it. Because once you do understand all of that you’re able to you have the potential to have a real impact on how the campus and the city relate to one another.
But like Richman pointed out, council can be surprisingly engaging. Lily Ogburn is a Medill sophomore and has reported on almost every council meeting for the daily this quarter.
[LO] I would say there’s definitely like a culture of like, I guess, like the, I guess, I don’t know, there’s a culture of understanding the characters of each of the, of the, of the aldermen, and it kind of makes Council a little bit more entertaining, because, like, we can talk about it afterward. And, you know, see if it kind of aligns with the character we’ve we’ve seen evolve through time.
[LO] So like, one classic one, and they would not be offended by me talking about this, is that Devon Reid and Clare Kelly often sort of butt heads on a lot of issues. And you know, it’s just kind of like a classic rivalry. They actually agree on a lot of stuff too. But they often are, like, “I disagree with you,” like very publicly.
[LO] We have a quote board in the in the Daily newsroom, and often they reference council members or mayor Biss or, you know, other other important figures in city politics,
Most reporters remember significant moments in their time at council, that range from the serious to the slightly silly, to surprisingly emotional
[WT] There was an ordinance that changed the city’s code with regard to the animals you can have in the city, so that the high school could have a rooster for curricular purposes. And, you know, I thought it was interesting to see, and I wasn’t at that city council meeting, but you can see the video of it, you know, to see students go and advocate for having a rooster in their school. And I worked on a story with then the city editor Aviva Bechky, about the rooster ordinance. And, you know, the interviews that V had brought in— they were touching, quite frankly. I think it was one of those kinds of ordinances that people don’t think are super impactful. But they are.
That’s Ordinance 9-4-5, subsection C, if anyone is interested. I asked Tong if he ever misses covering council.
[WT] Do I miss the length of the meetings? No. Do I miss hearing them talk? Kind of, yeah, there are some funny moments.
But beyond the reporting culture that comes with attending council meetings, student reporters are cognizant of the reason they report on meetings in the first place.
[LO] I guess why I stayed going is because like, I think that people sometimes like, or at least I underestimated, how important some of the stuff they’re talking about really is like, I mean, we hear a lot about the Ryan Field vote. And obviously that’s definitely important, but like, a lot of these ordinances have to do with stuff like minimum wage funding, like budget, the budget proposal. And like, even just like, Can semi trucks go on this street? and it’s been disrupting a bunch of residents, like, those types of things, like they actually really affect a lot of people and those decisions get made at city council.
And to students that might not see the point of following which laws and what ordinances passed in Evanston, Tong had a response.
[WT] Obviously, like, don’t follow this, like you follow your favorite TV show, because that’s probably not worth it. But at the same time, things that city council does, can affect students here. The brothel law ordinance that technically says that, you know, you can’t have more than three non-family members living in the same unit has exceptions as like, different stipulations around it. But I mean, that’s something that directly affects students here. The Ryan Field, debates, ordinances, approvals. All those things affect students and affect the school. if you’re going to live here and be a guest right in Evanston, I think there’s some degree of responsibility just to even just to get to know a little bit what people care about here, right to make an effort to integrate yourself in the community.
And as for Richman, the rookie council reporter? Well –
[ER] I am itching to return to city council. I really enjoyed it, actually. It’s a big time commitment. You have to put a lot of yourself into it. Um, but I was actually looking earlier at the schedule. I was like, When can I go back? Did they release the calendar?
Ogburn is also stepping off the council beat for a quarter, but she hopes to return soon.
[LO] I’ll definitely be sad and I’m already going to be sad to be falling out of the loop next quarter when I’m not here. But I’m coming back in spring and I will be covering Council again.
And Tong had just one more parting word on the way an hours-long meeting on a Monday night just might be worth a visit, no matter how long you plan to be in Evanston.
[WT] If you’re in the middle of that front line of local policy, right. At the end of the day, that is probably going to affect Evanston residents more than basically anything else in the world, kind of on average. And so you know, you’re, you’re watching a small little sphere of history unfold. Sometimes it’s about a chicken. Other times it’s about the 800 million dollar stadium rebuild. But they’re all important in their own way.
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison
