Members of the Evanston City Council approved the federal COVID Recovery Fund to allocate $508,000 to a Brooklyn-based company on Sept. 12 to provide advanced cleaning and maintenance to the city’s downtown and other business areas. Did.
However, the board hesitated over moves by several council members to add a social services component to the agreement with Streetplus Company, LLC.
At the committee, City Councilman Bobby Barnes (5th Ward) said the city would invest additional money in the company to provide social services along with cleaning and maintenance services, as the company has arranged in several other cities. proposed to allocate $125,000.
“We all know there’s been an increase in homelessness and aggressive panhandling all over the area,” Burns said at a meeting of the Executive and Public Works Committee held before the city council’s plenary session. “It’s not a problem in and of itself.”
He argued, “In light of the increased needs of the homeless population post-COVID, there is an urgent need for additional downtown staff who can interact with the homeless population and lead them to services.”
By adding this service to Streetplus’ contract, “in my opinion, it just allows us to bypass unnecessary bureaucracy,” he said.
Council Members: Screening Required for Social Services
City Councilwoman Eleanor Rebert District 7 said councilors will receive a report from Trilogy Behavioral Healthcare at their next meeting and that the agency’s mobile crisis response team is working with homeless people in crisis mode. He said he would like to receive updates about
Funded primarily from state grants, the trilogy team was launched in June to respond to those in crisis.
“But I think we’re talking about something completely different in terms of what you need downtown,” she argued. Well, there are a lot of people who don’t.”
Her proposal, which Burns supported, called for the city to allocate $75,000 to work with various agencies that serve the homeless and bring in someone to lead the program.
However, some of the city council members who voted against moving forward with the proposal said they supported the need for social services, but decided not to add the issue to cleaning and maintenance contracts on the night’s agenda. questioned.
City Councilwoman Claire Kelly, whose District 1 includes part of the downtown district, said she looked forward to hearing from the trilogy. He said he has also met with the Denver support team’s Assistance Response Program Director to better understand how they are doing.
“I really think this is acting a little too hastily,” she said of the push for action.
“These guys are humans. This isn’t sweeping the streets,” she said.
8th Ward City Councilman Devon Reid argued that by going ahead with the program now, the city could start to “put a dent” in the problem.
“Even if it’s a small dent, we can work with this population to prioritize the needs of the homeless and forced to beg on the streets and bring some people to the scene. Let’s go,” he said.
“I think this is a total commitment to creating a safe and clean city,” he said. Otherwise, “I’m going to say I’m going to put on paper what’s going on downtown by cleaning up trash here and there without actually dealing with humans.”
Council member Jonathan Newzma, District 4, who chaired the committee’s meeting, said he fully supports training social workers on the streets.
“It’s very important,” he said. “I want to move there.”
However, he told council members: It’s not appropriate to approve that money without considering what we want and other ways we could accomplish that role. “
This supplier (Streetplus) said, “It just so happens that they offer that service, and it’s very likely they’ll be the right answer in the end. But we’ll do our homework so we can answer that question. I have not.”
He said he wanted to move on with the program but “didn’t want to take what was available first and realize a month and a half later that I should have done this differently.”
Council members voted 5 to 3 against proceeding with the $75,000 additional allocation proposed by the level. Revelle, Burns, and Reid voted against. The council then went 8-0 for him and from 2022 he approved his $508,000 contract with Street Plus for the 2023 project.
Official: COVID staffing issues led to problems
In a memo to the city council supporting the StreetPlus jobs, the city’s economic development manager, Paul Zalmezak, said the Evanston neighborhood was “visibly dirty, with overfilled trash cans, graffiti, stickers and telephone poles. Suffering from deferred maintenance, such as signs tacked to yards, rat burrows, untidy beds, bicycles abandoned on bike racks, dying and overgrown vegetation. We will do everything we can to keep the whole community alive, this is getting harder and harder
We have reduced staff due to COVID-19. “
“Our contract with a dedicated business district cleaning team puts them on the streets every day to keep up with these challenges,” Zalmezak said. They will be trained to report maintenance issues beyond their scope to 311, such as boxes, loose sidewalk paving, and rodent burrows.”
Additionally, he said the deal will allow the Downtown Evanston Special Service Area organization, which has played a key role in downtown marketing, to focus on its services.
“Downtown Evanston estimates that $100,000 of its annual budget is spent on maintenance,” he said.
Meanwhile, Zalmezak wrote: It opened without the level of funding required to sustain it. Many of the tables have been destroyed by skateboarders, some have deteriorated from overuse and many are covered in the residue of outdoor dining. A clean team will maintain the Fountain Square,” Zalmezak said.
