The city of Evanston and other Evanston agencies were named the recipients of millions of dollars in federal grants in 2024, but the transfer of power from President Joe Biden to President-elect Donald Trump in January could create a possible challenge for the city and agencies based in it, according to Mayor Daniel Biss.
The grants the city received in the last year, including in the housing, transportation and energy sectors, total $12.4 million. At the Nov. 11 City Council meeting, Biss said the city’s staff would create an inventory of federal revenue the city is expected to receive and a threat analysis to determine whether federal grants could be revoked if the city did not comply with any new stipulations added to them by the Trump administration.
Biss said the federal grants the city is expected to receive could be “in peril” if Trump’s administration made policy changes to the grants that the city would not wish to comply with.
“I would not be surprised if the (Trump) administration were to say, ‘Hey, we’re not providing federal funding to municipalities unless they also go along with this, that or the other…that Evanstonians wouldn’t be comfortable with,” he said.
In a phone call to Pioneer Press, Biss said the city previously had to go to court to demand federal funding after the city in implemented a “Welcoming City” ordinance, which protects undocumented individuals from being held by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or other immigration officials after coming in contact with local police – unless they have a valid, enforceable federal warrant which has been signed by a judge.
At the meeting, Biss said “I think we need to be cognizant of that potential threat as we do everything that we do in these coming weeks.”
“I think it’s no secret that the outcome (of the presidential election) was not only not what I personally wanted, and not (what) the majority of Evanstonians wanted, but was really fundamentally out of step with the values of this community,” Biss said.
Cook County elections results by township have not yet been released for the 2024 presidential election, but results from the 2020 presidential election show that Joe Biden won 90.9% of the vote in Evanston Township then. Trump won 7.6% of the vote then.
Biss also mentioned that Liza Roberson-Young, the city’s Chief Legislative Policy Advisor, who began working for the city in July, had experience working in the Illinois Attorney General’s office during the second half of Trump’s first term and coordinated lawsuits with other Democratic states against the federal government.
“We’re not gonna be in the exact same situation… we’re probably not going to be partnering with Wilmette and Morton Grove to file too many federal lawsuits, but nonetheless that experience I think is going to be invaluable in helping us think about what we can do to protect our people,” Biss said.
Biss said, “as far as I’m concerned, it’s silly to pretend we can predict exactly what’s coming, and so I think we’re going to have to be nimble. We’re going to have to be agile, and we’re going to have be bold.”
The federal grants in question
In August, the city received a $10.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act Support for Building Energy Codes and Innovative Codes. According to a news release from the Department of Energy, those funds will be used for the city to “develop, adopt and implement a building performance standard that will reduce building emissions, while ensuring equitable decision making, ongoing affordability, workforce development opportunities, and energy cost savings.”
More Top Picks Toys And Games
In January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would award at least $42 million for school districts to purchase all electric buses through the Clean School Bus Program. Evanston/Skokie School District 65 announced the award provides funding for 10 electric buses in the 2025-26 school year.
Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing climate pollution from the manufacturing of construction materials, received a $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in August.
The city received an $802,500 grant from the the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Agency for Urban and Community Forestry in September 2023. The funds from that grant will allow the city to remove hazardous trees, prune trees, remove buckthorn and plant trees and shrubs.
In October the city received a $985,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation through the Innovative Finance and Asset Concession Grant Program. The grant will enable the city to partner with real estate/planning experts to create mixed-use developments located near city-owned property within a half mile of a train station, according to the city’s Community Engagement and Communications Manager Cynthia Vargas.