Tina Paden, an Evanston resident and self-described advocate of affordable housing, walked up to the City Council podium, paused a moment, and then spoke into the microphone steadily.
“Today I got a triple double. I know you’re wondering how I did that,” Paden said.
“No, I wasn’t playing basketball. I opened my gas bill, my light bill and my property tax bill. All my bills were triple double, especially my property tax bill,” she said, drawing nods and murmurs of agreement from residents in attendance.
That’s why, Paden clarified, she supports the Evanston City Council’s circuit breaker program, an ordinance backed by Ald. Clare Kelly, 1st, that aims to lessen the burden of property taxes for long-time homeowners.
But even after hearing from Kelly and several distressed homeowners at the March 9 City Council meeting, Council members couldn’t reach consensus on key elements of the proposal, precluding a necessary approval for the ordinance to advance.
Ald. Bobby Burns, 5th, moved to table discussion of the program until the City Council’s first regular April meeting, a motion that passed 5-4.
The one-year pilot initiative proposes that the city allocate $500,000 from the Affordable Housing Fund to provide a “direct credit” to eligible homeowners on their property taxes, equal to 20% of the total bill.
According to officials, the Affordable Housing Fund currently has a cash balance of $5 million for its 2026 budget, $2.5 million of which is allocated to special projects and activities.
Under the pilot guidelines, qualifying homeowners would be eligible for a credit of up to $5,000 per year, until the funding is exhausted.
Circuit breaker programs are designed to protect people from property tax “overloads,” in much the same way that traditional circuit breakers protect against electrical ones. When property tax bills exceed a significant percentage of a resident’s income, as is the case for many Evanston homeowners, according to Kelly, the “circuit breaker” kicks in to reduce the extra burden.
But not every homeowner will qualify.
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Eligible households must live in Evanston as their primary residence and have lived in an owner-occupied home for at least 15 years. They also need to have an income lower than or equal to the area median household income, have annual property taxes greater than or equal to 10% of their household income and have their residence be smaller than 1,800 square feet of “livable area.”
If approved by Council members, the program would sunset one year after it’s enacted, unless the City Council decides to extend or renew the program with additional funding.
“I think we all know what Evanston has been facing,” Kelly said at the Monday council meeting. “For populations with high property taxes, we’ve seen diversity undermined over the years, and when people move out, they frequently mention that it’s due to the high property taxes.”
“While upper income has been taking up a much larger portion of home ownership, Black home ownership has declined by almost 45% over the last 10 years,” Kelly added. “This is a way to help stop the bleeding.”
Ald. Parielle Davis, 7th, a co-sponsor of the draft ordinance, said she has received “a lot of emails from residents” in her ward that were struggling to pay their property tax bills due to unemployment or medical fees and were “excited about the prospect of a program like this,” especially given what they viewed as a “lack of relief” from the city for longtime homeowners.
“Homeownership is a very important way to prevent people from being priced out and keeping homes affordable…part of that is supporting people when they have a gap and when they have an issue that they’re trying to work through,” Davis said.
Davis said the Council members in favor of this plan were willing to make changes to the square footage requirements, median income or total funding cap requirements of the proposal if it meant it would be moved forward in the session for approval.
And if this program “isn’t your thing,” Davis added, she wanted to know what other options Councilmembers were willing to put on the table to support middle or lower-income homeowners.
“I do not have any issue with us creating a program that focuses on homeowners as opposed to renters,” Burns added, but for “something to appear to be jumping ahead of that process, before we fully understand the need, before we understand which programs we want to launch…there’s some concern about jumping out the gate with a half a million dollar contribution towards one program when we don’t know what that will mean when it comes to supporting other programs.”
Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma, 4th, echoed Burns’ concerns, but expressed appreciation for Kelly’s advocacy efforts.
“I agree that there’s a problem to be solved here. We have families that have lived in Evanston for generations that find it increasingly difficult to live here, and doing nothing about that is not an option,” Nieuwsma said. “The question is, what do we do and how do we do it?”
“But I’m not ready to approve it tonight for two reasons,” he added. “One is the strategic reasons that Council member Burns spoke about, and there are other programs available to help the same population we’re talking about here.”
Nieuwsma also said the proposed draft ordinance was “really unclear on the process.”
“It suggests that the city will be issuing a credit for property taxpayers, but the city is not in a position to put a credit against a property tax bill, because we don’t send out property tax bills,” he said. “I’m supportive of this initiative and Councilmember Kelly.. but it’s not ready tonight.”
Ald. Shawn Iles, 3rd, was also poised to reject the proposal before Burns’ motioned to table the discussion. “The choice is not to do this or do nothing,” Iles said. “ We have a limited pool of funds and a great deal of need in our community, and this is asking for 20% of the available funds.”
About 64% of cost-burdened Evanstonians are renters, Iles added, and this proposal does little to mitigate their fee increases, while prioritizing a “small number of community members that already have a number of programs, exceptions, tax breaks available to them.”
Ald. Thomas M. Suffredin pushed back on Iles’ comments. “This is for introduction tonight, so if you are sincere about wanting to work on it, we can pass it for introduction and there’s time before it comes back for final action.”
“Saying that we need to wait until we have a larger plan is akin to saying we can’t have the fire department put the fire in your house out until we have a comprehensive fire protection plan. It’s an abdication of our responsibility,” he added. “If you are stalling it to stall it, just be serious about that.”
Unable to reach consensus after more than an hour of debate, City Council members opted to postpone further discussion of the circuit breaker program until next month, hoping that the time delay would streamline updated ordinance language to address some of the Council’s concerns.
But what lingered most after the meeting concluded was not the council’s split vote contention. It was a plea from 7th Ward Evanston resident, Meleika Gardner.
“Think about the residents who have done everything right. They have worked hard, they have paid their property taxes, they raised their children, and they built their lives here in Evanston,” Gardner voiced to Council members during the public comment period.
“For many, property taxes have gone up faster than their incomes. They’re not asking for luxury. They’re just asking for a little assistance.”