By Greg Nagel The East Village Neighbors split from EVA about 3 years ago citing a lack of a respectful environment as their only reason. I have spoken to multiple neighbors and business owners that do not attend EVA meeting because of certain people they feel are aggressively rude or because of a general lack of civility of the group. As president of EVA, I took initiative to broker the merger of EVN back into EVA. There was no road map for this. These were clearly unprecedented waters. One of the items that I promised the EVN leadership was that I would propose and promote a bylaw amendment on respect. I felt this would make the EVN people more comfortable while simultaneously truly improving the culture of EVA. I naively thought this was an absolute no-brainer. Who is going to oppose respect? The EVN bylaws had provisions for not only removing people from a meeting but also expulsion from the group. I felt that was overkill, and felt the simply being able to ask someone to leave...

This Saturday morning, May 29, the city will be sponsoring a household electronics curbside pick-up service. You may put any unwanted electronic devices in front of your home and visible to the street by 8:00 a.m. this Saturday. The devices will be collected and safely disposed of between 8: a.m. and noon. Alternatively, you can take unwanted electronic devices to the 1st Ward Streets and Sanitation Ward Yard at 2505 W. Grand Ave. Landmarks workshop The Commission on Chicago Landmarks will host a spring workshop next month for community organizations representing the city’s 53 designated Chicago Landmark districts. The Historic Preservation Division will host the event at our downtown office. The topics will be additions and new construction in historic districts and feature examples reviewed by the commission. The workshop will be held on Saturday, June 5, from 9 a.m. to about noon, at the Historic Preservation office, 33 N. LaSalle St., Suite 1600. Registration and light refreshme...

Give your home an energy audit with advice from sustainability consultant Peter Locke at the Monday, June 7 meeting of the East Village Association. Locke's firm TerraLocke advises corporations how to conserve water and energy. Locke has contributed to three city task forces on green business and the Chicago Public Schools' environmental task force. Chicago has a Climate Action Plan , which recommends public policy for this decade on energy efficient buildings, clean and renewable energy, transportation, waste and pollution, and such activities as tree planting. The Climate Action Plan website suggests 10 things city residents can do to make a difference: Use compact fluorescent light bulbs. Unplug appliances even when they are off.  Turn off faucets when not in use.  Turn your thermostat down/up in the winter/summer.  Clean and replace dirty filters so appliances run more efficiently. Go Car-less. Emissions from transportation account for more than 20 percent of our gre...

By Marjorie Isaacson A proposed bylaw for the East Village Association would require that all members conduct themselves in a respectful, considerate manner in meetings, and gives the presiding officer the right to expel those persons who are judged to be disrespectful. I am opposed to this proposed bylaw for several reasons, and suggest that members think about these issues before voting. One reason I have heard for adding this amendment was that civility in meetings is so essential, the organization wanted to reiterate the commitment with a special mention in the bylaws. We should be respectful in our deportment, but the amendment will not accomplish this. Just because something is in the bylaws doesn’t guarantee it is carried out successfully. In my years of EVA membership, I have seen the bylaws misused on many occasions, both by people who claim the bylaws say something they don’t and by those ignoring policies that are in the bylaws. I have no desire to be a scold, and I think ...

By Chris Long I have lived in the neighborhood since 1996 and been a member of the East Village Association for most of that time. I am opposed to the proposed amendment allowing the chair of the meeting to expel members who fail to act in a respectful manner. I understand the president’s concern about maintaining a productive meeting environment but the amendment as proposed has several fatal flaws. It is unnecessary. We already have tools in place to maintain a respectful meeting environment. The EVA bylaws call for the use of Robert's Rules of Order to conduct our meetings. Robert's Rules or Order Revised Edition Section 43 already has a clause about decorum at general meetings, which would achieve the objectives of the amendment without unintended consequences. Robert’s rules were written to conduct orderly and respectful meetings. They have been tested and revised over more than a century and successfully used in organizations and governments large and small. It is va...

By Scott A. Rappe, a guy who knows nothing about composting Like the old joke about where our food comes from — the grocery store! — few of us think beyond our black carts when contemplating where our food goes to, the landfill. Space for landfills near where they are needed is limited, and that growing challenge is the least of our problems. Once kitchen waste and mostly benign household trash is collected and mixed with not-so-benign sources of trash, all of it must be handled as hazardous waste in perpetuity. Buried in lined pits and then hermetically sealed, the resources that end up in them are gone for good. While we all recognize the importance of diverting recyclable materials from landfills, we tend not to think of food and yard waste in this category. But it is. According to a 2003 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report, food and yard waste make up a full 24% of the municipal waste stream. Like other recyclables, organic matter contains energy and natural re...