Evanston’s Environment Board plans to ask the Evanston City Council Monday to restore at least $100,000 in planned funding cuts from the sustainability department’s 2026 budget.

In total, Cara Pratt, the city’s chief sustainability and resilience officer, said the department is anticipating a 37% decrease in revenues next year, down from $1.5 million in 2025 to $992,450 in 2026.

Much of the decrease comes from either over-budgeting last year, grant reductions, or a transfer of funds to other accounts, but at least $100,000 in revenue from the city’s wheel tax will be used instead to balance the city’s general fund budget.

On Thursday, Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th) told Environment Board members if they want to send a message to council, “the very simple words council will hear are ‘don’t defund sustainability.’”

“My big concern is that this somehow is going to become permanent,” the board co-chair, Katarina Topalov, said. “I understand tightening the budget but I worry, what are the guarantees that we can go back to the way it was?”

Part of the reason for the reduction in overall revenues next year is uncertainty in the federal government, which includes a $250,000 Department of Energy grant which the city is no longer budgeting for.

Pratt said the grant, which was supposed to be used for implementing the city’s Healthy Buildings Ordinance, is “too uncertain to include in the budget.”

But Pratt said overall revenue reductions will impact the department’s programs next year, including a “significant hit” to Sustain Evanston, a grant program for businesses seeking to improve sustainability.

“That reduction would be really significantly impactful to how we run that program,” Pratt said.

Nieuwsma told the board that the $100,000 reduction in wheel tax revenue is “really the only one controllable by council,” and recommended the board draft a letter to council ahead of Monday’s budget discussion to urge it be renewed.