Good Vibs

[UPDATE: From the N-G coverage of the meeting:

Champaign council signs off on developer switch for boutique hotel
On Tuesday, the Champaign City Council gave initial approval to putting Altenberger on the project, which was green-lighted last fall with the intention of it being branded as a Hotel Vib (pronounced "vibe") by Best Western, made to be high-tech and attractive to younger customers looking to stay in urban environments...

The change in developers has stalled project construction, which was slated to begin Jan. 1.

Despite the delay, Kowalski said the city won't reopen the parking lot where the hotel will eventually sit. He noted that heads on the lot's parking meters have already been removed and that the city has made accommodations for the lost lot space.]

The millennial boutique hotel is finally moving forward. I'm assuming that's a good thing as someone officially too old to know what the heck they're talking about. Excerpt from the News-Gazette article today:

Hotel still a go, but developer changing
After some delay, the city is moving forward with its boutique hotel project — this time with a different developer in tow.

Construction of the millennial- focused Hotel Vib (pronounced “vibe”) by Best Western was approved by the Champaign City Council last September...

On Friday, the city publicized official plans to part ways with the original project developer — Chris Keller with Grasshopper Hospitality LLC in Effingham. The city council will review those plans Tuesday.

[original post 2/24/2018, 6:16am]

Champaign Park District Ads

The board of commissioners will be voting on its advertising agreement with the News-Gazette. From the News-Gazette website last night:

The Champaign Park Board is expected to approve agreements with The News-Gazette and its three radio stations to promote park district programs at a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Bresnan Meeting Center, 706 Kenwood Road.

Park commissioners are set to vote on renewing an agreement with The News-Gazette that the park district says will result in savings on advertising ranging from notices for requests for bids to job offerings to district programs. Additions to the agreement include the district getting access to the paper's email newsletter recipients and the paper matching its spending on digital advertising...

The board will also vote on an independent agreement with NewsTalk 1400 WDWS, Lite Rock 97.5 WHMS and Classic Hits 107.9 WKIO to sponsor specific park district events... Both agreements will be for two years.

The Champaign Park District is separate unit of local government (from an archived directory):

The Champaign Park District was organized in 1911 and established as a separate unit of local government in 1955 by a referendum. The mission of the Champaign Park District is to provide quality parks and recreation to our community.

It is accountable to the residents through elections of the board of commissioners and has public meetings one can attend with concerns. Here's the organizational chart from the same archived directory (click to make larger):

Urbana Festival and Administrator

A boost in the festivities was approved for the annual Pygmalion festival. From the News-Gazette coverage:

The Urbana City Council gave its initial approval Monday to a $5,000 funding bump for Pygmalion 2018, in exchange for an added Urbana day of the festival’s activities.

Pygmalion is an annual festival centered around live music, food, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and the arts. The increased sponsor funding, which the council unanimously agreed to and will be voted on once more, would be financed with tax increment financing dollars.

And about the long vacancy of the administrator:

In other business, Mayor Diane Marlin announced Monday that the city is in the final stages of picking a city administrator. Urbana has been without an administrator for 10 years since former mayor Laurel Prussing chose not to have one...
 

Marlin said video interviews with the job’s five finalists are being conducted this week. The list will then be narrowed down to three finalists, she said, who will come to town for in-person interviews later in March.

Unit 4 Applications Submitted and Reopened

First a follow up on this post about the charter school application which has now been submitted:

Group formally submits proposal for new charter school
If a group of community leaders gets its wish, a charter school not far from the North Prospect retail district will open its doors to no fewer than 40 low-income students as soon as August

Monday night, backers of what’s being called North Champaign Academy submitted to Unit 4 board members a formal application for the new school. It would be located in the 1400 block of Moreland Boulevard and aim to better educate low-income students.

Additionally people interested in Unit 4's assortment of capital projects have an opportunity to serve on the oversight committee. From the same N-G article:

— Unit 4 reopened applications for the Referendum Oversight Committee, which board President Chris Kloeppel said was a response to community feedback.

The board is “looking for individuals to serve in that capacity,” he said.

 More information on the Referendum Oversight Committee here:

As the District moves forward with six capital projects following the passage of the $183.4 million referendum on November 8, 2016, the Board of Education authorized the creation of a Referendum Oversight Committee comprised of interested community members.

Urbana Priorities

The full article has input from council members on each priority. Excerpt from the News-Gazette:

Urbana lays out top 5 priorities
Last week, Urbana council members finished drafting the top five priorities to guide city work from 2018 to 2021.

These priorities are set to dovetail with basic city goals, like public safety and neighborhood services, and won’t be followed to the complete exclusion of other activities.

They also can’t be done by the city alone. Mayor Diane Marlin said each one requires partnership and collaboration with other agencies and organizations.

The quick list:

Priority 1 - With consideration of downtown Urbana as a whole, initiate and plan for a transformation of the Lincoln Square site (above) into a destination.

Priority 2 - Increase minority participation in city procurement, hiring and contracting. And, working with the Human Relations Commission, develop a system to incentivize and advocate for equity and increased minority employment rates.

Priority 3 - Work to achieve equity in traffic stops and reduce the disparate impact of court costs and fines on lower-income people.

Priority 4 - Expand the connectivity of the Kickapoo Rail Trail with a focus between Vine St. and Lincoln Ave.

Priority 5 - Invest in and repurpose older housing stock.

Cheat Sheet: C-U Local

This year's mid-term elections have County races on the ballot (primary voting has begun: more info here), so I'm going to keep focusing on making sure whatever helpful information for voters, candidates, and folks just curious about how to engage with their local government can find answers to their questions.

But, what about other local government? I'm fiddling with that, but it is a work in progress (slow slow progress). Right now it's called the Cheat Sheet: C-U Local. Here's the gist:

Information about the local Champaign-Urbana government and how to learn more about the City Councils, Township Boards and other local government offices such as:

• Their membership information and contact information

• Policy issues

• Latest news links

• Maps

• Information for candidates and about candidates

• Election information and upcoming races

• More up to date meeting information

• Primers on major local issues

• Issue positions and candidate statements

In time, with some hard work, this will hopefully be an easy and quick guide on what's going on with local government, how to effect change in it, and how it works for everyday voters. Someday I hope it can be useful enough for the political wonks, help folks become more political wonky and maybe even run for and become part of their local government.

The information is intended to be factual and based on government resources, local journalism sources, government officials themselves (either directly or through those same sources) and presented without spin as we observe it. We aren't endorsing any candidates or party. We merely hope people will simply find their local government more easily accessible, influencing it easier, and voting for it more informed.

There's not much there yet. But that's how the Champaign County Cheat Sheet got started.

Champaign Charter School Rationale

Following up on a previous post, here. Nathaniel Banks had a guest commentary in the paper today that highlighted a local push for a charter school that will be brought before the Champaign Unit 4 school board. He points to disturbing data in the News-Gazette here:

One need only to look at the latest academic achievement data for black children in grades 3-8. The state has five levels of test achievement. Students in categories 1-3 indicate who are not on track for post-graduation success. Categories 4-5 mean that they are.

Comparing the overall district report card with the state’s shows the state and Champaign’s scores in English language arts and mathematics are comparable. Across Illinois, based on English language arts, between 30 and 40 percent of students in grades 3-8 are on track for college or career readiness. Across the state, that number for black students is 19.4 percent. In the Champaign schools, that number for black students is 10 percent.

Clearly stated, only 10 out of every 100 black children in grades 3-8 in the Champaign schools are on track for success in either college or a career. Fifty-two percent of the black children in the third grade can be found scoring at the lowest of the five levels of achievement.

In the Champaign schools, when it comes to successfully educating black children, “the emperor has no clothes.”

Over the years, many attempts have been made to mitigate this reality, with only moderate success. Grades K-3 are especially critical for education success. District numbers show that in 2011, the percentage of black children in the lowest category for literacy statewide was 10.8 percent and in Unit 4, 15.1 percent. By 2017, those numbers have increased dramatically to 35 percent statewide and 52.1 percent in Champaign schools.

These numbers should alarm the community, but they don’t. They should outrage the community, but they don’t. For the few in the community who are outraged, one would think that their only answer is to double-down and do more of the same without substantially changing the culture producing these results.

He points to a charter school as the solution to this issue:

Based on legislation, the state process for approving charters begins with the local school board. After receiving an application, the board must hold a hearing within 45 days on the proposed charter school and board of education vote 30 days after that.

The North Champaign Academy Charter Steering Committee, of which I am a part, is preparing a charter school application to be submitted during Black History Month 2018. One question that the 3,500 black families in Champaign providing $35 million in tax dollars to the district through the per capita tuition charge of $11,236 might ask is, are their children getting their money’s worth?

The data from the school report card clearly indicate that they are not.

Unit 4 Transition Building

The News-Gazette highlighted a building purchase the district made without public input. The decision sounds above board, but any time decisions are made without enough sunlight, somebody is bound to find a flashlight. Excerpts from the News-Gazette, with flashlights:

Quietly, Unit 4 expands
...
But the district’s $3.4 million pending purchase of an office building at 502 W. Windsor Road didn’t merit the same kind of process, Unit 4 officials told The News-Gazette.

School board members signed off on the purchase without comment at the tail end of their Feb. 12 meeting. It was the ninth of 10 items on the “new/unfinished business” portion of the board’s agenda — referenced as “approval of contract by deed — 502 W. Windsor Rd.”
...
The need for the purchase, district officials said, stems from the decision to move Dr. Howard Elementary students and staff into the Columbia Center early this summer. While Dr. Howard is torn down and built anew during the 2018-19 and 201920 academic years — part of the six-school, $183.4 million referendum district voters approved in 2016 — students will attend classes at the Columbia Center, at 1103 N. Neil St., displacing the staff currently occupying the building.

“Seventy-five or 80 people currently work there,” Lockman said. “The majority of them will be moving to the Windsor building. Some of them will be moving to the district’s curriculum center building on Hill and Randolph.”

Lockman said the bulk of Columbia-based employees who will move to West Windsor are teaching and learning staff or special education teachers.

Doesn't seem sketchy. But now we know.

HackIllinois City of Champaign Collaboration

From the News-Gazette today:

Hackers to improve city services
As more than a thousand students gather from around the country this weekend for HackIllinois, a portion of them will be hacking data from the city to improve its services.

The city is providing several years’ worth of public works, geospatial and service request data, with the hope that students can find patterns and correlations in all of it that will help the city.

“We supplied some data, and it’s up to their imagination to see what they can come up with,” said Mark Toalson, Champaign’s IT director...

Full article here.

Parkland Costs and Unit 4 Charter School

Parkland Costs Didn't Go Up?

The full article explains how they're not giving the state, which they say has "abandoned us," any credit. Which sounds harsh, but may be accurate:

No tuition, fee hikes next year
For the first time in 26 years, Parkland College students won’t be paying more in tuition and fees next year.

The governing board of the Champaign- based community college voted unanimously Wednesday to freeze tuition and fees for in-district students at $164 per credit hour. Tuition and fees for out-of-district, out-of-state and international students also will remain the same as this year.

It’s the first time since 1992-93 school year — when tuition and fees were $33 a credit hour — that there won’t be an increase.

Unit 4 Charter School Request

A proposal Unit 4 rejected back in 2001 may get a second look due to concerning and years long tracking of racial disparity data. From today's News-Gazette:

Black-focused charter school to be requested
A six-year decline in academic achievement for black Unit 4 students in grades 3-8 has some community members poised to ask the district to create a charter school on Champaign’s north end.

The school, which would be called North Champaign Academy and serve grades K-5, has been offered as a solution to the rising numbers of black students in Unit 4 who are performing at levels below state expectations for their grade. Organizers shared the highlights of their vision with The News-Gazette ahead of Monday night’s school board meeting, when they plan to make a formal request to the school board.

Some of the troubling statistics cited from the Illinois State Board of Education and the Census Bureau:

The numbers that concern the charter school backers come from 2011-17: — In 2011, black thirdgraders comprised 15.2 percent of Unit 4’s lowestachieving students in the reading category.

— By 2017, that number was 52.1 percent...

 “The percentage of poor people in the black community has remained constant throughout the years — and that’s part of the impetus for trying to change that paradigm,” Banks said.

In Champaign County, black residents are twice as likely as white to live in poverty. Data from the 2015 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates showed that 41.5 percent of African-Americans had incomes below the poverty level, while the rate for whites was 17.2 percent.

March 20th Primary and 28 Days of Voting

Regular voter registration ends 28 days before an election (e.g. mail-in, at the driver's license facility, etc), but these days we have Grace Period Registration. If you still need to register or change your address you can bring your required IDs to any of the early voting locations  or election day polling place to register and then vote. More information at the Champaign County Clerk's website:

Grace Period allows an extension of the period of time an individual has to register to vote or change their address. Grace Period begins Thursday, February 22, 2018 and runs through 7:00pm on Election Day, Tuesday, March 20, 2018.

During Grace Period, an individual may register to vote or submit a change of address in-person and vote directly thereafter, at any of our Early Voting locations or at their Election Day polling place.

On-line Registration is still open through March 4th here: https://ova.elections.il.gov/

Election day falls within spring break for students and a lot of vacations, so make a plan to vote. There are a lot of options including Early Voting and Vote-by-Mail, both happening right now.

Multiple Early Voting locations open on March 13th (currently the County Clerk's office location is available). Vote-by-Mail runs through March 15th (more details here).

City Council Meeting 2/20

[UPDATE: The News-Gazette had an article about the Fire Chief's presentation on the Ambulance integration here:

City council members gave initial approval to further integrating the fire department and local ambulance services Tuesday after fire Chief Gary Ludwig proposed changes to the city's 1988 ambulance ordinance, last updated in 2002.

Ludwig, who claimed his department arrived at 911 call scenes a few minutes before ambulances more than 97 percent of the time in 2017, said he envisions having a clearly established chain of command for 911-call response.

"We sometimes pump more oxygen than we do water," Ludwig said, noting how medical calls have become a substantial firefighter task...]

Original Write-up:

I caught the meeting on the live stream (available along with previous videos here). The agenda is available here. The following is just a brief summary write-up (minutes available here when uploaded):

Two new officers for the Champaign Police Department were sworn in and the Central Boy's Golf Team was recognized for their achievements. Correspondence from OSF health care was entered into the record. No public hearings (not the same as audience participation).

The agenda items 021 through 025 were all passed unanimously. There were only two brief pauses as they were passed 8-0 with roll call votes. On 023 the mayor asked if there was any public input, and none volunteered. On 024 Councilwoman Beck had quick question on the details (due to small font) that was answered and satisfied quickly.

Audience participation was announced with no takers. City Council had no immediate comments. The City Manager had a comment pointing out a staff member had received a lifetime achievement award.

Bruno continued on the agenda XII and XIII to approve the vouchers and payroll and adjourn to a post council study session.

The study session included a presentation by the Fire Chief about the Ambulance Ordinance and an amendment to better integrate the fire department with the two local ambulance services. See the video link to watch the presentation here when the video is uploaded.

The mayor asked if there were any questions or comments from the council and there were none. She asked of the audience and Charles "Randy" Hulett, Vice President, Ancillary and Support for OSF Medical Center (Heart of Mary) responded. He pointed out his statement mirrored the submitted letter to the council. He asked for a 30 day review to consider the impact the amendment would have on the community. He stated there was an issue with not being able to properly review the changes the last time changes were made. He indicated there were discrepancies between the draft version he had worked with and what was being proposed now. If I understood him the version at issue for this meeting was not "accurate to the draft" and contradicted Illinois' EMS Acts.

There was no further audience or council comment. The mayor asked the chief a question about coverage for the cost of ambulance services and he explained that the ambulance services recover payment from insurance when applicable or from the patient if their plan doesn't cover the services in a particular situation. The city itself does not charge the ambulance services due to legalities. The direction passed a voice vote and appeared (I could be mistaken) to move to a future city council vote/motion (as opposed to in a study session).

Once again the audience was asked if anyone wanted to address the council with no takers. They adjourned to a closed session which was the last of the public meeting (adjourned for the night whenever that ended).

Welcome to the Local Cheat Sheet

The Goal for this website is to present non-partisan information for the local governments of the Champaign-Urbana area. This would include city councils and township bodies.

This is a sister website to the Cheat Sheet of Champaign County which has information on Champaign County government.

Goals:

• Easy to use
• Information about elected officials
• Information for upcoming elections and candidates
• How to participate and get involved in local government
• Issue information

Primary elections for the 2018 midterms are currently ongoing - Early and Mail-in-Voting already started for the March 20th, 2018 Primary. Many County offices are on the ballot this year, whereas local offices tend to be in off year elections (odd years that are neither mid-terms or presidential election years). I hope to have plenty of useful information here well before then so that people can get the most out of the election: whether that be informed voting, volunteering with a campaign or issue group, or running for office themselves if they're feeling bold.

It's your government. We get what we put into it.