Champaign City Council Meeting

Following up on this preview of Tuesday's City of Champaign Council meeting, the News-Gazette had a summary of last night's meeting:

Champaign council gives initial OK to funding for two economic agencies
The city council gave initial approval Tuesday to extending funding agreements with the Champaign County Economic Development Corp. and the Champaign Center Partnership.

If they approved in a second vote, both agreements would extend for one year from June 30. The city would continue contributing $115,815 to the county agency and $57,500 to the city agency, according to a city report.

Bruce Knight, the city's planning and development director, said he worked with the county agency recently when it created a new economic-development council and reorganized its board of directors. He said the group would spend its upcoming year developing a new strategic plan.

The Champaign Center Partnership would use its upcoming year to focus on funding and becoming self-sustaining, said T.J. Blakeman, the city's senior planner for economic development. The group is a nonprofit that does joint marketing for businesses in downtown, Midtown and Campustown...

In other business, the council heard from Centennial and University Laboratory High School students affiliated with iMatter, a national youth climate-change group, who encouraged the city to increase its efforts to fight climate change, including creating a plan to reduce carbon emissions.

The group's presentation came on the heels of a similar one it made to the Urbana City Council, which responded by passing a Climate Inheritance Resolution for quickly reducing that city's greenhouse-gas levels.

Full article with City Council member reactions here.