City of Champaign Roundup

[UPDATE - The Burnham deal terminated after the Monday deadline to show proof of the secured new location wasn't presented. The hard deadline effectively dooms the mansion for those hoping to save it. Demolition will be arranged tomorrow. From the News-Gazette website tonight:

Burnham Mansion again slated for demolition after UI alum misses deadline
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University of Illinois architecture graduate Chris Enck faced a deadline of 5 p.m. Monday to show school officials proof that he'd bought a relocation site for the mansion, and the deadline passed, Kloeppel said...

The Monday deadline was included in an extension the school board granted Enck. Originally, he was to have the mansion moved by July 15, but the board wound up giving Enck nearly another month — until Aug. 10 — provided he produce a bill of sale for the relocation site by Monday.

Kloeppel said the school district's agreement with Enck was terminated after the Monday deadline passed, and on Tuesday, the district will set in motion plans for the salvage operation.

There isn't a firm date yet for the demolition of the mansion, but a Peoria salvage organization will have 30 days to remove items from the property, Kloeppel said.]

There were a few oddball and interesting news items related to the City of Champaign government this weekend. The big one is the reentry housing issue which I talk about at length in a separate post. There were also some updates on the Burnham mansion's lack of movement, some information about "smart covers" over sewage manholes with sensors, and the history of the City's seal.

On the Burnham Mansion's fate rolling toward demolition if plans to get it literally rolling fall through tomorrow:

Financing snag puts deal to move Burnham Mansion on ropes
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Since Enck ran into the financing snag, he said he’s been meeting with people in town to come up with a solution.

“At one point, it seemed there was someone local who was willing to step in to pay for the land until we refined the details with the bank,” he wrote. “But that appears to have fallen through as of yesterday afternoon.”

Enck faces another deadline Monday to show the district a bill of sale, and appears to be running out of options.

“Unfortunately, short of someone purchasing the land outright quickly or a temporary location for the house to sit while we finalize the details, I don’t know how we can proceed from here,” he wrote. “As you can imagine, I am extremely disappointed by the current status as many have put in so much time and effort over the last two months and I know there are a lot of people locally who are excited about the project that I hate to disappoint.”

Full article on the mansion here. An N-G reader question on manhole covers with blue dots led to an interesting note on how the city is keeping track of the state of our various drainage:

Just Askin' | 'Smart' manhole covers
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They're called SmartCovers, and Champaign has nine of them to monitor liquid levels in the sewer system...

The SmartCovers, which are made by a company in California, use sensors mounted on the underside of the manhole cover to help the city detect sewer blockages or other problems.

"SmartCover provides instant alarming for water level and intrusion, and alerts for system maintenance," Blackmon said...

Each SmartCover costs about $4,900 initially, and Blackmon said they're worth the cost.

"They give us real-time data on what is happening underground in our sanitary sewer system," she said. "An atypical increase in the sanitary sewer flow level may indicate a clog and we can send a crew out to fix the problem before anyone has service issues. We also put them in areas where the sanitary sewers have high flow levels during heavy rains, giving us data to help define the extent of the problem."

Full article on the sewage tracking here. And finally a look back at that city seal from Tom's Mailbag:

Former Champaign Mayor Dan McCollum, who also is the city historian, said “the city’s seal stamp shows agricultural images, and dates back to the 19th century, possibly as far back as 1860 when a vote was taken to incorporate as a city. The actual incorporation was recognized in 1861 when a second vote was taken. Note, nevertheless, the date on the seal is 1860. The seal is still in the City Building. That far back, my guess is that the seal was a commercial job, possibly from design offerings but its origins lost in the sands of time.”

Another city-used image, which uses the City Building, is not the city seal, he said.

That article available here.

[Updated. Originally posted 7/22/2018 at 3:44pm]