Urbana City Council Updates

Wednesday's News-Gazette had an overview of this week's Urbana City Council meeting (agenda and video available here):

Urbana council OKs removal of parking lots near Lincoln Square
...
The Urbana City Council voted 6-0 to approve removal of parking lots 24 and 24 West on the south side of Lincoln Square.

Northbrook-based Brinshore Development has proposed using the land to build an arts-centered apartment building.

As proposed, the facility would have six artist live-work units on the ground floor, as well as an arts and cultural center to be operated by Urbana's Arts & Culture program...

In other business, the council voted unanimously to sell city-owned properties on the 200 block of South Vine Street and the 300 block of East Green Street to Green Street Realty for $1.

Green Street plans to build 42 townhomes with approximately 100 bedrooms at the sites...

Also, the council voted 6-0 to add one more Class BB liquor license for Analog Urbana at 129 N. Race St., and 6-0 to approve a special-use permit allowing Richmond, Calif.-based Sun Power Corp. to construct, operate and maintain a 40-acre solar energy system on two parcels of the city's closed landfill complex in the 900 block of North Smith Road.

Full article here. The meeting also had a presentation of the city's five year Financial Forecast, an annual first step of the city's budget process. Video of the presentation is available here. They lay out their plans to address the structural budget deficit, keep the budget reserves above the 15% minimum, and fully fund various critical services. They highlight that the general fund's revenues could be heavily impacted by the next recession, which is expected in the next couple years. More on recession anticipation at this post: Cities Anticipating Recession. The State's dire fiscal situation is expected to impact local budgets as less money is made available to local programs and grants to deal with State budget woes.

One slide from the Financial Forecast presentation summed up the situation in stark terms:

• very little chance of Best Case scenario
• risk of Worst Case scenario is relatively high

When asked where cuts would come from that wouldn't hit critical programs, the reply was that, "It's going to hurt and it's going to show." Fortunately the long term outlook was more optimistic than the short term pain being described.