City of Champaign Updates

This post covers a few recent topics related to the City of Champaign's local government bodies in the news the past few weeks (not including the reentry housing issue covered in a previous post here). The City Council approved a gambling expansion measure and announced Christmas tree collection information. The Champaign Police Department settled an excessive force lawsuit. The Park District is considering naming a education wing of a new center after a former local educator. And there's a new tool on the City's GIS map page for information on City planning projects.

The News-Gazette had coverage of the vote for gambling expansion a few weeks ago:

Businesses with video-gambling machines now have the option of adding one more after the city council voted Tuesday to increase the maximum allowed from five to six, which brings the city’s limit in line with the state’s.

The ordinance was also amended to peg Champaign’s limit to the state’s to avoid having to update the city code every time it changes in the future.

The proposal was approved 7-2, with at-large council member Will Kyles and District 4 representative Greg Stock voting against it...

The state law increasing the limit also increased the maximum allowed wager from $2 to $4, though that didn’t require council action.

More information including comments from City Council members in opposition at the full article here. The News-Gazette also had additional coverage previewing the vote with background information here. Smile Politely had an editorial in opposition to the expansion push here.

WCIA had coverage of the City's information on Christmas tree pickup in January here. More information at the City's website here.

The board approved the Champaign PD settlement in their December 3rd meeting. The News-Gazette had coverage of the vote:

By a 7-1 vote, the Champaign City Council approved an $87,000 settlement with a Champaign man who filed an excessive-force lawsuit against a police officer.

The federal lawsuit filed in February alleged that Officer Tyler Darling forced his way into Davonte Wright’s home in October 2018 and beat him unjustifiably.

The lone no vote came from District 1 representative Clarissa Nickerson Fourman, who had no comment.

And Mayor Deb Feinen said District 4 representative Greg Stock was unable to attend because it is new student night at Centennial High School, where he is a teacher...

The payment will be made from the city’s “Retained Risk” fund and from its insurer.

More information on the incident at the heart of the settlement at the full article here. More coverage on the incident from the News-Gazette here.

WCIA had information on naming an education wing at a new building after a former local educator:

Teretha Johnson was an educator in Champaign when schools were beginning to integrate. The park district says a decision will be made about whether or not they should reach out to family to pursue naming the education wing at the new Martens Center after Johnson. They say a donor wanted the wing to be named after an African American educator. He heard about Johnson and thought she would be a good choice...

“For Teretha to go out to Bottonfield, it was a majority white school, and so for her it was kind of like breaking a barrier,” said Johnson’s friend, Eunice Rivers. That opened doors for others. “Then once she was established and the people accepted her teaching there they decided to have more black teachers and that’s when it started to spread,” said Rivers. Students say her contributions are profound.

More information and background at the full article here.

One of the City of Champaign's many interactive maps was highlighted recently (City website's map page here with all sorts of helpful tools!) I first saw it mentioned by Julie Cidell in a tweet. She's a professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science (GIS) and project leader of the University of Illinois' Transportation Sustainability Working Advisory Team team. It was also mentioned in a recent Tom's Mailbag article in the News-Gazette here. There is just a plethora of information on current and past planning and development projects for the city on it.

More City GIS maps and information here. For information on the County level GIS Consortium, I have an overview on the County Cheat Sheet here.