City of Champaign Updates

This post follows up on this week's City Council (agenda and video) and Human Relations Commission March and February meetings. It also includes some links about parts of Downtown Champaign being added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

There was a Cheat Sheet post previewing the City Council meeting here with some additional background. The Council Bill involving an intergovernmental agreement with the University to install Smart Sensors was delayed again awaiting feedback on privacy and data security concerns from City staff. The northern 40 acre half of a Unit 4 property was annexed into the city to help improve options for the district to eventually sell it for development. The other half has some additional use restrictions that were covered in detail during the discussion of the item here. The News-Gazette had coverage yesterday:

About 40 acres of farmland once intended to be the site of the new Central High School on Olympian Drive has been annexed into the city of Champaign...

After the 2016 referendum, whose projects did not use that land, was approved, the board went back to the Atkins family, he said, and it agreed to loosen the restrictions, allowing for a middle school, elementary school, administration building or athletic fields at the site.

Unit 4 bought both tracts of land in 2014 for a total of $3.2 million.

Full article here. Other items on the agenda were passed swiftly and unanimously. The City Manager had a statement about preparedness for the coronavirus here. She explains the intergovernmental Regional Emergency Coordination Group facilitated by the Champaign County Emergency Management Agency. She explained that municipal and public safety members had met that afternoon in their policy group to discuss the coronavirus situation and preparing for the possibility of local cases soon. There will be weekly meetings on the subject led by Champaign-Urbana Public Health District addressing needs of informing the public.


Human Relations Commission:

The March Human Relations Commission had a couple presentations that might be of interest. One was an overview of the Census 2020 starting at around the 7:18 minute mark in the video. One highlight was how to identify legitimate census workers and warning signs for scammers at around the 14 minute mark.

The rest of the HRC meeting focused on a presentation (at the 24:35 minute mark in the video) and public comments on proposed changes to the City's Human Rights Ordinance updating the language on protecting people from discrimination around gender identity, updated terminology on transgender issues, and clarifying language. The main presentation was by Laura Hall, Assistant City Attorney. Kris Koester the City's LGBTQ liason and a couple local LGBTQ group representatives from Uniting Pride (UP) and the University of Illinois LGBT Resource Center spoke in favor of the changes after.

The February Human Relations Commission had an overview on the upcoming Disability Resource Expo and a discussion on equity issues in Unit 4. The Disability Resource Expo overview began at the 5:25 minute mark in the February video here. More information at the Expo website here. The time and location will be March 28, 9am-2pm, The Vineyard Church, Urbana, IL.

The Unit 4 equity discussion began at the 10:50 minute mark in the video here. The minutes from that meeting had notes of the Commissioner comments during that discussion available here on page 2 of the PDF.


Historic Downtown Champaign:

Last month there was some local coverage on portions of both the downtown Champaign and Urbana areas being added to the National Register of Historic Places. There was a previous Cheat Sheet post with links and more information for Urban's addition here. WCCU had coverage on Champaign a couple weeks ago:

The Downtown Champaign commercial district is receiving some honorable mention.

The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places...

The Downtown District contains 63 structures in total and covers more than 19 acres.

For property owners, the main benefit is access to a 20% income tax credit.

That full article and video segment here. Smile Politely had additional details from the City's press release including a map of the specific area here.