City of Champaign: Council and Township Updates

 

This post has some candidate updates and links as well as an overview of recent City of Champaign Township and City Council meetings earlier this month.

Municipal elections are coming up soon, with a consolidated primary election on February 23rd and the General Election on April 6, 2021. The Champaign County Clerk has an unofficial "Meet the Candidates" page here and sample ballots when they become available here. There's a non-partisan Candidate Guide available here.

While most of us were just hoping the 2020 elections were over in November, local candidates were already having to get ballot petitions signed and submitted for the 2021 elections (see candidate calendar here). By December some candidates were facing objections at local Electoral Boards (what is this?) and running into the convoluted precedents on what counts as a conflict of interest under the law versus what may seem like common sense. The News-Gazette highlighted local objections in a December 8 article:

Champaign’s electoral board held a similar hearing Monday, going over the rules and setting 6 p.m. Dec. 15 to hear the objection from Rochelle Funderburg against District 3 candidate Justin Hendrix.

He is up against attorney Matt Sullard and personal trainer Daniel Iniguez, who Mayor Deb Feinen helped collect petitions for.

That prompted several public commenters to ask Feinen to recuse herself from the electoral board...

In her challenge, Funderburg objected to Hendrix not putting the date of the election on his statement of candidacy and to various names on the petitions.

She alleged some signers weren’t in District 3, some weren’t registered to vote at the addresses they provided and that some handwriting wasn’t legible.

Full article here. Fienen did recuse herself from the board, but the legal nuance of ballot signatures knocked Hendrix off the ballot anyways:

After being knocked off the ballot last week for the local spring elections, activist Justin Michael Hendrix filed Monday to run as a write-in candidate to represent Champaign’s District 3.

The Champaign electoral board voted 2–1 Friday to remove Hendrix from the ballot, with Councilman Tom Bruno and City Clerk Marilyn Banks voting in favor and Councilman Will Kyles against...

“By his own admission, (Hendrix) sought guidance and used a commonly-used process by many elected officials and volunteers today,” Kyles said. “But unbeknownst to him, and even myself, that database that he utilized was not synced with the county clerk’s office. Who would have known that?”

That full article here. The full videos of the Electoral Board hearings for Hendrix are available at the CGTV website under City Videos here (with the first electoral board meeting starting 12/7/2020 and the hearing specific to Hendrix starting 12/15/2020). If you've listened to the public participation in recent City Council meetings, you will have heard Hendrix highlighting his write-in candidacy and harshly criticizing those he believes unfairly knocked him off the ballot as a listed candidate.

City of Champaign Township and City Council Meeting 1/5:

The City of Champaign Township (what is this?) board is made up of the same members and covers the same jurisdiction as the City of Champaign City Council. So, their meetings are generally tucked in before a City Council meeting on the same day at the beginning of the month. The first meeting this year had a financial report submitted (available here) and like a lot of local government entities was approving COVID-19 relief funds through bureaucratically named "Community Development Block Grant" or CDBGs. The agenda with links to the details of this funding and other information is available here. The video of the Township meeting is at the beginning of this video on CGTV.

Rita Conerly, a candidate for City of Champaign Township Supervisor in the Democratic primary on February 23rd, raised the issue of the current supervisor using the office to mail residents an informational flyer on Township services. She described it as campaign material due to the proximity of the election and the incumbent featured prominently on the colorful mailer. Front and back view:

I'll leave it to the lawyers to figure out the legal line and readers to decide the ethical line on this one. 

The City Council meeting (agenda, video) was called to order immediately after the Township meeting adjourned. If you dig into the weeds, you'll see that the items voted on also mostly involved COVID, from CDBG funds to extending the Emergency Orders the City is operating under during the pandemic. The Council Bills passed without any significant discussion or controversy. The bulk of the meeting involved audience participation (video starts here).

Many of the public comments focused on the eviction moratorium likely to expire at the end of this month. WCIA had an article on that here based on a Housing Authority update. There is an Eviction Moratorium Open Letter that has been circulating for signatures. Local Activist Allan Axelrod encouraged the entire board to support moratoriums on evictions and utility shutoffs. Council member Alicia Beck of District 2 noted her intention to sign it.

There was also a City Council Study Session this month on the Black Lives Matter mural proposal. Full Cheat Sheet post on that available here.