Wednesday, June 30, 2021

City of Champaign June Updates


The Cheat Sheet is playing catch up on local government news this month, as sometimes happens. It takes a lot of time and effort for people to attend meetings or catch up with the videos, dig through local news coverage, and follow up with various passing or failing votes. The process of catching up can be useful to anyone wanting to get up to date on a local government body, however. There is a post at the Champaign County Cheat Sheet on the process of catching up on using the County Board as an example that could be helpful. Depending on your time limits, it can be a cursory search for local news coverage or the deepest dive.

The City of Champaign government had a busy month this June. Some of the local news coverage highlights include:

An overview of the ARPA fund details is available in a Study Session report from earlier this month here. Video of that Study Session, presentation and discussion is available here. The Fiscal Year 2021-22 budget and 10 year Capital Improvement Plan were approved at the June 15th regular meeting. There was public input and Council discussion on the budget vote during the meeting available here.

The June 22nd Study Session involved drainage issues and improvement projects along the Boneyard Creek. As the Study Session report and maps make clear, drain issues and investment choices around them have a high impact on historically Black neighborhoods in town (click to enlarge):


Recent heavy rains and flooding in Garden Hills, in which there are also drainage improvement plans over the next several years, are an ongoing reminder of past policy ramifications.

Links to City Council meetings and Study Session videos, agendas, and reports.

Updates on April and May meetings are still a work in progress, but hopefully will be up and linked here soon!

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