New Collaborations with LWV and NAACP of Champaign County

New Collaborations:

If it looked like I've been having difficulty keeping up lately, you'd be right! I should be catching up on a big backlog of Cheat Sheet posts for various local government and related organizations soon. And a much wider variety than ever!

The League of Women Voters of Champaign County and the NAACP Champaign County Branch have started a collaboration to rejuvenate the local Observer Corps. This generational project of non-partisan reports on local government took a hit during the pandemic. There has been ongoing work and organization to get these non-partisan local government meeting write-ups going again and also make them more readily available for the public to stay informed.

The Cheat Sheet has joined that collaboration to help summarize and link to these full reports and meeting write-ups! As always, the Cheat Sheet will continue to attempt to avoid taking sides of different local controversies, parties, or ideologies. 

We'll report, to the best of our ability, confirmed facts and differing perspectives on the issues before local government. We'll link to local reporting, government documents, public statements, and recordings of the meetings themselves when they are available. 

The full meeting reports and write-ups that we link to from the LWV Observer Corps and NAACP observers are also meant to be objective, but any personal or organizational biases in them are not necessarily the views of the Cheat Sheet or its authors. Likewise, what limited stances the Cheat Sheet may take on various facts or perspectives are not necessarily those of anyone else we are collaborating with.

For anyone interested in joining either local organization and volunteering to be a non-partisan observer, just click the links above in this post or in our website's sidebar. You can also email observers@lwvchampaigncounty.org for any additional questions, on everything from the new collaboration or volunteer opportunities!

Bonus for Local Civic Nerds:

The League's Vice President, Ann Panthen, recently shared this treasure from the local LWV archives: a 20 year retrospective on the Champaign County Board from 1976 to 1996. She noted that it was "authored by Mary Blair- one of our most dedicated members and an observer for many years. Mary died recently at the age of 104!  She was also League president in the 70's."

The three page report talks about an era of rising conservatism nationally and locally, changing demographics, and long term pressure for better record keeping and transparency. It speaks of hope in more future intergovernmental agreements to work on behalf of everyone in Champaign County. That is something that we do actually see far more of in more recent decades and into today.

It also talks about earlier support for an elected County Executive by Democrats years ago. This was during the early days of coming up with any type of centralized administrative position beyond the County Board Chair themself. For those familiar with the change to an Executive Form of government, it was local Republicans who eventually pushed the 2016 referendum through, assuming that their candidate would win a County wide race in 2018! He didn't and the seat has been in Democratic Party hands ever since.

Needless to say, a lot can change in local government, especially over the long term. From this report, one can also see that many things do not change too!

Thank you for reading! We look forward to many Cheat Sheets and meeting write-ups in the future!

- Benjamin

Coronavirus and General Updates

Sometimes the Cheat Sheet doesn't have any posts for days or weeks depending on how busy everyone is and everything going on in the world. The last 12 weeks since we last posted have been an extraordinary time for everyone.

The coronavirus went through some naming conventions and concerns about political correctness versus inflaming racial tensions. Older posts still refer to the likely geographic origin, but the technical names for second severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2 and the coronavirus disease of 2019, or COVID-19, that it causes are a lot to type out.

I'll be referring to the coronavirus currently kicking humanity in the teeth as the coronavirus and qualify any other coronavirus with additional information (e.g. the original SARS or in contrast with less virulent coronaviruses that cause other diseases).

The latest local statistics on the coronavirus here are still available on the C-UPHD website here, with regular updates on their facebook here. There's also a collaborative effort to help businesses during the reopening phases here.

For folks looking for more detailed information and with some spare time on their hands (and coffee), I strongly recommend the last Champaign County Board of Health meeting video here (with a 17 minute delay during logons and Zoom setup). The meeting runs about two and half hours, but it begins with an update by Julie Pryde of the C-U Public Health Department with the latest information on local outbreaks and efforts. If you keep watching beyond that you'll get to see her respond to community and County Board member concerns on a host of issues.

Some highlight's from that update last week included details on the the 19 local outbreaks in Champaign County. There were over 700 people in quarantine (potentially exposed and avoiding contact and further spread) and 188 people in isolation (confirmed infected and avoiding contact with others). The low hospitalization rates due to the lower ages of many of those who have been exposed.

Critically, our local region, including Champaign County, is in a "sweet spot" according to Pryde when it comes to our hospital capacity in the cities and overall infection rates and treatment needs. This means that we're on track to move to Phase 3 of the reopening process. This next step allows other classes of businesses to open along with essential businesses and relaxes some other areas of the Stay at Home Executive Order. She answered numerous questions and addressed several concerns about the timing and process of this.

Phase 3 has a minimum period of 28 days (or two incubation cycles) to ensure that changes to the mitigation policy are being done safely. With the exponential nature of out of control infections, lives hang in the balance between being patient enough to have accurate data and acting quickly enough to control outbreaks before they get out of hand. An exhausting and constant effort that has been going on locally since the beginning of the year.

One of the issues that came up was child care access expanding in Phase 3, which would be necessary for many parents, but there were concerns about needing more details. Illinois Newsroom had a blurb on that this morning:

Child care facilities  will be able to operate again once Illinois enters the third phase of its reopening plan, which is expected Friday. Maria Whalen is president and CEO of Illinois Action for Children’s, which offered input into the plan to reopen child care centers. “I think that this is a plan that recognizes that at the end of the day, we’re talking about children who are being cared for in congregate settings,” said Whalen.  Newly reopened child care facilities will limit rooms sizes to eight for infants and 10 for others. There are now new sanitation and social distancing requirements. Children over the age of 2 will wear face covering when possible.

More information will probably be available as policy meets reality next week.

The meeting ended by adding an additional June 1st Meeting at 5:30pm (with Zoom meeting information for people to attend remotely to be made available on the Champaign County website later). It will be for additional public participation and updates prior to the regular meeting scheduled on June 16th. 

I'll try to get more updates and information on the local Cheat Sheet going forward. There have already been some updates on the Cheat Sheet of Champaign County for anyone interested in County government. We've been catching up on local government meetings and there should be some overview posts soon. I apologize for the long break while adjusting to the every changing landscape on how local governments were adapting and a tsunami of news and information that we just couldn't keep up with. I have a huge to do list on updates and information on how people can still participate in local government.

Good luck and stay safe, everybody!

Weekend Early Voting and Primary

REMINDER: Voting has begun! Early voting is happening this weekend too:

Brookens Administrative Center: 1776 East Washington Street, Urbana
Saturday, March 17: 9:00am - 4:00pm
Sunday, March 18: 9:00am - 4:00pm

All other Early Voting Locations (list of locations)
Saturday, March 17: 10:00am - 1:00pm
Sunday, March 18: 1:00pm - 4:00pm

This is the last week of Primary Voting! The official election day is this Tuesday, March 20th, 2018!

Grace Period Registration is available at early and regular polling locations. More information here. Sample ballots are available here.

Cheat Sheet Candidate Information here. Updates on Judicial candidates and Smile Politely interviews of County Clerk candidates too!

VOTE!!!

Cheat Sheet: C-U Local

This year's mid-term elections have County races on the ballot (primary voting has begun: more info here), so I'm going to keep focusing on making sure whatever helpful information for voters, candidates, and folks just curious about how to engage with their local government can find answers to their questions.

But, what about other local government? I'm fiddling with that, but it is a work in progress (slow slow progress). Right now it's called the Cheat Sheet: C-U Local. Here's the gist:

Information about the local Champaign-Urbana government and how to learn more about the City Councils, Township Boards and other local government offices such as:

• Their membership information and contact information

• Policy issues

• Latest news links

• Maps

• Information for candidates and about candidates

• Election information and upcoming races

• More up to date meeting information

• Primers on major local issues

• Issue positions and candidate statements

In time, with some hard work, this will hopefully be an easy and quick guide on what's going on with local government, how to effect change in it, and how it works for everyday voters. Someday I hope it can be useful enough for the political wonks, help folks become more political wonky and maybe even run for and become part of their local government.

The information is intended to be factual and based on government resources, local journalism sources, government officials themselves (either directly or through those same sources) and presented without spin as we observe it. We aren't endorsing any candidates or party. We merely hope people will simply find their local government more easily accessible, influencing it easier, and voting for it more informed.

There's not much there yet. But that's how the Champaign County Cheat Sheet got started.

Welcome to the Local Cheat Sheet

The Goal for this website is to present non-partisan information for the local governments of the Champaign-Urbana area. This would include city councils and township bodies.

This is a sister website to the Cheat Sheet of Champaign County which has information on Champaign County government.

Goals:

• Easy to use
• Information about elected officials
• Information for upcoming elections and candidates
• How to participate and get involved in local government
• Issue information

Primary elections for the 2018 midterms are currently ongoing - Early and Mail-in-Voting already started for the March 20th, 2018 Primary. Many County offices are on the ballot this year, whereas local offices tend to be in off year elections (odd years that are neither mid-terms or presidential election years). I hope to have plenty of useful information here well before then so that people can get the most out of the election: whether that be informed voting, volunteering with a campaign or issue group, or running for office themselves if they're feeling bold.

It's your government. We get what we put into it.