County Board Updates

It has been a busy month for the Champaign County Board and its committees. First, the latest from the News-Gazette's coverage of the most recent County Board meeting:

The cost of running Champaign County government services will rise 5.5 percent next year.

The county board on Thursday approved a $129.6 million budget for 2020, with the increase tied largely to higher personnel and services costs...

In other business Thursday, the board declined to take action on a controversial ordinance prohibiting marijuana businesses in unincorporated areas of the county. Instead, it sent the ordinance back to committee to work out a possible compromise.

The board also approved a cannabis, drug and alcohol use/abuse policy for county employees in anticipation of the legalization of recreational marijuana starting next year. Under an amendment, the policy is a temporary measure that will expire June 1, 2020.

More details and information at the full article here. WILL had additional coverage of the marijuana regulation at the Board meeting here. Excerpt:

Champaign County board members will take another look at whether to allow or prohibit cannabis businesses in unincorporated areas --- with an eye toward a possible compromise.

The Champaign County Board split along party lines in its debate over whether to ban cannabis businesses in rural areas. Democrats from Champaign and Urbana opposed the ban, while the county board’s mostly rural Republicans said their constituents don’t want a cannabis dispensary nearby...

The county board voted to send the cannabis issue back to its Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC for short) for reconsideration. The committee, meeting on November 7 with one Democratic member absent, had produced tie votes on a proposal to permit cannabis businesses and another to prohibit them.

Eisenmann, fellow Republican Jim McGuire and Democrat Connie Dillard-Myers voted against the move to send the issue back to committee. But ELUC’s Republican chairman, Aaron Esry, says a compromise might be possible.  

Full WILL article and radio segment here, which also includes a brief note that member Vachaspati resigned at the end of the meeting due to a new job in Boston. The video of the meeting isn't up yet this morning, but should be available here at the County Clerk's YouTube channel soon. Videos of the Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC) and the County Board's Committee of the Whole meeting (what is the COW?) are already available at the video link as of last week.

The ELUC meeting on 11/7 (agenda here, video here) had extended discussions from either side of the marijuana issue in unincorporated County areas. Early in the meeting, this drew some public questions from one citizen of a smaller town concerned about the topic (jump to that discussion here). Typically there is no back and forth Q&A for public participation, but the rules were suspended in this instance. The discussion helped clarify some basic questions on what these new marijuana rules would mean and where they would apply. On the first item, there was further discussion by the committee (jump to the video of that discussion here) for and against a compromise direction for the full County Board. The vote on the language to ban it came later with an additional brief discussion (jump to video here).

In the end, both marijuana policy votes failed in ties. The ban policy moved on to the full board without recommendation. The reason the ban went on to the full board as opposed to the other policy was explained by Chair Esry and Mr. Hall, head of the Zoning Department, in the video here. Essentially they were introduced using different processes. The full County Board, as mentioned above, sent it back to ELUC for further work for a compromise policy.

The Committee of the Whole (agenda here, video here) had a budget overview with details on what the County Board voted on and approved at the regular County Board meeting mentioned above (budget overview PDF available here and on pages 137-155 of the agenda packet).

The COW also had a presentation on the Public Safety Tax that, while also delving into the financial situation of debt and projections, also included discussions on how that funding might be used towards public safety projects such as jail consolidation, jail programs, and possible implementation of Racial Justice Task Force recommendations. County Board member Fortado highlighted a few things she'd like to focus on, including a research person in place. She explained in further correspondence on this point:

The researcher position was a RJTF report recommendation, and we advocated for it to get implemented, because it seemed like getting that done could help drive some of the other recommendations.  But it is a first small step, there remains a LOT of work to be done implementing what is outlined in that report.  I firmly believe those recommendations should be front and center in any conversation about Criminal Justice in our community, and we as a Board need to keep working towards the goals outlined in the study...

To follow up, they just finished the interview process the data analyst should be on board soon.

Video of her commentary in the Public Safety Tax overview discussion starts here.