June County Committees

Each month there are a number of Committee meetings that deal with topics such as Facilities, Environment and Land Use, Highway and Transportation funds, etc. The County government is generally much larger and complicated than folks imagine. This can be confusing and confounding for folks just trying to understand how to have their say on a specific issue that may affect them. Democracy is messy and at the local level it takes persistence and learning just to figure out where you can have an impact.

So far this month, before the regular County Board meeting next Thursday:

• Facilities Committee (agenda, video)
• Environment and Land Use Committee (agenda, video)
• Highway and Transportation Committee (agenda, video)
• Committee of the Whole (agenda, video)

The Facilities Committee focuses on the maintenance and building needs of the County. Here is where you would have seen a lot of discussions about potential jail consolidation plans, presentations and overviews of various upkeep and repair projects, etc. At the June meeting, the jail situation was brief and one of resignation. It really sounded as though the plan going forward is to hope and pray that the County can get through the pandemic hurdles and come up with a workable jail plan before they're forced to close the downtown jail. At that point the County would have to find a place to house prisoners separated for safety and legal reasons. And during a pandemic, outside regional jails may outright refuse the infection risk.

With the coronavirus epidemic and economic fallout, there doesn't appear to be any chance of reviving the plans presented earlier this year. An overview of the jail consolidation outlook in February is here with a lot of helpful background information. Below is an excerpt from the last updates from the County May meetings on jail consolidation:

In Board communications, member Stohr advocated an ad hoc committee to look at and possibly revive the jail consolidation plans. Member Harper would vehemently oppose the idea in the regular board meeting's communication portion next week. Jon Rector emphasized the public participation comments on the desperate economic relief needed locally in balance with health concerns. There were other members who spoke on and thanked community members for their efforts to help fellow citizens and other topics...

The jail consolidation issue was brought up again, with all of the concerns about the downtown jail being on the verge of having to be shut down at any time, no current plan to come up with a facilities remedy, and now a situation where other jails are unlikely to accept any prisoners that may need to be segregated or moved elsewhere.

That full Cheat Sheet post here. More information about the consolidation plans falling apart from the March/April meetings here. It was worth noting that some of the glass demand for pandemic related safety barriers has been stretched even more thin by recent looting and window smashing around Champaign-Urbana. No County facilities were damaged in those incidents, however.

The Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC) often deals with agricultural and zoning issues. This month's focus was on nailing down the language of the cannabis business regulations around towns that may not want certain elements of the industry nearby. In this case there are desires for a 1.5 mile area around such towns where they'd have primary say. There are ongoing disagreements about what that means for the people who live nearby, but aren't represented by those local governments, but rather their County government.

Highway and Transportation deals with a lot of the spending and details of the various road projects and transportation related issues on county roads and integrating transportation with local and State government. 

For your average Joe just wanting to keep up with what's going on in local government, almost all of the work of these committees ends up going through the Committee of the Whole where reports and recommended items are then passed on to the full regular County Board meeting. These steps can be confusing and there are all sorts of rules to ensure that they're done with enough time for public input and opportunities to speak out at each step.

Activists and other folks who have an issue they really care about or could impact them take advantage of these parliamentary steps to pressure County Board members at every step of the way. They do sometimes have more extended discussions and presentations on difficult topics, which can be useful for wrapping one's mind around them.

The Committee of the Whole this month was a bit of a bear, so I'll be doing a separate post on that meeting soon. For folks who can't wait to get their COW fix, I strongly recommend the presentation on the Soil and Water Conservation District local government body (starts at the 28:30 minute mark in the video). It may not sound exciting at first, but they're a government entity created in 1943 in response to the Dust Bowl and have been protecting the last few precious inches of top soil in America.

Their work intersects with our local economy, long term concerns about feeding the population, watershed protection, climate change, and building trust with science in a sector with a lot of traditionalist thinkers.

Drama over malfunctioning property tax systems and accusations of supporting white supremacy rounded off the meeting in ways I'm still figuring out how to write up.