County Board: June Meeting / July Preview

The June County Board meeting (agenda here, minutes on page 4 of the PDF of the July agenda packet). The YouTube video of the meeting appeared to have a sound problem on the County Clerk's YouTube channel here, so I recommend the video on facebook here.

The big news out of that meeting was that the marijuana business zoning regulation passed in spite of the City of Urbana's City Council voting in favor of a protest to the regulation (forcing the vote to require a 3/4 supermajority to pass). The Urbana City protest, in spite of the county regulation mirroring their own, was against the advice of their own city staff who saw no negative impact. From the discussion at that meeting it appeared they simply wanted the County government to have to have broad support for the measure.

The primary opposition to the regulation was on the Republican side of the of the County Board who wanted more consideration for smaller communities to restrict marijuana related businesses near their towns and villages. The language of this resolution, that had finally made it through the entire legislative process and committees of the County Board, however appeared to be the only real option for now versus even less regulation if it failed. Given the choice between an arguably imperfect regulation or none (that wouldn't make hardly anybody happy), the board voted 19-2 to approve.

There was a bit of a question about whether the County had officially received the Urbana protest paperwork due to the timing of votes and communication with the County Clerk and staff prior to the office closing, but the supermajority vote made that irrelevant.


July Preview:

Tomorrow's July County Board meeting (agenda here) will include a presentation from the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation. There's also a handout from the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce here that has numerous personal stories about the hardships faced by local business owners and their employees due to COVID related policies and shutdowns.

I strongly recommend reading the various pleas and hardships faced by local businesses to better understand not only their plight, but also potential ideas and areas for accommodation and fairness. I don't know where the balance can be had between public safety and economic survival within this pandemic, but if we go too far in either direction lives and/or livelihoods could be destroyed unnecessarily.

Other items on the agenda include approving funding for mail-in voting via the federal CARES act/funding and the intergovernmental agreement with Douglass County on an Enterprise Zone for a solar farm and tax issues with the solar farm there (presentation at the January Committee of the Whole available here).


Other County Updates:

Vote by Mail applications are available now from the County Clerk's office for the November 3, 2020 General Election.

The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District has released its updated guidance for local schools. WCCU coverage here. Full guidance available here.

Champaign County LIHEAP program for energy assistance starts Julty 27th. News coverage from WCCU here. More from the Regional Planning Commission here.