Regional Planning Commission Updates

As the Cheat Sheet gets back up and running for 2021, it's worth highlighting one of the major resources for services and programs in the area: The Champaign County Regional Planning Commission. This post includes a general overview of the RPC and the January commission meeting write up. First, a quick overview from their about page:

The Champaign County Regional Planning Commission is an intergovernmental membership organization that provides a variety of programming in the areas of regional, environmental and transportation planning; economic, community, and workforce development; social services; early childhood education; and technical assistance in East Central Illinois. As a multi-faceted government agency, the Commission administers over 100 federal and state grants and contracts with an annual operating budget of $25 million and a staff of over 230 professionals housed in 12 locations serving over 30,000 clients annually.

More at their website here. What you'll find with local governments is that a lot of the funding and collaborations for various programs and organizations go through the Regional Planning Commission. It acts as a conduit between funding sources (Federal, State, or private) to actual boots on the ground organizations offering assistance and services to people in your community. WICS highlighted a recent example with the Champaign County Sheriff's Office last month:

Sheriff Dustin Heuerman and the Champaign County Sheriff's Office have set three initiatives for 2021.

They pertain to Justice Diversion, increasing community relations, and continuing the work of their Special Enforcement Team...

The first initiative is working on Justice Diversion.

They will be working in partnership with the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission to get a social worker to help with certain cases that police get called to.

Full article here. More coverage on these CCSO initiatives at the News-Gazette here.

The commission itself is run by a Chief Executive Officer Dalitso Sulamoyo and commissioners representing local governments across the County. For example, Urbana Mayor Marlin is the chairperson of the commission as of 2021. The chair rotates from year to year (the previous chair was Savoy Mayor Joan Dykstra). There are also two community members serving as commissioners.

As with the last meeting, the discouraging numbers from the 2020 Census played a major role. From the November meeting minutes:

[Planning & Community Development Director Rita Morocoima-Black] presented the final numbers of the Census 2020 to the Commissioners. She commented that the numbers were not very encouraging for the Champaign County area. The numbers are lower than what the staff was hoping the numbers to be. Also, it is believed that the numbers do not include the numbers from the University. The Village of St. Joseph had 85 percent response rate.

The numbers were compared with the numbers from the 2010 Census and the news is not good. It was expected to have better numbers in comparing with 2010, but that is not the case. In Champaign County, numbers were down almost two percent. The City of Champaign was down almost six percent. The City of Urbana was down almost one percent. The Village of Savoy was down almost seven percent. The Village of St. Joseph was up four percent. The Village of Rantoul was down almost four percent. The most discouraging numbers were from the University District. This can be attributed to COVID. It is uncertain if the numbers for the University are correct. 

The full November meeting documents here (video, minutes). This helps provide some context for this January's meeting notes below.

January 22nd Commissioners Meeting:

The meeting video is available here (meeting documents, agenda, and agenda packet). There was some beginning of the year business to attend to, including the new rotating chair and approving the meeting calendar (with some revisions for remote Zoom meetings as opposed to the usual in person location).

Concerns about the 2020 Census were brought up in the last meeting as well as January's. Early indications appear to suggest that there was a significant 2% response drop from 2010. Various funding is often directly based on Census data, so this could have impacts on funding of all sorts of programs and assistance in the coming years.

In the Planning and Community Development Director's report the Census data and products will begin to be available at the end of February with overall counts in early March. Unfortunately the local counts and full details may not be known until July 31st later this summer. 

Workers comp claims and costs are down due to the impacts of pandemic restrictions. Claims are usually due to in-person incidents such as trips and falls.

The tentative launch date for additional emergency rent assistance in the County is February 26th. It was noted that landlords have been frustrated in trying to encourage tenants who qualify for assistance programs to get through the process or even convince them to apply (even though they're eligible). There was discussion about possible outreach to build trust and encourage participation. Lisa Benson, the Community Services Director, noted that there is difficulty in getting proper documentation and there is a need for in-person assistance to help people through the process.

Dennis Roberts of the Urbana City Council and the Workforce Development team at the RPC highlighted a successful beautification project collaboration they hope will inspire more collaborations with local governments and the RPC team there.

The Workforce Development team also highlighted a University committee established to address racism in the community, including a subcommittee on workforce participation. There will be public engagement coming up on ideas and historical steps in the community to move forward. There was some discussion about the energy of addressing racism locally often involving "reinventing the wheel" of beginning steps as opposed to building off of previous work. Champaign City Council at-large member Will Kyles volunteered to participate.

Chief Executive Sulamoyo didn't present his own report and left the robust division reports speak for themselves this month. The meeting went into closed session to deal with employment matters before adjourning.