County Board July Updates

 

There were a lot of updates on the Champaign County jail situation, with the closure of the downtown jail and other related safety, space, and jail consolidation plan news. That's in a separate jail update Cheat Sheet post here.

The News-Gazette had coverage previewing the meeting:

Up for consideration by the board Thursday is a recommendation from its Community Violence Prevention Task Force to use some of the county’s federal coronavirus relief funding to make first-year grants to the following organizations for violence-reduction programs, including:

• $500,000 to the new H3 Coalition launched by First Followers.
• $500,000 for DREAAM House.
• $385,000 to the Housing Authority of Champaign County — $300,000 for supportive services and $85,000 for landlord incentives.
• $15,000 to a brand-new organization called A Vision to Succeed.

...

The county is getting $40.7 million in federal funding over two years; the city of Champaign is getting $25.27 million over two years; and the city of Urbana — which hasn’t made decisions yet on how its money will be spent — is getting $13 million over two years.

The county board has pledged $4.1 million for community gun-violence reduction over the two years of its federal funding, with $1.5 million of that being spent this year.

That full article here with more program and budget details. WCIA had coverage from the meeting itself here. Excerpt:

“It’s a collaborative effort, whether you have a lot of not-for-profits and some small business owners that are coming to the table that are putting our heads together and have performed a strategic plan in order to deal with community violence and the wholistic approach,” [Marlon Mitchell of H3 Coalition] said.

County Board members weighed in on the discussion and the proposals were supported by most of them. Patterson said organizations like these help put people on a better path forward.

County Executive Darlene Kloeppel said the next steps forward are contracts and negotiations, but everything has been agreed to. Those contracts are expected to be finalized in about a month.

That full article here. The full meeting was relatively brief, running just over an hour (agenda packet, video). A couple highlights included some question and answer opportunities. One was with Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center Superintendent Keith Willis and its current staffing and space issues (jump to video). The other with Marlon Mitchell answering some more detailed and organization questions about the H3 project (jump to video).

Other County Government Items:

• County Board member Stephanie Fortado got confirmation from County Executive Darlene Kloeppel that next month's regular County Board meeting was likely to have presentations on the rural broadband funding and projects tied to ARPA funds.
• There was an update on the jail consolidation and other facilities projects this week (noted in the action report), but the video doesn't appear to be available yet. The last update was presented at the June facilities meeting (overview in minutes, video). See today's other Cheat Sheet post on other Jail updates from July.
• For those following the County political party organization leadership battles, one current and one former County Board member has been picked to lead the Republican and Democratic Party county organizations. The News-Gazette had coverage here.