Champaign City Council Approves Budget, Nixes Plan for Curtis Road Sewer Design Work

The Champaign City Council voted 8 to nothing to pass a difficult 114-million dollar budget Tuesday night. It uses spending cuts and new and increased fees to help bridge a 6-million dollar gap.

Council member Deb Feinen says it wasn't easy balancing the new budget, but she's satisfied with the final result. "We may not have agreed on every piece of the (budget) process," says Feinen. "But we have a budget that does what we set out to do, which is trim about 6-million dollars, so we are prepared fiscally for what's going on --- in the world, not just in our community."

The new Champaign budget includes 114-million dollars in spending, with funding re-allocations that bring up the total to 158-million dollars. To keep costs down, the budget keeps some city positions vacant, and lets others go away through attrition. Some road projects will be delayed or cut back. And the budget includes more revenue from fees ---for instance, Champaign's cable TV franchise fee goes from 3 percent to 5 percent. And there's a new fee for motorists whose vehicles are impounded by police for certain traffic and criminal offenses.

But council members also voted against spending already budgeted money to help design a sewer system to serve future development at the new Curtis Road interchange. That vote came after passage of the budget, and after hearing a complaint from West Washington watershed resident James Creighton --- that the budget included nothing for sewer upgrades in his frequently flooded neighborhood. Councilwoman Marcie Dodds represents that neighborhood. And later, when the council considered funding to design a sewer system for the undeveloped Curtis Road I-57 interchange area, Dodds voted no. "I'm not going to support this," explained Dodds, "because I think that we have too much in-town needs --- infrastructure, watershed and sewer needs --- that we don't need to be building new stuff, for something that's not going to be out there, and borrowing money for it." Plans for the new sewer system include applying for a State Revolving Loan to help pay for it.

Dodds was joined by four other council members. Together, they defeated the joint agreement with Savoy and the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District. Mayor Jerry Schweighart says the four acted emotionally. He says they need to start preparing the Curtis Road site for what city officials have said could be the next big wave of new development in Champaign. "It's a project we need to do to be proactive," says Schweighart. "It (the Curtis Road Interchange area) is a location that's fast developing, and this sets it back maybe a year --- or more."

Despite the risk of delaying the Curtis Road sewer system, council members seemed more mindful of James Creighton's complaint, that his neighborhood isn't due for major sewer work by the city until 2025. .