News Local/State

A Rundown Of Other Village Races, Referenda In East Central Illinois

By Jeff Bossert
 

Outside of the races for mayor in Champaign, Danville, and Decatur, some smaller communities will have a change in leadership.   There were also a number of referenda that went down to defeat in the region Tuesday.

Roger Cyrulik, a former mayor of Clinton, bested incumbent Carolyn Peters 72 to 29 percent.

Butch Schmink is the new mayor in the Vermilion County village of Catlin, topping incumbent James Robinson, 55 to 45 percent.

Voters in the village of Atwood chose from two new candidates, Christina Stoltz bested Arthur Urban in the race for village president.  The vote was 63 to 37 percent in Douglas County, and 85 to 61 percent in Piatt County

The longtime Village President in the Coles County community of Lerna, Don Pearcy, won re-election, taking 78-percent of the vote in defeating Tim Salsbury.

After yesterday’s election, two rural communities will now allow liquor sales.

Residents in the tiny Champaign County town of Bondville voted to end a ban on those sales, on a 66 to 34-percent margin.

Those in the Coles County city of Oakland did the same, ending an 80-year ban on sales of alcohol by a final vote of 55-to-45 percent.  The city’s ban on the sales started in 1935, two years after the U.S. government repealed Prohibition.

According to the Mattoon Journal-Gazette, a referendum to end the ban was voted down during the 1980’s, but the issue found its way back on the ballot after the city surveyed citizens in 2013.

A number of referenda lost in the region.

Voters in Piatt and Champaign County have rejected a tax to provide ambulance service in the Northern Piatt Fire Protection District, and voters in DeWitt and Macon County have rejected a proposal to increase the maximum tax rate for the Maroa-Forsyth School District.

A proposal failed in in Moultrie County to increase the maximum allowable tax rate from 30 to 40-percent on all taxable property in the Dora Fire Protection District.  And voters in the city of Hoopeston defeated a plan to levy a sales tax (a non-home rule Service Occupation Tax) of 1-percent for municipal operations.

In Champaign County, a plan to increase the limiting rate under the state's property tax cap law for Thomasboro School Disrict #130 failed.