City of Champaign

By Illinois Public Media News - A health care advocacy group is renewing its call on the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to investigate an underground pipeline in Champaign’s Fifth and Hill neighborhood.

Champaign County Health Care Consumers held a news conference Tuesday in the neighborhood, and cited a recent report that identified chemical waste in the pipeline know as “coal tar” as petroleum-based. The group’s executive director, Claudia Lennhoff, said the toxins are likely linked to a gas manufacturing plant that had been in the area from 1887 until 1953.

By Dan Petrella/CU CitizenAccess — Behind an annex art studio on the University of Illinois campus sits an 8-foot-by-8-foot wooden structure, lying on its back and filled with dead leaves and dirt. Not long ago, some hoped this small, cabin-like shelter would serve as a model for a new way to house some of the area’s homeless.

CHAMPAIGN — The proposed city budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 has a line item that is easy to overlook but is worthy of attention.

The fiscal year 2010 budget, released Tuesday, projects spending in the general operating fund, the city´s main account, of $67.5 million.

That´s $2.3 million less in spending than was budgeted for the current fiscal year, and $900,000 less than the city actual expects to spend this year — after the city implemented a hiring freeze and other cost-saving measures last fall.

Reductions in city spending don´t come easily, according to city Finance Director Richard Schnuer. He said the city needs revenue growth of 5 percent annually just to stay even in terms of numbers of employees.