The Danville City Council Public Services Committee passed along the proposed next step for designing the planned ARPA funds spending on a redesigned Garfield Park and Garfield Pool; in addition to the long range plans to bring Kirchner Building Centers to the old Goodwill building northwest of Gilbert and Fairchild; which will take a long while as it involves the city acquiring some surrounding properties and transferring them to Kirchner for the room their operations would need. One item City Engineer Sam Cole mentioned was, it doesn’t look like any major curb cut and entrance adjustments will be needed. But even if they are, it would be a local issue, not an IDOT issue; because those parts of Gilbert and Fairchild on the north and west sides of the intersection are not part of Route 1.
AUDIO: Both of the entrances, the one on Fairchild Street and the one on Gilbert Street, are relatively far from the intersection, which is always a goal for the safety standpoint. And that’s one of the beautiful things about that sight, is that for a retail business such as Kirchner; it’s got great visibility, great frontage. But the roads that their customers and their drivers are going to access from are not the busiest portions of the route.
Meanwhile, Police Chief Christopher Yates presented his July and up through July crime statistics reports. Two items to note: overall July incidents went down from 329 last year to 258 this year; including a drop in criminal damage incidents from 91 to 59. Chief Yates says, it’s a matter of having a team of officers that are visible and following up when they need to; as he continues the goal of very soon hitting a total of 70 Danville officers.
AUDIO: The individual officers on patrol, they follow up with investigators. You know that’s the meat and potatoes of our department, they’re the core of strength. These young men and women, they’re working really hard, and we’re just trying to facilitate them with the tools they need to do their jobs.
Chief Yates had two new probationary officers sworn in on August 10th, and hopes to have three more sworn in during the month of September.
