Danville’s Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr says bids from construction companies interested in the tear down of Bresee Tower and the County Courthouse Annex building project were scheduled to be opened at 2 PM Wednesday (Nov 6th) afternoon. Following Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting, Williams stated that it is not necessarily the lowest bid that will be chosen, but also the most economical and responsible bid.
AUDIO: Let’s say that someone says that they can do it for $50,000. Clearly, there’s no way that you can safely make that happen. So we won’t have a definitive number tomorrow. We will have a list of all of the numbers and all of the bids, and that will come to the City Council for final approval; and also the County Board for final approval.
Meanwhile, the proposed Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget was presented to the Danville City Council Tuesday night; coming in at a total of $71.7 million, $37 million from the general fund, and $11.4 million from fund transfers.
Mayor Williams says one thing he’s happy about is various departments giving up a little bit to allow for capital improvements to include some much needed work at three city parks. This would include the repair of storm damaged basketball courts at Lincoln Park; the resurfacing of the Cannon Park tennis court for tennis or on court soccer; and some new playground equipment and basketball court resurfacing at Elmwood Park.
AUDIO: What I appreciate about our department and division heads is that number one, they are good stewards of their resources, particularly money and people. And they all were willing to chip in. It means that they’ll have to wait a little bit on some of the items that they need. But for the greater good of our citizens, they were willing to make those sacrifices.
The budget presentation included a mention that with overall equalized assessed valuation of Danville properties having gone up, the tax levy in the Danville budget will be able to go down 11.8%.
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, Eric Childers was officially named City Engineer; replacing Sam Cole, who stepped down earlier this year.
