Voters living in Ward 7 in Danville have an opportunity to elect a new alderman to the city council in next Tuesday’s election.
Kaylan Huber and Darren York are running for the seat that was held by Steve Foster for 27 years. Foster, who is the longest-serving alderman in Danville’s history, resigned in December to accept a paid appointment to the Vermilion Regional Airport board.
York, a counselor with the Illinois Department of Human Services who was appointed to the council in January, says that residents in Ward 7–the northernmost ward in the city–are concerned about roads and paying the city’s public safety pension costs. He also says many residents don’t know what is going on with certain things the city is doing.
“The city does a good job with attempting to communicate with people, it’s just that some people don’t have access to those means,” York says.
York says he thinks the main issue the city will be dealing with is the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the budget and revenue for the next few years.
The other candidate for the Ward 7 seat is Kaylan Huber, an attorney at the Davis and Delanois law firm. She also says COVID is the main concern right now, and adds that infrastructure is another, with the sanitary sewer project on Denmark Road affecting residents right now.
“The more that the city identifies those issues and making sure that the constituents are aware of those issues and aware of the costs that it will take to repair those issues, and then ultimately tying those into the over-arching benefits for everyone, I think is very important,” she explains.
The Ward 7 seat is one of five contested Danville city council races that appear on the April 6th ballot. Tomorrow, we will profile the race for Ward 6.
