The Danville City Council met in person for the first time in several weeks on Tuesday evening, March 1st; and residents brought forth concerns about familiar issues on the night of this return.
With further discussions coming soon about how the city will spend $24.7 million in ARPA COVID relief funding, the Reverend Frank McCullough made another plea for the Three Kings of Peace and their planned Mentoring Center at 700 Commerce Street, in the former Steel Grip building by Garfield Park.
McCullough said that while other organizations may offer tutoring and guidance for Danville’s youngsters, the Three Kings of Peace intend for their facility to be about direct mentoring. He stated that inspection work indicates $739,000 will be needed to get the place stabilized and ready to go. McCullough also said that two state legislators have offered to kick in some money if they receive COVID relief funding from the city. He says Senator Scott Bennett’s office has pledged just under $200,000; while State Rep Mike Marron has pledged about $100,000.
Danville Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr says; that’s good to hear, but it still leaves the city with a big bill.
AUDIO: I commend them for what they’re trying to do. Half-a-million dollars is a lot of money. That would be almost two percent of our ARPA money, and I think we just have to wait. All of the interest of everything that we have to do, as Director Ahrens said and as what we’ve been considering. So it’s something that we will certainly consider.
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, with spring and summer coming soon, Randall Osgood came forward with a proposal for adjusted rules about parking campers and RVs. Osgood has had trouble with the rule about needing to park in only side or rear yards because he lives on a corner. So he’s proposed some adjusted rules for simplification; two of which are “must park perpendicular to the street,” and “must be no less than 25 or 50 feet (whichever the city would choose) from a public street intersection.” Mayor Williams says, it will be up to the City Council, perhaps starting with the Public Services committee, if they’d like to review this hot issue from 2021 again.
AUDIO: That’s up on the Council. We’ve brought similar adjustments to them previously, and it’s not something they’ve been interested in changing. So we’ll see. I’m sure it will be considered, but ultimately it will be the Council’s decision.
It was also mentioned during the meeting that City of Danville offices are now getting around 25,000 hacking attempts at city information each and every day. As often happens at tax time, attempts are way up. Mayor Williams says, be aware of this. And remember, the IRS will not contact you by phone. Do not give out personnal information.
AUDIO: We’ve received exponentially more attempts to hack our financial and other software; intelligence software of the city. They are hacking people, they are making attempts on our populace as well. Be extra dilligent. Do not give out personal information, such as your date of birth and/or your social security number; especially over the phone or non-secure electronic formats.
And the Danville City Council made it official, as we talked about after last week’s Public Services Committee meeting, that the final three entities on the waiting list for video gaming licenses; the Big Easy, the BP on South Gilbert, and Stroud Liquor; have been approved. The City Council will now begin what is expected to be a multi-month task at redesigning and updating the city’s liquor and gaming licenses.
