CHAMPAIGN — With city revenues down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Champaign City Council Tuesday night endorsed the idea of cutting spending by cutting city staff. They want to do this by offering buyouts to an estimated 15 to 25 employees who agree to leave voluntarily. During the Great Recession, the city of Champaign…
Aaron Kleidon kneels to stoke a campfire under a massive copper kettle, as hundreds of gallons of molasses-colored brew churn and bubble inside. He shakes a few handfuls of dried sweet clover into a cotton sack, which will steep in the beer and infuse it with a subtle vanilla flavor. Like all of the beers…
URBANA – Gov. J.B. Pritzker visited a barbecue restaurant in Urbana Thursday to showcase the first round of grants from a new state program to help small businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. The governor says Illinois’ new Business Interruption Grants, or BIG, will help small businesses that haven’t been helped by the federal government’s…
Gov. Pritzker is at Wood N’ Hog BBQ, located in Urbana, joined by local leaders, to announce the first round of business interruption grants. The announcement will occur at 10 a.m.
URBANA – A moratorium on utility shutoffs in Illinois expired last Sunday. But with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing, several utilities have volunteered to extend the moratorium for another month. The Illinois Commerce Commission says utilities that agreed to the extension include Ameren Illinois, Illinois American Water and Aqua Illinois. All of those serve customers in…
DANVILLE – The operator for a proposed Danville casino says it is withdrawing the application, it submitted last October, and plans to submit a new one next month. The request from Haven Gaming, LLC, to withdraw is on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting of the Illinois Gaming Board. In a statement, the Rochester, NY-based company…
URBANA – A new statewide effort aims to provide vulnerable young people in Illinois with summer jobs. The COVID-19 Summer Youth Employment Program provides $9.3 million to fund summer jobs for 2,400 young adults with a focus on low-income youth living in high-poverty communities. State and local officials spoke at a press conference Monday, held…
Each month throughout the pandemic, Illinois Newsroom has received questions from listeners about whether maximum SNAP benefits will be issued. To find out more about how the program works and what SNAP recipients in Illinois can expect going forward, Illinois Newsroom reporter Dana Cronin spoke with Leslie Cully, who oversees the SNAP program for the…
CHAMPAIGN – Prepare for highway lane closures and a lot more orange construction signs in Champaign. Starting Wednesday, construction crews will begin rebuilding the 56-year-old U-S 150 bridge over I-57. It is part of an Illinois capital program that will lead to the reconstruction of the entire I-57 and I-74 interchange. The Illinois Department of…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) must be shut down by August 5 until a more extensive environmental review is conducted. The more than 1,100-mile pipeline stretches from North Dakota to south-central Illinois, where it ends at an oil tank farm in Patoka. The pipeline was the…
CHAMPAIGN – The child care industry, like many others, has been hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many day care centers and home-based child care providers were forced to either close or reduce their capacity as states implemented stay-home orders to slow the spread of the virus. As businesses slowly reopen, lack of access to…
Even before the pandemic began, Lisbeth Hernandez says she was exhausted. Hernandez is heading into her senior year at Dominican University, a small Catholic college in Chicago’s western suburbs. Hernandez is undocumented, and she has temporary legal protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Even so, she’s unable to receive federal financial…
SPRINGFIELD – Prospective and currently enrolled college students may be eligible for additional financial aid if their economic circumstances have changed significantly since they first filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Jacqueline Moreno, managing director of college access and outreach for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC), says her office has…
DANVILLE – The Danville City Council approved a zoning permit for a cannabis cultivation center, and funding for Fourth of July fireworks at its meeting on Tuesday night. (See the agenda and meeting materials at this link.) Council members voted 10-1 to grant a special use permit allowing Bourbonnais-based Alexander Real Properties to build the…
CHAMPAIGN – March Madness is returning to Champaign-Urbana. The Illinois High School Association board voted Monday to move its Boys Basketball State Finals tournament from Peoria to the University of Illinois State Farm Center for the next three years. The board voted to keep the girls’ tournament at Illinois State’s Redbird Arena in Normal, rejecting a…