URBANA — Champaign County residents raised concerns about data centers and a shortage of skilled nursing beds at the County Board meeting Tuesday, Sept. 15.
Regarding hyperscale data centers, Board Chair Jennifer Locke said there are no requests or proposals from companies to build a data center in the county and the county does not have anything planned.
For context, Locke said she and other members of the board had a meeting in December 2025 with Clean Cloud Energy, a company that scouts potential data center sites. She said she took that meeting as a “warning.”
In response, the county formed the Data Center Activities Task Force, and passed a 1-year moratorium on data centers in April.
“We all live here too. We all pay electric bills here. We all drink the water. Nobody wants to endanger that. Nobody is acting out of bounds,” Locke said.
Locke also said the county cannot ban data centers itself because they must follow Illinois state law, echoing what county officials shared at a public task force meeting on Aug. 31.
“So I encourage all of the energy that is going to ban the data centers, please bring that energy here,” she said. “But also bring that energy to your state representatives and your state senators because that’s who has the power to make the changes that we as a community all seem to want.”
Locke said when she steps off the county board in November, she will continue to advocate for clean water and energy.
A plea for nursing home funding
Members of Advocates for Aging Care also spoke at Tuesday’s Board meeting: They’d like county officials to provide $1 million to help fund a new nursing home in Savoy.
Champaign County needs more than 700 skilled nursing beds to sufficiently serve the community, according to a study conducted by the organization and funded by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and the Champaign County Board,
The county is currently more than 300 beds short of that number.
Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Healthcare Consumers, said her office often gets agonizing phone calls from concerned loved ones.
“They’re telling us that the hospital is telling them that the only [nursing home] placement they got is someplace far away, where they won’t be able to routinely see their loved one,” she said during public comment. “And they’re asking what their options are. And unfortunately, I have to tell them, ‘You need to take that placement.’”
Diane Marlin, a member of Advocates for Aging Care, said the group needs $3 million to cover startup operating expenses of the nursing home. She said as of this month, they have raised $1.8 million.
Marlin said she’s heard comments from members of the public that they were surprised the advocates were asking for money from the county.
“They were even more surprised to learn that Champaign County property owners have been paying an annual nursing home property tax at the rate of 0.03% for the past 23 years,” she said.
This tax was approved by voters in a referendum in 2002 to support the operational costs of the county’s skilled nursing facility. However, the sale of the Champaign County Nursing Home in 2019 that led to its closure in 2023 has not prevented the county from continuing to collect this tax.
Champaign County Health Care Consumers says on its website that this tax currently generates about $1.7 million annually.
County Board member Brett Peugh expressed his support for the funding allocation, saying the county should use funds from the existing tax that voters approved.
“There are very few affordable beds in this town, in this county, in this area,” he said. “We’ve been collecting taxes for quite a few years now. And I think the least we can do is give that money back to the people that need it.”
Next steps for nursing home funding considerations are unclear, as the matter was not discussed further following the public comment period.