URBANA — Annie Adams announced her campaign for mayor of Urbana in September. Adams is a member of the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission and a resident who has been involved with city planning.
Urbana’s current mayor, Diane Marlin, has endorsed Adams.
Adams describes herself as “a real systems person” who knows how to navigate city governance to get results. She said if voters elect her, she would be prepared to help grow the city’s population, modernize policing and ensure Urbana is welcoming to diverse communities.
Ahead of the primary election on Feb. 25, IPM’s Arjun Thakkar spoke with Adams about her reasons for running and her vision for Urbana.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. IPM also interviewed Adams’ opponent in the Democratic primary, DeShawn Williams.
THAKKAR: Why don’t you first go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit about yourself?
ADAMS: Hi, my name is Annie Adams, and I’m a candidate for the mayor of Urbana. And I moved here in 2014. My husband and I started renting on Main Street in 2015, we bought like a 670 square foot house over by [Huaraches Moroleon]. And I was raised in Wisconsin in a large multi-racial family, so nine brothers and sisters. African American, Vietnamese, German, Polish and Belizean. And that’s kind of my background. I’ve served on the Urbana Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission since 2016. When I first moved here, I did things called Imbibe Urbana, Urbana First Fridays, and the Mistletoe Market, I started those three projects. And then I also, during COVID, I did something called the Urbana Amble, Front Yard, Garden and Art Tour. So I’ve been very active in the community, very active working with the city on large scale projects and helping bring millions of infrastructure money into the city to help rebuild our roads.
THAKKAR: So you announced you were running for Urbana Mayor last fall. Can you kind of tell us you know why you’re running for mayor, and what drove you to run for the position?
ADAMS: I’m very interested in civic duty. I’m very interested in taking care of the community. I’m very interested in creating a safe, affordable and connected Urbana, and that is why I’m interested in running for mayor of Urbana.
THAKKAR: What do you think are the greatest challenges that Urbana faces in in the city’s future?
ADAMS: One of the biggest challenges we’re facing right now was In 1970 we were six square miles, and we had 33,000 residents. Today we are 12 square miles, and we are … 34,000 residents. So we right now, have doubled our infrastructure. In addition to that, 31% of our properties are off the tax rolls due to their status, so we’re unable to collect property taxes from them. So what we need to do is grow the city of Urbana … You get federal dollars based on resident status. So the number of residents that we have coming in affects your federal dollars as well. What I would like to do is find ways that we could grow our city. We have empty lots in our downtown district. We have empty lots actually right outside the studio here that I would like that we could build. I would love if we could do maybe a tech hub. Start attracting different tech startups, get a tech startup going there. Other things I would like to do is build additional housing in a lot of the empty lots and empty spaces that we have available in our city.
THAKKAR: We’ll get into some, you know, issue-by-issue questions in a moment, but just first wanted to give you a chance to say, if voters were to elect you, what would be your priorities in office?
ADAMS: My priorities in office would be to, I’m interested in creating a safe, affordable and connected Urbana. So what that means is, I’m interested in communication, increasing communication among residents, increasing communication among different communities. One thing I’m interested in doing is called U-Alerts. So it’s something similar to what the University of Illinois does, and they would be an emergency alert system, so you would know if, like, when trash pickup is or isn’t happening, when we’re cleaning the streets, if there’s an incident that you need to shelter in place for. That’s one thing I would like to really work on, is communication. Increasing the type of communication that we’re giving out to the residents. Right now we have one full-time communicator. It might be nice if we could add additional communication strategies to that, because there’s so many different ways that people get their information these days. Another thing I’m interested in doing is a Teen Council. What a Teen Council would do is it would bring youth voices into the city. Right now, we have a council that is made up of adults, but they also have different concerns than our teens. It would be nice if we get our teenagers into the city, and that would bring in the community more, and we could find out more different opinions, and different ideas, and hear what their needs are and how we can grow the city. The city right now is a majority population under 25 and over 60, so we have these two different types of populations that have pretty different needs and they have pretty different responses. So it’s very important that we’re hearing both types of voices and that we’re hearing from the full community, and not just the, we have seven council members, but that’s one of the other big things I would like to have happen.
THAKKAR: You spoke a little earlier about your background. I noted that you’re a member of the Urbana Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, and you also work in marketing and communications for U of I Granger College of Engineering. Can you talk about what you would bring from your experience and those and other roles to position of mayor?
ADAMS: I’ve worked at a lot of large organizations. I’m about 20 years older than the other candidate, and I have worked for Encyclopedia Britannica, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois. I have served on the North Lake Shore Drive Redevelopment Committee in the city of Chicago. I have served on a variety of chambers in Chicago, and I’ve worked on, so I’ve worked on a variety of community engagements, and I understand how large organizations work. I’m a real systems person. I’m interested in figuring out ways for systems to work, in ways that we can get the different parts and pieces to come together, to create synergy, to move us forward. So that’s one of the things that I bring. In addition, having served on the commission in the city of Urbana for eight years, I understand how city government works. I know a lot of the people that work for our city. I understand where there’s pinch points. I understand that things take time. You might start a grant process, and it might be five to 10 years before you can even begin to get like shovels in the ground to fix projects, to do things. It’s one of the reasons why I started serving on the commission, so I could begin to understand exactly how government works and how we can find the ways to move Urbana forward.
THAKKAR: First, let’s talk about housing, reading directly from imagine Urbana, the most recent comprehensive plan, it states that the city “needs more housing of all types and at all price points.” Do you have any ideas or thoughts on what you would do as mayor to help expand housing options in the city?
ADAMS: The Imagine Urbana comprehensive plan is going to be, it’s not implemented yet. It’s still in the design phase. We’re still gathering community feedback on it … It’s a 20 year plan update is the easiest way to say it. So we have zoning ordinances that are about 20 years old, and then we also have a comprehensive plan that’s about 20 years old. So, what this plan is doing is it’s trying to say, where do we want to be in the next 20 years? Not where do we want to be tomorrow, not where do we want to be in two weeks, but 20 years from now, do we want to have more than 38 or 34,000 residents? Do we want to have more dense housing? Do we want to have single family housing? What kind of mix do we want? And that’s what I’m very interested in. I’m deeply interested in getting our downtown activated and vibrant. We have some wonderful spaces there. I know that 200 South Vine [Street], when it was built, and that is right next to city hall when that developer built, that they could have filled four more of those. So we have spaces. We just need to get developers into our city. We need to have them build confidence that they can get the kind of developments they want done right in our downtown, right next to there’s like this little dry cleaner. We have that empty lot that the city owns, that lot. We also have other lots down by Boneyard Creek that we have purchased that we can also build on. So, there’s quite a bit of opportunity for us to build that those things, those that kind of housing. And I do know people want single family housing, I understand the need for that, and I understand that we need to definitely work with people on how to make sure that we can have single family housing as well as other types of housing.
THAKKAR: In terms of public safety, the Urbana Police Department has spoken in the past about staffing and retention challenges. I know the department in the past has asked for funding to hire more officers, but that’s also at times, drawn pushback from residents. How do you think the city should navigate the difference of opinions on policing and public safety?
ADAMS: Our police, right now we have, I did a ride along on Friday night, we were actually down to one officer at first, when I started this a few months ago, the campaign, I guess six months ago at this point, we have lost one officer a month since then, they are being drawn to nearby communities due to benefits and due to not being allowed to do 21st century policing and being given the tools to succeed. So when I was there on Friday, when I did the ride along, on Friday night, we had one officer available to answer calls. We receive about 64,000 calls for service every year. The police need our support. We need to retain officers. We need officers who have responded. We do not want to have a lot of young officers. We would like to have officers who have responded to different things, because … as anyone who has done any kind of job you know that you develop this, develop skill sets to do things better the longer you’re in a position. So I’m very interested in moving and getting the Urbana Police Department the tools they need. I’m interested in getting them staffed up the way they need to get staffed up. The chief presented actually just on Tuesday night saying, you know, at some point it’s just gonna be me and the commander answering calls. So we’re in it. We’re in a critical position right now, and I’m definitely interested in 21st century policing tools and using them, though, like, we have to protect our civil liberties. We have to make sure that communities are not upset that the police are coming in and doing terrible things. Like, we have to be very sensitive to these issues. And I’m also very interested in alternative policing, and our police force is very interested in it. Right now we just do not have the staff for it, and we have a council that has been asking has been kind of stepping back from the alternative policing and not allowing it to move forward, which has been very frustrating for the police force, which would like to see wrap around services. They would like to work with the community and get the community involved. So when a person right now, like when there’s a domestic [incident], when a police responds, they can hand someone a piece of paper that says, Here are some information, but there is no way for them to allow for a follow up, to have somebody come to that house and work with that work with that couple. Right now, it’s just the police on their own. We definitely need to figure out alternative policing, because that is the majority, almost 50% of their calls are coming in for domestic disputes, and so we need to find ways, and when there’s a domestic dispute, we are dealing with a wide variety of things that social services can help with. So, I’m very interested in us being a leader in this, and finding a way that we can move our city forward, and that we can work with our police force and make sure that they are fully staffed in a way that they can respond not only to the 64,000 calls to forgery, and lost person, and alarms going off and all the other all the other things that they need to help take care of, but also that we can find ways for them to give people the type of, we can help families thrive. Because right now, families can’t thrive with a little green piece of paper.
Editor’s Note: After the interview, Adams emailed IPM to correct part of her statement. She said the Urbana Police Department is on track to answer 26,000 calls for service this year.
THAKKAR: Just wanted to follow up on the, you said, 21st century policing. Can you elaborate? I imagine some folks listening or watching might not fully know what that means. Can you kind of elaborate?
ADAMS: Right, 21st century policing tools. What it means is — I currently work for the University of Illinois, and at the University of Illinois, they’re always encouraging us to try to figure out ChatGPT. They’re always encouraging us to try to learn new tools. They’re always trying to say, here’s some new information. They are though, always telling us, ‘Hey, don’t be stupid. Don’t be using chat GPT and putting in your latest research information.’ So they’re warning us, before you use these new tools. Here are some pitfalls. Here’s where things can go wrong. So 21st century policing is that way. The communities surrounding all of us are using something called automatic license plate readers. Automatic license plate readers collect a lot of data, but they can only pull … you have to go through a specific set of protocols to be able to pull a license plate. And anyone in our community who studies data knows they’re collecting so much data that they really only do want that very specific amount of data. So what’s happening is, the communities around us, if someone, say with dementia, gets in their car and drives, they can find them if somebody calls in, but if they come into Urbana, nobody can find them. It is, we are a dark zone, and we cannot share data. So other communities are sharing data with each other in that manner. So automatic license plate readers is one tool. It also would cut down on police having to, one thing that I find personally frustrating as a person who’s served on a commission for years is it’s like, well, why don’t we have police out there telling people to slow down, and why don’t we have police out there? Well, another aspect of 21st century policing is something called data and crash mapping. So, what we’re trying to move towards would be a vision zero, which would be a safe systems approach to our streets. So what that means is, when you drive your car, you will be slowing down. You will be in a space where you automatically will be driving at a speed that is safe for people, thus eliminating the need for the police to sit on a corner and hand people tickets, because we’ve designed the streets in a way that you can easily drive at excessive speeds. So that is yet another, another tool. So it would be zone mapping, where our crashes are … where that’s happening, and then we can come in and start creating solutions to it. And it’s similar to what the aviation industry has done with flights. So that’s how you’ll get near misses. And so that’s the other thing we’re trying to track. Where are your near misses? Where are your light crashes versus your fatal crashes? And so that’s another way to relieve the stress and the pressure like on the bike Pedestrian Advisory Commission, I believe it’s almost two full time officers a year, if you add up all the times that they have to spend responding to crashes. So, it’s also a way to save money in the long term on all of our insurance, on our car insurance, and it’s also, because the majority of your accidents are going to happen between one to two miles from your house, it’s also a way to it’s also a way to lower city expenses.
THAKKAR: As you know, Urbana conducted a … partial special census, to correct issues from the 2020 population count, and that comes as the city appears to be growing more diverse. How do you think the city should respond to the results, results of the updated census and and respond to serve its increasingly diverse population?
ADAMS: One of the reasons we did the special census was because, what happened was during COVID, when the census was taking a lot of folks responded that they were not living on campus. And that’s what’s we have. About 50% of our population are students, and so that is definitely a large, a large percentage of what happened with a special census. So hopefully, we are hoping that when those special census numbers come back, that we are going to see higher numbers, because, again, that is directly related to federal funding, which we, as a small city with a budget of under $84 million a year desperately need. And how are we going to respond to our growing, diverse population? Urbana has always been a welcoming, diverse city, and by that I mean welcoming and diverse from all places. It’s sort of a beautiful thing about living in central Illinois. I remember coming here, and I did not know that a city like this could exist in in such a space. In that, what do I mean? I mean welcoming to people from all backgrounds, from all races, from LGBTQ, plus from and I’m even going to say it. I’m going to say whether you’re people here, whether you’re voting independent, whether you’re voting Democrat, whether you’re voting Republican. Everybody works here. Everybody has to get along here. And I believe the University of Illinois does a really good job promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. And the city as well also needs to promote diversity, equity, inclusion. And we have a large Asian population. We have all these wonderful, different, diverse groups of people who are bringing their cultures. And as a person who grew up in a multicultural family, I felt very comfortable here. I mean, I grew up in a family which I didn’t I never got to see a family like mine reflected anywhere, and it was, it was very, it was a little strange for me, because when you grow up in a family, it’s just your family, it’s who you are, it’s just the people around you. So, I was very excited to move to Urbana and just to see this incredibly diverse population, and that people were welcoming and that they were kind to each other and another. Another fact to know about Urbana is one in five of our residents are immigrants, so and they are bringing diverse cultures, and they are paying taxes, and they are also very welcome here.
THAKKAR: Let’s talk about Urbana’s current government. What do you think about Urbana’s current officials, from Mayor [Diane] Marlin, to [City Adminstrator Carol] Mitten, [Urbana Police Chief Larry] Boone, and the city council members, you know, how would you rate their performance? And is there anything that you think you know the city and its officials could be doing better?
ADAMS: I think one thing to know that, unless you’re really like in the weeds with the city, the one thing that that folks have to know about how the city operates, is the mayor or the chief can have ideas, but the way it’s going to work, the way those ideas become reality, is the idea has to come forward and be presented by either a member of council or the mayor. That then has to go through, whether it’s planning commission or any other variety of commissions, it has to go through these commissions that they can gather a lot of community feedback. This is why it’s slow. That’s why people sometimes get a little frustrated with things. And then you gather a lot of community feedback. And a lot of times like, you have to be careful with community feedback, because sometimes only certain types of people are showing up. Give their feedback. And so then you need to reach out further, to the pocket communities and make sure we’re hitting everybody, and that everybody gets a chance to lean in to what’s happening. We see this a lot on on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission. We see this a lot because, like, if we do, we just got a ten million RAISE grant for Florida Avenue, and if we only collect data from people that live there, not the people that move through it, not the not the students that are going to be needing to take busses and move through there and get to Orchard Downs or name your location, then we’re not actually getting a full picture of what the actual needs are, because everyone’s going to have a wide variety of needs. So, this is, it’s like a Schoolhouse Rock answer … first you have the idea, then you start shopping the idea around, then those ideas go to the commissions, then the commission elevates it up to council, and then Council has the opportunity to approve or disapprove. And then at that point, we also need to have funding. And then at that point, we can move things forward. So I feel like they are doing, they are doing the best job that they can with, there’s a wide variety of opinions right now on council. We have a we have a pretty divided council in a variety of ways right now. And so that’s, that’s challenging for anybody trying to get anything through, because, half a council wants … they each have different priorities and but you’re going to have to find the medium. You’re gonna have to listen to everybody, and you’re gonna have to find the pathway forward. That’s something I’m extremely interested in. I love trying to find the yes, I’m not always gonna get my way. I’m not always gonna get what what I want, and that’s not important. What’s important is understanding what the community wants and making sure that we are giving everybody what they need, and that we’re creating things safely for people to succeed, that we’re not that we’re not creating damage, that’s not appropriate.
THAKKAR: Taking a step back and looking statewide at the state of Illinois, as you likely know, the state is facing this year a $3 billion deficit heading into its budget. What do you think Urbana is looking for in terms of support from state lawmakers in Springfield while they’re confronting that budgetary challenge?
ADAMS: I’ve lived in Illinois for a long time, and we’ve had a budgetary challenge for a long time. I really think the current leadership that we have has been doing a really good job, slowly removing the debt and getting us slowly out of debt. I am not convinced we’re ever going to be debt free. I don’t, I mean, the US government’s not debt free, but we do definitely have to be in a space where we can spend, because we do have to improve our roads, that’s where a lot of our funding is going to come from, or our road funding, for example, or sewage funding, or electric funding, you name. It does come from a variety of taxing bodies, meaning it comes from a variety of the federal government, the state government, and then the local government. And then sometimes, like you can also get private firms to lean in. Or sometimes people give money, say for a tree program, or somebody else, there will be other foundations that’ll say, hey, we want to do sidewalk and lighting, such as for the [Equity and Quality of Life] Project, where we’ll be getting money from foundations that want to do sidewalk and lighting in neighborhoods that don’t have it. So there’s a wide variety of ways. And so, one of the things that I’m very interested in is making sure that we’re pursuing that money and that we’re getting that money. And the city has recently hired somebody full time to apply for and get money. Our city is poised. One thing I’ve learned, working on the commission is our city is poised to get money. Why? Because first off, our demographics. we have, our demographics show that we do not have a high income level here. So we can get a lot of grants for that too. We have partnering. If you’ve ever applied for a grant, I know anything about applying for grants, you need partners. The community partners here are fantastic, from the University of Illinois to the Regional Planning Commission, to the Champaign County development, to the health department. People are willing to lean in … and sign on. Because we all know when any one of our communities, whether it’s Champaign, when it’s University of Illinois, whether it’s Urbana succeeds, we all succeed, and we all know that we’re in all these communities all the time, moving through them. So that’s one of the things that I very, am very interested in, in pursuing and pursuing money on all levels that we can get and we can get, we can get the money. We can do it. We just did not have money for that full time position that the mayor did the … Mayor [Diane Marlin] dug us out of a $2.5 million dollar debt. And she also got our general funds back up to a safe level. And then she also got our emergency funds back up to a safe level. So ,we are at a space now where we can move forward. I do know federal funding is going to be going down with the new administration, so that is going to be a little bit of a tricky bit for us to try to figure out how we’re going to source that, because there has been a lot of ARPA funds coming in and funding a wide variety of things throughout the city. So, we’re going to have to be very wise stewards of how we move, we know we have a tight budget, so we’re going to have to be very wise stewards of how we do development and how we move the city forward. And that’s, that’s just a reality of who we are.
THAKKAR: What you said earlier ties into question I had about, you know, if you have any ideas in terms of Urbana working with its neighboring communities, whether it’s Champaign Savoy and Rantoul or other neighboring communities in terms of working together for the purpose of economic development. What do you think about that, you know, goal or that possibility?
ADAMS: Absolutely. We need to work with each other, not against each other. We, that’s one of the things that that both mayors have done. Both mayors have worked with each other. We want. I mean, one small example of this is there is a bike path that that Savoy worked on with … it’s this bike path on First Avenue that you may or may not even be aware exists. But what it does is it creates connectivity, which is something I’m very interested in, creating connections between all these spaces. And it allows you now to bike from the University of Illinois out to Savoy safely, not on a street. You’re actually on a side path. And every time I go past that side path, it is, people are using it all the time, so we have to constantly work with each other and make sure that we are, we’re not fighting for resources. We’re actually growing resources, and we’re growing our community. Champaign Urbana, this area is a growing space. We are, more and more people are wanting to move here, wanting to live here. The University of Illinois is growing. We are not going to be facing an enrollment cliff. We are an R1 university, a research one university. People are going to be coming to it. We are growing with, federal with grants that we’ve received, and working with the governor, we have gotten many we have researchers who are moving here. We have a fermentation we just got a large fermentation grant, so there’s going to be a lot of money coming in. And we’re also going to be having professionals that want to live here and work here. So, universities are not just students. Universities are researchers. Universities have people who work for the University. So that is one of our main employers, and is one of our main economic engines. But the people that work and live there do also want restaurants. They want stores, and I would just like to shout out right now the H Mart. It has been incredibly to see H Mart and to see the response of the community to H Mart, that parking lot, which I personally thought was far too big. And I had been asking like, hey, H Mart, can we get like a bike path through here? And can we, can we get like walking paths? They were like, just wait. They were like, just wait and see. That parking lot never looked so small to me. In my life. It is packed. It has been packed day after day. So, and there’s bike parking right up front. You can just go right to the front and park your bike up there. So H Mart is just incredibly exciting to see that infusion of Asian culture in our city. And I’m just really excited about it. And I want more of that, more please.
THAKKAR: If you were in New York, or Los Angeles, or any other far-flung region in the country, and someone asked you, what Urbana has to offer? What would you tell them?
ADAMS: I love Urbana, and I love Urbana because I have lived in larger cities. I’ve been in larger cities. What does Urbana have? It is it is a safe, affordable and connected city, and I would like to make sure we keep it that way. And I can tell people, when I moved here, a friend of mine, Rose Marshack, she’s in a band called The Poster Children, looked at me, and she walked up to me, and she shook my hand, and she said, ‘welcome to the good life.’ And that’s what, that’s really what I keep in mind. My husband and I were able to move here, we were able to start saving more for our retirement. We were able to buy good food, locally grown food. I can buy food that is like grown one mile from where I live … I can buy it at the farmer. I can go to a farmer’s market on Saturday mornings and buy locally grown food. I can buy cheese made a couple miles from my house in Urbana. It’s, it’s absolutely incredible. The food here is great. The people here are great. They’re friendly, they’re interested. They want to see these cities thrive, and they want to see you thrive … Also, I can ride a bike. I’m not just a person who likes to bike and walk everywhere. I just did not know that a city existed. It like this, that I could ride I could ride my bike. I can walk everywhere. We are a gold level city. We are the only one in the state of Illinois, and I believe there’s like 38 or 35 in the nation. So that is also something to be very proud of. The bus system here, top notch. If you’ve lived in Chicago, which I have, you kind of get a little, you’re kind of like, I’d rather walk than take the bus, because you never know when the bus is coming. You’re you’re unsure if you’ll even get to your destination. Here you can just look at an app, and it will actually tell you when the bus is coming in. The bus will come. And it’s affordable. You can, you can afford to take the bus. So these are, these are things that I’m very interested in. The only thing I really would like, would like an Ethiopian restaurant. This has been a longstanding conversation of mine, so I’m just going to put that out there. I would really like an Ethiopian restaurant. That is one of my favorite types of food, and there is not an Ethiopian restaurant in Urbana-Champaign. So just shouting out to anybody who could make that happen for me? I would, I’m here to support you.
The Urbana Democratic primary election is on Feb. 25. Early voting information is available on the Champaign County Clerk’s website.