Gary Storm for Urbana City Council

Initiatives:

• Promote police-community relations programs that bring local residents and landlords together with human service and law enforcement personnel to assess neighborhood problems and design solutions for them; these might include neighborhood-based bicycle patrols that “mainstream” police into the life of the community often in helpful or constructive roles.
• Develop neighborhood resources/programs that give residents access to needed services or constructive outlets for their leisure time; the services might include child care or substance abuse counseling and the constructive outlets might be a community garden or small park with sports facilities.
• Promote neighborhood watch programs; ideally these would evolve naturally out of neighborhoods whose streets, sidewalks, parks were alive with residents of all ages participating in a rich array of neighborhood activities, especially leisure activities (outdoor recreation, community gardening, music groups, etc.).

Initiative: Provide a City "Matching Grants Program" to encourage the development of a wide range of neighborhood/community improvement projects. These might include a number of projects described above, and they could be organized through existing clubs or organizations (often nonprofit) or through new grassroots associations (often cooperative), but with financial help from the City, perhaps on a declining basis over several years until the activities can become self sustaining.

• Child Care Cooperatives
• School- or Public Housing-based Health and Social Services
• School- or Public Housing-based Community Centers
• Community Gardens
• Neighborhood/Community Beautification Projects
• Recycling Projects
• Mini-Parks and Playgrounds
• Workshops and Tool Exchanges
• Reading/Discussion Groups
• Political and/or Debate Clubs
• Athletic and/or Sports Clubs
• Civic Organizations
• Monthly Neighborhood/Community Forums to identify and discuss issues and problems
• Arts Organizations (different media)

I will work to:

Procure new federal funds for economic recovery and reinvestment to pay for public works of numerous kinds: infrastructure improvements; new information/communication technologies; improved public transportation systems; upgraded school, health and social service facilities; and grassroots community improvement projects organized by citizen groups.

Use existing sales tax revenues, special TIF funds, and new grant revenues for the same purposes in order to provide the physical and social infrastructure required to attract business, residential and cultural investment.

Promote development within established areas rather than on the periphery of the community in order to minimize urban sprawl and destruction of valuable agricultural land surrounding Urbana.

• Specific to Ward 7: Monitor development of the University’s old Pomology Orchard (at the SW corner of Philo and Windsor Roads) and of Orchard Downs (west of Race Street between Windsor Road and Florida Avenue) to insure that Ward 7 residents have a voice in decisions made and that the developments be completed in ecologically-responsible ways that also respect the social, cultural and aesthetic character of the existing neighborhoods.)
• Downtown Urbana: Involve the City, business and citizen groups in downtown planning and development; create incentives for small scale commercial and cultural enterprises; establish higher density housing for a variety of age and income groups; and connect the two downtowns and campus through an energy efficient transportation corridor that includes walking and bike paths (increased land values along the corridor will attract many kinds of investment)

Promote intensive, organic approaches to gardening and farming both inside and outside the city through the promotion of neighborhood/community gardens and community supported agriculture (CSA) efforts.

Encourage the development of ecologically responsible leisure activities that are rewarding but consume less energy and materials than current lifestyles—e.g., creative intellectual and artistic activities, reading and discussion groups, debate groups, amateur athletic competition and sport, landscape design and gardening, etc.; often these can be organized as clubs or nonprofit social or civic groups.

Initiatives:

• Use existing TIF funds to develop facilities/programs (e.g., store front schools) providing practical education and job training skills that can be employed by graduates to pursue private and public sector jobs in the community; ideally, students would be given opportunities to work as interns for pay while learning new skills and later be employed by cooperating employers—public, private or nonprofit.
• Encourage development of cooperative day care programs where parents, under the supervision of professionals, provide some care directly while learning child development skills; in most cases these parents would be combining child care with school and/or employment responsibilities.
• Locate health and social services personnel in schools and/or public housing facilities where they are readily available to both children and parents; with careful planning, schools and public housing facilities can become more comprehensive neighborhood or community centers offering a variety of developmental opportunities.

• Encourage regular neighborhood-, ward-, and community-wide forums to identify and discuss issues and problems of concern to residents of Urbana.
• Use new communications technology to open City Council deliberations to participation by place-bound and mobility restricted individuals.
• Experiment with "participatory budgeting" as a way of involving the wider public in decisions about how their tax money gets spent.
• Encourage greater use of publicly-initiated referenda (binding and non-binding) in City decision making thereby achieving more direct democracy.
• Adopt electoral reforms that will encourage wider participation (by candidates, parties, and voters) in City elections and guarantee that no candidate be elected with less than 50% of the votes cast.
• Initiate a City "Matching Grants Program" to encourage the development of community improvement projects throughout the community, projects initiated by existing nonprofit organizations or new grassroots citizen groups. Such a program would create new avenues for residents to become actively involved in bettering their own lives and the life of the community; it would energize citizen action in many constructive ways.