[Peace-discuss] 3 Tuesday meetings: County Board (jail followup), Urbana Council (discussion of traffic stop racial disparity), Urbana Library Board (new director search)

[Stuart Levy]

*Three meetings* all happening Tuesday night, Nov. 12th -

*6pm Tue County Board committee-of-the-whole meeting, Brookens Center*
     Relevant to the No New Jails effort:

     This meeting includes a report on one of the actions recommended by 
ILPP: pre-trial services.   County officials say they've been doing this 
for five weeks and are calling it a failure, and oh yes they'd like to 
use the money elsewhere, as written up in the N-G yesterday:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-11-10/group-pretrial-services-program-dud.html

     Also to be considered: a request-for-proposals for groups to 
provide post-jail re-entry services.
     See the agenda  ( 
http://www.co.champaign.il.us/countybd/COW_PPA_JSS_F/2013/131112agenda.pdf )
     or the full Board packet ( h 
<http://www.co.champaign.il.us/countybd/COW_PPA_JSS_F/2013/131112agendafull.pdf>ttp://www.co.champaign.il.us/countybd/COW_PPA_JSS_F/2013/131112agendafull.pdf 
<http://www.co.champaign.il.us/countybd/COW_PPA_JSS_F/2013/131112agendafull.pdf> 
)

*7pm Tue Urbana City Council*
      They're to consider the IL Dept of Transportation statistics on 
traffic stops in Urbana, which show - for whatever reason - that people 
of color are far more likely to be stopped than whites are. (The 
disparity is even greater in Urbana than in Champaign, or in Chicago.)  
Durl writes:

> The Urbana City Council will be discussing the implications of the 
> racial disparities revealed in local IDOT traffic stop data to 
> determine if it merits approving our request to form an Ad-Hoc 
> Community/City Committee to study in more depth and detail the ongoing 
> racial disparities involving primarily African-American drivers.
>
> Todd Rent, Urbana Human Relations Director, will likely make a 
> presentation to the city council addressing the traffic stop data, the 
> city's recent actions in response to those racial disparities, and 
> possibly some recommendations for further action.  Whether these will 
> coincide with our request for the creation of an ad-hoc committee is 
> unknown.
>
> Therefore it is critically important that all who can attend and/or 
> speak to this issue do so.  [...]
>
> In short, our goal on November 12 is NOT to try to explain why these 
> disparities exist or to place blame.  But rather to apply pressure to 
> the City Council to open this process beyond the walls of city hall to 
> involve the community in a joint dialogue with the UPD and city staff 
> to study why these disparities exist and to determine how they can be 
> minimized.
>
> Specifically we want the city council to create an ad-hoc committee 
> composed at least 30% minority representation, at least one 
> representatives from each of our signatory organizations, members of 
> the UPD, and city staff/elected officials.  The committee's charge 
> would be to take the time and access the necessary resources to truly 
> attempt to understand the dynamic of what is causing these racial 
> disparities and to then make recommendations to address them.
If interested, please contact Durl Kruse (jandurl {at} comcast.net).


And, ...
*7pm Tuesday Urbana Free Library Trustees*, in the UFL Lewis Auditorium

http://urbanafreelibrary.org/12-nov-2013

      Among the new business: the Search Committee has a proposed job 
announcement for the new director position.

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