The City of Champaign Township has placed a few advisory referenda on the ballot for next week:
Voters in the townships that include most of Champaign and all of Urbana will get an opportunity to weigh on some national issues in the Feb. 5 primary.
Additionally, Champaign voters also will be able to vote on whether they agree with the decision last year to cut funding to general assistance recipients in City of Champaign Township, and whether they think the town board should actively pursue "any and all means available to them" to help those residents living in extreme poverty.
The advisory questions, most of which center around the war in Iraq, were placed on the ballot at the annual township board meetings last April. At those meetings, members of the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort, a local activist group, and its supporters jammed the annual town board meetings and voted the questions on the ballot.
Pass or fail, these are non-binding.
Regardless of whether these are non-binding, I don't want the City of Champaign Township associated with nutty stuff like this. We don't want to be Berkley, telling the Marines that they aren't welcome. The City of Champaign Council clearly told the supervisor that if she wanted more money, she should work on a referendum--what was her answer? Her answer was that the referendum was the City's responsibility and that she would help them with that. Then she went out and solicited, or assisted, AWARE coming up with these kinds of things which aren't useful or helpful.
If the Supervisor needs more money, then I want to see a budget and better figures, and I want some accountability for the spending, neither of which I've ever seen from this supervisor. I don't want to hear her say one more time "That's a good question" without directly answering the issue raised, or looking for the answer on the ceiling.