On January 14, 2020, City Council met for a study session regarding Champaign City Code, Chapter 24: Special Events Ordinance.
Deputy City Manager, Matt Roeschley, walked City Council members through the proposed amendments to the ordinance initially discussed in April 2019. During the prior study session, council discussed city policy for sponsorship of special events, models that other cities use, programmatic approaches to funding and sponsoring, and processing requests for special events. The take-away was that it was going to take substantial funding for sponsorship of special events and that the city had no identifiable funding nor available staff time at this point.
Thus, it was proposed that the ordinance language be amended to clarify that the city does not sponsor or provide incentives or support in the form of unreimbursed services, with wording that would allow narrow exceptions for existing sponsorship agreements like Friday Night Live and the Illinois Marathon.
Other proposed amendments were to update insurance requirements for events permitted (increasing required liability insurance), separate the issuance of amplified sound permits from special event permits, and update the Public Gatherings section (last updated in 1986) to make it consistent with current standards and residential zoning classifications.
Council members spent time discussing the repercussions of amending the ordinance to state that the city would not be sponsoring any special events. Mayor Deborah Feinen voiced her concerns about precluding council from making a decision to fund a special event. “I’m not comfortable saying we’ll never fund it because I think as soon as the right thing comes, we just throw this ordinance out and we fund it anyway” remarked Feinen.
Council member Clarissa Nickerson Fourman followed up with Feinen’s concerns, agreeing that council should be able to decide to sponsor events if they think it benefits the community. Council member Alicia Beck followed-up by suggesting that there needed to be a better distinction between permitting a special event and sponsorship. Other suggestions were that the application form could have a section where the applicant could say what impact the event would have on the community and economy.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor and council member Tom Bruno voiced support for a policy that does not provide sponsorships. Bruno was concerned that it was a slippery slope when it comes to making sponsorship decisions, especially when using tax payers money for charitable purposes.
Bruno suggested that instead of evaluating requests for sponsorships as they come in, there should be an application period where all applications can be vetted, “so that the Right to Life League, can be equally justified with the Ku Klux Klan, with the Republican Party, Boy Scouts of America, with every other group that we may like or don’t like.”
This led to a back and forth between Bruno and Fourman, with Fourman asking if council is really going to accept an application from the Ku Klux Klan. Bruno stressed that this was the heart of the problem- that people may have different values, and there will be sponsorship requests where decisions are obvious, and others that will be tougher decisions, and if making these decisions is what they want to be doing as a city council.
In the end, it was still unclear if and how council should make sponsorship decisions. Mayor Feinen called for another study session to discuss the sponsorship piece of the ordinance and council’s poll was postponed.
Study session concluded on a lighter note, with Beck thanking volunteers that cleaned their drains before the storm and encouraged more citizens to sign up for Champaign’s Adopt A Drain program.