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How Champaign County residents organized an AI data center resistance

Longtime Champaign County residents Ruth Yontz and Antonia Herbstreit had never met before organizing what would become an AI data center resistance group. Yontz, a former faculty member at the ...
CU-CitizenAccess.org

Philo Road pharmacy access remains a challenge for vulnerable residents

Restrictive covenants associated with the former Walgreens property prevent another pharmacy from operating near the Philo Road corridor.
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One year, four accidents at Archer Daniels Midland’s Decatur, Ill. headquarters; company fined over $400,000 in past 10 years

An explosion in September at the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) plant in Decatur, Illinois injured eight workers, but federal work safety data shows it was only the latest in series of safety incidents ...
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Champaign residents warned the county about a nursing home operator. Now, four senior facilities are closed.

When the Champaign County Board sold the Champaign County Nursing Home in May 2018, the board members expected the new owners to care for seniors for the next ten years. But just five years later, the ...
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Several diseases on the rise in Champaign County as federal changes threaten prevention-based programs

Whooping cough, rabies, syphilis and strep. These are some of the infectious diseases on the rise in Champaign County over the past six years, public health district records show. Rabies cases went ...
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Urbana record store celebrates tenth anniversary

According to the World Economic Forum in 2020, 34% of small businesses across the United States closed because of the effects of the pandemic. However, a small business in downtown Urbana met the ...
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Champaign County doesn’t allow looking up property by name. We made it searchable again.

Although the Champaign County Assessment Office has a property tax lookup tool developed by the software company DEVNET, the office decided to remove the ability to search properties by owner name. It ...
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While $55 million cleanup continues, Rantoul reaps revenues from leases at former Chanute Air Force Base

While dozens of businesses are leasing property from the Village of Rantoul on the former Chanute Air Force Base, the Air Force is still performing $55 million of environmental cleanup at other ...
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Champaign County Sheriff’s Office knew Norman Meeker had an alcohol problem for a decade. Why did it take a flipped truck and a DUI for Meeker to leave the force?

This story is part of a partnership between the Invisible Institute and CU-CitizenAccess exploring police misconduct in Champaign County. Champaign County Sheriff’s Sergeant Norman “JR” Meeker had a ...
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Concerns raised in Monticello about number of brain cancer cases; Data being collected from the community

This past February at a Monticello City Council meeting, resident Caitlin McClain spoke about her father-in-law who died of brain cancer in 2022. “My father-in-law was a smart, strong, witty man,” ...
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Downtown for sale: Vacant and derelict buildings wait for new owners and development plans

Abandoned and vacant buildings abound in downtown Champaign after three years of pandemic closures, business failures, downsizing and moves, a street-by-street survey by CU-CitizenAccess conducted ...