Solar arrays, city hall and crime data; Highlights of Tuesday’s Danville City Council meeting

DANVILLE, Ill. (WCIA) — The Danville City Council held its regular meeting Tuesday night, during which they discussed and voted on several topics.

Solar array voted down

The City Council voted down a zoning petition that would have authorized a solar array to be constructed on the west side of Danville.

The proposed location for this solar array would have been in the area of Brewer and Jones Roads, just north of Interstate 74. The Danville Area Planning & Zoning Commission previously held a public hearing on the project earlier this month, but did not give its recommendation for the project to proceed after a 3-3 vote, with one absent.

On Tuesday, the zoning petition came up for a vote before the City Council. Before voting, the council heard from three people: two people who live in the area where the array would be located and who spoke against it, and a representative of Donato Solar, the company behind the proposed array.

“I’m not opposed to solar, but where they’re proposing is not a good place,” homeowner Martha Jones said. “Right on Brewer Road, there’s houses and I just think they’re taking away more and more crops, more and more agriculture and really that’s my only stance on it.”

Daniel Boyd mentioned the effects that the solar array could have on both wildlife and nearby properties, among other things, during his comments.

“It causes significant habitat degradation, displacing large numbers of mammals, birds, insects, wildlife,” Boyd said. “They’re unsightly for a big thing too. It means clearing trees, vegetation and replacing it with row upon row of these solar panels which, I know what they’ll do, once they get their foot in the door, they’re going to expand. It will for sure negatively affect property values um people aren’t going to want to buy a house that has a solar farm in the backyard it’s going to affect the resale value.”

Tony Grillo, representing Donado Solar, tried to dispute Jones and Boyd’s comments when he spoke.

“One of which is the biggest and easiest things to I guess rebut is ruining habitats for animals. Currently the land we’re looking at is tilled farmland, there is no habitat, industrial farmers have ensured that’s not the case,” Grillo said. “Property values is something I’ve heard before, I’ve never really seen much proof of it, especially with how commonplace solar arrays are nowadays.”

Grillo also spoke about the project, explaining that it is a 5-megawatt array, similar to four other arrays in Vermilion County, and Donado Solar has been working with Vermilion Advantage to establish a base workforce to service the arrays as one larger project.

Donado expects to hire 40 to 50 people over the next two to three years, Grillo said, with eight to ten permanent workers for the site at Brewer and Jones and eight white-collar data center workers.

However, in order for the petition to be approved, 10 votes in favor were needed because of the Planning and Zoning Commission’s earlier deadlock. Only nine people voted in favor, with four no’s and one absent. The motion failed.

City buys old National Bank, plans to move city hall there

The City Council also approved a plan to purchase a historic building in Danville and move City Hall there.

It’s the old National Bank building. The plan is for the city to buy the building and close on the deal within the next few weeks, with city staff moving into the building within the next two or three years.

The city said the decision aligns with plans for downtown redevelopment, and the decision is more cost-effective than renovating the Robert E. Jones Municipal Building, which serves as the current city hall, and fixing its issues.

The roof has leaks, cracking walls, and a broken elevator. The HVAC system, while not incredibly old, has issues nonetheless and while most of the building is ADA-compliant, the bathrooms are not.

The plan is to demolish the Jones Building, along with Bresee Tower and the courthouse annex, opening the downtown area up for redevelopment.

The motion was unanimously approved.

Violent crime down in 2023, overall crime up due to property crime

In addition to ordinances and petitions to vote on, the City Council also heard a report on crime statistics for the City of Danville in 2023.

Police Chief Chris Yates, who was sworn in exactly five years earlier, presented the data in comparison to 2018. Since then, Yates said, he and the Danville Police Department have focused on violent crimes, devoting resources to data- and intelligence-driven policing. Officers were trained under the notion that they are a part of the community and are policing themselves.

While the overall crime rate in the city is higher than it was in 2018, city council members noted that the rise is due to property crimes. Violent crimes, Yates’ data shows, is down compared to 2018 — by 61%.

The violent crime rate per 1,000 people is down from 18.10 in 2018 to 7.62 in 2023. Yates clarified that this does not mean seven different people were the victims of violent crime; some violent crimes involved the same suspects and same victims, or vice versa.

The city recorded 12 homicides in 2018, 11 of which were gun related. That number was down to five in 2023, a 58% reduction, and only one homicide in 2023 was gun related.

“We saw a reduction almost immediately; however, it was status quo until last year and we will continue to work on it this year,” Yates said.

Overall crime, however has seen a sharp increase since 2018, going from 7.04 per 1,000 people to 58.07 per 1,000 people. This increase, however, is because of property crime like shoplifting.

“That’s probably the single largest driving factor of our crime rate here in town,” one council member noted. “So when people talk about you being a victim of a crime in Danville and how it’s much higher, I think someone stealing from Walmart is very different than someone getting robbed, raped or mugged.”

Yates’ data also showed that 145 guns were seized in 2018 after they were found to be criminally possessed, a number that has seen a slight decrease since then. There were 91 shots-fired incidents in 2023 compared to over 300 in 2020.

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