Urbana, Illinois Mayor Diane Marlin has frequently touted the importance of including neighborhood groups in the ongoing dialogue about police reform and community safety. At the City Council’s “Strategic Goal Setting Session” two weeks ago, the Mayor put great emphasis on the value of neighborhood associations being able to interface directly with City staff and elected officials.
The groups that the Mayor has referred to are, among others, the West Urbana Neighborhood Association (WUNA), the Southeast Urbana Neighborhood Association (SUNA), and the Historic East Urbana Neighborhood Association (HEUNA). In 2017, the City created a map showing eight different neighborhood associations in Urbana.
Mayor Marlin, February 22nd, 2022: “We now have a more robust list of our many different neighborhood organizations….So an action step would be, we need to promote communication and outreach with various neighborhoods.”
The Mayor acted as though the City was just beginning to initiate communication with many of these groups. On the contrary, the City of Urbana had rather strong ties with these neighborhood associations before Marlin took office. It was only after Marlin took the reins in mid-2017 that communication and cooperation efforts were abandoned.
The Urbana Community Alternative Policing (UCAP) Committee was established in 1993 by Mayor Todd Satterthwaite “to represent the residents in the UCAP area in matters pertaining to the policing”. The UCAP area refers to the northeast region of Urbana, very closely approximating Ward 3. Mayor Satterthwaite founded the Committee to “evaluate program effectiveness, set goals and discuss specific problems and potential solutions” in regards to issues of neighborhood policing.
On May 17th, 2018, Mayor Marlin said in a UCAP meeting that she wanted to merge UCAP with a different Urbana Board called the Mayor’s Neighborhood Safety Task Force. The Task Force was established by Mayor Laurel Prussing in February 2006.
After Mayor Marlin announced the UCAP merger in May 2018, the Task Force met on August 22nd and December 5th of 2018, but has not held a meeting since. One of the last topics of discussion at the December 5th, 2018 meeting of the Task Force were two armed robberies that had recently taken place in Urbana.
In July of 2020 Mayor Marlin, with much fanfare, announced the creation of an “Advisory Committee on Public Safety and Policing”. In her presentation at the July 27th, 2020 City Council meeting, Marlin said that the work would be so substantial that the civilian Committee members would need to be provided financial compensation – a proposition virtually unheard of in Urbana. At the same meeting, residents asked questions about the status of the already-established UCAP and Task Force committees, but no meaningful answers were given.
The new Advisory Committee was supposed to receive community input and craft ideas for changes to police policies and measures for oversight and accountability. Over nineteen months have passed, and the civilian Advisory Committee, which has since barely been discussed, appears to have been completely abandoned.
Meanwhile, the City webpage for the Mayor’s Neighborhood Safety Task Force has been updated to indicate that the “This Task Force is no longer in effect”. The change to the webpage was made on January 26th, 2022 by Bridget Broihahn, who acts as the Communications Specialist for the Mayor’s Office.
Despite the City web pages for the UCAP and the Task Force having been removed or almost entirely disappeared from public view, the City continues to post both committees on their organizational chart in the City Building. Check CU could not find any record of Mayor Marlin having discussed the termination of these committees with the City Council.
That makes a total of three different crime and policing-related boards that have been dissolved or abandoned by Mayor Marlin. Aside from the Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB), which only deals with complaints and does not discuss community safety or policing generally, there does not currently exist any Urbana board or commission tasked with these issues.
Check CU notes that the UCAP and Task Force committees last met in 2018 – long before the onset of the COVID pandemic. Though Mayor Marlin has made allusions to the pandemic disrupting City meetings, all other Urbana boards and commissions have managed to conduct regular meetings during COVID.
Though it cannot be found by navigating the City website, agendas and minutes for past meetings of the Urbana Community Alternative Policing (UCAP) Committee can still be seen here.
The Mayor’s Neighborhood Safety Task Force agendas and minutes can still be seen here. A playlist of past meeting videos can be found on the Illinois Documents YouTube channel: