A trip to Waukegan to an Illinois Municipal League meeting revealed in some disappointing news for Mayor Joe Judge and the City of Mt. Carmel. Judge explained the city is due to receive $300,000 in CURE federal stimulus money, but the state has decided that only cities or counties with a population of 500,000 or more gets to decide how to spend their funds. Instead for the vast majority of Illinois cities, they are made to wait for the release of money from the state’s department of economic opportunity who told municipalities to spend the money and then send them the receipts at which time a decision will be made whether the spending is approved. Judge said he felt progress was made during last week’s meeting….
Judge said an exact plan on how the money will be used hasn’t been set yet, but he pointed to Gibson County where money there was used to give 26 businesses almost $9,400 each to help get them back on their feet during the pandemic.