The Champaign City Council approved $2,932,110.29 worth of vendor payments made through the month of April. Click on the links below to see the full check registers.

Don Gerard officially will become the mayor of Champaign tonight just after 7 p.m., when he is sworn in to office during the city council meeting. He issued a press release earlier today summarizing what his transition team found -- they have been meeting with city administrators during the past few weeks.

As I wrote for today's edition, Don Gerard will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday and Jerry Schweighart will serve his final day. Schweighart says he does not plan on being at that meeting, but he did make a few final remarks after last week's city council meeting, which was effectively his last.

Champaign's chronic flooding issues have gotten a lot of attention in the past few years: severe storms in the latter half of the past decade plagued some residents' properties until they asked city officials to do something about it.

I've been writing a bit lately about the Boneyard Creek, and I've wondered how that name came to be since I first moved to Champaign in 2006. It seems a little morbid for the channel that drains storm water for a large portion of Champaign-Urbana.

With just a few weeks left before he takes office, mayor-elect Don Gerard is preparing to take over as the city's top elected official. From a press release:

The city paid vendors $3,731,666.29 between Feb. 25 and March 31. You can view the check registers below.

Only about 30 minutes until the polls close, and I imagine the candidates are starting to get tense. I plan to be in touch with Champaign candidates throughout the night, so keep your eyes here as I do my best to keep you in tune with what the war rooms are like on election night.

A University of Illinois student has a video camera pointed at the wreckage resulting from last week’s fire on Green Street, and it is rolling 24/7 for anyone to see.