Greg Knott, a member of the Champaign County Board since 2000, has announced that he will resign from the board after Thursday's regular board meeting.

Knott, a St. Joseph area Republican, is running for a seat on the Parkland College Board of Trustees in the April 5 election. In his resignation letter to county board Chair C. Pius Weibel, Knott said he wished "to devote all my energies towards this goal."

"For as busy as I've been with this campaign I was concerned about missing too many (county board) meetings," Knott said Wednesday.

Republican precinct committeemen from County Board District 4 (generally the southeast quadrant of the county) will choose Knott's replacement within a month, said state Rep. Jason Barickman, who also is chair of the Champaign County Republican Party.

"We absolutely want to have a replacement by the March meeting" of the county board, Barickman said, when members are expected to vote on construction of the controversial Olympian Drive highway project north of Urbana.

Barickman said he is not aware of anyone interested in the county board seat, "but I would expect that there would be some interest from among the people in the St. Joseph area."

Knott, too, said he thought the appointment was "wide open."

"I'm not aware of anyone right now. A couple of people I thought might want to look at it, it turns out it just wasn't the right time for them," he said.

In his letter to Weibel, Knott wrote that he believed the county board had had "some great accomplishments over the last 11 years."

Knott has been the caucus leader of the 12 GOP members on the county board in recent years.

"I am proud to have played a key role in the successful voter referendum on reducing the size of the county board, the establishment of the map redistricting commission, building  of the new courthouse and county nursing home," he wrote to Weibel.

"I have appreciated your leadership and friendship through the years in many of the difficult situations we worked on together. We demonstrated that putting aside partisan differences in the name of accomplishing the work of the citizens is possible in this day and age."

Knott, 44, is business manager at the department of food science at the University of Illinois. He is married and has two children.