The Champaign City Council will finalize changes to the current debt policy at its Tuesday meeting and vote to approve additional changes that were proposed by council members at the Jan. 29 study session. 

At the Jan. 29 study session, Richard Schnuer, finance director for Champaign, presented several changes to the language of the current debt policy. These changes included listing guidelines for hiring a financial adviser and explicitly stating the desire to work with minority- and female-owned businesses in contracted work. 

During Schnuer’s presentation, council members also suggested making additional changes to the language of the policy, which are reflected in the bill they will discuss Tuesday. 

Karen Foster, council member at-large, said she suggested two of the three additional changes at the study session. The changes dealt with removing a double negative that was placed in the “Purpose” section of the policy and “clarifying the range of savings under which the City would refund debt,” according to a city memorandum. 

“It was very important to have these procedures spelled out, so I was happy to see (the changes),” Foster said. 

The third change, suggested by council member Marci Dodds, District 4, involved the standard contract period for keeping a service provider from “several years” to a more concrete “five years.” 

Foster said that changes to the debt policy happen very rarely, with the last revision occurring in 2001. 

“It’s taken them a year to rewrite this,” Foster said. “There’s been a lot of activity on it, and (the city) has been short-staffed.”