The Charleston City Council voted on an agreement to enter into a debt recovery program with the state of Illinois on Tuesday.

The program will allow the state to pay the debts of a person from any reimbursements they are going to receive.

Mayor John Inyart said the program became available last year and allows the city to collect money through the state after all the other collection means have been exhausted.

Inyart said the previous issue with this program was the computer system to regulate program.

He said when the law was enacted there was a lot of work that went into keeping program running.

“There was not a software, there was not really a way to track this easily,” Inyart said.

Scott Smith, the Charleston city manager, said Lake Land College has been working on a program that could keep track of the collections.

They have been working on the software since last year.

“They have improved that and made it much more easy and effective for us to use,” Smith said.

Inyart said he does not see any problems with the program.

“As long as we’ve got a mechanism in place that we can use, we plan to take full advantage of it,” Inyart said.

The council also granted a zoning variance to PP & W Properties for their building plan at 1919 9th Street.

Inyart said the company wanted to build a building with eight two-bedroom units.

The zoning of that area would allow for a building with four four-bedroom apartments.

“The size of the building would be the same, the number of bedrooms would be the same, but they would just have to be split up into four four-bedroom apartments,” Inyart said.

The building proposal was approved by the Zoning Board, who recommended to the council to approve it.

Inyart said this is similar to other variances they have approved previously.

They also approved the sale of three out-of-service police cars and seized motorcycle.

The items are a 2005, 2006, and 2009 Ford Crown Vic and a 2000 Suzuki GSX-R600.

The council also voted to approve a no parking zone on the inside of the Tarus Loop.

The outer part of the loop will allow parking and there is enough parking off the street.

A no parking zone has also been added for the inside of the curve on Kenton Street.

Inyart said the zone will be about two house long and will improve visibility on the street.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.