Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

After. Yes. Alright. It's 05:30 call in the order finance committee meeting here in City Chambers on Tuesday, 11/18/2025. Here in attendance is councilwoman Sherri Reardon, councilman Larry Hug, and myself Pat Budrin. Moving into the minutes, hope everyone had a chance to take a look. And can we get a motion?

Motion to approve

is presented. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Also, aye. Citizens to be heard on agenda I mean, on agenda evenings tonight, I see we have Officer TJ Gruber who might want to speak. He's working. Okay. Agenda items award of the professional service agreement for a citywide service level and staffing study by Refits in the amount of $156,500

Okay. This item is a organizational review of the city. And what it is going to do is look at all departments and desired service levels and staffing levels that are required to obtain that level of service. We went out for RFP for this. It had six people submit.

Two were shortlisted. We did interviews with two of the consultants and have selected Raphtellus to complete the study. There was a fee component of the proposal. And in this case, was $156,500 We're recommending moving forward with this. And basically what this is going to do is this is going to review all city departments staffing levels and determine what the appropriate level of staffing should be and if that's a mix of city employees or contractual services or both.

We're going to look at key metrics levels of service compare ourselves to peer communities and I'll also look at industry wide best practices. It's intended to provide short and long term goals for staffing and planning to ensure that we have the appropriate mix of staff members. And I don't want it to come across as this is just a study to look at adding people. This is rightsizing. So if we have not enough resources in one area, the recommendation will likely come back that we should add resources.

But there might be areas where we're operating at a very high level, and those resources can be reallocated to another location to help other areas and become more efficient in general. The key outcomes that we want out of this are, again, assessing the levels, types, and quality of city services, evaluating the adequacy of service delivery by city employees and contractors using industry metrics, identifying potential changes in services and staffing levels to meet the desired staffing level, recommending adjustments if necessary, to organizational structure, staffing plan, and service offerings in the short and long term. And finally, probably the most important thing, developing a detailed implementation plan that includes a timeline, action steps, and projected costs of each recommendation. So we can present that to the council, and then you can look at those and determine if these are steps you want to take based on the proposed cost, etcetera, etcetera. That's kind of a high level look at this.

It is not intended to be a dive into what individual employees are doing. This is a 5,000 look at city services and department organizations. So we're not going to be out following the man on the street figuring out what he's doing on a daily basis. This is I'll use public works as an example snow plowing. Are there metrics we should be hitting?

Do we have enough snow plow drivers to meet those metrics? Or do we need to add more? Or maybe we have too many and we can reroute and provide other services with those employees. So there could also be locations where there's overlap in some duties between departments. And this review will look at that and say, you're doing this twice.

Why are doing this twice? You can work more efficiently, have one group do it and then the other group reallocate those resources and that's kind of what we're shooting for here this was something I wanted to do for the Department of Public Works last year I talked about it with the administration and finance during our budget discussions and it was kind of expanded out to become a citywide study beyond just public works. Again that's kind of what we're looking to do here. Can answer any questions you might have on that.

Next question? I just wanted to ask, I mean, when you say industry matrix, I assume it depends on which department we're looking at. Like you referred to the snow plowing, we're talking miles of road and things And like in other areas, are we looking at number of residents? Are we looking at I mean, how does

that Yeah. I guess it's going to depend on the task and the department, right? So public works is infrastructure based. Finance is, you know

Finance. Yeah, finance based. And they're probably Funding.

Yeah, funding based. HR is a different animal also. Do we have enough people to appropriately manage the human resource needs of the number of employees we have for the city? That type of thing. So each department is going to have different metrics.

Raftelis has industry experts in all the different areas. There's a human resources one, finance, public works, public utilities, police, fire, etcetera. And those people are generally staff members who have worked in the public sector for a good portion of their career and then they've moved on and now they're doing consulting and review. So they have the expertise to see what has worked and what has not worked.

I think it'll be a great review.

Yeah. Expensive review. It was a 126,000?

150.

156,000.

I'm looking at it. We did this already once, at least for most of the departments, a couple of years ago. You know, we're consulting ourselves to death and spending a lot of taxpayer money. Greg, if you're a betting man, we'll make a bet. I'll bet you a dollar that's gonna come back and see if gotta hire more people. How many of the employees of this consulting firm, you said many of them are retired from public sector, how many of them are private sector retired where things are more demanding?

I can get you their resumes. I don't know off the top my head.

But you did know they were public sector?

Yeah. Because that was something they presented

to us.

Yeah. Right. Probably not many of any. There's probably a lot of,

you know, retired public sector bureaucrats who run this. Look. I voted against the last couple of budgets because we've added more than almost 11% we've added to this to our staffing in the last three years. It's out of control. I I don't know why we should waste money

on this because I would not support adding any

more positions. That's my position.

So Greg, you had mentioned that this agreement, I guess I should say, or staffing study, is in the budget. Is the 156 part of that in the budget?

Yes, it is. And we actually have more than that in here. There was also a facilities component, which we're not moving forward at this time. We wanted to get the staffing done first so that if it recommends we need x amount of employees, need to understand what sort of facilities we need for those. So there's more than this 156,000 in the budget, and I don't remember the number off the top of my head. I want to say it was like 250,000 total. Is that correct?

Yeah. And that's in the 25 the current budget. The current budget.

I hear you and your interview's conversation that this group somewhat specializes in governmental or municipality consulting or not necessarily?

They do a lot of work. They presented references for the public sector. I think they do private sector work, but I think they do a lot for public sector. They do, I think, generally organization reviews. But they have done a lot in the public sector, certainly.

Okay. One more question. Why would this I think things have changed. Why was this the first time we've heard about this? The council, in an advisory capacity at least, wasn't even part of establishing the scope of this study and so forth and so on. When we did it last time, the council was actively involved and brought it forward. Was very transparent the entire time. First I heard of it was now when we got it. So why weren't we involved in an earlier stage?

The intent is to get counsel input, citizen input, and input from businesses, etcetera, etcetera, when we're developing the study. I'm not sure, I guess, why you weren't informed previously. It wasn't as part of the budget. It was a line item in the budget. So it wasn't, I don't think, being hidden. But as far as why it wasn't presented beforehand, don't have a good answer.

Right. Why the council, even on committee level, wasn't included in the process of developing scope and other things. Like, we always have been in the past.

Yeah. I don't have

a good answer for that. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Moving to you wanna

make a motion? Or No. We have two of them. I'm gonna hand you back.

Okay. Movement number nine.

We're gonna need to separate them, though. Okay. Okay. Because I don't know if you wanted to take this one right now. What you

I do not. Okay. Resolution accepting the 2,025 powering the holidays grants from the Metropolitan Mayor's Caucus in the partnership with ComEd for the 2025 fiscal year.

Hi. Absolutely, I can speak on that. So the city of Joliet applied for a grant through the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus in partnership with ComEd to help power our Light Up the Holidays Festival. There were 80 applications that were received. 25 were chosen, us being one of them. And they're offering us $2,500 towards funds to light up any sort of decorations I believe it was chosen for the tree at the New City Square. And then we would do a $500 match, which is a requirement of the grant, in order to provide more holiday lights for City Square. Are there any questions?

No, I love the new tree, though. It looks great.

It really

is a great tree.

Is this the first time we received this, or the first time ComEd was offering this? Or how did we get lucky enough to get $2,500

So this is the first time we received it, pretty much just searching for grants out there. This came across my lap. So we applied for the city of Joliet,

and that's how we got it.

Thanks. Congratulations. Okay. Now we'll go with the agenda items. And could we get a motion and have them separated?

Okay. I'll make a motion to take agenda item nine thousand one sixty seven to the full council with our recommendation to approve.

I'll get a second. I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Opposed? No. Okay. I'll do a

motion to take agenda item 9,205 to full council with the recommendation from this committee to approve.

Do have a second?

Oh, yes, sorry.

All in favor? Aye. Reports. Mister Singh, would this be Yeah.

You? So you have the month October monthly financial report. So just some information on that. So 83% of the year is behind us. General funds got a surplus reporting at 14,900,000.0.

Once again, keep in mind that's largely due to property tax comes in two installments and then it gets spent down throughout the rest of the year. As the year progresses I do expect that surplus to decrease however I do expect to see a surplus but that's primarily due to sales tax, income tax and permits all trending better than budget. And then on the flip side, we do have some items under budget, you know, trending revenues trending less than budget, those being utility, replacement, hotel, motel. New for October was video gaming actually flipped. It was above budget.

It's now trending a little bit below. And then cannabis tax is also trending below budget. For expenses, I do see expenses are trending a lot under budget, but keep in mind, some of that is going to be project related. And so if that project is not paid in '25 and the projects have been approved by council, we will be including that in the carryover budget amendment. Similar to what you see, the current budget shown on this report shows a deficit of 1,000,000 point dollars Obviously, we adopted the budget, was not a deficit.

That's $1,000,000 worth of projects that we've carried into the twenty five year from '24. So sewer and water, revenues are actually trending better than budget. And and there expenses are slightly below. And then just as a reminder that surplus funds their capital improvements, and we've a lot of those coming up. And then parking, I was hesitant, I'm gonna say parking's trending better than budget.

The deficit is trending smaller than we had expected, So that's good news. I I do anticipate having a less of a deficit in parking this year even with the free coming on board on the street. But with those restrictions, I think we're seeing people move more with the cabs. So expect that to end the year a little better than expected. Still a deficit, but still losing money, but not as much.

Then you've got the exceptions. Once again, are the invoices that are in between meetings, generally stuff that's got lost in the mail, utilities, refunds to people, Tri County as well. Be happy to answer any questions on that.

I just have a parking question for you.

Yep.

Is there do you

have any availability to show that

more people are parking in the deck? Or are we just thinking that's where the extra money is coming from since we

Well, that's that's the only spot the money is coming from right now.

Nobody on the

street. I can get more information on that to quantify.

Yeah. We do we do do daily counts in there Mhmm. So we can quantify that. It's a little challenging to pull that data together, we can work on that

because it's There's hand been no change in the way we charge in the deck yet.

No. That'll be coming online shortly. It'll be a lot easier to run reports on Wednesday for Kevin once we're computer based as opposed to taking

The parking folks do tell us where the money comes from. So which parking lots, the deck, for example, so I can run that information for you.

Because we have no park well, do we have any parking lots that they pay in?

Yeah. We do. We've got a couple of commuter lots. Oh. And then there's some permitted lots. Here. Yep. Barrett's Lot is an example. Yeah. The the the non street still has a fee to it.

It still has a fee.

Yeah. And remember, the street now is two hour minimum maximum. I'm sorry. And so otherwise, you get a ticket.

So You think it's mostly confusion for people? And the kind of fear of, oh, I don't really know if I should park here? Know? Or

what do That I don't know. A little bit of both. But can run that and provide that to you.

So when they come into the city to complain about their ticket, who who handles that complaint?

Police Katie. Oh, legal. I'm sorry. The legal department.

Poor Katie.

Oh, Unfortunately, we have somebody

from legal here too. Maybe we could talk to her after

on TV.

Kevin, as you alluded to, we're at about $7,500,000

You and I

discussed this before. A little while ago, we were 11,000,000 It's up and down depending on where bill comes in. Generally, like you said, you anticipate, and I'm glad to hear that. It was a little

bit different. Yeah. Last night, I reported I anticipate ending the year at 2.5.

Right. And what we've shown is an increase in revenues. And what you're saying is we're trending up. You can't guarantee that next year. Well, in 'twenty two, couldn't guarantee it. It happened in 'twenty three. 'twenty three, we couldn't guarantee it. The trend is consistent. So I just want to make that clear and on record that the trend of going up is consistent. And unfortunately, there's people that have the mentality I think one person, I can't remember who it was, told me, spend it if you can get it.

No, that's not exactly what it Yeah. The trend is going up. What is unknown, though, is the level in which it's going up. And so when you look at the historical, some years it went up very much, some years it doesn't, not every revenue goes up and there's different forces. But in

your analysis, you've seen no year in the last three or four years, you've seen no year where anybody said, let's hold the line on spending that we had a big increase. We said, there it is.

We got it. Let's spend it. Am I correct?

Well, I'm saying that there's new expenses that come on board as a result Yeah. Of

we add 10 11% to the to to to the staffing of brand new positions. Not hiring vacant of new ones. Those are expenses we create.

Yeah. And I think that's where the staffing study comes in to determine whether or not that should be the case and whether we need those positions to provide the level of service that the council sets for. And so I think that's where, you know, while revenues go up, expenses go up because it's providing positions that are actually providing a service level to the community. You know, these aren't positions that people are just sitting around doing nothing. They're, you know, maintenance workers are providing service or contributing to provide a service to the community.

You mean, like, new positions with a second position in the party planning department? That kind of thing? What's it called? Cultural

affairs. Cultural affairs.

Yeah. So having a second position without even proving your first position was necessary. This is good conservative finance.

Well, I think there's a plan put put in place to provide those services, and maybe that and that sounds like information that we should get to you and what the thought is on adding that second position.

Regardless of any positions being added, we have raises every year in this budget.

Correct. Collective bargain agreements.

Contracted raises.

Correct.

Well, Pat, you do realize if we didn't add 11% of new positions, the increases would have covered those raises. Without raising, with still being able to give the tax break on the 1% to the senior citizens and everybody else for food, the increase in revenue didn't cover the current level, because we increased the level. Every time there's an increase in revenue, as a city, we said, let's add more people.

I disagree with you there. But I also feel that we have ignored our health insurance that is unfunded forever, that whenever we decide to do it, it's going put a big hit on that budget.

How does adding 11% to the staffing of brand new jobs, how does that address that?

I'd have to look closer with

our

finance director. But at the same note, we, the city, have brought more businesses, more activity. I can't say we've added more people, but I think we have

a demand for more services.

Yeah. I think we were there was a recent one. It was a surprising one that was actually leading. Was it Bolingbrook? Maybe it was Naperville. We've increased in the last five years. The estimate was 0.015%. So, no, there's not been a great demand in residential or business. There's not been a great demand in new services. And our services are met. Now, understand that across the board, our pay scale is above those of what we want to call comparable. You you can't look at an Aurora and say they have 100 more employees if they're paying 20% less. Those are considerations. These are other people's money that we're spending. You

know that. I don't need to tell you that. Well, I would like to say one thing that just in looking through this draft today, didn't I have a lot of time to do. But I've noticed that you are very conservative on what your projected revenues are for next year. And I compliment you on that. Not putting the pie in the sky like, oh, this is what we're going to make. I think that most of the line items were very conservative. So I I think that's a good thing.

Thank you.

So we don't think we're getting so much more money next year when we're really not. So, thank you.

I would agree. That's a great thing and too bad we can't be as conservative in projecting our spending.

There are no other questions. Move to travel.

So travel is actually one of the smaller reports I think we've reported on in the last couple of months. A lot of still a lot of public safety, primarily public safety related travel training and travel. One part I skipped over was the quarterly report for the museum. So they hosted over 10,000 visitors to their properties in the last quarter. A lot of it or most of it or over half was the self guided prison tours at 5,300. In addition to that 10,000 they also attracted 1,200 guests for their Cars Behind Bars event at the prison, so the car show at the prison. It's continuing to bring people into the downtown area.

Kevin, have they increased year over year on the number of individuals that actually come and and partake of their

I'd have to I'd have to look look at the compared to previous years, I'd to look

at that. Yeah.

I'd be curious maybe at the next meeting, know, the next question would be if they have, why are we still giving them money? Why aren't they solving if they're making more money? They get free rent. With that, we're not gonna take away from them, obviously. So if you can have that at the next meeting, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Do you look for the visitors 2025 compared to

prior years? And, actually, pass along maybe to Beth, you know, the city manager's department. I don't know if you guys have ever gotten one since you were on the council, but we got one years ago from we never got a thorough as one that I can recall from the museum, but we did from Rialto. And it was in-depth, and we drilled them. But long story short, 60,000 ticket buyers. And then we made them drill down to how many individuals was I say. It wasn't 60,000 individuals. You know, we there was conversation going on at the time. So I think it came out to be 25,000 unique individuals. We haven't had an in-depth report from them, from the Rialto or from the museum.

That was, I think, in 2015, 2014, 2016, somewhere when we had those reports. We really need to have those reports instead of the fluff reports that we're getting, which is just real, real, ethereal summaries. We need to know how many individual ticket buyers. Where are they coming from? They provided it before. You know, 20% were from the city of Joliet. 8% were from the village of Manhattan. Manhattan. Unincorporated, they this is what they provided for us at the time. There was a general a gentleman at the time that was in charge. I think you guys know him, Randy Green, who provided this because it was demanded that he provide it. And I'd like to see the same thing from both because they're spending, know, you considerable amount of tax dollars still every year.

Yeah. I'll just see what kind of information they collect. But

Yeah. But well, they did it once. You know? Tell them to go back and look at twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, and find out how they came up with that report. I remember the number to this day, 60,000. Because at the time, they were asking for $600 And a very simple person simple minded person said, talk to the booking agents and see how you can raise it $10 per ticket. There's your $600,000 Uh-oh. We can't do that. I said, yeah, you can. So these are the types of conversations we should be having.

I had somebody in finance that you may know, I don't know, who told me that he's actually got concerns about the economy and where the direction is going. Know, you may share those concerns. So, you know, the ones feeling that are the taxpayers, the residents. So if you can get those in-depth drill drilling down reports from both Joliet Historical Museum, the least they can do. We're giving a lot of money.

Yeah. I'll see what information they collect to see what they have the ability to do.

Because, Larry, as you know, Venue Works now runs it. They have been collecting some information. So yeah. But you could get

Good point. So maybe they don't they're not gonna track it as deeply as it was. And if they don't, they should. We We need to tell them they need

to I guess we'd like to

hear why you're not. Sure. I mean, they're a corporation, he's just following corporate rule on whatever they're doing at the rest of their theaters.

I would think at all their theaters, like any

of us, we'd like to have as much information as we could. Absolutely. And I would think they would be target marketing the audience.

And you're a private sector guy. So I'm Sherri, private sector woman. So you know that generally speaking, 99% of the time, sector companies collect more detail than the public sector does. By far. Because they're spending their own money.

Yeah. Trying to make a living. Exactly. Okay. If there's nothing else, Mr. Singh, maybe we can move to position reports.

Gina? Good evening. So for the positions that we have open, not including police and fire, there are approximately 18 open positions as of the date of submission of the report. We have one additional opening since the report was submitted. And as far as positions that have been filled, to date, not including police and fire, again, we've filled approximately 43 positions. And our HR director will be starting on Monday. So I want to make note of that. Do you have any questions?

What is the new position that is not on our report that has become vacant?

That is the grants coordinator, the CDBG? CDBG.

All

right. Thank you. You're welcome.

If there's no other questions on that, move to new or old business, not for final action.

Nothing.

Nothing there? Then any public comment would be appropriate at this time. Seeing none, ask for a

Motion to Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thanks, everyone.