Prison Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody, to the City of Joliet Public Assets Committee meeting here in the Executive C-Hall Executive Conference Room. Today is Wednesday, 4-30, May 27, 2026. Can we have a roll call, please?

Councilman Clement?

Here.

Councilman Moreno?

Here.

And Councilwoman Ibarra is going to be absent.

Yep, she had a veterinarian issue with her new dog. Okay. Approval of the minutes. Approval of the minutes from 4-15-20-26. Do you have any questions or comments? I do not. I do not. Okay. Motion. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye to the minutes. Okay, citizens, have you heard on agenda items? I do not see any citizens here on any agenda items, so we will move on to agenda items. This is probably Blaine, right?

Yeah, Blaine Klein, Facilities Management Director.

Blaine Klein, Recommendation to Award Payment for the Ottawa Street Parking Garage Painting Project. to Cask Grove Construction Incorporation in the amount of $190,625. Blank?

Yeah, so as you guys know, as part of the continued beautification, specifically downtown, the Ottawa Street parking deck built in the late 70s will kind of be the main parking lot for a lot of the events downtown, especially at City Square. The exterior has not had a painting since... I was told sometime in the 90s, so we're approaching 30-plus years, so it's overdue. So we did seek three proposals. Cosgrove Construction was a low proposal, $190,625. There will be two coats of paint. They'll power wash first. Everything will be rolled because of conditions with the vehicles. We cannot spray it, so it will be hand-rolled. So they'll provide the lifts as well. We also had... Capital funds set aside. Our original estimates were actually $300,000, so we're well below the funds that we had set aside. So if there's not any questions, that's about it.

Juan, you have a minute? Yeah, just a quick question. If the concrete is a little chipped or anything like that, does that cover the repair of it? Yep. The little cement on it?

They'll do patching as needed. No major spots. We didn't see any, but yeah, there are some spots. Small things? Absolutely. Okay.

Does rolling add into the labor? I mean, could we not? I mean, obviously it does.

It does.

Could we not, like, spray on the weekend and close the deck? No way.

Only problem with weekend is there will be additional pay because of overtime. So it probably comes out as a wash per se. They may spray on the two alley sides because there's not necessarily parking on those sides. It's kind of the drive-in. So they'll use their judgment, but they did want to – Note that they will roll the two long sides just because if there's any wind, they didn't want to have complaints coming in on vehicles because it'll be done during the week.

And then my last comment, I wouldn't mind if we could, you know, it's going to go to council, maybe let the mayor and Beth, let's make sure we get the right color so we're not doing all this and then it's just not...

it doesn't fit yeah no the original proposal obviously nothing's been purchased was to paint it the same color that we just painted city hall last year which is there'll be a hair darker than what you currently see at the parking deck just because that's faded over time but we can cross that we'll get that button up next week that won't change their cost okay does anybody have any questions or comments

Okay, we have a motion to move this to the full council. Will that be on next week's?

Go right to Monday. Motion.

One motion is all second. All in favor? Aye.

That's all I've got.

Okay, does anybody have any new or old business, not for final action or recommendation, anything going on at the historical museum, prison, anything you want to touch on?

Yeah, sure. Greg Pierbal, Chief Executive Officer of the Billy Derry Historical Museum, just here wanting to give you guys another thank you for the support on the baseball game. In terms of a rainout where we got our you-know-what's kicked, you know, still a pretty cool game and a good time. So we were able to open up at noon, so I think people got to come in, do prison tours, see the game. So by the time the rain did come in, I think people were kind of, you know... At least I did not get a lot of complaints saying you took our money and we couldn't see this baseball game. Everyone appeared very happy. If there is feedback from you guys' side or the city side, certainly let us know. I'm sure we will get together for some kind of formal after action here pretty quickly. We think this event's scalable. We have been inundated with interest from people who want to use the field. So we are very quickly working up a policy proposal to do that so we can get games in this year and just kind of keep that good energy moving forward. Other than that, we got our facilities open seven days a week. We are rocking and rolling for the centennial. I know this is the last report I gave yesterday, quarterly to the Finance Committee. And this is January, February, March. So this is the low period. This is when we're dead. The prison still had in that time, which is pretty much just March, visitors from 27 states and 15 countries and jam-welcome visitors from 20 states and 13 countries between January and March. So that's only getting better now as the weather turns and We're really excited, meeting a lot of excitement for the centennial. People are coming from all over the world. People are very happy with what's in Joliet. And just give you a little example of that, and then I'll stop talking because we might have a record for shortest meeting. We were in Pontiac for a meeting today with Heritage Corridor, and the people in Pontiac said, you know, we used to see people first thing in the morning at, you know, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock and have our doors open, and now they don't come until after dinner. And the reason they don't come is because they're stopping and spending their day in Joliet, spending a longer time in Joliet than they ever were. So we're having an effect on what other cities are doing because things are going so well here and we have so much to offer. So you guys are all part of that, and we appreciate it. So thank you. In reference to the game, what was the attendance? 5,500 was the attendance, and that's ticket sales. Slammers have the data. We're excited to meet with them and look at that. They had to go right into their season, and we had to go right into ours because that was, you know. your kind of busy time is after that game. It kind of felt like we all needed to take a deep breath, but we didn't really have much time to do that. So, yeah, we're hoping to pull location data, kind of see who came from where, and, you know, how far. I know anecdotally we knew we had at least one international attendee from France at the game that night train met. And, of course, Bill Murray. We did not know that was going to happen, so... We were thrilled to death when that happened and hope you guys got a little face time with them. I don't know if you did or not. One for the books. The whole goal of that was to kick off the centennial and the big reason we applied to do that was for all intents and purposes a marketing exercise. We wanted to show everybody that Joliet's got a lot of stuff. It's ready. It can do big things like this just as much as any other city down the line can. Thank you.

Dustin? I'm okay. I got something to pray over there. Oh, okay. All right. Anybody have anything? No? Okay. We're going to move to public comment. I do not see anybody here from the public. So we'll move on to adjournment. Motion to adjourn? Motion to motion. I'll second it. All in favor? Aye.