Prison Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, at this time I'll call to order the City of Joliet Public Service Committee meeting for Monday, July 20th, 2026. First order of business is always roll call. Councilman Raritan? Here. Councilman Mudren? Here. Councilman Hugg, I am here. Next would be approval of minutes. We have the minutes from the public service meeting of July 6th, 2026. Pat, you were not able to make it because of traffic. Correct. So it's just you and me. Any changes or edits or anything, Sherry?

No. Okay.

Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the public service minutes from the July 6, 2026 committee meeting as presented. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Showing none. Are there any citizens to be heard on the agenda items? I see we have a citizen. Nothing. Okay. Then we'll move right into contracts. And we have quite a few. Yeah. All right, 352, approval of purchase for one, AX17 Vermeer Chipper from Vermeer Illinois Incorporated in the amount of $119,527.78.

The 2026 budget includes funds for the purchase of a tree chipper for the roadways division. Vermeer Illinois is the vendor we've used for this and is a territory supplier for this product. We did receive source well pricing which is the government bidding consortium on this so from the standard pricing to the source well pricing it was about a $11,400 discount this chipper will would be utilized by roadways for Tree limb clean up storm clean up that type of thing and we are requesting approval This is a 17 inch chipper so we did look at larger ones, but based on past experience We feel like the larger ones tend to get beat up by the large limbs. So this is the size we're comfortable with here questions or comments

353 approval of a professional services agreement for on-call engineering and surveying services with geotech incorporated and twig technologies each in the amount not to exceed $50,000

Yes, so we went out for an RFP for Survey and Engineering Services to help supplement our staff with topographic surveys, boundary surveys, construction plans, and design support and whatnot. Again, this will help supplement our staff with some of our current retirements we're trying to pick back up where we left off. And we would use this on an on-call basis. At this point in time, we'd like to see that moved to council for approval.

Okay, questions, comments? I just had one. The way it's reading, is it $50,000 per? Per consultant, yes. All right, thank you.

And didn't Twigg used to be called something else?

Yes, they were Rudiger and Tennelly.

Oh, the old Rudiger and Tennelly? Yes. 354, approval of professional services agreement for the North Point traffic impact study review with Strand Associates in an amount not to exceed $100,000.

Yes, so as you're aware as a part of the settlement agreement between the city center point north point There was a traffic impact study that needed to be reviewed by all parties In the settlement agreement has specific timelines to get these done This is a 60-day turnaround for us with this size of traffic impact study is not it's not in our wheelhouse As far as the city staff goes, it just takes too much of our time. So we outsourced to Strand. Strand is one of the three that was listed within the settlement agreement that could do this, that was approved through the settlement agreement. We will be starting that very soon, if not already, but we are looking to have this approved through council.

We're getting reimbursed, right? Yes, sorry.

Yes, I missed that part. Yes, we're getting reimbursed through North Point.

Thank you. Okay. 355, award of contract for the 2026 City of Joliet Sidewalk Replacement Program, West of Larkin, to Davis Concrete Construction Company, in the amount of $1,106,778.11.

Yes, so this is one of two sidewalk program contracts that we're going to get out this year. This is the first. The other one will be coming later on the year. We're waiting for some grant language that needs to go in the contract in order to get that out. But this is for everything west of Larkin. We had three sealed bids, P.T. Farrow, Austin Tyler, and Davis Concrete. Davis Concrete was the low contract. It was 10% above the engineer's estimate, but we will make sure that stays under the threshold that we need as we go through it. And at this time, we'd like to see that moved to council for approval.

Questions or comments? All right. 357, approval of biosolids application spring lease payments to Anderson Farms in the amount of $24,000, to O'Ram Farms in the amount of $37,800, and to Hummerding Farms LLC in the amount of $27,000, and to James Fleischman in the amount of $51,600.

So as a little bit of a refresher on the end products of wastewater treatment, you end up with the effluent, like the water stuff that goes back to the rivers, streams, and then we have this bio-solids material. The bio-solids material has organic qualities to it that makes it an asset for farmers. So it has nutrients in it. So what the city does is we contract with farmers to pay them. It's $150 an acre. it's for the tillage that they need to put the bio salads into the ground and then the we also do a another 150 per acre if that we get them past the prime planting season and with how the schedule works we get the the bio salads to a handful of farmers before that date and then a handful after And when they plant later in the season, it just reduces their yield a little bit. So that helps offset the cost. And so with that, the names that you read are the different farmers that we have contracted with to put the biosolids on. And so this memo is to approve the payments to these various farmers.

Questions or comments? Is it safe to say that these are all pretty crappy contracts?

There's lots of good jokes.

The question I have, are there standards on what can be in those biosolids?

Yes, so there's standards.

Wasn't there a problem some years ago, I don't know if it was Joliet or some other community, where they have fiberglass or something?

That hasn't hit my radar. But the fields are monitored, and then there's, like, lifetime limits that you can put on these things. So after so long, you can only have so much of this type or that type of nutrient or whatever.

Okay. Let's see. 358, purchase of water metering equipment from Korn and Main LP in the amount of $126,900. Okay.

So this is purchased for water meters for development. And so these get reimbursed. So we set up this organ object number that's a reimbursement fund. So we pay for them out of this fund. And then as developments come in, they buy these meters. And those funds go back to this development or this reimbursable fund. The purchase is from Core and Main, who is the sole source provider of the census meters.

Questions or comments? No. 359, award contract number 2987-0726 for the Hickory Creek and East Interceptor Multisensor Inspection to Taplin Group in the amount of $299,168 and an award of professional services agreement for field inspection services to RJN Group Incorporated in the amount of $56,400.

So this project is kind of like exciting in that it means that we completed something we're working on for a while. So in the city's sanitary sewer management plan for the last years, we've been completing small diameter sewer cleaning. And so that's mostly like residential type areas and we've got lots of those areas. So in 2025, we completed the small diameter cleaning and now we're going to go towards the large diameter. with that where we're targeting is the Hickory Creek interceptor and the east interceptor and so we're going to clean and TV those sewers and those type of sewers often collect debris because you know it all channels to them and so in order for us to be able to put together a good bid with strong quantities as to how much debris has to be removed we're doing this process called a multi-sensor inspection which is like a lidar type technology that will measure how much debris is in the sewer and then what it also does is it assesses the pipes too so that if we see structural deficiencies we can address them in the following project also So we advertised a project to bid. We've got some very different bid prices. One came in, Taplin Group came in at just under $300,000. National Power Riding came in at a little less than $1.6. And yeah, so Taplin Group has done this work for other communities in the region. and we like to recommend a word to them and again once we have this information from this it lets us bid out our our next sewer cleaning televising contract with strong quantities so that the contractors know exactly how much materials in the sewer so

Questions or comments?

Those numbers really were all over the place. The engineer's estimate and then the one company, one point something. I'm like, what is going on here?

And you described it as exciting. Right now, my wife, my son and I are painting our basement. You're welcome to come over and watch it.

Does that accrue comp time by chance?

No, you know what? I get excited about these things too. I've been on this committee too long. 360, a water professional services agreement for the sanitary sewer rehabilitation for the 2027 water main replacement program to RJM Group Incorporated in the amount of $52,400.

So as you know, every year we're doing a water main replacement program. And so this is for the 2027 projects. So we have the 2027 water main projects identified. Those are under detailed design. And in the process, we also have the sewer televising completed for the areas. And so this contract with RJN Group, the engineering, is to do two things. One, it's to review the footage that we've already been collected. So we can identify any repairs that are needed in the sanitary sewer in that area so that we can put those repairs in the water main contract. And then the other item is that EPA requires that any water mains installed are at least 10 feet away from sanitary sewers. And there's a number of sections of pipe where we can't meet that distance without tearing up significant trees or things like that. So in those scenarios, we will line the sanitary sewer, and that allows us to be closer than 10 feet. And it's one of those things that most of the sanitary sewers will need to be aligned eventually anyway because of the materials. So it's not just a waste of money to do that just for the EPA purposes, but it actually helps strengthen and revitalize our sanitary sewers. So with that, this is the RJN group is the vendor that's going to do all that. We selected RJN from RFP a couple years ago for sanitary sewer rehab services.

Question or comments? And that's a not-to-exceed number, right?

Correct, yes.

365, award contract number 2985-0626 for the Minton Road lift station replacement project to Austin Tyler Construction, incorporated in the amount of $590,075. Great.

So this is a lift station in the previous Southeast Joliet Sanitary District area, of which we now own and maintain. This is being funded by some free money from, just joking, Larry. I want to see your reaction, Larry. I know. This is from the Congressionally Directed Spending Program. So this is grant funding. So we're paying for it and getting reimbursed. Again, we have a reimbursement job number here. So we advertised the project. We got bids ranging from $590,000 to $750,000. Low bidder was Austin Tyler Construction, and we'd recommend award to Austin Tyler.

Questions or comments?

Okay.

Sir, I declare you out of order for that statement. One more time and you're out of it. That's the last item under contract.

Okay. Under contract, I'd like to move to the full council with our approval. Item number 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, and 365. Okay.

Second. I have a motion and a second for the items under contracts 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, and 365 all be sent to the full council with this committee's recommendation to approve. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Showing none. We'll move on. I'll tell you what, if they say anything about us, I can't say we're not thorough on our motions. Change order to pay estimates and final payments, 361. Approval of change order number two for the railroad street water main improvement project of P.T. Farrell Construction Company. This is a deduction in an amount of $417,544.90.

Yeah, so this is a bit of a housekeeping for EPA purposes We have to do these change orders even though and then we'll have final payments coming up But we have to do the change orders to keep all the contracts current so we can get our reimbursement money so with this this is just so the work has been completed and This is a deduction just basically for unused quantities that were used in the project Yeah

362, approval of change order number one for the lowest place lift station rehabilitation to Aries Incorporated in the amount of $20,958.83 and final payment number four in the amount of $48,540.39.

Correct. Yeah, so this is the change order number two for a deduct, and it's kind of the same thing as the last one. So the work's completed, and a little bit of housekeeping just to keep the change orders up to date.

Questions or comments? 363, approval of change order number three for the Hagee Park Water Main Improvement Project at P.T. Farrell Construction Company. Again, this is a deduction of $272,352.78. Housekeeping.

Yes, this is housekeeping. It's completed. There's some extras that had to be added, and this is for final payment also.

Okay. And number three, are there any questions or comments?

I just had a question about the one right before. Was that a deduct? You said a deducted. I don't see any.

Let's see so the 62 62 the three six one dash 26 Yeah, I saw that but oh no, I'm sorry, yeah, I misspoke if that's yes I Wanted to be yeah a little too excited in the DLX there.

Yes.

All right, so

The final item under the heading would be 366, approval of change order number one for the Glenwood and West Acres Water Main Improvement Project to Austin Tyler Construction in the amount of $218,240.10. I think we had one get out of order here.

Which one are we on?

366. Glenwood and West Acres. Glenwood and West Acres Water Main Improvement Project, changer number one for Austin, Thailand.

Did we get 363? Yes. Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

Yes, because Member Sherry asked about the one before it.

Yes, there we go.

OK. She was lobbying for another deductive. Sorry about that, yeah. And I appreciate that.

I move my files around here. Great. Yes. So with this guy, the change order one, the amount of 218. And oh, yeah, OK. This is the one for we previously went to council. It was last session or two. So at the high school, we had a meter pit that got moved from one project to the other. So we did the IGA for that. And then this is to do the change order for it. So the the change order amount is basically just moving funds from one contract to the other the work was previously in the Larkin project and got moved to the Glenwood and West acres and then with this one the school of this $218,000 the school will be reimbursing us about forty eight thousand five hundred for some work some private work on their facility that made sense just to roll into our projects and

Everybody follow that? Mm-hmm. All right. No questions or comments? That's the final item. We're going to change orders, pay estimates, and final payments.

Okay, so under change orders, pay estimates, and final payments, I'd like to recommend moving items 361, 362, 363, and 366 to the full council with our committee recommendation to approve.

I'll second that motion. I have a motion and a second under change orders, pay estimates, and final payments to send items 361, 362, 363, and 366 to the full council with the committee's recommendation to approve. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Showing none, we can move on to ordinance and resolutions. 371, ordinance accepting a $3.5 million grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Joliet I-80 to Splains River Bridge Community Plan and amendment of the 2026 budget to receive and expend grant funds.

this item is related to the interstate 80 project currently underway being reconstructed by idot specifically the relocation of the bridge over the displanes river so idot had started a process to look at mitigation efforts for residents who were affected by the relocation of the bridge they conducted i guess what i'd call a preliminary study Then they gave the city $400,000 to further vet those ideas, and ideas that came out of that were a walking and biking trail connecting that neighborhood south of McDonough there to areas further to the north, some lighting, some improvements at Varnado. Am I saying that correctly? Varnado. I get it wrong every time. Varmadale Park and then some traffic calming measures along Water Street. And again, that was a $400,000 grant to vet those. We're at the point where we're nearing the completion of that community outreach and ready to move into potential construction of these items IDOT has given or is proposing to give the city a grant of 3.5 million dollars to complete construction of those items so this is a ordinance to accept the grant and then further amend the budget to be able to spend it this item wasn't included in the 2026 budget as we did not know when we were going to get this agreement proposed

Questions or comments? Greg, thank you for not calling it free money. I've learned my lesson. You know, this must be part of the $58 billion record budget that's 25 times higher than inflation increases. So I guess we should be thankful as city people, but not as Illinois residents. All right, 372, ordinance amending the 2026 annual budget for the final payment for the Joliet Multimodal Transportation Center 1B bus station. In the amount of $383,589.39.

This item is final payment for the Transportation Center project and we'll close out that project. This one has hung on for so long because the contractor who was working on this became insolvent and the bonding company took over. There was a lot of hoops to jump through and hurdles to get over with documentation and other items. This final payment in about in the amount of well, we'll say three hundred eighty three thousand and six hundred dollars or so Will be reimbursed by pace Through a grant that they had put towards the project. So we'll make this payment and then we'll be reimbursed by Pace for that amount and the project will finally be closed and off the books. I

And, Councilman, this was the subject of litigation. I think we had lawsuits from 12 different subcontractors on this case because the general didn't pay its bills, and we got a notice that a receiver out of Cook County had been appointed. So that's one of the reasons it took so many years to get rid of all those lawsuits. It was multi-years in the making.

I kind of vaguely remember now that you bring that up. Right. I do remember that. All right, 373, ordinance authorizing approval and execution of a class action settlement agreement in Musa et al. versus the city of Joliet, Will County, case 22LA334, consolidated with 22CH196. So this is mine.

The actual details of this ordinance, they're pretty complicated. There's a Supreme Court case. There's issues of municipal code, vehicle code, city ordinances, and home rule. But at the end of the day, it's a class action where the class is set up for a total amount of $2,039,786.79. But that's not the true amount. The true amount is a little over 1.7. The reason why it's not the 2 million is we didn't collect the whole 2 million. So when we gave tickets to these truck drivers, you don't collect 100% of it. A lot of it's in collection. And then when we found out that this lawsuit was happening, we didn't collect it. The real amount that we're going to have to pay is 1.7. There's fees. Since this is a class action, there's going to be an administrator appointed. So it shouldn't be much more than the 1.7, but that's kind of the ballpark of what we're talking about here. To get down to the nitty-gritty of why we're settling this, is we didn't follow our own ordinances. So in the whole procedure, there's a case, Camacho versus the city of Joliet. And beyond that, back in 2011, there was another case out of the first district, Cadham. Camacho ruled for the city in 90%, but then it went back to our own ordinances. And 3.5 of our ordinance indicates that any traffic offense required reporting to the Secretary of State shall be returnable to Will County Courthouse. there's a provision in the vehicle code that basically any CDL driver, they get their infractions reported to the Secretary of State. So we didn't have jurisdiction administratively to prosecute these offenses. Based on state law or local ordinance? It's everything. So our local ordinance said, this is what we're supposed to do. Anything reportable to Secretary of State, we are supposed to prosecute that at the courthouse. We didn't do that. We did it administratively, probably in this room here. And so not filing our own ordinances, the Supreme Court says you don't have jurisdiction. And that's one reason. Generally, the Tort Immunity Act says they have to sue us within one year. But how this came down is there's an exception when it's a refund claim. And there's also a provisional law called void ab initio. So if you don't have jurisdiction from the beginning, the whole case doesn't exist. And they can go all the way back to the beginning of it. So because it's a refund and because we didn't have jurisdiction, the statute of limitation does not apply.

Moving forward, if we change the ordinance, if I asked if it was state statute or ordinance or both, could we go back to collecting that safely?

Are you talking tickets that are issued tomorrow? Yeah, moving forward, not the old ones. Yes, we can. And actually, there's a very recent case. The city of Chicago is administratively adjudicating their actual overweight. Our offenses, where our code was a gross vehicle weight rating. So it's more of a, every car has a weight, whether it's a pickup truck or a small car or a semi. And these semis were essentially over the rating for these roads. So it wasn't a difficult case to prove. Most overweight you think of, you have to pull into a station and they get on the scale and it's X amount, and that's the overweight. Where these, the truck could be empty. But the rating was above what the road was rated for. So they were giving the tickets based on just a weight rating system. So the other way that the actual overweight, the city of Chicago right now, they're administratively adjudicating they're overweight. So they're hitting guys with thousands of dollars in fines. And basically what Camacho said is a home road municipality can do that as long as it follows its own ordinances. So we can go back to doing that, but we have to clean up the ordinance. Correct. Are we looking into that at all in the legal department? We are. I want you to give me more information. Well, I've been involved in this case for several years, and I can go back to our code and think this is what I need to change. So I wanted this to settle first, and then... because of the camacho case there's some bills in springfield trying to take our home rule authority away um under division 2.1 and enforce the cadham decision so before we go through the whole process of rewriting it thinking how is this going to affect us um you know i'd like to see how the state legislation will pan out as well are you telling me that illinois is actually trying to curtail

Local governance? Wow.

Wow, I'm shocked.

Happens. Let's talk about zoning next. Yeah. All right, thank you. Any questions or comments for our learned counsel? You made a very good, very simple explanation for a complicated problem.

There's much more I could say. I think you said enough, for me at least.

All right, 375, resolution accepting a grant of construction and drainage easements from Mount Zion Church for the Ontario Street Drainage Improvement Project.

Yes, so there's three easements, a couple permanent, a couple temporary, as you see in there, related to a stormwater project that we're doing near Ontario Street. This will help some of the drainage issues that have been happening near the Mount Zion Church area. I've recently met with them on a couple occasions to go through the easements, and they went through and signed everything at this point, so we're looking to process these through to Ontario. formalize it here and then we will do construction later on this year with the small storm sewer project to help mitigate some of those issues that they see 376 resolution approving a memorandum of agreement between the city of Joliet and the Illinois EPA for the property located at 14 West Clinton Street

During the construction of the city square project an underground storage tank was encountered in Clinton Street under the sidewalk not unusual for Buildings of that age in that era to have heating oil tanks located in the vaulted sidewalk. So we had to remove it the tank was removed disposed of according to IEP a requirements and they issued a letter of no further remediation so there's no further action we have to take at this point but we do have to complete the memorandum of agreement with them for the process it has a few actions that we would need to take should we transfer this property this right away or we sell it to someone or give jurisdiction to another State agency like I dot or something. I don't foresee either of those things happening in this case But that's part of the requirement there the items that we would have to complete would be notify IPA that we're intending to transfer the property and give IPA copies of the deed and recorded land use limitations and make sure that Arrangements are made that any portion of the property that transfers is subjected to those land use limitations basically we have to notify any entity or mean agency that we're transferring this property to of this issue and any sort of limitations and There wasn't any contamination plume found or anything like that. I think there was some old heating oil in the bottom of this tank, but other than that, it was not a complicated environmental issue.

Questions or comments? The only question I have is it belonged to a building, right?

It did at one point, yeah.

Are we going to recoup any of the money from the building always?

No, there is an underground storage tank fund established through the state. We'll recoup a portion of that. But this would have been adjacent to where the library had that small parking lot previously, and I don't even know what building was there previous to that or when it was removed.

Oh, so this belongs to a building that doesn't exist anymore.

Correct, yeah. The building's long gone. All right.

Thank you.

382 resolution accepting amendment number one for the license agreement from Metro for the Washington Street water main improvement project yes this is kind of a housekeeping item here so we have an agreement with Metro to put a water main under their tracks and we're just changing the installation method from jacking to open cut and that's what this is for questions or comments

383, resolution approving intergovernmental agreement with the Village of Shorewood for gravity sewer line oversizing payment and capacity for the Lasser Diversion Sewer.

Yes, so this memo is at the Rock Run collection project. There is a sanitary sewer being installed, and we're upsizing it so that Shorewood can use it also to send future additional wastewater to us through there. They are through the rock run collection They bid it out and then they bid it with an extra to upsize it to the volume that Shorewood asked for So they are paying the difference. So this is the IGA To put that agreement together between the city and Shorewood and then Shorewood will then owe us I'm sorry. I'm saying that incorrectly here So, yeah, so IGA with the Village of Shorewood for gravity sewer payment capacity in the amount of $130,000 to Cullinan Properties, yes.

Shorewood will pay that. Did you have questions, comments? I'm sure I don't. And then once they do, if they do utilize it with their own future development, they'll be charged based on volume, right?

Yes. Yeah. So we, yeah, we currently do. Yep. There's a, there's a very long back answer I could say, but we, they already bought so much capacity from us. Then we still owe them some of that. But then for additional after that, they'd get charged more or renegotiate that. But yes.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments? No? Then we will move to the last item, 385. Resolution authorizing execution of an intergovernmental cooperation agreement between the City of Joliet and the Joliet Park District. Emergency shower facility access during extended water service disruptions.

And I'll take this one on. This is for the Southwest Joliet Sanitary District. It's IGA with the Park District so that if their water goes out, they can shower and use the facilities.

All right. Is there a cost involved?

No.

That's nice. That's nice that two taxing bodies can work together. If there's no other questions or comments on any of the items, that was the final item, folks.

Still under ordinance and resolutions, I'd like to move the following to the complete council with our recommendation of approval. 371, 372, 373, 375, 376, 382, 383, And 385.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to send the items under ordinance and resolutions 371, 372, 373, 375, 376, 382, 383, and 385 to the full council with committee recommendation to approve them. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Showing none. We can move on to new or old business not for final action recommendation. Is there anything from the committee members? No. Anything from staff? Then we can move on to public comment. Anybody like to make any public comments at this time? Seeing none, we can move to the final item, which is adjournment. Motion to adjourn. Second. I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Showing none. We're done. Thank you, everyone.