Prison Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody, to the City of Joliet Public Assets Committee meeting here in the Executive Conference Room. Today is Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 4 o'clock. Can we have a roll call, please?

Councilman Clement?

Here.

Councilman Marino?

Here.

And Councilwoman Ibarra is going to be absent.

Yes, she's let us know that she just brought her dad home from a procedure from the hospital there, so she will not be making it. Okay, approval of the minutes. Did everybody have a chance to review the minutes from May, May, right? Yeah, 27, 2026, the public assets minutes. Did everybody have a chance to review those? Motion to approve. Yep, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Citizens to be heard and agenda items. I do not see any citizens here and any agenda items, so we'll move on to agenda items. Blaine Klein.

Yeah, Blaine Klein, Facilities Director for the City of Joliet. First item is seeking a recommendation to approve the purchase of a caterpillar generator for the Publiferk Cedarwood facility to Altorfer Power Systems in the amount of $163,379.84. Cedarwood Public Works is one of the three facilities that the Public Works staff works out of. They currently do not have a generator. Most recently, one of the storms, I believe in June, did knock out power to that area, so it is critical for that facility to have backup power so that they can serve in any situation, but especially when an emergency does pop up in the city. So this was put out, the pricing is via SourceWell, so that accomplishes the bidding process through that. It includes a discount of being SourceWell members. This includes the actual generator, the electric hookup, transfer switch, gas, load bank testing, everything is included in this. So are there any questions?

So this facility has never had one in the first time? Have we ever had like major issues with it that now we're doing it or after X amount of years they made it work?

Yeah, so this last storm did prove challenging for public works just because they were not able to field phone calls and direct some of the staff out to the areas that most needed help with the storm. It was June. So not only were they struggling to get out to folks, they were struggling to get into their facility, unfortunately. So this will provide them the opportunity to keep that facility running 24 hours a day if there were to be another storm or anything like that. Any power outage for that instance? Anything else?

And the life on these generators, they're like 20 years, aren't they?

Now they should get you 25 to 30. Yeah, it's natural gas, so brand new product. 20 years would be a minimum. We should be looking at 25 to 30.

Okay, if we don't have any more questions or comments, do we have a motion to bring this to the full council? Motion to approve. I'll second it. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you, so the second item is a recommendation to award contract 2990-0726 for the City of Joliet Facilities Grounds Maintenance 2026 through 2029 to Duke's Landscaping Services in the amount of $878,996. So this is for 15 facilities that the city owns that would be providing weekly grass cutting along with fertilizer application, tree and shrub pruning, mulch applications, litter pickup, weed pulling, spring and fall cleanups, and seasonal flower watering to many of the plants that you see in the downtown area. This is work that is already being done by a contractor, so this isn't new work, it's just being put out to bid. In the past, it's paid as a monthly as needed. I can speak to, as of a week or two ago, we've spent about $130,000 on these type of items. So this number falls in line with that amount that was found in the bid. This was put out to bid. It was advertised in the Herald News on June 5th. We did have a mandatory pre-bid that two people did attend, and then sealed bids were open, and this was the only bid and the low bid, obviously. Our estimates put it at around $525,000 for two years. The reason that we put it out to bid now was so that we could incorporate what city square was. So we did wait until that was finished. So all of the beds in city square that have all landscaping, that's all included in this also. So that's for fertilizer application, weed pulling, any dead shrubs they'll take out, stuff like that. So this would start essentially here if this passes through this committee and council in August and get us through the rest of 26 and then three full years after that. I will note that the pricing came in for years 27, 28, and 29 at 240,000, which doesn't show an increase, which I think is advantageous to us. because we all know prices are always going to keep going up, so fertilizer and things like that are not going to get cheaper. And we did budget $250,000 this year for grounds maintenance. So essentially, we find that to be in line with our estimates. And this includes facilities like City Square, as I said, Bicentennial Park, City Hall, both police stations, outside of the museum, Ottawa parking deck, Richard Street property that we now have, Campbell Street property, transportation campus.

Is that listed in the contract? I mean, can we have it for the meeting? Yeah, absolutely. So we can let the public know and the rest of the council know what's going to be covered. This does not include our entryways, right?

That is correct. That is handled by Public Works. This is separate, but those discussions, I know we've had.

Yeah, I know we're going to have a discussion, and that's something myself, I'm sure the other council and members of the public want to see the city a little bit cleaner. And we want to see it look a lot nicer. And I think we can get there. Any questions or comments on this?

Just a real quick question. Do we do a lot in-house? So we don't have guys doing the lawn mowing and stuff like that, right? Everything, we send it out?

So Public Works cuts some of their facilities, but what I'm in charge of, I do not have grounds maintenance staff. I have building engineers and facility workers, such as someone that works at the parking deck, but I don't have grounds staff. So no, we don't cut, we don't, community development does not have lawnmowers, things like that. Public Works does cut some outside their facilities, some stuff out by the prison they cut, some right of ways, but in general, for me, no. Okay.

Like what Councilmember Clement said, do you think we should have added the entryways to this contract, maybe? Since we don't do a lot other than public works, and I don't think it hasn't been done very well. Throughout the years? Should we have done it with this money?

I think we should roll with this and have that discussion. I'm already having a discussion with Beth about it, about our entryways and the Mary. And they already fixed the cash street coming in from New Lenox. The weeds were high, they got away from us, and I believe Duke or somebody took care of it, it looks great. But we have to really focus on those, and I think that should be another project. But going into that, we've had, Wayne and I and the city manager and the mayor, I've had conversation about, I think we need to put a couple experienced landscapers on city staff, and maybe not this year, maybe it's a discussion for next year, buy them equipment and let them go. And let them go every day and do their thing. I mean, that's what I really believe needs to happen. no disrespect to somebody that doesn't have the experience, but you need somebody that knows how to do brick pavers and plant shrubs and spray weeds. Those are things I think we should have. We're a big enough city to ask we should have something like that.

That's a fair statement. I think In 2027, hopefully we'll see a pretty big improvement on entry signs, and I think maybe we'll see a different way they're handled. That is in Public Works Department, so I can't speak to what they budgeted or what they allocated. We'd be happy if that's something that falls into our lap to make sure that we incorporate that however we do that, whether another bid, part of whatever.

You're right, but I don't want to hold this up for something that we can get done in another whatever. Motion to approve. And I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. That's all I have. New or old business, not a final action or recommendation? Kind of spoke on it already. I don't have anything. Public comment? Any public comment? And I want to note, Greg Pierbold's there, and I'm sorry, Joe Clement. Steven Wright, I'm the curator at the museum.

Okay, so we're here to just say thank you, as always, to answer any questions you guys might have. Everything is going great this year. We're seeing great admissions at the prison. On the weekend, we're getting 150, 200 people as high as... 400 people a day so uh just thank you to blaine and his team as always for helping um and we just appreciate the partnership so you know we're always i didn't i need to run out so i didn't know if i was no no i'm going to be able to make the whole meeting but we always want to be here to answer you guys's questions and just say thank you and we appreciate the partnership so okay thank you okay all right i may pop in for greg if you can't make it in the future he knows more than me yes i'll give you a call

Does anybody have anything else they want to make comment on? If not, then we'll motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn? Do you want to make a motion? Yeah, I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I'll second that all in favor.