Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Let's see you.

Okay. Welcome, everyone, to the city of Joliet Finance Committee meeting here Tuesday, 02/17/2026 at 05:30. On the committee with me is councilwoman Sherry Reardon, councilman Larry Hug, and myself, Pat Mudran. Roll call completed. Approval minutes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Motion passed. Citizens to be heard. An agenda item, we have one gentleman I know would love to come up to talk. He's just too busy, I guess, right now.

I got here early. TV was boring.

Alright. Again, item. Mister Singh, would you like to be first?

Yeah. I'll actually have Becky DeGroat, our grants coordinator, handle the first two items on the agenda. Peggy?

Hi. Good evening. So the first item on the agenda is a Route 66 grant from Heritage Corridor. It's funded through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development. It's for Route 66 tourism grant. We do have to go through Heritage Corridor because only convention and visitors bureaus can apply. And so we we applied through them for AV audio visual equipment at City Square. We were granted $225,000 for the that equipment and installation with a $2,000 program management fee for Heritage Corridor. Awesome.

Questions, thoughts?

That's great. That's all I can say. Wonderful. Yeah.

You're a good job.

I can speak on the second one as well. That is also a Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development grant for Plainfield Road water main. So that's along Plainfield Road between Theodore And Black Road. Our public utilities department has been awarded $100,000 for installation of new water mains for the residents in that area.

Question for everybody generally. This is coming from the state of Illinois, which I'm reading according to Capital Facts is $4,000,000,000 short. Where does this money come from if they don't have 4,000,000,000 to cover the standard bills? I don't expect you guys to

understand. I know the the 100 thousand's bond fund. So they issued a bond for it.

Oh, debt?

Not yet. Debt.

Oh.

You mean going towards the 8,000,000,000 already yet? Got it. Thank you. It's my Kevin, 2028, launch.

Okay. If there's no questions,

I have before you for your consideration a contract amendment with Borderless Studios for work associated with the Choice Neighborhood Initiative grant. In April 2025, council awarded Borderless Studios to be the the order of the contract to be our planning consultant for the work associated with Choice Neighborhoods. That was a $500,000 grant from HUD. The contract award was $308,880. The outcome, the deliverable that the city of Joliet will receive in conjunction with the housing authority of Joliet is a document called a transformation plan.

It's a plan that has specific land use suggestions, market rents, housing types, elevations, and that document is going to be the result of extensive public involvement and outreach to the community and community leaders. An element of that final deliverable is a market study. We come before you this evening suggesting a contract amendment with Borderless for the amount of $30,000 to conduct this market study. It is a necessary element of the deliverable, and this will be 100% reimbursed by the grant funds.

And this reimbursement will not affect the other HUD money that we get?

No. So I'm going to give you more of an answer than less when you say the other HUD money that we get. I'm not sure if you're referring to community development block grant. Totally totally separate initiatives. We are very lucky to get a a substantial allocation from HUD. Could always take more if they're listening of $920,000 a year. This $500,000 grant does have some play in it for incidental costs. We were able to work with HUD and get a budget amendment on the HUD side of how we're gonna spend this grant money. So everything that needs to get done will get done, and no city funds will be expended.

Question? So so everybody when we knew that this was required as part of the process, right, at the at the the tail end here, we'd have to do this 30,000 study. Right? Mhmm. Why wasn't it included in the contract to begin with?

Well, I thought it would be cheaper to go out and knock on a few doors to see if I could get a cheaper price, and I I could not. So we're going to use the firm that the contractor initially suggested we use and at the pretty fair price of $30,000.

Thank you.

And the time frame for this?

This scope of work has to be done by this summer.

So

the scope of work for the entire Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant has to be delivered, I think, by the end of this calendar year. I don't remember the exact date. You'll forgive me. I can follow-up if you'd like.

No. That's fine. Any other questions?

No. Alright.

Thank you. Do we need

a motion?

Oh, okay. Under agenda items, I'd like to make a motion to move ninety five sixteen, ninety five twenty two, and ninety five thirty six to the full council with our recommendation to approve.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Alright. Reports. Alright. So you've got the monthly financial statement for the month of January. Not much to report if you're, you know, the fiscal year ends December 31. Most of the invoices paid so far have been attributed to that 2025 fiscal year. We actually over the weekend performed our what I call soft close. We close it for internal posting. Any postings to '25 will be done through our auditors. And so going forward, we will start to see activity in the '26.

So with that, nothing's jumped out at us as being reason for alarm or unconventional. Moving on, you've got the exception report with for the invoices that are handled in between meetings. Be happy to answer any questions. And then the museum, before I go to travel, for the calendar quarter fourth quarter of the calendar year, they had over 7,000 visitors. Their largest event was the forty fifth anniversary of Blues Brothers at the prison.

They're estimating that drew approximately a thousand people from across the country. The biggest component of theirs was self guided tours at the prison for a little under 2,200 people, and they had 663 visits at the museum. And then moving along travel, two items.

I know I saw that. Like, think we

I actually asked my staff, are you can we double check that? Are you sure there's only two? And they said, yeah. We we checked.

Nobody went anywhere.

Nobody went anywhere. That wasn't already reimbursed.

Yeah. So K.

K.

No no questions. We can move on to new or old business, not for final action.

I have anything.

I don't know. One

last chance for public comment.

No. They don't have any.

Other than I worked at the prison doing that, so I'm glad that many people went there.

Okay. I'll accept the motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Motion Motion passed. Thank you, everyone.

Did you bring anything up?