Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

We will kick around.

Okay. Try this again. Welcome everyone to the City of Joaquin finance committee here Tuesday, January 20 at 05:30. On the committee is councilwoman Sherry Reardon, councilman Larry Hug, and myself, Pat Mudran. Approval of the minutes is first on the agenda. Can I get a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the December 16 minutes.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Any

citizens to be heard on the agenda? Seeing none, we move to our first agenda item, approval of payment to Heritage Corridors destinations in the amount of $44,595.24 Paulina, would you like to

Yes. Good afternoon yes so this is from a five year contract that we have with heritage corridor destinations which was started in twenty twenty one twenty twenty six is the last year that we have this agreement before we start renegotiating for a possible extension if that is what the city council wishes to do. They're requesting a reimbursement of $44,000 $595 with $0.24 for the reimbursement of the distribution and fulfillment of travel guides, in which Joliet is on the cover of the travel guide. A total of 45,000 copies were distributed, mainly throughout the Chicagoland region, but also along 35 different states throughout the nation. Do you have any questions?

I guess I'm confused when I look at our agenda piece where it's showing base membership fee and then tourist marketing fee.

They're all considerably higher $44,000

Yeah. So there are three components to this agreement. One is the membership fee, which is the 55 it started out with $55,142 with $0.22 and increased by 2% every year. The second component is the actual tourism budget, which started at $120,000 and increases by 2% each year. And then the third component is the fulfillment piece, which no dollar amount was assigned to that piece.

So that is what they're asking for reimbursement at this point. The Heritage Corridor does split that fee with us, and they're covering $60,000 of the total cost. So the city is covering $45,000 and the Heritage Corridor is covering $60,000

I understand.

How many other communities are part of this?

Of the agreement with the Heritage Corridor? They cover from Joliet all the way down to LaSalle County. I don't know the exact number of communities, but it is a large portion of this region.

And, like, instance, marketing promotion budget this year of $130,000 how much are the other communities paying?

CHRISTINE They have their own agreement with the Heritage Corridor. So this $100,000 budget is for Joliet alone. So some of the items that we have spent this money on for example, last year we paid for an episode on the story of art in America, which will be premiering this year. And it's concentrating on communities along Route 66 and featuring local artists in those communities. There is marketing in the Travel Illinois magazines, the winter and the summer editions.

And there's advertisements in different campaigns. So the first 100 miles events it's probably includes marketing, marketing in the playbills of the Chicago theater, as well as other travel magazines throughout the Chicagoland area.

And do we have anything in place to track the effectiveness of this? Is what?

MARY Sorry, can you repeat your question?

MARY There's about $240,000 $230,000 total in a year. What do we have in place to track the effectiveness?

MARY So we are migrating to a more digital platform. So instead of having so much print, which is hard to track the progress of that, last year we had a heavier focus on a digital campaign. So we started with a fallwinter campaign. We're waiting for the results of that campaign. We hired three different marketing agencies, including Sojourn Travel, which is an international travel tourism marketing agency, as well as Comcast.

So we're waiting for the final report. But essentially, with Sojourn Travel, what they do is they do online ads. And they not only track how many people are clicking on those ads, right? But they are also tracking how many of those people who are clicking on those ads are actually booking travel to the area. So more to come on that.

That's all I have, Mr. Chairman.

With that, could I get a motion?

I'll make a motion to move agenda item 9,234 to the full council with our recommendation to approve.

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

Moving to reports, Mr. Singh.

So the first item you have is the December 2025 preliminary financial statement. This is the remember, every year we go through this as we convert from every year, we'd go a cash basis to this point. Our annual audit is an accrual basis of accounting. Main differences, cash is when the money goes out the door. Accrual is when the services are received.

So as an example, the last two, tonight's council meeting, invoice list, almost all of those invoices are being booked to 25. So this statement has already been reduced. Expenses have gone up about 1,000,003 from the statement you see here. So we show it just because, you know, it's a snapshot in time. And as the year progresses and we leave the year open through February as expenses and revenues will be tweaked as we move to the full accrual method for our annual audit.

So with that though, still looking at a cash basis before we start those accruals. Some of the prior trending that we had seen is still holding true. Sales income, interest income and permits still trending above budget. Utility replacement taxes, hotel, motel, video gaming and cannabis are trending a little bit below And then expenses, obviously, as I mentioned, they're still coming in, but so far trending a little bit under budget. Sewer and water, kinda same thing is holding true.

Revenue is better than budget, and then expense is lower, but once again, that will tell when the audit's done and we get all those entries booked. Parking, you know, still same as last month. The depth the deficit is not as large as we thought we were going to have. It was probably the the takeaway there. Really, that's on the expense side is what's driving that, not the revenue side.

So we did see, on a cash basis, revenues down because we did the two hour or the free parking on the street. For the year, we did see a decrease of about 50,000 in overall revenue. You know, the automation at the deck is live for about a week, so it's still kind of too early to to tell what's gonna happen there from collecting twenty four hours a day. And then with the restriction on the street, how that's pushing people to the paid lots. So still too early to tell on that, but we are kind of watching that, and we'll report on that as time time goes on.

Kevin, the parking, not meter, but the parking infraction that you stayed too long, does the staff find count towards parking? Yes. Okay.

Yeah.

And we are still or we were still, helping those that were confused Yep.

Yeah. With

the known they were in.

Not involved heavily on it. Just, you know, been part of meetings. You know, they have not, I'll call it, they haven't gone in and just full blown. They're still it's a new technology as well because it's LPR. So they're still kind of working through that. And then, you know, the the goal is to get people not to do it versus absolute enforcement, but, you know, enforcement is a is a key piece.

So I know you mentioned it's only been a week for the deck. Any major issues that people got themselves

I in think we had one talking to Public Works. Somebody did break the gate, first one. Only one in the week.

Only one in the week. Wow.

I That's shouldn't say so good. Yes. So we had one and the number of visitors, once again it's eight, this is eight days. So I did ask for a report because I figured it would come up. We had thirteen ninety two independent visitors or visitors, I'm sorry, did fourteen fifteen transactions, so fourteen fifteen transactions. They stayed an average of two point one six hours per visitor.

Kevin, we used to sell monthly passes. Do we do we still do that?

We are. We're actually looking, Public Works and I had a meeting with a vendor, on automating all of that as well. So so today, and there are some people, you had to you had to come into this city. I think we kind of pushed them to quarterly, but it is monthly pass, just paid it through three month increments. We're actually looking at a software that integrates with Flash that the person can manage it.

So it'll do prorations. It'll allow a number of employers buy them for their employees. The software we're looking at is the employer would be able to go on, manage that for their employees, update license plates, so on and so forth, without having to interact and actually make a trip down to city hall. So we are looking at that, moving that forward as quickly as possible. It's actually very inexpensive.

Do we know who damaged the gate?

That I don't know. I believe they're looking in

me all that. We're charging them for the repair.

I know they are looking into that.

Do we have cameras?

There is an LPR camera, and I I know the council approved doing survey other cameras. I don't know if those are in yet or not.

Yeah. We were also starting, you know, in the more dangerous areas. It'll say the stairwells and things like that, so I'm not sure if that would have been installed yet

with the powder. Because this is an OPR technology, so you're putting your plate in. So they they just have to track down when it actually occurred. I believe they have an idea of who this person is or the vehicle was, I should say.

Are these automated gates then or is just

You pay by if I'm not mistaken, you pay by plate. Can either do it through an app or at a pay station.

Okay. So

And then if you so example, if you prepay, you walk go in, gate goes up. You come out, it charges you. So and it I think it it works with I don't remember what app parking app that they have out there. It's pretty popular.

So Good. Okay.

Alright. Next I have is the exceptions report just as an example. These are either checks that were reprinted because they were lost in the mail or paid in between meetings for generally for things like utilities and then reimbursements.

I have a couple questions on it. Yes. First of all, I don't have a couple questions. Have one. But preventative care, that's just because everybody waits until the last minute to get

that in for their $200

Yes. What is this Constellation Newing?

New Energy. It's Constellation New Energy. New Energy. It's just chopped off. It's electric.

Yeah. Know what it is.

And we just as a reminder, we do bid that regularly. So we did go to auction, and they were the low supplier.

Okay. Thank you.

Moving along, you've got the quarterly report for the Rialto. They had just over 47,000 visitors for 35 different events, five weddings, and four movies. And I've got the travel expense report. One of our I will say one of our shorter reports, primarily public safety. I do wanna note I did have a question from an individual about it says Republican National Convention.

That was the public safety piece of them working the security, not for them actually attending the inside of the convention. So we did get we we do get reimbursed for that from one of the agencies that that that part of our mutual aid. That's all I have.

Questions, thoughts, issues? I believe that's all we have on the agenda. So

New of business?

New rule of business.

I got one. Kevin, I won't delve too deep, but you're a finance guy. You're a numbers guy. Right?

Try to be.

Question. Have you been tracking on our international state what's happening to the petro dollar as well as the US money dollar as we serve? It's going down. There's something going on. We'll we'll talk about that at length later. How will that affect us in our budget?

For

If we if if the petrol dollar eventually is eliminated or if the US dollar is no longer reserved, what would that do to us?

I have to look into that a little bit.

It's kind of interesting to see.

I'll talk about 80,000 feet there. Jeez. Let me get deeper. I was

concerned when he asked if you were a numbers guy.

You're right. I

can't I can't sound the alarm on it. I'm not just not that high up in the on on the food chain. Right? We're in trouble on the reserve dollar right now. The US dollar over the last two years has lost 7% against the average foreign currency. 10% is called panic. We're in trouble. You know, we know it's China and Russia leading, you know, with with India and Brazil and a couple of other countries coming behind them. We have other we've had other threats to know, our challenges to our petrol dollar and to the reserve currency status. But, you know, going back to Libya and other countries, they've never succeeded. This one has got traction, and it's scary. And we're gonna have to deal with it if it continues. I don't know what they're doing in Washington. I don't expect you to know. But if we were to lose that status, this could be a nightmare for us and and our finances. Right?

I thought you were gonna give me an easy one, Larry. I'm sorry.

Do I ever? You you want to flop?

I will do some research and we will I will

get Why back wait until the, you know

Until collapses. Yeah.

The floor here.

K. Move for a motion.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned.

Thank

you. Nice meeting. Ran it quickly, gentlemen.