Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Welcome everyone to Tuesday, April 21, 05:30 meeting of the Finance Committee. On the committee is Councilwoman Sherri Reardon, Councilman Larry Hug, and myself, Pat Mudrin. Could I get an approval of the minutes, please?

Motion to approve.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Thank

you. Citizens to be heard on agenda item, which I see none at this time, so maybe after the meeting. Agenda items. First one, ordinance accepting a million dollar grant.

So I'll kick it off, but I'll also have Becky DeGroat, our grants coordinator, and Chief Carey also worked on this. They did most of the work. I'm just the one talking right now. So this was talked at pre council. This is a grant from the seven zero eight Mental Health Board for mental health or counseling services to be performed by the fire department. This ordinance does three things. It formally accepts that grant. It also amends the twenty sixth budget to increase revenues of the grant amount and then increase expenses for the grant amount. It also does a third thing, is create a social worker position that is funded by the grant. So I'd be happy to answer any questions or, to be honest, I'll kick it over to the fire chief to answer technical questions.

I agree.

Yeah. I was talking to the chief about it just a minute ago too. But and I had talked to Todd. I think it was Todd. It wasn't you. Was it Todd? It was not me.

You and I talked about the grand concept.

About changing the wording?

Yeah.

Okay. And the wording didn't change,

did it?

So this this this like most other nonprofits and governmental agencies, when they hire based on a grant, they put in that if the grant goes away, the position goes away. We don't have that. That's the problem. Right. And and that's that's that's not an abnormal. And this is not normal. This is abnormal. Right? I've been you probably met in public life, a lot of people, I'm looking for a new job. Now I was I was working for, you know, such and such for nonprofit or for the township. Did they fire you? No. But the grant ran out, so the decision was based on the grant. My understanding, you and I talked about it. I had my my

Yeah. Was yeah. We we had yeah.

It's an increase in demand even beyond the borders of Joliet. So if we lose well, that's what Kevin, that's what you told me

when we That's what I was yeah. I would I would just I was looking to the chief to confirm that there's an increased demand today for the social worker. Yes.

Yeah.

And I don't know if it's directly related to I wanted just to confirm that whether it was directly related to everyone else or just our stuff. That's where I would want you to talk to the chief on. So I'll ask him to weigh in.

Yeah. So oops. I mean, it's a lot. You know, we started the program in 2022, then Raquel came on board, and it it really took off. And right now, she is working with just the city of Joliet residents, our program. We've had two intern social workers we've gotten from Lewis University that have have actually may have been a tremendous help with helping her. But next year, we're not getting another intern. So having another person either way is we have the demand for it now with just the city program as it's running They also do a lot of work with the community paramedic program also where they go out in the community and help Brian. They go visit people in the home, do home visits.

So the grant though, the grant funds for county wide.

Yes. Right.

That was where I think that I wanted to clarify.

And so with that, they won't be going anywhere in the county. They're still only gonna be taking care of our residents under the community paramedicine program. But there'll be an increase in the people who call that they get registered, and that's what the position is for is is the intake.

Right. We won't be going on anybody else.

No. Ambulances.

But It will be just doing the intake for

Wilkina, where I grow up, can come here and take advantage

of it.

So yeah. And they'll they'll call our number. And we decided that when we talked with the county was because how it started when other towns started doing it. Now you had 10 different numbers, and it started confusing people. So, like, we have just one number, and they would provide us another position to take all those do all the intakes. It would be easier for people in the county to use only having to know one number.

So as opposed to Mokena and New Lenox and Feigler having one, Joliet's number is one?

Yes.

Then we we need to ask those communities to pay it.

Right now, the count the the $7.00 8 tax is paying for it all right now. Well, we'll be paying for it all.

Paying for what?

That's what this grant's for.

Right. Right. But if the grant goes away, we need a a mechanism where these if these communities still wanna use Joliet, have their people use it, they need to pay in. Right now, you're right. The grant and if the grant stays forever, we're we're good.

Yes.

But we all know grants never stay forever. It could be ten years. It could be a year. It could be twenty years. We don't know. There's no prediction. Right?

Yes. So

so if if the grant goes away, then the full cost of the program allow, you know, at that point, we would have to, you know, I would like to see something in writing in here that would say that other than Joliet residents would then, the community, other communities would have to make up the difference if we ever lost the grant, or they could not use our services anymore.

Yeah. And that's

what we

that's what we if if it went away, it would just no longer it'd go back to just the City of Joliet program. Unless they all wanted to

Right. Do that. So this is beyond what you, you know, what you guys did and and we talked about. That's not what the wording says. Legislative, you got it. I won't be here when it where let's say in in six years, you know, it had something somebody has to pull the trigger on it. I won't be here, and it's not there as an automatic. Like I said, I talked to a lot people that get grant funded positions, and they tie you directly to that grant and say, here's the sundown. Grant goes away, the position goes away. And that's very common.

Were just saying, I forget who it was. You're like, yeah, know somebody, know, some organization. They all mostly do that. Because otherwise, the the tax dollars start paying for it if that grant goes if the grant ever goes away, then we would never pull the trigger on eliminating the position or services beyond the city boundaries because we'd always have that grant. But we don't have a guarantee we'll always have that grant. And then legislation, you've got to be proactive, visionary, and think ahead. What's going to happen in a year, five years, ten years, twenty years? And it's silent on that. So it's more of a legislative problem. First of all and so did Pat and Sherry. We were completely supportive. Was a great program. But started as Joliet only. Yes. And now we're expanding.

And maybe reasons go to or otherwise that that's expanding. But we can't expect Joliet citizens to have their taxes paid for something that serves the entire county should this grant goes away. And nowhere in there, you're saying that I know what you're saying. Common sense, if we lose a grant, then we would stop. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say that. And and what they did is they put all three items into one legislative ordinance or memo instead of separating them out. So that's my decision. The Joliet citizens would have to carry the costs associated with what the grant pays for when the grant goes away.

May I have a question?

Go.

So don't we I don't know. Either one of you could answer this. Currently, aren't we budgeting money for our Joliet residents for this program beyond what insurance pays? So it would just revert back to the Joliet residents that we are funding this. This will help us to not have to spend that money on funding it currently.

Is it 200 or $400,000 Right.

Oh, we had $200,000 last year. Then we had the 1.9 from the state. So we keep we've had it in the budget from the beginning, but we haven't had to spend any of the City Of Joy money for the last couple of years. So that just goes back because we've been getting grant. But we have that pool of money that was from other years that's still sitting there. We wanted to keep it in case. If it ever goes under, we just revert right back to the resident. We don't lose our residents coverage ever.

And it's always Ben just Joliet that we have that money set aside for.

Yeah. But we've been getting it paid for for the last three years now. So we haven't had to spend our money anymore.

So going forward, if the funding for the grant ran out and we had to revert back to us putting the money in for what wasn't covered, then the other parts of Will County would also have to do the same thing for their residents.

Or not provide service.

Or not provide service.

Yes.

So we're all on the same page. This is new information. I didn't realize that the money that we set aside in each of the budgets going back think, three or four years now, you didn't have to spend it in the last couple of years. How does that work in the budget? I I didn't

think It goes into surplus.

Okay. So so it's not really

It goes into reserves is really what happened.

Right. And so it's not there for him to use?

It's there for the council to decide to re reallocate it. Correct.

Okay. So I'm clear on that. But it's good to hear, you know, you got the state grant and all that. So but see, Sherry, that was a great point. He gave me some information, but it doesn't say it in the legislation. So we're we're we're turning to him saying, well, this happens almost like we're saying, you'll make sure that this gets done. That's not his job. It's our job to have it in the legislation. That's why you have legislations. It's so that it's it's it's not a it's not a insider game. So it's not not an insider game, but it's not a informal game. You know exactly A, B, C, D. And if A only happens and B, C, D doesn't happen, you've covered B, C, D legislatively, legally. But maybe you never have to use it.

I feel like we've been doing this all along though, Larry, because we have put that money into the budget every year. And we've had other grants that have been supplementing it so that we didn't have to spend the city money. And then it's getting put back into reserve. So going forward, if we lose the grant, we're just going to be budgeting again for Joliet like we have been in the past. But if we don't have the grant, then we will actually be going into that fund. I don't see where it's changing really because we've had other grants in the past that have prevented us from having to use that money.

Well, the way I look at it is we're but we're adding a position. If the grant goes away, we have to go back to funding the original program plus the new position.

Well, we don't have to go back.

But it's not in the legislation.

I'm making it a management management decision. I'm making the chief and the person in charge of the budget figure out can we have it or not. Sometimes people have to be laid off.

Right. But the it's up to the council, and you and I may not be on council when this happens

Sure.

To watch the first strings. It's not up

to when they come up with a number that they don't have the funding for or didn't have it for before, it's our job to say, no. You can't have that position.

Mostly because they would have to add the position at that point to the budget because it's not within the budget now. Isn't that correct?

The creation of this would basically put it in there. And then annually, there's a list of positions that would be included in there. And I think what what Councilman Hug is saying is without language, the grant goes away. That position stays unless there's future action by the council. You were looking for to keep it. If the grant goes away, you want future action from the council.

Right.

Is what he's saying?

No. He wants it he

wants it gone.

Yeah. He wants it gone without action.

He he's right. When we talk about it, that it's gone unless the council at that point it's automatic. Comes to the council, votes and says, well, let's keep it anyway. So it's up to that future council. It it it invokes that. It's up

to the future council now as it is.

I

mean, all the numbers are gonna come to us as the council, and we can take the people out of that budget anytime we want to.

Mhmm. But it's not automatic.

No. It's not auto well, it's automatic in that we only have so much money.

Right. It's not automatic. What you're talking what Kevin's clarifying and thank you for the clarification, Kevin. We did talk quite a while about this. At first, you're right. Pat's right. I'm like, well, maybe we gotta tie it to record too, so it's gone. And he said, well, how about if we put some language in there that says it's gone unless it's re what do we what's the word

we Reauthorize.

Reauthorize. I said, okay. I can live with that.

Then we got put in. Because logistically, we we talked about the logistics. You know, grant runs for a period of time. We're working on a a renewal. And then at the eleventh hour, they come in and said, oh, we're not gonna renew it.

There's there's certain layoff provisions and things you have to do, but we wanted to make sure there our discussion was that we don't get into a trick bag of being out of unintentionally being out of compliance with that legislation. The idea was we needed a time period to be able to come back to council, if we were going to consider doing that, coming back to council. But at the end the day, the decision was to keep the ordinance the way it's written so that if the grant goes away, the council can elect to evaluate the service that we're currently providing, the calls for service for just Joliet, and then make a decision to keep or remove. It was the way I think the decision was to keep it at that route, to prompt the discussion to say, well, what do you want to do as opposed to having it just go away. So it's just difference of opinion, different way to

But neither one exists in the legislation language?

No. No. There's no mandate in the in the language. Just the fact that staff or the city manager reports to you, we report to the city manager, and you guys hold the purse strings.

So, yes, you're right, Pat. If if if if next year, if we're all still on the council, it would be fresh, you know, top of the mind going on. So, we'd be like, oh, wait. We lost the grant. Well, maybe we should look but future ones wouldn't. They might just assume. You know, where is it? I I felt there's nothing wrong with the saying if this grant goes away, whoever's on the council has to reauthorize this position without the grant. That's what I was asking.

Todd, can I get your opinion as to what your thoughts on that?

Well, the budget has head counts

every year. Correct? Yes.

And that's something the council has to consider each and every year. Putting something like this in the ordinance, council would have to remember it's in this ordinance every year when you do the budget. We've come across other things that's been buried in agreements like this that council forgets years down the road. So my response to that is council every year when they do the budget decides how many positions. And tying the future council's hands at this point probably wouldn't be appropriate.

Council next year, I don't know who's gonna be on there, might decide, we need these positions. And putting this condition in there ties their hands, and it sounds like for the police chief that the budget's already there. The the funding's there. It goes into reserves.

Thank you, chief. Fire chief. I'm sorry. And, Tom, correct me if I'm wrong. We we squish three things into one.

That's that's correct.

Every year that we get the grant, we have to formally accept the grant.

Correct.

Every year we get the grant, we should formally reauthorize the the job related to it.

And that's And that's

not tying anybody's hands.

Okay. That that's what's this is my opinion. I'm not gonna argue with you, but what I'm saying is the budget process already takes this into consideration. If this the funds are not there, the presumably, the future councils won't approve those positions.

That you you were saying something about them from getting. That's if they're even aware that it was originally tied to a grant.

Right. All all that's true.

So I so the automatic that I was asking for, the automatic reauthorization Mhmm. Would remind the current counsel and the future counsel all remember, this was tied to a grant. The grant just went away. Do you still wanna keep it? There's nothing wrong with that. Okay. Otherwise, it's gonna get lost in the shuffle. I guarantee it.

That's just my opinion.

We we had sign makers that we fought for years to finally get rid of that were, you know, in in in the department even though we don't make our own signs and have it since the nineteen sixties because you order signs. Dispositions that get lost when you forget about the original intent. Mhmm. Okay. Okay. That's all. I'm not gonna belabor it, guys.

Sure. Okay. If there's no other discussion, we can move on to ordinance authorizing the amendment for the annual budget of the city of Joao for 2026 and the year of 2025 projects funded in 2026.

Yes, this is our, I call it a housekeeping item. Last year's budget had a number of projects that were included in that budget. A lot of those projects were approved by council to move forward and so this budget takes all of the unspent monies for the projects in the '25 that were flagged by the departments of carrying over into '26. So as we talked last night, there is no new monies being reallocated as part of this. This is truly taking unspent funds for projects that were not completed in '20 budgeted for but not completed in '25 and then carrying those appropriations into '26 so that those projects can be completed in '26.

And you'll see some on the list are projects that span multiple years, so they may have started actually in '24 and were carried into '25 and then now carried into '26. So, just a good housekeeping to ensure we have the appropriate appropriation. So, the alternative of this is to come back multiple times throughout the year to do budget amendments. And so, quite frankly, this is something I've done in the past at other places. It's just cleaner to kind of put it all into one, work with the departments to package it to ensure there's no new funds and we go through a check of last year's financials to make sure that that's what was available.

Discussion? Okay.

I'm assuming you want me to split out the

No, not really.

Okay. Then I'll make a motion to move the agenda items ninety seven point three three and ninety seven point four eight to the full council with our recommendation to approve.

And the reason being, just, you know, thank you for asking is, you know, I'm sitting here too. The chief did say, and I trust the chief. He said even without expanding it to outside Joliet, the workload has gotten big enough to need it, and they're losing their intern. Yes. You know? So, you know, I fought the fight, and I lost that one. You know? We didn't get the details put in, but I'm not gonna kill it for that. Not worth it. I'll second.

Okay. Then you're gonna second it?

I just said that I'll second it.

Okay. All in favor say aye. Any opposed, same sign. Kevin, you're still up.

Alright. So you have the March monthly financial statement. And so this is the first time of the year I'm going talk about actual activity instead of saying it's too early to really have a discussion. And so we've got three months under the books. And so we're seeing some revenues coming in, some a little better than budget, some a little below, but I'm gonna give some caveats with that.

So revenues that are trending better than budget, three of them video gaming, sales, and utility taxes. Utilities, some of those trends are because we're in winter and people's furnaces are running and so generally it'll kind of die off, pick back up, and die off again. So while I'm mentioning it, we'll see how it trends the rest of the year, but good news I think on video gaming and sales. Now revenue is trending below. Once again, generally we see some seasonal dips and highs, but state income tax, building permits, no surprise there, and then charges for services, which are generally are us providing service to external entities.

Once again, you know, special event permits and special events are generally what we charge a lot for, and those haven't come up. But So on the revenue side, you have that assessment overall. We're kind of trending along budget. And then expenses, slightly better than budget, but once again, we're not in construction season yet. While it's good so far, I anticipate it'll it'll flatten out as the year progresses.

Same thing on the sewer and water side for the expenses and then revenues are trending according to budget, with some seasonal adjustments. Parking fund. So the report that's in your packet, you know, we have to cut it off after a certain point to get it ready for packet, but that report shows revenues being down compared to last year. I reran that as of this morning. Actually, revenues are higher than than for March this time last year. Right after we ran the report, we had a booking of all of the automated payments, if you will, the the machines. We booked those basically a couple days after the report was ran. So that's actually on track to be higher than the same period last year.

By how much?

Good question. So the parking deck, it was really related to the parking deck. Was 60,000 last year through March. It is was 89,000 through March. That was the one that was that was bringing it down with the deck.

Yeah. So, obviously, we did where we had street parking last year, we didn't have street parking this year, but overall, you know, $29,000 increase at the dock was enough to carry it to be higher than last year overall. Okay. So be happy to answer any other questions related to it.

Nope. Good.

Okay. You've got the exception report. Be happy to answer any questions. Once again, these are checks that are run between council meetings. And things, so you also may see stuff that's on the council if we had check out lost in the mail when we run a check it hits this report so that's on there as well.

Moving on, you've got the Rialto first quarter report. Summary for that report, they had just over 20,100 visitors for the quarter. Those visitors attended 16 events, four weddings and two movies.

Hey, are we anywhere heading towards finally getting rid of the subsidy completely?

So the Redi Alto is the one that we do capital and they have a lot of capital left and so we haven't had any of that discussion just yet. I I, you know, be happy to

You mean a lot of capital projects?

A lot of capital projects.

Right. Have they made it a money maker enough that they're making enough money to pay for their own capital projects?

I think they're so the if you remember, we actually had them do a presentation. I think it was two years, Sherry you're the liaison, help me remember. Two years ago they started earning a profit, I don't think it was big.

And then the asbestos.

And then they had last year, then they had the asbestos and I think their goal was to use that to capitalize on our grant to actually do preservation projects. The HVAC is this year and they still have a number of projects to go.

Sherry, do they still have a fundraising round? Foundation?

Oh yeah.

Are they raising any money?

Well, yeah, they are. But you can't much? No. I don't have it off the top of my head. But you can't imagine the the amount of expense they have for capital. And this project cost them like a million and a half dollars that they're not seeing money yet from the insurance from the person who caused the issue. It's really caused them a lot of strain on their budget.

The HVAC was eight, nine?

Yeah, I think it started at seven but they had to put it off for another year or so.

Yeah, and they've been successful in getting a lot of grants. Yeah. They're still doing that component, trying to get grant funding. So the good news is we moved it out of operations and said it has to be just capital.

Yeah, we did it a couple of years ago. And that's how I started voting for it.

You did, thank you. But, you

was a sundown at some point. Mhmm. Otherwise it's gonna be publicly subsidized forever. Yeah. Alright, that's all. Alright,

I think I have one more item, travel expenses. You know these pick up this time of year although this report is only one page you know as we get into summer these are generally trainings and conferences to ensure our staff is knowledgeable enough to provide excellent service to the community.

They should pick up in the winter and go somewhere nice.

For some reason, not every, like counting ones are never anywhere nice.

Oh, okay. I see. But you do have some kind of finance seminar in Oahu?

Is that

one that you want?

No. Don't. They, you know, things like Washington DC. Chicago. Chicago. Nebraska. Nebraska. Yeah.

You gotta be on township government.

Yeah. No offense to Nebraska.

Yeah, no offense to Nebraska, yeah. But we did, I mean on the finance side, I joke about it, we had a number go to our Tyler conference, know, which is the software we use, A lot of cool things, AI that may create some efficiencies and assist with the staff and so there are some new cool things coming down.

Well, tech's getting like Las Vegas trips, isn't it? They have a lot of their technology trips there. You guys found out where to go.

But a lot of public safety. Usually it is. And I think that's good for the city.

Okay, if there's no other questions, moving to new or old business, not for final action. No. Public comment that whoever was here has left, so we have no more public. And looking for a motion.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

All in favor? Aye. It passes. Thank you very much.