City Council Meeting - Regular Meeting

Next is a proclamation for a nonviolent city presented by councilman Abara

I just want to say before we get started, this is very important to me every year, and I want to say why. My sister-in-law was stabbed to death at her hair salon over 22 years ago, and it's taken me 20 years to even talk about it without completely breaking down. So nonviolence is very important to me and my family, as is peace. So I want to thank you for all that you do, and I'm going to read the proclamation. Proclamation. Whereas many concerned citizens of Joliet are committed to foster a culture of peace and nonviolence through education, sustainable economic and social development, a clea

Public Service Committee met here yesterday at City Hall in the Council Chambers at 4.30 in the afternoon. Yesterday would have been September 14, 2026. On the committee is Councilwoman Raritan, Councilman Mulder, and myself. Everything that's on the committee agenda was reviewed last night at the pre-council meeting, so I'll go through it quickly. There was only one contract, and that was for $196,000 for a Hutchinson Engineering to do the Route 30 bridge structural inspections for the Third Coast Parkway, North Point, and that $196,000 will be paid by North Point, not by the city. We had thr

Mayor, correct me if I'm wrong. Kevin, this is basically a 1% increase year over year.

Yeah, it's 1% year-over-year and we added cyber Coverage as well, correct? So that's that's a good you know in the market I think the other two insurance agents up can tell you a 1% increase isn't much so It's not a bad.

Yeah, I just want to say after the last Hawaiian Brothers that we approve Savvy Sliders is chicken slider sandwiches, and they're supposed to be very good.

Should we be voting on this if they don't bring samples up here? No. Probably not.

I do have a comics. This is district 5. So it's my district they I at all sides worked with the community to make this happen. So it wasn't something that I was going to immediately say yes to. In fact, I was going to say no. But some of the very key people within the south and southeast side of this district worked with the developer and the owner Make sure it was something that they could agree to and they were okay with it So I want to thank once again, Megan Cooper and Margie Stephen for working together with mr Koenig and some of the others involved to come to an agreement that everyone W

Mayor? Yeah. I want to go back. I made a mistake here. It's 465. I want to reverse my vote to no. Oh, okay. I made two mistakes now.

I think I need more sleep. I'm like, I thought we were talking about a box.

All right. You know what? We're good. Good work. Thank you. I was just testing you. Okay. Lauren.

Yeah, just real quick, I want to clarify. Now, we have an ordinance that's somewhat restrictive and it's protecting the watershed, right? But it also meets any IEPA or anything else as well, correct? Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Any comments or questions? Mayor, I wanted to clarify something. There was some confusion after last night's meeting. Some media reported city paying out $12.5 million, which was misleading. We're paying a million, and we're approving this million to move it to the fund, and the rest is being paid by our insurance company. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

Mayor, I do want to offer my condolences to the family. I feel terrible about this situation, and I do want to say how sorry I am for this.

can i respond to that yeah we actually talked about it two weeks ago was a huge presentation we went through pictures we went through the same kind of thing that we went through for the mexican independence day parade but that happened closer to last meeting so it happened at last last week it was a it was the last meeting i mean it was different dates way different dates they were about a month apart I can send you that video, though. I'll send it to you. Thank you, Susan. Yeah.

I just want to wish happy early birthday to my wife tomorrow. So happy birthday if you're watching. And also bring some awareness to Construction Suicide Prevention Week as a blue collar worker myself. And that is through September 14th through the 18th. And once again, congrats Chief Brown. And then I spoke to the city manager earlier about our diversity and community relations committee. And I spoke to Councilwoman Ibarra. And we're in agreement that we can try to bring some of these things I'm going to talk about into fruition. But since I typed it out, I'm just going to read it out. I'd li

Beth, can I ask, do we have a realistic timeline of the work that's going to be done for the Southeast Side Sanitary District residents?

Okay, so there's nothing more that we can do for them. Like, I just want to be clear. They have asks. The money that is allotted to anything that happens with them, just make sure I understand this correctly. It does have to come from the county. Yes. Because it was a county's aging system under their jurisdiction. I'm trying to get a handle on this.

Thank you. They have other asks, like the showers and who's responsible for going back to the county, I guess, and asking for those things that they're asking for.

Thank you. So we are in the middle of a grocery store study for the east and southeast side of District 5, and I am very excited about this. And we need everybody in District 5 on the southeast and east side, we need your suggestions, help on a location. The consultant would like me to... collect suggestions from the community in the affected area where you would like to see a grocery store it can be open land it can be a building that's failing or that nothing is there can really be anywhere but it does have to be in district five and it does have to be on the east or southeast side you can e

I just wanted to put on the record, so to speak, at our finance committee meeting, I asked our finance director, Kevin, to start researching consultants that specialize in cost-cutting measures, municipal budgets. We talked about that, and Kevin said he would look into that. I don't think we do enough to cut costs. It's always automatically we're going to expand the budget, and there are even some, my understanding is, some consultants out there that don't get paid if they don't find the cuts. So they work on, if you will, a commission or a performance basis. So you're going to look into that,