The City of Joliet held its Pre-Council Meeting on Monday, December 1, 2025, at 5:30 PM in City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting featured a presentation on the proposed 2026 budget, a review of consent agenda items, and discussion of several ordinances and resolutions. No public comments were made. The council later entered closed session to discuss personnel, collective bargaining, land acquisition, and litigation.
Good evening. Welcome to the City of Joliet pre-council meeting for Monday, December 1st, 2025 by 530 in City Hall Council Chambers with the Mayor Terry Darcy presiding. We'll begin with roll call. Mayor Darcy. Here. Councilman McCartiness. Here. Council McClement? Here. Councilman Hug? Councilman Abarra. Here. Councilman Moreno. Here. Councilman Madrin. Here. Councilman Quillman. Here. Councilman Ridden. Here. First, we have a presentation, 2026 budget presentation by Kevin Singh, Director of Finance. Good evening again. So tonight we wanted to focus primarily on the capital portion of the uh fiscal year 2026 budget. I'll also recap a little bit more on the operations and the total budget as a whole. So capital funds are in various different funds within the uh city, ranging from motor fuel tax, vehicle replacements, government capital, parking, and then the sewer and water funds. So the funding sources for capital come from on the government side, uh casino gaming revenues. So a couple of years ago, we took our casino revenues and we allocated them to fund capital improvements. They also come from our local fuel tax for vehicle replacements. Uh we receive an allotment from the state of Illinois' fuel tax, and then we also seek uh and receive grants uh as they become available. For sewer and water, we collect funds from utility rates dedicated and use those for capital improvements. Once again, we also seek and receive grants, and then we use debt. So some highlights for the capital uh government capital for 2026, uh roads and sidewalks. So in the various funds, there's just shy of 23.5 million dollars for roads and sidewalks. Uh it's broken out about a little over five and a half million in the capital government capital fund, small amount in general fund, and then most of it is in motor fuel tax fund. And then the amounts that we have set aside is roughly or the equivalent of roughly 43 lane miles of roadways uh of new road work. We also have a public safety institute uh in partnership with JJC. Uh we've budgeted the use seven million, not sure exactly how much that will come, but that represents the amount we received from uh development fee from the compass business part, which is restricted for that type of use. We also have some specialty vehicles for the fire department, two pumper trucks totaling about two point four million, and then a uh technical response vehicle for uh 225,000. And then police, we have various equipments from uh ballistic shields, drone program, and then replacing gas masks that are aged uh quite a bit in the police department. Then we've also got 300,000 in a to continue our deployment of security cameras throughout the city to increase public safety. For sewer and water, we're continuing our water main replacement uh down a little bit for this year, represents roughly 18 miles of roadway. It's that uh we fund that through uh combination of loans, bonds, and low interest loans through the uh Illinois EPA. We also continue our late Michigan water program. Uh we've got almost 28 million programmed in the budget uh for our improvements to be able to accept Lake Michigan water, and then as part of uh Grand Prairie Water Commission, we've got about 38 million that we're on the uh have in our budget to go fund towards our contribution to that. Continuing the West Side uh wastewater treatment plan expansion uh design. Also have just under two and a half million on the sewer collection system, so that's a sanitary sewer. Uh just under six and a half million for water and four point seven million for sanitary sewer itself. Uh for vehicle replacements, uh this is funded by our local fuel tax. We're replacing 31 vehicles just shy of three and a half million dollars, uh 15 police vehicles for large dump trucks, uh street sweeper, seven roadways trucks, uh, an electrical service truck, and three inspectorslash admin vehicles for sewer and water looking to replace two dunk trucks. Moving into the total budget itself or comprehensive budget, uh shaping up to be just shy of $650 million.