The Joliet City Council met on Thursday, August 20, 2026, at 6:00 PM local time. The meeting covered a wide range of routine approvals, public comments on community safety and housing, and key votes on contracts, ordinances, and resolutions. Public comments highlighted concerns about the Riverwalk housing complex, the Attorney General report, and a proposed data center. The council approved all consent agenda items, passed several ordinances and resolutions, and received reports from the city manager.
We are on track to meet that goal. I want to thank all the city council, all the members of the staff who have been involved in working on the count on this budget. That would be in my report. Mayor, unless Larry. Thank you. And public service. And the public service committee met uh yesterday at 4 30 here at City Hall in the council chambers. Um included myself, Councilwoman Meridan and Councilman Mudrin. We got a short agenda. We have four items under contracts. Uh one item was for a uh technical rescue team vehicle. Uh NAP High specialty body is referred to for the fire department's technical rescue team vehicle. Um this is one of a number of vehicle purchases that are already in the budget, so it is budgeted for. We looked at it for 77,600, and uh it looks good. Um we also looked uh at approval of a bulk uh road salt sales agreement between the city of Joliet and Midwest Salt LLC. This year, a major player in the salt game called Cargill is no longer providing salt. This is impacted the state of Illinois joint purchase agreement where we normally get our salt. Of the four facilities that we store salt at, they all only came through on two of them. The other two just was nothing to deliver, so we had to go on on our own. Our public works department did. And uh, you know, where we used to pay 85 to maybe uh 100 per ton, um it's as high as 140, 160, 180 a ton now because of this short shortage created for several reasons, the largest being the big player cargo getting out of the game, at least for now. Um our staff was able to find with uh Midwest salt, uh our needs to be filled at 117 a ton. So we were happy to hear that. We we minimize the increase. That could have been much more catastrophic, and we'll have plenty of salt in two delivery dates prior to September and then after September. So the salt we're gonna use before January and then the salt we'll need after January, plus a little extra to have it on hand because the salt industry is apparently becoming a little unstable. So remember that when you're seasoning your chili. Um then we looked at a water professional service agreement for the Southeast Joliet Sanitary District, uh the backstrown wood woodman um for engineering services for 65,400, all of which will be paid by the county, not by the city. And then we looked at um the approval of amendment number five to the professional services agreement for the alternative water source program to Stan Tech Consulting Service Incorporated in the amount of $34,792,000. Um of that paid is paid solely by the city because that's for city centric improvements. The rest of it is part of the all overall um alternative uh water supply, which is governed now by the um oh, what's the name of the commission? I forgot now. I'm not sure. Thank you, Mayor. The Grand Prairie Water Commission. Um we are a 60% partner in that. We're the biggest boy on the block. And uh, so we'll pay 60% of the remainder, and the other communities have to pay their share. So we looked at it and we sent all four of those items forward with a recommendation to approve. Um we had no change order to pass from some final payments. That's the first time in a long time, so that was nice. And then we had uh a resolution declaring certain city property or Joliet property, a surplus. Again, we sent that forward with recommendation to approve. And finally, we looked at an application for a drive-through permit for a Hawaiian brothers restaurant at 1351 Shale Road. That will be built out at what we all know as the Rock Run Collection, the Cullen Project. Um, so there really are no traffic concerns and things that we've had with other coffee houses in the old section of the Joliet because that's out of the new development, and uh we saw no problem with that. Uh I know some people are excited about the Hawaiian brothers, me I I'm a cup of joe guy. I I would I went somewhere to specially coffee house with some people on the weekend on Saturday, and they I don't know. One guy ordered a twisted double backflip, and it came to me and they're like, what would you like? Is it a cup of coffee?