Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Joliet City Council convened for a Pre-Council meeting on the evening of October 5, 2026, to review items scheduled for the formal City Council meeting the following day. The primary focus was the presentation of the FY 2027 Proposed Budget by Finance Director Kevin Sing. The council also discussed several major contracts, including a $41 million water storage tanks project, and heard public testimony supporting the extension of the Poet Laureate program. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to enter Closed Session. (A note on time: The agenda states the meeting began at 5:30 PM CT, while the metadata provided for this summary timestamped the event at 2026-10-05T11:30:00+00:00.)
Let's see if this is right. We will now call to order the pre-council meeting. City of Jordan Pre-Consul meeting Monday, October 5th at 5 30 p.m. here in the council chambers. Mayor Terry Darcy presiding. We'll begin with roll call, Mayor Darcy. Here, Councilman Cardinals. Councilman Clemmin. Here. Councilman Hogg. Here. Councilman Abarra. Here, Councilman Marino. Councilman Modrin. Here. Councilwoman Queman. Here. Councilwoman Rarden. Here. Okay, first we will start with the 2027 budget presentation by Kevin Singh, Director of Finance. All right. Thrilled to be here tonight in October talking about the first draft of the fiscal year 2027 budget. As you can tell, we're a couple months early, which is good to give us plenty of time to evaluate. So looking at the budget, total budget is 151 million dollars. There's no new positions in the budget for 2027. We're going to continue the staffing levels into next year. But expect taxes paid in 27 to be the fifth consecutive year of a property tax rate decrease. So talking about the general fund, as you can see, just under half of the expenses in the general fund are for police, fire, and EMA, followed by the general fund's share of employee health and work out benefits. Public works, uh administration and support, which includes elected officials, the city manager, the clerk, IT, HR, and finance departments, followed by garbage collection at uh 18 and a half million, and then community development. Budget also includes grants, uh, continuing the grants for the Rialto and the museum at the same funding levels that they were in 26, just as a reminder, uh, for those those funding levels to go out the door, grant agreements would need to be approved by council in 2027. So, where does the general fund get its money from? As you can see, a little over a third of revenue in the general fund comes from sales taxes, followed by other local taxes, and those taxes include hotel motel, utility, real estate transfer tax, uh food and beverage tax, and our grocery tax, uh charges for services, those mostly include our ambulance billings, um, fines and fees. Big part of that is the refuse contract or garbage contract, and then property taxes. You see property taxes are only 8% of the total fund funding for the general fund. A little bit more about the general fund, so please to present it. Uh biggest change, uh, I wanted to address revenues going up 21 million, and so a big part of that is from I'll say from finance, changing the way we're reporting ambulance buildings. So in prior years, there's costs associated with it reimbursements we have to give the state, and so in prior years that was a reduction of that revenue. So trying to be more transparent to give the council and the public to know how much the fire is actually billing, we're treating that as an expense going forward. So you'll see where ambulance billing revenue go up six and a half million and expense go up six and a half million. The net effect is is zero, but it's just changing the way we're presenting the financials, and so I would just wanted to address that as part of the presentation. The remainder of the revenue is primarily driven by sales tax increases. Uh 6.5 million increase for just a general employee or payroll cost, and then we're also uh consolidating our cost, I'm calling it an insurance fund for our liability and property claims, and so we're creating what what I've I've dubbed an insurance fund as a way to track those expenses so we can get a better handle on what truly the costs are. Uh in prior years, they were just built in the general different areas all throughout the general fund. So, like we did with work comp and health insurance, we're gonna pool those into a new fund, and then it's funded by the general