By Wayne Horne
During last week’s Pre-Council meeting, City Manager Jim Caparelli briefly discussed the status of the Joliet 2030 Comprehensive Plan. You have never heard of it? That’s probably because, to date, it only exists on paper as an idea not a concrete plan. There is actually a Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee (CPAC) appointed by Mayor Bob O’Dekirk in March of 2020 that was supposed to help guide the planning and public outreach process for the comprehensive plan. The CPAC has never met since its inception. According to a local newspaper article published back in September 2019, the Joliet City Council ok’d a contract to hire a planning firm to implement a comprehensive plan at a cost of $249,000. The work was to be completed in 12 to 18 months. That was 26 months ago. To date there is no plan and, according to City Manager Caparelli, the firm that was hired to design the blueprint no longer does that type of work.
At the same meeting Mayor O’Dekirk said that the members of the advisory committee he appointed in March of 2020 are no longer available or interested in serving on the CPAC. According to the newspaper article in 2019, Joliet had not pursued a comprehensive plan in more than 60 years. No one could say the City Council members are exactly laser-focused on completing a comprehensive plan. In their defense the City Council’s attention, at that time, was focused on another, narrower, long-term plan to find a sustainable, quality water source. It was determined the water source had to be up and running by 2030.
It would seem that the cost and implementation of a long-term comprehensive plan would have come up sooner than last week, but the council’s idea of spending $12,000 on a public relations firm was a bigger priority because it seemed excessive and unnecessary. It’s just an observation, but it would seem forgetting about a contract that cost $249,000 and would have a major impact on Joliet’s future would be a bigger priority. The City Council often focuses on minor issues at the expense of larger priorities.
For instance, another lack of attention to costly priorities is the baseball stadium which costs the city of Joliet taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars every year with only a small return on the stadium investment. The only revenue that Joliet receives, according to the lease, is the rent paid by the Slammers organization for year-round use of the stadium. The amount paid by the Slammers is equivalent to the Slammers share of naming rights revenue. The Slammers retain all revenues paid by other users of the ballpark. By the way, the Slammers organization, unlike the City of Joliet, has their own public relations person.
The Slammers new season opens at home on May 13 against the Ottawa Titans, a team they won’t play again the rest of the season. They have scheduled 51 home games this year. If they play all 51 games this year, they should exceed 100,000 in attendance. Seasonal attendance usually runs about 2,000 fans per game so there are always plenty of seats. It has the capacity to seat over 6,000 attendees.
On last thing… Will County Board candidate Herb Brooks has decided to run as a write-in candidate. He and Denise Winfrey are campaigning as a team for Will County Board District 6. The last election two years ago, Brooks received 5,983 votes out of 17,722. Brooks and Winfrey also ran as a team and were unopposed in 2020. The 2022 primary election will bring out between 17,000 and 21,000 voters if past election history is any indication of voter turnout. There are four people vying for one of the two spots on the June primary ballot for Will County Board District 6 offices. Whoever is successful on Primary day will be guaranteed election success because they will be unopposed on the November ballot. That’s a lot of write-in votes Brooks needs to be elected. If he is successful, it will in fact be the largest write-in vote campaign ever conducted by a candidate for a Will County Board primary election. Good luck, Herb.
Stay tuned…
Comments welcome at wayneswords@thetimesweekly.com