The Streator City Council approved updates to its financial policies while raising spending limits during its meeting last week.

One update increases the limit for Streator’s capital assets, like machinery, equipment and vehicles, from $5,000 to $20,000. According to city documents, the change is due to rising equipment costs and will reduce the need to track lower-value items.

The council also approved raising the spending limit for department heads from $5,000 to $10,000 for equipment purchases made without prior council approval.

City Manager Dave Plyman said the adjustments will make record keeping easier going forward.

“The real challenge is if you have capital items that are relatively low value, when they’re disposed of you don’t necessarily remove those items from the list,” Plyman said. “Ten years later when you try to update it, you can’t find the stuff.”

Notably, the changes are the first update to the city’s financial policy in almost eight years.

In addition, the council adopted a policy to better manage the use of city-issued credit cards, outlining who can use the cards and requiring receipts to be submitted for all purchases.

According to city documents, credit cards are currently used by the city manager, department heads and select staff for approved purchases, with most cards stored in a city vault when not in use.

“Just so people know and somebody doesn’t misread this in the paper - council members don’t get to use those credit cards,” Councilman David Reed said.