May 21, 2024
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Joliet City Council balks at police contract

Want new city manager arriving to look at supervisors’ contract

By Bob Okon
Councilman Joe Clement speaks at the Joliet City Council Committee meeting on single-family rentals. Aug 11, 2022.

Joliet Councilman Joe Clement wants a vote on a new contract for the police supervisors' union pushed back until it gets a review from the new city manager. (Gary E Duncan Sr)

Some Joliet City Council members said they want to delay approval of a police union contract, saying they got too little information too late on what’s in the agreement.

“I didn’t even know you were negotiating this,” Councilman Larry Hug at a Monday workshop meeting for the council said to the interim city manager.

The three-year contract with the police supervisors’ union is on the council agenda for a vote on Tuesday.

The push to delay the vote appeared to have the support of Mayor Terry D’Arcy, who has a son in the supervisors’ union.

“I don’t think that would cause any issues,” D’Arcy said after Councilman Joe Clement called for a delay in the vote.

Clement, a retired Joliet police officer who was in a separate union for patrol officers, said the contract should be held over for the new city manager that arrives next week.

Beth Beatty has been selected as the next city manager for Joliet. Oct. 31, 2023.

New Joliet City Manager Beth Beatty is scheduled to arrive on Monday. (Provided by the city of Joliet)

New City Manager Beth Beatty arrives Dec. 11, and Clement said she should review the contract before it is approved by the council.

“I don’t see any issue is pushing this down the road a couple of weeks until she gets a chance to look at it,” Clement said.

Beatty will replace interim City Manager Rod Tonelli, who at times has faced criticism from a couple of council members but particularly Jan Quillman.

“In the past, we were informed of negotiations going on,” Quillman said at the Monday meeting. “We’re like mushrooms sitting in the dark again. I guess the interim city manager is going to do whatever he wants to do.”

Tonelli in his only comment on the matter noted that Beatty did not participate in the negotiations with the union.

“It may be unfair to burden her with something she had not been part of,” Tonelli said.

City Manager Rod Tonelli sits in on the Joliet City Council meeting on Tuesday, July 18th, 2023.

Joliet interim City Manager Rod Tonelli (Gary Middendorf – gmiddendorf@shawmedia/Gary Middendorf)

The contract provides for a retroactive pay increase of 2.5% going back to Jan. 1, when the the last contract expired. Supervisors would get another 2% increase Jan. 1. On Aug. 1, 2025, they would get a 3.25% increase.

By comparison, the police patrol officers union in its last contract approved in July 2021 received a retroactive pay increase of 2.49% for 2020, a 2% increase in 2021, 2% for 2022, 2.49% for 2023, and 2% in 2024.

The supervisors’ contract also includes new step raises for sergeants and lieutenants who have been employed for 18 years or more.

The step increase at the 18-year level is new to the supervisors’ union but is provided to all other union workers with the city, Human Resource Director Kathy Franson said when asked before the Monday meeting.

The police supervisors’ union was the only city union to endorse D’Arcy in the April election and had been at odds at times with former Mayor Bob O’Dekirk.

All other city unions are working under contracts negotiated when O’Dekirk was mayor.