Joliet getting $24 million in COVID-relief funds

Money could be used to fill jobs, reopen Bicentennial Park

Joliet Municipal Building at 150 W. Jefferson St.

Joliet expects to get nearly $24 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding.

The money could be used to fill jobs not currently funded in the city budget and to reopen Billie Limacher Bicentenntial Park, Councilman Michael Turk, chairman of the Finance Committee, said at a council meeting Tuesday.

He said the city expects to get half of the $23.86 million approved for Joliet by the end of May and the other half in 2022.

Also at the Tuesday meeting, the council delayed a vote on the creation of two new jobs sought by the city manager and already posted for resumes.

The city has another 26 positions unfilled due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tax revenues, including jobs in the police and fire departments.

Turk said it would take $4.6 million of the COVID-19 relief to bring city employment back to 2019 levels.

“It’s not new positions,” he said. “It’s older positions from the last couple of years that haven’t been filled.”

It wasn’t clear whether the money could also be used to pay for two new positions that City Manager James Capparelli wants to create.

Capparelli wants to hire a public relations manager and a grants coordinator. The two positions were on the agenda for the council meeting Tuesday.

But the council tabled a vote on both jobs without setting a date for when it would vote.

While council members did not say why they tabled votes on the two new jobs, they did approve filling other positions after clarifying that they had already been funded in the 2021 budget. The public relations and grants coordinator jobs are not in the budget.

Turk noted that it would cost $431,000 for the city to reopen Billie Limacher Bicentennial Park, which was closed this year as a budget cut made to adjust to revenue reductions related to the COVID-19 impact on the economy.

City officials said when approving the budget that the park could be reopened in 2021 if revenues improved.

While Joliet is getting $23.86 million from the COVID-19 relief bill, city officials are questioning why smaller municipalities are getting more.

“Joliet did not get as much as say Evanston,” Capparelli told the council at its Monday workshop meeting. “There is a convoluted formula involved in that.”

Capparelli said city officials have begun to contact representatives in Congress “to try to get our fair share.”