Mayor D'Arcy Votes To Raise Your Joliet Property Taxes, Here's Why

JOLIET —After a 5 to 3 vote, Joliet Mayor Terry D'Arcy became a swing vote, following city manager Beth Beatty's recommendation to raise the property tax levy for the residents of Joliet. The vote took place at Tuesday night's meeting. D'Arcy was joined in the yes-to-higher-property-taxes vote by Council members Pat Mudron, Sherri Reardon, Cesar Cardenas and Suzanna Ibarra.

The three no votes to the property tax increase were Larry Hug, Jan Quillman and Joe Clement. Clement and Quillman are running for re-election in the April 1 at-large municipal races. Cesar Guerrero, who is now running for Joliet Township Supervisor instead of his Council seat, was absent from the vote.

At the meeting, Joliet finance director Kevin Sing explained that the tax increase for property owners would be about $12 annually for someone who owns $300,000 in property. The Joliet City Council may also vote to increase the city's fuel tax on gasoline and diesel at its next meeting in two weeks.

Joliet's 2025 budget will include taxpayer subsidies to the Rialto Square Theatre of $475,000, another $275,000 to the Joliet Area Historical Museum, $500,000 to pay off the construction of the new Will County Courthouse, $50,000 toward the Will County Center for Economic Development, $36,800 to the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce and $15,000 for Pace Route 511.

The 174-page budget that was posted online also listed the creation of nearly 30 new city of Joliet positions including: 14 new police officers, 3 new firefighter/paramedics, 3 new firefighter lieutenants, 1 new fire captain, 1 community paramedic funded by a grant, 3 new information and technology staff, 1 bilingual employee for City Hall's front desk, 1 new office manager at Public Works and 1 new development coordinator for community development.

It's also worth pointing out that since D'Arcy has been mayor and Beth Beatty became the new city manager last December, after leaving her deputy mayor's job at the City of Chicago, Joliet has added several new six-figure salaried positions at City Hall and dramatically increased the pay for some of the new department heads.

For instance, new community development director Dustin Anderson was given a salary of $180,000 last August; the person he replaced, Eva Marie Tropper, made nearly $151,000. Among the new City Hall jobs, Christa Desiderio became the deputy city manager, and she received a salary increase of roughly $43,000, from $142,695 to $185,500.

In addition, D'Arcy's campaign manager for his successful 2023 mayor's race, Rosemaria DiBenedetto, was hired last May to fill Joliet's newly created City Hall position of media engagement and communications director, at a starting salary of $159,900.

At Tuesday night's meeting, Mayor D'Arcy blamed previous city administrations for Joliet's ongoing financial challenges.

"I'm going to throw in my two cents," remarked D'Arcy. "This is not Chicago, this is Joliet. This budget has been cut several times to get us to where we're as close as we can to balancing.

"I came into this position eyes wide open," an angry sounding Mayor D'Arcy snapped, raising his voice. "I'm a public servant, not a politician. And what I've seen, some of our previous city administration do to this community, is unspeakable. We have got a collective bargaining agreement that carries insurance until 2030 for all of our collective bargaining employees. And there are people sitting on this dais right now that are aware of that. And you know, that cost of that insurance goes up for our retirees and our current employees $2 million a year. This year, we're covering $32 million in health care. I didn't know any of this when I took this position. So, next year, it's going to be $34 million. This contract goes out until 2030.

"I'm in collective bargaining agreements. I have collective bargaining employees that work with me. We go every three years or four years, and we discuss everything and we adjust together. (Here) there is no adjustment. We are Blue Cross, we are this, we are that, or the other, and that's it. How do you negotiate with an insurance company, when you have no negotiating opportunities? We've gone up 6 percent a year since this thing was baked in 2016. And it doesn't end until 2030."

"But there's four contracts in between there," D'Arcy explained. "I've never heard of this. So when we talk about trying to balance this city and trying to cut back a little bit, I'm flabbergasted. Our unions have agreed for this year to finally sit down and talk about this conversation because this is untenable. We cannot continue to invest all these millions of dollars in health care for a couple of thousand people, I hate to say it. We've got seven or eight hundred retirees and eight or nine hundred employees, and that's our insurance coverage.

"Who would like to pay $1,200 a year for health care?" D'Arcy asked. "I would. So we're doing our best that we can, and I know it feels like we're doing something wrong. We're doing the best we can do. And we really have shaved down. Sixty-eight percent of this budget of this city is human capital. That does not leave a lot for sidewalks, and new construction and anything else. We are trying to invite new construction because they will add more bottom line to us.

"You know, I said the only to get our way out of this is to get to 400,000 residents, so we can dilute it more. We need you all to be here, we don't want anybody to leave. I love it here. I'm not going anywhere. But somehow we've got to fix this thing ... when we looked at the water project, OK, the biggest users are going to pay more per unit than the rest of us, the households. So if we're prudent with our water, we're not paying the same bill as the guy out there using tons of water. And I think we're going to look at the same thing, how can we make those warehouses, they have a $1 million tax bill, we get $128,000, that's nothing. We've got to plow their streets, police them and fire them. We've got to rebalance the city so we the people aren't sitting here paying all the tolls for this stuff.

"I would like to put bridges up, truck bridges, so they can't bring another damn truck to our downtown," D'Arcy declared. "Now you've got trucks slamming around everywhere, you can't stand and talk to somebody without dust blowing on you. So, I don't disagree. I hate to make this decision, but again, the average home value in our city right now is $246,000. It's $9.88. If we don't take a little bit every year, it's going to be a big bite down the road. We don't want any of that, but we are going to try to rebalance this thing."

D'Arcy went on to say, that "if you're 65 and over, there's a tax freeze. I don't know if I've applied for it, yet, but I'm eligible for it. So we are doing our best we can. We're not deficit spending, we're not trying to dig us a hole. But we've just got to keep moving us along ... I got a lot of hot calls today and I called back, and I explained the dollars and cents of it, and it started to make sense for people. Because, when you hear, my bill is $5,000, and it's going up 6.5 percent, that's the number we all look at it, but it's actually not the true number. So, we're here to be respectful and prudent of all of our tax dollars, because we're all in this together."