Dysfunction At Joliet City Hall Has Consequences: Ferak Column

JOLIET, IL — 2020 marked year two of the Joliet City Council wars. One political faction is led by Joliet City Councilman Pat Mudron, who is in his early 70s and tied to the Old Guard of Joliet. The other side is aligned with Mayor Bob O'Dekirk, a former Joliet street cop who works in private practice as an attorney and is in his early 50s.

Because of political infighting and petty squabbles on the City Council, Joliet has gone more than two entire years without a permanent city manager. And the last permanent city manager the Council picked, Bloomington's David Hales, turned out to be a dud.

The Council replaced Hales with corporation counsel Marty Shanahan, but after eight months in that role, Shanahan was abruptly removed as interim city manager. Next up for the job was Steve Jones, the city's economic development director.

Jones was reluctant to serve as interim city manager, but a $40,000 pay increase and an opportunity to collect his retirement pension and continue to stay on the job as a month to month contract employee was too tempting to pass up.

By February, a national job search for a new city manager yielded two out-of-state finalists, Will Jones of Mequon, Wisconsin and J. Mark Rooney of Rhode Island. Although Will Jones had strong credentials and little baggage, the Joliet Council did not offer him, or Rooney, the job.

Steve Jones, no relation to Will Jones, stayed with Joliet another six months before the mayor and City Council wore him down. He left Joliet in early August. And nowadays, Joliet's last permanent city manager to hold the job for more than a year is back in town.

Jim Hock, who retired from Joliet in April 2017, is back from Michigan, which is where he spent most of his municipal government career.

Hock has done a pretty good job, but he's considered a short timer, meaning he does not have the ability to dive into complex issues and projects that require a long term approach.

And that brings me to one of my favorite projects that symbolize the state of disarray in Joliet: 2219 West Jefferson Street, the empty Señor Tequila property.

It's now been 3 1/2 years since business investors proposed opening a large liquor store called the Joliet Market at an empty 12,000-square-foot shopping plaza two doors away from the Senor Tequila site.

However, the current owners of the Señor Tequila property, Basinger's Pharmacy in the Marycrest Shopping Center, protested that project, suggesting it would hurt their plans to build their own liquor store along with a new pharmacy on the current Señor Tequila site.

As a result, the liquor license for the Joliet Market got rejected by Mayor Bob O'Dekirk and City Council.

Now, nearly four years after Basinger's received a liquor license, demolition has not even started on the former Señor Tequila establishment.

I bring up the Señor Tequila debacle because it illustrates how the Joliet City Council's current state of dysfunction has consequences we can see every day.

The Señor Tequila property is one of the biggest blights on West Jefferson Street.

Yet nothing is being done about that at the city of Joliet. The property is owned by Basinger's Pharmacy. Basinger's has been a fixture in Joliet for generations so it stands to reason that many city officials are reluctant to hold the owners accountable for misleading the city of Joliet about their redevelopment project from four years ago.

Because of the continued infighting on the Joliet City Council and the inability to hire a top-level permanent city manager, the Basinger's construction project has fallen off Joliet's radar.

Basinger's never built the beautiful new business building like it claimed it would. The city of Joliet lost out on thousands of dollars of added sales tax revenue over the past few years that would have come if the Joliet Market gained Council approval for a 2017 liquor license.

Instead, the retail space sought for the Joliet Market liquor center sits vacant, three years later. The empty Bakers Square restaurant to the west was unable to attract a buyer the past two years.

I can't help but think that a number of potential buyers of the Bakers Square said thanks but no thanks after seeing the Señor Tequila property next door.

With 2021 on the horizon, the Señor Tequila eyesore stands. The Bakers Square next door remains empty. The large retail space sought by the Joliet Market is still unoccupied.

Three economically depressed business properties all in a row on Joliet's busiest corridor, and the Joliet City Council doesn't even seem to notice or take an interest anymore.