Old Joliet Prison report lists some expenditures, not all

A recent prison expenditures report gives a glimpse at what the city has been spending at the Old Joliet Prison, although not the whole picture.

Joliet has yet to develop a budget outlining revenues and expenditures at the prison for the city and its partner in the project, the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

Most of the cleanup and restoration done so far at the prison has been through volunteer labor. The recent expenditures report itemizes some of the expenses the city has faced.

“We can’t walk around and say it (the prison) isn’t costing us anything when obviously it is,” Councilman Larry Hug said Monday.

Hug last week referred to the expenditures report when he said that Joliet has spent more than $1 million on the prison so far.

But the report prepared by the city finance department lists only $261,125 in expenditures since the city began converting the former Joliet Correctional Center into a visitors’ site in early 2018.

The report does not show an estimated $585,000 spent on police overtime for security at the prison before Joliet installed a camera security system. The cameras cost $116,000, making security the biggest cost at the prison.

Joliet took out a lease from the state on the prison in part to get some control over trespassing, vandalism and arson.

The camera system is in the expenditures report, which covers all of 2018 and runs through May 28 of this year.

Other expenses include $77,432 in professional services, $50,000 for a city subsidy, $12,622 in tools, $2,068 in office supplies and $2,362 for electricity.

Finance Director James Ghedotte said that $51,480 in professional services expenses is due to be reimbursed through a state grant used to offset most of $74,000 spent on a structural assessment done on the site by engineering firm Klein and Hoffman.

Hug said he is concerned the city is not tracking the cost of using staff at the prison. He noted the expenditures report also did not list overtime paid to Public Works Department employees for two weekends in early 2018 to clean up overgrown brush.

City officials said the only staff now being used at the prison on a paid basis is a weekly crew that mows grass. Labor costs for mowing are estimated at $428 a week.

Assistant City Manager Steve Jones said he is in the process of working with the museum on a budget that would at least account for all revenue from other events.

“Part of it’s going into a fund we’ve got,” Jones said. “Part of it goes into a fund they’ve got. We’ve got to mesh it together.”