Joliet gets ready to OK hike in gas tax

The Joliet City Council appears set to approve hikes in the city gas tax on Tuesday.

Mayor Terry D’Arcy and two council members voiced support for the higher gas taxes at a workshop meeting Monday, and no one spoke against it.

City officials are framing the hike as one that will have the biggest impact on semitrailers and little effect on Joliet motorists.

“We’re talking about something in the range of $5 to $10 a year,” Councilman Cesar Guerrero said regarding the impact on most Joliet residents.

The city tax on gasoline would go up a penny from 4 cents a gallon to 5 cents a gallon.

The bigger hike will be on diesel fuel.

The city plans to increase its tax on diesel fuel by seven cents from the current rate of 4 cents a gallon to 11 cents.

“This is really our response to what a lot of our citizens have been asking for – to collect money from the trucking industry to repair our roads," City Manager Beth Beatty.

Actually, the city plans to dedicate all $1.6 million in new revenue from the tax increase to fund a vehicle replacement program.

But D’Arcy said the city would have to draw from general revenues used for assorted city services to pay for new vehicles if the gas tax did not go up.

“It’s not onerous to the citizens,” D’Arcy said.

He calculated that a motorist buying all gas in Joliet and driving 15,000 miles a year would spend between $6 and $7.50 annually on the tax hike depending on vehicle mileage.

City Hall issued a news release an hour before the start of the Monday council meeting in which Beatty commented extensively on the benefit of higher gas taxes, suggesting that without them the cost of new city vehicles could lead to fewer funds for road resurfacing.

The Joliet gas tax was just a penny before the city hiked it by 3 cents in 2020 to pay for bonds used to start a vehicle replacement program.

The latest increase, if approved, would help support a $662 million budget that also is bolstered by a 6.5% increase in the property tax levy.

All but 1% of the levy increase is paid for by new development in Joliet, city officials say.

The impact of the tax levy on current homeowners is roughly $4 for every $100,000 of assessed property value, according to officials.