Joliet drawbridges draw attention in council election

Mayor Bob O’Dekirk is calling for a long-term solution for the downtown drawbridge problems, and some City Council candidates are making suggestions.

The Jefferson Street bridge has become a campaign issue in the April 6 election now that is out of service until October, which will mark 16 months since it was last in use.

Hudson Hollister, a candidate for City Council, says the best solution is local control and proposes a way to do it.

Many may not know that the city does not maintain the downtown drawbridges. They are maintained by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Hollister proposes putting them under the control of a local port authority and taxing cargo containers to fund the authority.

“It’s time for us to stop relying on the state to maintain Joliet’s bridges,” Hollister said in a statement.

“Here’s what we need to do,” he said. “Let’s expand the existing Joliet Regional Port District’s jurisdiction to include the intermodal facilities and barge infrastructure, fund it using container charges, acquire the bridges from the state, and maintain them ourselves.”

‘Container charges’ means taxing the cargo containers coming through the intermodal facilities.

The Joliet Regional Port District owns and operates Lewis University Airport, so it does have some experience managing big projects.

Hollister isn’t the only council candidate to jump on the Jefferson Street bridge issue.

Jeremy Brzycki has started a petition drive to urge state officials to fix the bridge.

The question of what to do about the aging Joliet drawbridges was raised a few times at a Thursday forum for City Council candidates held by the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce& Industry.

Brzycki said the city needs to develop a better relationship with state officials, particularly at the Illinois Department of Transportation.

“The IDOT situation is ridiculous,” he said. “We have to have a more proactive relationship with some of these entities.”

Candidate Warren Dorris, a former councilman, also used the word “proactive” when discussing the bridges at the forum.

The chronic explanation for bridge maintenance delays is that parts must be custom-made, which can take months, each time a defect is discovered, and defects often aren’t discovered until maintenance starts.

Dorris, a former manufacturing manager for Caterpillar Inc., said the city and IDOT need to get together to identify what could go wrong with the bridges and prepare for the possibilities.

“Manufacture these parts and have them on the shelf,” Dorris said.

All of these sound like good suggestions. Surely, the devil is in the details. But we may as well start diving in.