Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk leaving office after historic, tumultuous eight years

Bob O’Dekirk exits as mayor after leaving his imprint on Joliet, for better or worse.

The better part of O’Dekirk’s two terms has been a record of getting things done, capped off Thursday when the Houbolt Road bridge opened with the promise of offering some relief to the growing dilemma of regional truck traffic.

“Absolutely positive,” council member Larry Hug said of O’Dekirk’s influence in Joliet, pointing primarily to a track record of economic development in Joliet over the past eight years. “Roughly $5 billion in new development, that’s going to be tough to beat.”

The worst part has been a style of government called brash by some and offensive by others.

Despite a long list of accomplishments that O’Dekirk could repeatedly list during his reelection campaign, he lost by a 2-1 margin in the April 4 election to Terry D’Arcy, a car dealer with deep pockets to challenge the mayor who is making his first attempt at elected office.

“Bob beat himself with the vindictiveness and vengeful tactics that he took,” said John Sheridan, president of the Cunningham Neighborhood Council.

Sheridan is a one-time backer of O’Dekirk, who worked on his behalf in the first campaign for mayor in 2015. He later became O’Dekirk’s most vocal opponent, speaking out against the mayor and even labeling him a bully during public comment segments of City Council meetings.

The clash between the two led to a reopening of an alley behind Sheridan’s house, which neighbors banded together to have blocked off on one end because of concerns about criminal activity.

Sheridan said he found while campaigning that the seemingly trivial dispute was noticed by voters, who may not have spoken out against O’Dekirk but were ready to vote against him.

“It was just another one of those issues that people were pissed about,” Sheridan said.

O’Dekirk did not make himself available for an interview for this story.

But his comments along the campaign trail, starting with a State of the City speech in February in which O’Dekirk basically laid out progress in the city since he became mayor in 2015, reflect his own view that his time as mayor was one of regular, and at times explosive, advancement for Joliet.

O’Dekirk could put up numbers showing improvements in the city’s financial condition and point to development to back up his case. Opponents have said he takes too much credit, but history will be hard pressed to show O’Dekirk’s two terms as mayor as anything other than a time of significant development for the city.

Not all of it has been welcome, such as the controversial NorthPoint Development project that would add more warehousing to an area where residents are becoming fed up with the number of trucks on the road.

But the city also took on other projects that may not have gotten done under a less aggressive mayor.

• The Lake Michigan water project will replace the deep wells that have supplied city water for 100 years, but which scientists have said no longer will be adequate by 2030.

• The Lion Electric Co. bus and truck factory was brought to Joliet amid a national competition that highlighted the city’s potential to attract more than warehousing to the local industrial economy.

• The popular reopening of the former Joliet Correctional Center as the Old Joliet Prison was initiated by the city and was done under a unique lease arrangement that could serve as a model for other unused state properties.

• Chicago Street was reopened, providing a direct route into the heart of downtown from Interstate 80 and opening a corridor that had been under discussion for years before O’Dekirk became mayor but never done.

• Cullinan Properties has begun developing 309 acres at the crossing of Interstates 55 and 80, a project that, if done as planned, would create a new commercial area of Joliet and attract customers from a broad section of the state.

• The Olive Garden Restaurant chain opened just this month, fulfilling a request that had been on the top of lists for businesses that Joliet residents would like to see and reflecting a more aggressive approach by the city to attract business that included the creation of the city’s first economic development division.

The Houbolt Road bridge project had been on the drawing board before O’Dekirk became mayor, but O’Dekirk declared after being elected that he would see that it got done, and it did.

Even Sheridan gave O’Dekirk credit for the Houbolt Road bridge, saying it was good to see him still in office to cut the ribbon for the bridge opening.

But he’s not sad to see the mayor go, and neither are other enemies O’Dekirk made over the years.

It was a clash between City Hall and state Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, when she was seeking a City Council seat in 2017 that turned Sheridan against O’Dekirk. Ventura lost that election, but since then, her political status has risen while O’Dekirk’s – at least for now – is down.

When asked about O’Dekirk, Ventura described him as “a toxic leader who bullies people and yells at them.”

She said O’Dekirk takes too much credit for projects that were underway before he got on board, including the Houbolt Road bridge and the restoration of the Joliet Correctional Center.

O’Dekirk’s last term in particular has been marked by controversy, including what amounted to a street fight when the mayor got involved in a personal confrontation with two protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020.

Later that year, former council member Donald “Duck” Dickinson filed a police report accusing the mayor of criminal intimidation, which later exploded into a charge against Dickinson for allegedly filing a false police report.

The charge against Dickinson later was dismissed. But it became the focus of an investigation by the city’s inspector general, who reports to O’Dekirk, and a report that came out just a month before the election.

The inspector general report may have been one more controversy in a city that had enough of it.

Council member Pat Mudron, who the inspector general accused of inappropriate conduct in the Dickinson matter and other inspector general investigations, was reelected April 4.

His victory in the same election as O’Dekirk’s defeat is one sign that the mayor’s political style may have backfired on him.

Mudron was a central figure in a council faction that opposed O’Dekirk in what became a revolving door of interim city managers. The city also is on its fourth police chief since O’Dekirk became mayor.

“He seemed to get himself involved in a battle with somebody all the time – whether it was the former police chief or other council members,” Mudron said of O’Dekirk. “I don’t think that’s the best for the city.”