Gavin To Joliet Taxpayers: 'I'll Be Your Huckleberry'

JOLIET, IL —On the night after Christmas, east-side Joliet City Councilwoman Bettye Gavin cast the deciding vote to raise Joliet's taxes to pay for a controversial $10.5 million remodeling of the downtown Joliet Public Library that is a haven for homeless people. Next, Gavin voted to raise the hotel and motel lodging tax from 7 percent to 10 percent.

Joliet's hotel and motel lodging taxes will now be way higher than Plainfield and Naperville, among others.

And when it came time to voting on Joliet's fuel taxes, Gavin voted to raise Joliet's current 1-cent per gallon fuel tax to 4 cents per gallon for 2020. During Thursday's special meeting, Gavin told everyone that she drives to Lockport to buy her gasoline, rather than buy it in Joliet.

Prior to Thursday night's votes to raise a slew of Joliet taxes and fees, Gavin remarked, "Right before I vote, let me clear up a couple of things that was said this evening ... It has been stated, I believe in the paper, that the mayor supported my campaign and that all of a sudden, I switched allegiances. Let me make one thing very clear: My vote is not up for sale.

"It is not an allegiance to anybody. I take every memo that I have, I go through it and I make a decision on it myself. Nobody tells me how to vote. And I'm not in anybody's pocket. I just want to make that clear to everybody. What I decide to do is my decision. And, even though I'm linked with my good friends and my colleagues down there, that goes for them too.

"You know, you can group me in this group of Mudron 5 or however you want to say it. But that is not me. That is not me," Gavin repeated. "So, it was made perfectly clear that tax hikes are on my shoulders. Well, I'll be your Huckleberry. I'll vote aye."

With that, the new tax and fee increases for the city of Joliet residents and non-residents were adopted. At the meeting to adopt the city's 2020 budget, Gavin joined forces with her usual City Council voting bloc: the Mudron 5.

The following five members voted to raise the fuel taxes, hotel-motel taxes and property taxes at Thursday's special meeting: Gavin, Don "The Duck" Dickinson, 30-year councilman Mike Turk, insurance agent Pat Mudron and newly elected Sherri Reardon.

Voting against the tax and fee hikes were: Jan Quillman, Larry Hug and Terry Morris.

Joliet Mayor Bob O'Dekirk previously voted against all the fee and tax hikes at last week's meeting when Gavin was a no-show.

Later in Thursday's meeting, Mayor O'Dekirk put two members of the Mudron 5 under the microscope: Dickinson and Gavin.

The mayor told everyone that he had surveyed Thursday's gasoline prices across the city and found a 40-cent to 50-cent per gallon price discrepancy between several of the city's east side gas stations and several on the west side of Joliet.

"So Councilman Dickinson, I'm going to ask you specifically, because it's been commented, and I've received complaints about this, about you never adding to the conversation. I want to ask you how you can tell people on the east side of Joliet, they're already paying 40 or 50 cents more per gallon, some of these people are coming from the poorest neighborhoods in the city, how it's OK to charge them another 3 cents on top of what they're already paying?"the mayor asked.

Dickinson: "They need to identify the places that are charging outrageous amounts and go to a different place. That's the only way you're going to get anybody to lower their prices. Don't patronize them."

Dickinson also explained he uses an app that identifies the cheapest prices in the area to buy gasoline.

Gavin told the mayor that she also surveys the gas prices to determine where to buy her gas. She said the Shell station at Cass and Henderson Streets was $2.99 per gallon Thursday on Joliet's east side, compared to several gas stations that were $2.53 per gallon on the city's west side.

"The only way to stop that ... is to stop patronizing them. Stop patronizing them. Go someplace else and get the gas. I hate to admit, I go to Lockport, because at Murphy's, it is two dollars and fifty some cents. But I'm not going to pay $2.98 at this place," Gavin said.

O'Dekirk then told Gavin that his big fear is that the City Council's action on Thursday night to raise the city's gas tax an additional 3 cents per gallon is going to backfire. Rather than raise the city's revenues as envisioned, the added fuel hikes are going to decrease the city's revenues because people will leave Joliet to buy their gas elsewhere, the mayor suggested.

"I would stay in Joliet," Gavin responded, "but it's closer from my house to Lockport than from my house to the west side."

In addition to the upcoming fuel hike from Joliet, retiring four-term Will County Executive Larry Walsh broke a tie vote last week to enact an additional 4-cent per gallon county wide fuel tax that will take effect in February.

Walsh and the Democrats on the county board, with the exception of Rachel Ventura, all voted in favor of the 4-cent per gallon gas tax hike.