Joliet to stop mailing city newsletter to most residents

The Joliet City Council this week agreed to stop mailing a print version of the city newsletter to most residents.

City officials said they would continue to mail a print version to as many as 4,800 residents considered to have limited access to computers, although no specific plan was set out.

City Manager Beth Beatty said Joliet could get more information to the community through other media than a printed newsletter mailed to people’s homes.

She said the city had heard from people calling the front desk at City Hall that there was general dissatisfaction with the mailed newsletter.

“By the time people get the information, it’s out of date,” Beatty said. “Or they can’t get it at all. Or they get three copies.”

The city has a $202,000 contract with Liberty Creative Solutions to put out eight quarterly newsletters through 2025. The agreement, however, includes a provision allowing the city to pull out.

The council voted unanimously to end the contract and the mailing of the printed newsletter to all Joliet homes.

Beatty said the city planned to create an arrangement by which residents who want a newsletter mailed to their house can continue to get it.

“For those residents, we will provide an opportunity for them to sign up, and we will mail it to them,” she said.

One possibility is that a printed newsletter would be sent with monthly water bills to those households that want it, Rosemaria DeBenedetti, the city’s communications director, told the council.

Councilwoman Jan Quillman said the cost of the citywide mailing “is becoming outrageous.”

Quillman heads the council’s Legislative Committee, which reviewed the proposal and recommended elimination of the mailed newsletter. No one spoke against the end of the print version at the committee meeting or the council meeting.

The city already makes a digital version of the newsletter available on its website.

Beatty said most municipalities have been switching to electronic-only versions of city newsletters.