Joliet: Two months after undergoing surgery for throat cancer, Joliet Mayor Arthur Schultz has promised that he will return to his duties in City Hall soon.
Using family members to “translate” his hand movements and read his lips, Schultz declared that he hoped to attend a City Council meeting the first week of March and probably would be able to spend time in his office before then, “just to say hello.”
Last November, Schultz’s larynx was removed during a 3-hour operation. He has been recuperating at home since mid-December. By using a voice prosthesis inserted into a neck valve, Schultz hopes he will be able to communicate in another 2 months.
“I will be back,” he said through one of his five children, Nancy Voots, who along with Schultz’s wife, Frances, monitored the mayor’s lip movements.
Schultz, who was elected mayor in 1991, stays abreast of city affairs through daily briefings from secretary Nancy Franchi, and by viewing live cable telecasts of council meetings.
Although he was pleased to see that the city’s 1994 budget reflected an influx of more than $17 million in riverboat gambling revenue, he maintained that homeowners needed relief from high property taxes.
Last year, Schultz urged the council to rebate property taxes with the help of gaming revenue funds. And even if he was pleased to see $1 million earmarked for public and parochial schools in the city, he insisted that a tax break was still needed.
But Schultz gestured that even if such a measure was “very important,” he had only one vote, and it would need four other votes from the council to enact such an ordinance.
Schultz, a member of the Joliet Police Department for nearly 30 years before being elected mayor, also wanted more uniformed officers on the street.
Among other things on his mind, Schultz said he believed:
– Riverboat gambling revenue estimates were still conservative but will soon level off.
– Boxing at the Rialto Square Theater, scheduled for next month, was a good idea.
– And, because the city still had a serious problem with finding a tenant for the refurbished Union Station, it should fill it with water “and put fish there, so the kids could have something to do.”