County Undertakes Formatting Overhaul of Decades-Old Ordinances

JOLIET — Will County officials are modernizing the format and structure of the county’s ordinances, some of which date back to 1943, as part of a comprehensive review process to improve readability and consistency.

During Thursday’s Ordinance Committee meeting, members and staff worked through detailed formatting changes to Chapter 30 of the county’s code, which governs administration, with attention to readability concerns that have persisted for decades.

“We do have two chapters for the full county board meeting coming up that we’re going to be approving,” said committee member Judy Ogala, who raised concerns about the document’s formatting. “When I’m looking at all this, and I’ve said this before, is when you are typing a paper for a master’s thesis, you have your heading and then all of the lines are indented. They don’t come back over, so it’s easy to read.”

Phil Mock from the State’s Attorney’s Office, who is leading the ordinance review project, offered to make several formatting improvements, including adding bold headings for committee names and creating consistent indentation patterns to make the ordinances more accessible.

“I could put more spacing to highlight it by having an extra space. So after the word, after the three, there’d be a double space before it got to ‘executive,’ and then at the end of ‘executive,’ a double space before ‘finance’ started,” Mock explained.

The committee also decided to eliminate the traditional section symbols (§§) that had appeared in front of section numbers, which Mock noted were redundant. “It’s self-explanatory,” he said, adding that the committee was also removing references to previous iterations of ordinances to streamline the documents.

Committee member Katie Freeman supported the changes but cautioned against making the document look “choppyish” by over-formatting. “When you look through it, all of the different times that some committees, you know, be it landfill committee, public health and safety committee, whatever committee, it’s going to jump out all over the place,” she said.

The committee ultimately decided to bold committee names at the beginning of each section and maintain consistent indentation throughout, with Mock agreeing to implement the changes for all chapters under review.

“I like it when Michael was a great public works — public health and safety — she would put things on that didn’t come and flow that way. She was in charge of that committee. I didn’t want to — I wanted her to make it her committee, and she did a great job,” Ogala said, emphasizing that the formatting should support committee chairs in understanding their responsibilities.

The comprehensive formatting review is part of a larger effort to modernize the county’s ordinances. Mock noted that some sections of the code hadn’t been properly reviewed since they were first written in the 1940s.

“The earliest I found was ’43,” Mock told the committee when discussing the age of some provisions.

The committee voted unanimously to forward the updated Chapter 30 to the executive committee with the agreed-upon formatting changes. The committee plans to continue its systematic review with Chapter 34 at its next meeting.