SHARON Funds for secretary cut from budget

The post has been vacant for nine months, and council is unwilling to fill it again.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- It looks as though newly elected Mayor David O. Ryan won't have an executive secretary when he takes office next year.
City council cut the $18,000 earmarked for the post out of the proposed 2002 budget Wednesday.
The job has been vacant for nine months, after the resignation of Mayor Robert T. Price's secretary.
Price didn't fill it, deciding instead to pay two other city secretaries an additional $4,000 apiece to handle those duties for the rest of this year.
Fred Hoffman, council president, said that additional $4,000 was a raise for each of the secretaries and the city can't take it back now, even if the additional secretarial duties are assigned to a new person.
Ryan disagreed, saying the additional pay was to cover the additional work load for the last nine months of the year and wasn't intended as a permanent increase.
Price said the money was given as a wage increase, and he recommended that it not be taken away from the secretaries.
Hoffman said council would be increasing the cost of the job to $26,000 a year if it OK'd a new secretary for Ryan at the budgeted figure of $18,000 and continued to pay the other two secretaries an additional $4,000 a year each.
Suggestion: That's not something council is willing to do, he said, suggesting that Ryan have his secretarial duties handled by the current staff.
"I've never known a mayor in Sharon not to have an executive secretary," Ryan told council, adding that the position dates back to at least 1960.
He said he prefers a full-time executive secretary over having to deal with two or three different secretaries. He asked council to restore the funding in the budget.
Councilman Ray Fabian said granting Ryan's request would add an additional person to the office complement, but Ryan said that isn't the case.
The job was always listed in the complement even though it was vacant for most of the year, he said.
Support: Councilwoman Chris Outrakis agreed with Ryan, saying the mayor should have his own secretary. She pointed out that some department heads in the city have their own secretaries.
Outrakis backed Ryan in the November mayoral race, while Hoffman and Fabian backed the unsuccessful campaign of Councilman Lou Rotunno.
Hoffman said the question of the additional $4,000 for the two secretaries needs to be addressed by the city solicitor and the American Federation of State, County & amp; Municipal Employees union that represents them to determine if the money was a permanent wage increase or a temporary bonus.
Council, which refused last month to introduce the $7,960,708 general fund budget for 2002 as proposed by Price, spent several hours reviewing each department's spending in an effort to trim a 3.5-mill property tax increase called for in the spending plan.
They made cuts in some departments but increased spending in others. In the end, they reduced overall spending by $10,300.
Hoffman said council will likely bring the budget up for the first of two required readings at its Dec. 13 meeting.