WARREN Panel: Address street plans

There are two executive secretaries in the water department, but the city administration knew of only one.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Two meetings of city council committees garnered the same result: the scheduling of another meeting.
Council's engineering, building and planning committee met Tuesday and talked about the need for a long-term solution to address street resurfacing and preventative maintenance of streets.
"It's council's responsibility to develop a plan to resurface," said Councilman Gary Fonce, D-at large. "We as a council aren't doing what needs to be done."
Earlier this year, the idea of an assessment program for street resurfacing was bandied about along with increasing license plate taxes to increase revenue for the project. But none of the solutions was approved.
Councilman Robert Holmes III, D-4th, said he wants money from license plate fees and that remaining from the sale of Anthem stock to be used for streets. He's circulating a petition among council members to do that.
David Robison, director of the city's engineering, planning and building department, said the city spends money annually for street resurfacing, but there aren't funds to keep up with preventative maintenance of the roads. He said the method of annually resurfacing that's been followed is a Band-Aid approach.
Councilman Alford L. Novak, D-2nd, committee chairman, said he's always been supportive of street resurfacing and road projects and he'll schedule a meeting within a month to hammer out a street resurfacing plan.
Getting fired up
Tempers flared at a finance committee meeting Tuesday about an ordinance setting authorized strength for general fund departments. Authorized strength deals with the number of positions authorized for each department.
Councilman Robert Holmes III, D-4th, requested the ordinance to combine different ordinances addressing department strength into one piece of legislation.
Mayor Hank Angelo wants the panel to wait for the budget hearings, set for next week, and debate the departments' sizes at that time.
Angelo said he has notified council and gotten its approval for hiring done for positions above the staffing level at the time of 2000 layoffs. Holmes pointed to the water department, which lists two executive secretary employees. Legislation approved by council calls for only one.
"There's supposed to be one, how did it get to be two?" he asked.
Angelo and Fred Harris, safety-service director, said they weren't aware of two executive secretaries in the water department. They asked that another meeting be scheduled when Gary Cicero, human resources director, could attend. Cicero was out of town Tuesday.
Auditor David Griffing confirmed there are two people in the executive secretary position in the water department.
Possible situation
Angelo said it may have been a temporary transfer of an employee from the community development department to the executive secretary position in the water department . Holmes said the staffer has been in that slot for six or seven months.
Fonce asked the administration not to hire anyone except in the safety forces until the authorized strength ordinance is settled. He wanted to exclude the safety forces because the city pledged to hire a certain number of police officers and firefighters if the income tax increase was approved last year.
Fonce was incredulous about the administration's contention they didn't know about the second executive secretary position.
"Since I've been on council, I've been hearing that it's the director's job to hire and fire, but the director can't tell me whether we have one or two executive secretaries," Fonce said.
Harris said he couldn't keep track of all of the city's employees. He said he'd sit down with Holmes and Cicero and review the proposed ordinance and determine why two people are in the water department position.
dick@vindy.com