Public's vote is final, tax critic tells panel

The second of two hearings on the half-percent sales tax will be 10 a.m. Friday.
YOUNGSTOWN -- If Mahoning County commissioners impose the recently defeated half-percent sales tax, they can expect an organized effort to overturn that decision at the ballot box.
Gary Brant of Pinecrest Avenue, Austintown, was one of several in a standing-room-only crowd who spoke in opposition to an imposed tax at the first of two public hearings on the issue. The hearing Monday was in the commissioners' conference room in the basement of the county courthouse. The second hearing will be at 10 a.m. Friday in the same place.
Brant told commissioners that about 65,000 people said no to the half-percent sales tax renewal in November, adding, "No means no." He said commissioners should fund only state-mandated services.
"If the new commissioners work diligently [to show fiscal responsibility] and put the issue on the ballot, I believe the measure would pass," Brant said. He added, however, that he would seek signatures for a referendum to place the tax before voters if commissioners impose it.
The county has two half-percent sales taxes, which bring in between $26 million and $28 million, or nearly half of the county's general fund revenue. The county's anticipated revenue for 2005 will be between $34 million and $37 million.
The first sales tax, which dates to 1981, was voted down in November and expires at the end of the year. The second, approved in 1997 and again in 2002, expires Dec. 31, 2007.
Commissioners David Ludt, Ed Reese and Vicki Allen Sherlock will decide before the end of the year whether to impose the tax. Reese and Sherlock will leave office Dec. 31. They chose not to run for re-election. They will be replaced in January by Anthony Traficanti and John V. McNally IV, the city of Youngstown's law director.
Opposed
Some of the others speaking against the tax were Patrick Strange of Campbell, Tom Kelty of Struthers and Bill Beacham of Austintown.
Strange, who has unsuccessfully run for countywide office, said voters turned down the tax in March and November, and it would be a great mistake to impose it and a disservice to the new commissioners.
Kelty said imposing the tax would show "the vote of the people means nothing."
Beacham said the commissioners lied when they said the tax was a renewal, when actually it was a permanent, continuous tax. He said if the commissioners agreed to restore revenue sharing from the tax and reduce its length, he would vote for it.
Joseph Caruso, assistant county administrator, said that because of county government's rising costs, the revenue sharing program had to be abandoned.
Commissioners had used revenue from the recently defeated tax to provide seed money to the county's political subdivisions as the local share for state and federal grants for infrastructure repairs.
As for the language on the November ballot issue, Caruso said it had been approved by the secretary of state's office. "As long as the sales tax rate percentage does not change, the tax could be called a renewal," Caruso said.
Support
Commissioners did hear from some who support imposing the tax.
Glen Kuntz, a county deputy sheriff and president of the deputies union, said deputies have done everything they can to help the county keep costs under control.
He said, however, the department is in "crisis mode."
"There are no road patrols. Everyone is either at the jail or serving the courts," Kuntz said, adding that if there is a call for help in county areas without police protection, all cruisers must be dispatched from Youngstown.
Thirty-one deputies were laid off last month, and Sheriff Randall Wellington expects to lay off more because of the decline in county revenue.
Sat Adlaka of Adlaka & amp; Associates, a Boardman professional engineering firm, said the tax should be imposed as a benefit to the public, as did Brian Hughes, Springfield Township fire chief, David Catauro with the 911 emergency call center, and Nicholas Frazeskos of Campbell, whose son is a deputy sheriff.