YOUNGSTOWN BUDGET County fails to answer call by city to consolidate 911 centers

The city could save up to $600,000 a year, the finance director said.
YOUNGSTOWN -- As the city council's finance committee neared the end of its meeting Wednesday on a temporary budget for 2005, Councilman Artis Gillam asked a question:
Why not consolidate Youngstown's and Mahoning County's 911 systems? Surely that would be a savings for both political subdivisions, the 1st Ward councilman said.
In fact, Finance Director David Bozanich said he had called the county six or seven times during 2004 trying to get discussions started. He couldn't get a response, he said.
Undeterred, Bozanich said he spoke with John McNally IV, the former law director who was sworn in Wednesday as a county commissioner, about the consolidation proposal.
"John said he would make this one of his top priorities," Bozanich said.
The matter of merging city and county 911 functions has been broached before; the city wants it, the county doesn't.
The two call centers are roughly 200 yards apart: The city's is on the sixth floor of city hall; the county's is in the administration building.
The idea is that the city workers would become county workers. In return, the city would pay the county for its share of 911 costs.
Bozanich said potential savings to the city would be between $400,000 and $600,000 a year, money that could go to other city needs. He suspected the county would save the same amount or more.
The county system has satellite answering points in Boardman, Austintown, Canfield and North Lima, but they would not be affected by a consolidation plan, he said.
After the finance committee adjourned, council went into its regular session and approved a temporary, three-month budget of slightly more than $23 million. Bozanich came up with that figure by taking about one-quarter of the city general fund budget of roughly $92 million to get departments started next year.
He plans to get council a budget breakdown with requests from department heads in about 10 days and projects that budget hearings would begin by the third week of January.
Changes were made for final budget figures for this year to show increases for the 911 center, the street department and an additional $460,000 toward work on the Marshall Street bridge.
Bozanich explained there was an unanticipated local match for the bridge replacement, so the finance department took the money from the city's debt service account, which had some excess funds, for the city's share.