Niles involved with township land swap

Township police have been given a 3 percent annual raise for the next three years.
By MARY SMITH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MINERAL RIDGE -- Weathersfield Township trustees approved a land swap with Niles, giving the city 16 acres in Waddell Park -- while Niles gave back four parcels in the township's Kerr Cemetery.
Trustees approved the switch Tuesday after a technicality had kept the properties in the wrong governmental entities for years.
The Waddell Park land is by the Mahoning River along West Park Avenue and includes a baseball field. Land at Kerr Cemetery, the township's largest, is off Salt Springs Road behind the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District spillway.
Other business
Trustees also approved 3 percent increase for each of the next three years for the township's six full-time police officers and two lieutenants. The contract with the Ohio Patrolman's Benevolent Association runs from July 1 to June 30, 2009. The base wage for a patrolman now is $18 an hour and will be increased 54 cents hourly in the first year; to $19.09 in the second year; and to $19.66 in the third year.
Trustee chairman John Vogel said no new police levy was considered. He said budgetary tightening has been underway in the department, adding the new package is "not a budget buster."
The only other change is, if health insurance costs covered by the township exceed 8 percent of their current rate, trustees will have to rebid insurance carriers and attempt to reduce the cost of insurance, or the union may be charged with the difference.