Youngstown city officials should refuse wage hikes

Just 13 days after voters in the Youngstown City School District rejected a 9.5-mill levy — they ignored warnings that the budget would implode without the new revenue — members of city council granted their department heads and other managers exorbitant pay raises.

Weren’t they paying attention? The voters who went to the polls Nov. 6 are the same ones who vote in city elections. And many of them agreed several years ago to increase the city’s income tax rate because officials promised increased police and fire protection and other services.

There was no talk of giving city government employees obscenely large pay raises. Indeed, had former Mayor George McKelvey and council at the time said that money would be used to fatten the wallets of the public employees, the tax increase would have been rejected.

And yet, the kind of slopping at the trough that we’ve seen recently gives new meaning to the word piggish.

To add insult to the injury already being suffered by private sector taxpayers, consider the asinine comments of some members of city council when they passed legislation granting department heads and others 10.3 percent raises over the next two-plus years.

“I think it’s reasonable. I think it’s fair.” — Councilwoman Carol Rimedio-Righetti, D-4th. (It should be noted that she is receiving a public pension from her years as a Mahoning County Board of Elections employee.)

“We need to keep peace in the family.” — Councilman Paul Pancoe, D-6th.

“[The raises are] not out of whack with the private sector.” — Councilman Mark Memmer, D-7th.

Each of those comments demonstrates the dearth of thoughtful leadership in City Hall.

Cycling into debt

By the way, the classic reaction came from Finance Director David Bozanich, the financial mastermind of the budget-busting Chevrolet Centre — can anyone in city government say “$12 million debt?”: It’s appropriate for management and nonunion employees to receive similar pay raises to those in bargaining unions.

But these raises will set a pattern for demands by union employees the next time around, and so it will go. How about nobody getting pay raises — until the city government’s economic health improves to the point where the 2.75 percent income tax rate, the highest municipal rate in the state of Ohio, can be reduced. The tax rate is job killer — at least in the private sector.

Someone has to take the lead in putting a stop to this perversion of public service. We, therefore, call on Youngstown city government’s department heads and managers to refuse the pay raises — between $7,000 and $9,000 in little more than two years — as a way of setting an example for the rest of the employees.