Oversight panel prepares to review Youngstown school finances

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — An independent Financial Advisory Committee created by the city school board nearly two years ago to look at district spending is set to be activated this month.

The board appointed two of the three community members in July and expects to name the third and final community member early this month. Those three will be joined by three school board members — chairmen of the finance, personnel and business committees — to form the advisory panel.

The goal is to have the committee hold its first meeting and get organized before the end of August, said Shelley Murray, school board president.

Board member Lock P. Beachum Sr. brought up the idea of an independent body to look at school finances after the district was placed under fiscal watch by the state for running a budget deficit.

The board debated the issue, deciding how much authority the panel should have and to whom it would report, and agreed in September 2006 to create a Financial Advisory Committee.

The idea was kind of dropped there, however, Murray recalled.

The district was downgraded to fiscal emergency in November 2006, but the school board at the time didn’t seem to want to move on the advisory panel issue, Beachum said. The board got three new members this year and has become more aggressive in looking at finances, he added.

Murray, who was elected president this year, has been asking board members for nominations for the committee for a couple of months. She got two, and the board appointed Lena Hopkins, a retired city school teacher and assistant principal, and Greg Slemons, a certified public accountant and former school treasurer in Warren, Hubbard and Orange City, as the first two community members.

Slemons, now an investment banker for Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, said he sees the panel’s job as being “another set of eyes” for the district.

He said he worked with a citizens committee while in Orange City that was active and found its advice to be helpful.

Having something similar in Youngstown is “absolutely a good idea,” he said.

Hopkins, who now works as a tax preparer for H & R Block, said she was approached by someone in the district who asked if she would be interested in serving on the panel.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.