Youngstown schools OK levy attempt

By Harold Gwin

The district is looking at a plan to trim $1 million in annual costs of transportation.

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s official.

Youngstown City School District taxpayers will be asked to approve a 9.5-mill, four-year tax levy in November.

The city school board, meeting in special session Monday, passed the final resolution required to ask the Mahoning County Board of Elections to place the levy question on the ballot.

It’s essentially the same tax proposal turned down by city voters three times already, except the term is shorter. Previous levy attempts called for the tax to be imposed for five years.

The district received certification from the Mahoning County Auditor’s office showing that 9.5 mills of tax will be required to generate the $5.3 million in additional annual revenue needed to help the city schools return to fiscal solvency.

Youngstown has been in state-designated fiscal emergency since November 2006 when the district began operating at a deficit that grew to $15 million in 2006-07. The district borrowed $15 million from the state to balance its budget that year and ran another deficit of $10.4 million in 2007-08, again borrowing the amount of the deficit to balance the budget.

It still owes the state $18 million on the two loans.

School officials have said getting the levy passed, coupled with some $26 million in spending cuts imposed over the last couple of years, will enable the district to emerge from deficit spending in 2012.

However, it could be back in the red by 2016, unless additional spending cuts are made, and school board members have said they believe an additional $2 million in cuts will prevent that from happening.

The board’s business committee is continuing to look for those additional reductions.

At a meeting Monday, the committee met with representatives of Community Bus Services Inc., the district’s special-needs pupil carrier, about a CBS management services proposal that the company says would save the district $1 million in annual transportation costs.

Terry Thomas, CBS president, had offered a guarantee of the $1 million savings off the $5.5 million annual district transportation cost but had initially tied the guarantee to his company getting a five-year special needs transportation contract.

The school board balked at that plan, opting instead to give CBS only a three-year special needs contract last month, but still wants to talk about the $1 million savings idea.

Thomas said Monday that he is still wiling to talk about that but suggested the district set up an administrative team to meet with CBS to iron out the details of a management services contract.

He assured the board his company wouldn’t take over district transportation but would only make recommendations on how it can save money.

The company would honor the current union contracts and there would be no reduction in services, he said.

Savings would come from bus route changes, he said.

Thomas said his company would first have to spend about $250,000 to put global positioning system units in all of the district buses to help map out re-routing.

CBS would be paid a fee for its services, he said, adding that amount would be part of the negotiations.

gwin@vindy.com