Suggestions vary on how to get school levy passed

YOUNGSTOWN — Get top administrators to take a pay cut, cut central office personnel, create a budget truly reflective of the economic climate — all suggestions on how the city school district can persuade voters to support a 9.5-mill tax levy when it comes up again.

Youngstown voters turned down the five-year emergency levy for the third time Tuesday, although the margin of defeat continues to narrow.

School officials have already said the levy will be on the ballot again in November. The state fiscal oversight commission overseeing district spending since the state placed Youngstown under fiscal emergency in November 2006 has said repeatedly that the district needs an influx of additional revenue to recover from a $15 million budget deficit incurred last year.

The $5.2 million per year the levy would generate would help the district return to solvency by 2011, when combined with a series of cutbacks that, by the end of fiscal 2009, will have reduced annual spending by about $26 million.

Youngstown hasn’t had a new operating levy passed since 1987 and vocal opponents of the 9.5-mill plan who have stood up and publicly announced their opposition — as well as some new members of the school board — have some suggestions on what the district might consider to get this one on the books.

“We still don’t have the information we asked for,” said Delores Womack of East Boston Avenue, chairwoman of a group calling itself the Citizens’ Action Committee Against the Levy. Specifically, that’s data on whose job got cut, when it was cut and what savings are realized in salary and fringe benefit reductions as a result, she said.

The district also needs to explain why it needs more money if it is making the substantial cuts it has outlined, Womack said.

“We’re going to say ‘no’ until they create a budget that accurately reflects the economic reality of this city,” she said.

Read more in Thursday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com