Panel: District needs levy

By Harold Gwin | March 14, 2008 at 12:06a.m.

The commission isn’t ready to recommend the size of another levy issue just yet.

YOUNGSTOWN — The chairman of a state fiscal oversight commission controlling city school finances said the district appears to be on the right track to resolving a budget deficit but still needs more revenue to make that happen.

The Financial Planning and Supervision Commission approved its annual update of the city school’s financial recovery plan Thursday, and key components of that plan are requirements that the district continue to pursue passage of an operating levy as well as continue to make spending cuts.

The school board has tried three times to get voters to approve a 9.5-mill, five-year levy that would produce about $5.2 million a year in new revenue, and, although the margin of defeat is gradually shrinking, the latest vote earlier this month showed the proposal losing by more than 1,000 votes.

The state placed Youngstown under fiscal emergency in November 2006 after the district reported it was facing a budget deficit. Youngstown ended the year $15 million in the red.

Roger Nehls, commission chairman, said he expects the school board to put a levy issue on the ballot again in November, and school officials have said that is their intent.

If the district can’t get a levy passed at that point, further necessary cuts in spending will affect the district’s academic programs, Nehls warned. The district has made every effort to avoid that thus far, he said.

He said the commission isn’t ready to recommend what size the next levy attempt should be. Several factors will affect that decision, he said, including where the district stands at the end of this fiscal year in June, a state audit certification of the deficit and what additional reductions might be implemented.

The district should know by August just how large a levy it should put before voters, he said.

The district has already made some $19 million in spending reductions over the last couple of years, including eliminating 300 jobs, and has proposed another $7 million in cuts next fiscal year accompanied by 140 job cuts.

Nehls said the district has changed the way it does business and the administration “is owning this problem.”

Although the commission has fiscal oversight, it has been the district administration that has proposed the cuts to be made, and that is preferable to having the commission impose reductions, he said.

The commission also gave its approval Thursday to a new contract the district negotiated with its security guards that calls for a three-year wage freeze.

The district has two full-time security guards and 20 part-time people.

Everyone is paid at an hourly rate of $23.08, and that wage was frozen last year and will remain in effect through Dec. 31, 2010. Only the full-time guards get health benefits, and they will begin picking up about 5 percent of their health care premium costs in the pact, which is retroactive to Jan.1.

The terms are the same as the district has negotiated in new agreements with all of its employee groups, said Damon Dohar, assistant superintendent for human resources.

gwin@vindy.com