Youngstown’s fiscal problem represents years of giveaways

Through the years, as Youngstown city employees received pay raises or other financial benefits, we kept reminding the mayor and city council that the day of reckoning was not far off.

However, no one in City Hall was willing to not only turn off the financial spigot, but to actually disconnect it.

Thus today, the average salary and benefits in city government is $65,000. By comparison, the median household income in Youngstown is $21,850. Add to that the high unemployment rate, the growing number of residents on fixed income and the exodus of families with young children because of the Youngstown school system and what you have is a city in financial crisis.

Last week’s announcement by Mayor Jay Williams that as many 60 jobs could be cut because of the projected $4.5 million deficit comes as no surprise to us — or to city residents who have shared our displeasure at what has been going on in City Hall for decades.

To be sure, Williams cannot be held responsible for the decisions made prior to his taking office in 2006, but it is now his problem and his initial response is appropriate.

But the mayor needs to go further. Not only should the administration work to eliminate the projected deficit, but it should operate on the assumption that things are not going to get better in the immediate future.

Concessions

Thus, Williams should ask the heads of all the employee unions to meet with him to discuss concessions, such as salary givebacks and increased contributions toward health insurance premiums. The mayor should lead the way with management employees.

There should be across-the-board sacrifice.

In addition, Williams should reassess the perks that employees receive, such as bonuses management types receive for having a college degree.

Paying such bonuses suggests that city government believes that having a college degree is something special. It isn’t. A bachelor’s degree today is the basic requirement for many jobs in the private sector.

That’s how it should be in government.

Given the salaries and benefits that public sector employees earn, and the lucrative pensions they receive upon retirement, a bonus for having a degree is a luxury Youngstown can ill afford.

Indeed, the mayor has decided to authenticate the college degrees of every individual who receives a bonus. The action was prompted by the revelation that the city’s former deputy director of public works, Carmen Conglose, had lied about having a college education.

Conglose, who had retired but then had been rehired by the mayor to be the city’s traffic coordinator, had received the degree-bonus for nine years. The perk totaled $3,000,

In the private sector in the Mahoning Valley, just having a job is a perk.