Oakhill furnishings’ sale to scrapyard sparks spat

By Peter H. Milliken

Commissioners take issue with comments of meeting attendee from Austintown.

YOUNGSTOWN — The removal and sale of metal furnishings from Oakhill Renaissance Place to scrapyards struck a raw nerve at a Mahoning County commissioners meeting.

“I don’t feel that it’s over with,” John Paulette of Austintown, a frequent speaker at county commissioners’ meetings, said of the investigation of the matter Thursday.

“Pete Proach [an agent] of the FBI personally investigated that case, so why don’t you go talk to the FBI agent?” Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners, told Paulette.

Traficanti was referring to Proach’s review of a county sheriff’s department probe of the case, in which a scrapyard owner reported he paid $2,606.50 for nearly 2 tons of stainless-steel sinks, stretchers and cabinets a day-reporting work-detail inmate hauled from the former hospital to the yard in a pickup truck.

Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which the county bought in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in July 2006 for use as a county office complex. The day-reporting inmates removed the furnishings in April 2007 in preparation for the move of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services into Oakhill in July 2007.

An inmate told Commander Leonard Sliwinski, who oversees the sheriff’s department’s detective and patrol divisions, that United States Trading Inc. paid him that sum for the scrap, and that he sold other metal furnishings from Oakhill to Diver-Steel City Auto Crusher Inc.

The sheriff’s department provided no accounting of the scrap sales at Diver.

The inmate, Joseph T. Yaksich Sr., who died a year ago, said in a written statement that a building maintenance supervisor and the deputy sheriff supervising the work detail permitted him to remove metal furnishings, which were being discarded from Oakhill, and sell them as scrap.

The inmate said he shared the proceeds from the sales with a fellow day-reporting inmate, but not with any county employees. No criminal charges or administrative disciplinary actions were filed in this matter.

“How are we ever going to find out, to this day, what’s been taken out of that building, or not, because we don’t have an inventory?,” Paulette asked.

The only inventory found by a Vindicator investigation was a three-page list of Forum Health-owned hospital furnishings left behind, all of them on the second floor of the five-story complex, when Mahoning Valley Hospital moved out of Oakhill in May 2006.

Without citing any specific statute, Paulette told the commissioners an inventory was legally required. He also said an auction of the former hospital furnishings would have been productive for the county.

An auction would have generated multiple bidders and yielded far more than $2,600 for the county, Paulette said. A used three-bay stainless-steel sink is worth $450 to $700, not including the spigots, he said.

State law requires an auction or competitive bidding to dispose of surplus property worth more than $2,500.

“Please do not accuse the commissioners of breaking the law. That is very offensive ... . You’re incorrect,” Traficanti told Paulette.

When Paulette did not immediately return to his seat after his allotted three-minute speaking time, Traficanti rapped the gavel and said: “Go have a seat, or I will have you removed.”

“Then you will have a lawsuit,’’ Paulette replied before returning to his seat.

In other business, the commissioners approved rehiring two recently laid-off child-support enforcement supervisors and hiring a nonsupervisory child-support worker, who faced the prospect of layoff, into vacant entry-level social service and income maintenance aide positions paying $10 to $11 per hour.

The former supervisors will be working at about half their previous pay, said Judee L. Genetin, director of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services. A third laid-off child-support enforcement supervisor did not apply for any available positions, Genetin said.

“I would rather be able to offer people jobs in the agency than to leave them out on the streets. It’s up to them whether they decide to take it,” Genetin said.