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Engineer requests funding change
Merge the tax-map and auditor’s real-estate offices, the auditor suggests.
YOUNGSTOWN — One of the county’s tiniest offices has become the latest political football in Mahoning County’s budget debate.
County Engineer Richard A. Marsico seeks to pass the salary and benefit costs for the three employees of the tax-map office, estimated to total $244,000 next year, from his office to the county’s general fund.
“Unfortunately, due to declining revenue, our office finds that we can no longer afford to subsidize the cost of the tax-map department,” Marsico wrote in a letter to the county commissioners.
Based on his interpretation of state law, Marsico, who has jurisdiction over the tax-map office, said the three employees should be paid out of the county’s general fund.
But George J. Tablack, county administrator, wasn’t eager to be the receiver on behalf of the general fund, which he said has suffered a 15 percent revenue decline in the first 11 months of this year, compared to the same period Past year.
Tablack called for a budget hearing on Marsico’s request and for Marsico to compile real-estate transaction statistics for the last several years for an analysis of the tax-map office’s workload.
“Just looking at our [real-estate] conveyance taxes, it’s pretty obvious that the volume of work has declined dramatically,” Tablack said during Thursday’s county commissioners’ meeting. “I’m expecting the statistics will show a dramatic decline in demand for services” of the tax-map department in recent years, he added.
Neither Commissioner David N. Ludt nor Dorothy Ann Meredith, conveyance manager in the tax-map office, would comment.
County auditor’s office figures show a steady decline in real-estate transfers each year since 2005.
The tax-map department, whose employees are paid from traffic-fine revenue and investment income, reviews every real-estate deed transfer to ensure its accuracy and prepares maps to show every such transfer.
Marsico said his department’s revenue has declined at least 15 percent in the same 11 months, and he acknowledged that real-estate sales have declined because of the economic recession.
A year ago, the engineer’s office laid off nine employees in a cost-cutting move brought on by declining gasoline-tax and license-plate revenues and the doubling of road salt and asphalt prices. The engineer’s office has a staff of 89 and a $12 million annual budget.
Beginning Jan. 1, all nonunion employees of the engineer’s office will take one unpaid floating holiday a month, Marsico said.
Since 1997, the county engineer’s office has not received any general-fund money to pay for the tax-map department, Marsico said in his letter. The general fund is the county’s main operating fund, which supports the sheriff’s department, prosecutor, courts, elections board and many other county functions.
In his letter, Marsico cited a section of state law that says tax-map draftsmen are to be paid out of the county treasury in the same manner as the salaries of other county officers.
As to what he’ll do if the commissioners won’t go along with his request, Marsico said: “We’ll look at that after we have our meeting.” Marsico acknowledged that the tax-map staff’s workload has declined, but he said its work must be timely completed to keep records current.
As to whether there’s still enough work for three people, he said: “We have to look at it in detail.”
County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino said he wants to research whether the county might eventually save $50,000 to $100,000 a year, possibly by job combination and not replacing employees who resign or retire, if the tax-map office could be merged with the auditor’s real-estate office.
“Maybe this is one of those opportunities where we can streamline government,” Sciortino said.
“Everyone’s competing for fewer and fewer dollars, and it’s incumbent upon us to measure where the need is greatest, and then we can make, I think, an intelligent decision as far as appropriating sufficient sums to deal with the volume of work,” Tablack said.
“I don’t understand how departments, in a period where revenues are declining by 15 percent, can expect us to pay more money to operate them,” in 2010 than in 2009, Tablack added.
The commissioners are expected to adopt a 2010 general-fund budget at 10 a.m. Dec. 29 in the county courthouse basement.
milliken@vindy.com