City to decide about layoffs by end of July

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Youngstown finance director David Bozanich

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Edward Colon

Youngstown could end the year with a deficit.

By David Skolnick

YOUNGSTOWN — The city administration will decide at the end of the month how many city employees will lose their jobs.

It’s a decision administrators have put off for months as they try to get city employees to take financial concessions and early-retirement buyouts.

There is still hope of a possible buyout for firefighters, but city officials have repeatedly said layoffs are inevitable.

It wasn’t until Monday that the administration put a timetable on the buyouts.

After a board of control meeting to approve an early-retirement buyout for a detective sergeant, city Finance Director David Bozanich said the major financial decisions — including layoffs — will be decided at month’s end.

City officials are evaluating Youngstown’s financial figures for the first half of the year, Bozanich said.

They had hoped profit-tax collections from business would improve from earlier projects, but that “revenue is worse than anticipated,” he said. “We are fearful of the second-half tax numbers. [The fear] could be unfounded. I hope it’s unfounded, but what I see causes me concern.”

A 2009 general-fund budget, passed in March by city council, including cutting payroll by $870,000, including $665,000 in the police department.

Those payroll reductions equate to about 30 to 38 employees, most of them in the police department.

Also, the city’s tax collection is about $275,000 less than budgeted and getting worse, Bozanich said.

Seven ranking police officers retired Friday under the buyout plan, but because of severance packages including unused sick and vacation time, the city won’t see a savings this year. The buyouts will save the city more than $500,000 a year, beginning in 2010, because those officers won’t be replaced. Each officer taking the buyout will receive a year’s base salary paid over five years beginning in 2010.

For the first time publicly, Bozanich admitted the city could end this year with a deficit.

“We’ll try to balance 2009, but I don’t know if we can do it,” he said. “It may take us to 2010” to balance the city’s general-fund budget.

Finishing 2009’s general fund with a deficit would result in a citation by the Ohio auditor’s office because government entities such as counties, cities, townships and school districts in the state aren’t permitted to operate with a deficit, Bozanich said. Also, the city’s bond rating would surely be lowered, he said. But Bozanich said a lower rating shouldn’t cause a major problem for the city.

Edward Colon, president of the Youngstown Police Association, which represents the department’s 115 patrol officers, said there is no reason to lay off police officers.

The city offered YPA members a buyout, a year’s base salary spread out evenly over five years beginning in 2010.

But the proposal also called for a lower starting annual pay — $24,000 in one scenario and $27,000 in another; the starting salary is currently $38,000 — and increased the number of years, from five to 10, it would take for an officer to reach the top of the pay scale, about $52,500.

“Give us what you gave [the ranking officers], and we have guys who will take it,” Colon said.

The two sides haven’t met since the patrol union rejected the buyout May 21.

“There’s concerns about layoffs” among YPA members, Colon said.

Meanwhile, the city received some good news.

V&M Star Steel, which is considering a nearly $1 billion expansion in Youngstown and Girard, has formally agreed to reimburse Youngstown up to $5 million for land acquisition needed for the potential project, Bozanich said.

It doesn’t mean the company has decided to expand here, but it’s an important step in the process to make the project a reality, Bozanich said.

skolnick@vindy.com