43
City Health District has no cash to fill positions
Altman is temporarily heading two divisions that lost their supervisors.
YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown City’s 2009 budget will probably not include money to fill several state-mandated City Health District division heads lost to retirement last year.
Health Commissioner Neil Altman informed the health board at its meeting Monday that the city’s finance department recently told him of the likely shortfall. He said more will be known after the health department’s budget hearing March 10.
If the positions aren’t filled, the city health department would lose its state subsidy, which was $24,887 in 2007. Also, Altman said, the department would be the only one of Ohio’s 138 health departments that do not have the positions filled.
Among the division heads and others who retired last year, most of whom took advantage of the city’s buy-out program, were: directors of nursing, environmental health and air pollution; supervisor of the STD clinic; and two sanitarians.
A new director of air pollution was hired under a grant, but the rest have not been replaced, officials said.
Altman is temporarily heading two divisions that lost their supervisors, environmental health and the registrar. The registrar records births and deaths.
But he said, because he is not a nurse, he is not qualified to head the nursing division; and he said the Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic should also have a nurse as its head.
In other action, the board approved a $3,600 contract with Dr. Joan L. Boyd, who will serve as clinical director of the STD program; and hired the Western Reserve Care System to provide services for the board’s Dental Sealant Program for Youngstown city schools students. Under the contract, dentists are paid $50 an hour, for a maximum of 40 combined hours, to provide examinations, screening and follow-up evaluations as well as apply the sealant. Altman said the goal this year is to provide sealant for some 900 students.
The board also approved the employment of Tara Cioffi of Youngstown as a public health sanitarian in the Air Pollution Control Agency. Cioffi is paid through grant funds and her employment is contingent upon receipt of those funds. Her wages are $21.45 per hour, or $44,621 annually.
alcorn@vindy.com