City meeting with unions produces few results

YOUNGSTOWN — You wouldn’t know that members of city council, the administration and employee union officials were in the same meeting today based on what each said after it ended.

The session had been called to discuss ways to cut city spending.

Several union officials called the two-hour-plus meeting a waste of time and said it created a greater divide between the two sides.

“We’re done talking to them,” said Doug Pesa, secretary-treasurer of the union that represents Youngstown police patrol officers.

But Mayor Jay Williams called it a “very productive meeting.”

Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd and chairman of the finance committee, said only that the meeting was “informative.”

Union officials say they were bothered that the city administration wasn’t willing to speak to them until today, the day after city council approved a budget.

The city’s 2009 general fund budget calls for $860,000 in personnel cuts that could result in laying off as many as 35 workers, most of them in the police department, by the end of April.

For the complete story, read Wednesday’s Vindicator or Vindy.com