County workers agree to 9 unpaid days
The floating-holiday accord will save Mahoning County about $96,000 this year.
YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners have approved an agreement under which employees of the clerk of courts will take nine unpaid days off this year.
Under the agreement, ratified earlier by members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3956, the floating holidays will be taken at times agreed to by the employee and his or her supervisor, said Scott Grossen, administrator for the clerk’s office.
The floating-holiday provision applies to the 63 union members and eight managers.
Also under the agreement, there will be no pay raises this year, and no vacant positions will be filled.
By using the floating holidays, the clerk’s office expects to avoid layoffs, Grossen said. “We wanted to avoid layoffs at all costs,” he said after the commissioners acted Thursday.
The floating-holiday agreement is expected to save the clerk’s office $71,214 in general-fund expenses this year. An additional $25,183 is expected to be saved outside the general fund, Grossen said.
The clerk’s auto-title department is funded by auto-title fees, which are separate from the general fund.
The clerk of courts’ allocation from the county’s general fund this year is $1.6 million, which is 10.1 percent below the $1,779,839 it spent last year. The general fund is the county’s main operating fund.
“We will be able to meet the budget number given to us by your office and continue to do the court’s work,” Kathi McNabb Welsh, chief deputy clerk, told the commissioners.
George J. Tablack, county administrator, noted that the concessions come in poor economic times, when court filings typically increase.
“The cruelest irony is that while we’re cutting back staff hours and salaries and expenditures, your volume of work is actually going up,” Tablack said.
“During the toughest of times, when you’re being asked to do more, you’re doing it with less,” he said.
“When you hear about foreclosures and you hear about a rising crime rate, that falls to the courts,” Welsh said.
Since 2000, the common pleas court has seen a 113 percent increase in civil filings and a 64.5 percent increase in criminal filings, she added.
Over the past two years, the court has averaged about 170 new foreclosures per month, compared with only 900 for all of 1999, she noted.
The clerk’s office serves the county’s common pleas court and its area courts in Boardman, Canfield, Austintown and Sebring; and it includes the auto title department at the South Side Annex.
The commissioners also recognized eight student winners out of 1,338 participants in the county recycling division’s annual poster contest, in which posters convey a recycling or anti-littering theme.
The winners and their schools are: Katie Masucci and Audra Lambert, Poland Union Elementary School; Seth C. Hill, St. Charles School; Brianna Stackpole and Alex Weimer, Poland North Elementary School; Amy Goddard, Canfield Village Middle School; Lynnette Seebacher, Austintown Middle School; and J.T. Hvisdak, Lowellville schools.
The winning entries will be featured on placemats at area restaurants and nonprofit organizations’ breakfasts and dinners.
Winners received certificates from the recycling division and American Express gift certificates from the Dominion East Ohio Gas Co.