Mayoral hopefuls focus on finances
The mayor says he’s been working to bring in a new tax base; the challenger wants to get more grants.
CAMPBELL — Mayor John Dill and his challenger, George Krinos, are facing the question of how to bring the city out of a fiscal emergency with state oversight on spending.
It’s a problem that has its roots in the closing of two major employers in the city — Cold Metal Products in 2002 and Calex Corp. in 2005, said Dill, who’s been mayor since 1999.
And though the city has been financially stable with balanced budgets and carryovers in recent years, including last year’s carryover of more than $600,000, it can’t forecast that stability past three years, said Dill.
A five-year forecast is necessary before the state will let the city out of fiscal emergency, a status it’s had since 2004, said Dill.
Since that time, the city has been proactive in trying to attract new business, notably in its brownfields along the river, he said.
It has used Clean Ohio grants to clean up the old industrial sites it owns among those brownfields, he said, and has successfully enticed some businesses to locate or expand there.
Those businesses have accounted for 120 new jobs, he said. Though many of those workers don’t live in Campbell, they are paying the city’s 2.5 percent income tax, he said.
Work is continuing in the brownfields, he said.
“We’re now cleaning up a 13-acre site with a $700,000 Clean Ohio grant,” he said.
A company called A-1 Maintenance has made a commitment to move in there, building a new building and accounting for 11 more jobs, he said.
He said a new bridge going into the area will connect Campbell to Struthers at Bob Cene Way. The bridge will allow the Campbell businesses to more easily reach Interstate 80 east.
Casey Equipment owns 35 acres in front of its plant that it would like to develop, Dill said. He said the city got the grant to do it.
“If we are going to have any type of new tax base, it has to be down there in the brownfields,” he said.
“We are doing a lot down there,” he said, including pursuing grants for a new pumping station and sanitary sewer lines and road paving.
Dill said the city would like to attract more residents as well as businesses. Its declining population can be attributed to younger generations’ moving out of all the old river towns to the suburbs and the countryside, he said.
He said that with federal neighborhood-stabilization funds, the city is able to demolish blighted houses.
“Then you’re creating a better place to live,” he said, agreeing that younger families could be attracted to the city by its school district, rated excellent this year.
He also said city employees, including police and firefighters, have gone for six years without a raise.
“We have to find a way to compensate our employees somehow,” he said. “It’s only the right thing to do.”
Dill said he doesn’t agree with his challenger’s assertion that the city needs a grants writer to help overcome its financial distress, adding that three engineering firms already write grants for the city. They get paid only if they obtain grants, he said, and that pay comes out of the grant.
He also said that after funding runs out from a grant to pay a salary for a city employee, the state oversight commission would not allow the city to pick up the costs of that worker.
Krinos, though, said he believes a grants writer is crucial and would advocate a $38,000 annual salary for the position.
A grants writer, he said, would be more dedicated to doing a good job for the city than outside firms.
He said the city is missing out on many grants, and the $38,000 salary would be worthwhile.
For example, he said, the city missed out on a grant that would have paid for three full-time police officers for three years.
He said that if the city’s police were involved in a mutlijurisdictional task force, it would be eligible for seizure money from drug raids.
He believes that money would be “more than enough to pay for three police salaries.”
He also said that once a grants writer is in place, the city could hire a business-economic development director, with the grants writer obtaining the salary for the position.
He also talked about gathering investors together to establish a credit union that would lend money to residents to purchase homes and to businesses to start or expand.
He also said he wants to attract homeowners with a program that would lend up to $10,000 to people moving into the city.
The money would be a lien on the house for 10 years, he said, then the lien would be forgiven. He believes the money made through income taxes generated by residents the program attracts will surpass the city’s investment into such a program.
Krinos also wants to lower taxes on businesses from 2.5 percent to 1.5 percent. He said the city will attract new businesses and create more jobs with the lower tax.
“The whole goal,” he said, “is to find any means necessary to bring grant or taxation money into the city without raising taxes.”