City council to vote on tax break for Fallsway Equipment

By David Skolnick

The company spent about $800,000 to make improvements to its facility in 1998.

YOUNGSTOWN — A tax break to a company 14 years in the making is finally about to happen.

Youngstown City Council will have a special meeting at 4:15 p.m. Monday to approve a 75-percent, 15-year tax break to Fallsway Equipment Corp., which spent about $800,000 at a facility in the city-owned Salt Springs Industrial Park.

The city offered Fallsway a 75-percent, 10-year real and personal-property tax abatement in 1995.

But because of business reasons, the company held off on the project until 1998 under the assumption that the city had finalized the tax break, according to Vindicator files.

Fallsway questioned city officials in 1999 about not receiving a tax break. The city couldn’t offer the tax abatement under state law because Fallsway — which sells and services work trucks, cranes, wreckers and forklifts — already had built its facility, according to the newspaper’s files.

The city offered a different deal: tax-increment financing; a tax break equal to the value of the abatement that would grant a 75-percent, 15-year tax break.

But that proposal hit a roadblock because a tax break of 15 years needs approval from the city’s board of education. The board objected, and the state tax commissioner ruled in favor of the school system in 2003.

Councilwoman Carol Rimedio-Righetti, D-4th, whose ward includes Fallsway, recently persuaded the school board to agree to the tax deal for the company.

Council will vote Monday to start the 15-year tax break this year.

Fallsway would save about $8,000 annually in taxes, said city Finance Director David Bozanich.

Fallsway officials referred comment Friday to Greg Fairhurst, the company’s president. Fairhurst couldn’t be reached to comment by The Vindicator.

Also Monday, council’s public utilities committee will meet to discuss a proposed capital-improvement project at Meander Water, the former Mahoning Valley Sanitary District, which Youngstown co-owns with Niles. The district provides water from Meander Reservoir for about 250,000 residents in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

The committee also will review the results of a study conducted on improvement work needed by the city’s wastewater system, Bozanich said.

The study calls for an increase in wastewater fees to pay for improvement projects, he said.

The details of the study also will be released Monday.

skolnick@vindy.com