Warren auditor looks to more cutbacks in 2010

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — City officials trimmed $1 million in red ink from the budget in 2009 through employee concessions. It will need those same concessions plus an additional $500,000 in savings to balance the books in 2010, Auditor David Griffing says.

Griffing met with the Warren City Council finance committee Tuesday and discussed his 2010 projections.

Without the same type of concessions again in 2010, the city is looking at a deficit of $2.5 million, Griffing said.

The $1 million that was trimmed midyear came from employee pay and benefits concessions covering the last half of the year. Getting those same concessions for an entire year should save $2 million in 2010, and the remaining $500,000 in savings might come from health-care concessions, Griffing said.

Last year, concessions brought down the city’s $6 million health-care bill about $150,000, Griffing said.

Griffing based his projections on the city’s having the same number of employees in 2010 that it had when it started 2009: 61 police officers and 60 firefighters.

The police department currently has 60 officers, and the fire department has 56.

Griffing said the city will start having meetings with department heads Sept. 10 to determine what areas can be cut.

He noted many factors are still unknown, such as how much federal stimulus money the city might get to pay police and firefighter salaries and how much income-tax revenue will be collected in the next 12 months.

Griffing is estimating receipts at $25 million, down $800,000 from 2009, Griffing said.

Councilman Fiore Dippolito asked about the impact of workers’ returning to their jobs at the General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown, but Griffing said the city receives relatively little income tax from those workers.

Griffing said Wednesday that even though the economy appears to be improving in recent weeks, the Mahoning Valley seems to lag behind national trends. “And I’m assuming that will be the case again,” he said.

Worker concessions actually saved $1.6 million in 2009, Griffing noted, but $600,000 of that was from unions’ agreeing to delay one paycheck until 2010.

Griffing said the midyear cuts, coupled with layoffs Jan. 1 and scattered other layoffs later in the year, have left him confident that the city will end the year in the black — but just barely.

runyan@vindy.com