Niles council freezes new massage parlors

December 16, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

NILES

City council Wednesday passed a moratorium on new licenses for massage parlors despite having only one massage business in the city — a business that the mayor acknowledges has not run afoul of the law.

“We passed a similar moratorium on tattoos and ear-piercing a number of years ago, but we didn’t include massage parlors at the time,” said Mayor Ralph Infante. The mayor said his moratorium recommendation was unrelated to current complaints about massage parlors elsewhere in Trumbull County. Some of the complaints allege prostitution activity.

Terry Dull, Niles law director, told council the moratorium cannot be indefinite unless the city conducts a study of the massage business and its impact on communities.

“As long as we do that and can show problems, that would keep a future establishment from opening,” Dull said.

“We will get ordinances from other communities and see how they handle this,” Infante said. The mayor said there have been no health or criminal violations at the city’s lone massage parlor.

Council also unanimously approved its 2011 budget of $73.6 million, a reduction of nearly $4.5 million from this year’s budget, according to Charles Nader, city auditor.

“That’s a 5 percent reduction, and it would have been higher but we had to include a $3 million note to pay for a sewage- retention tank in next year’s budget,” Nader said.

The auditor said that budget cuts were across the board with some of the larger ones occurring in the light department.

“We don’t buy as much power anymore since the plant closings,” Nader said, referring to the shutdown of General Electric and Easco Aluminum plants in Niles several years ago.

The auditor said another negative impact on the budget is the low interest rate being paid on investments.

“Three years ago, we probably earned $1 million on [investments], and now we’ll be lucky to get $50,000 [this year],” Nader said. “Money is shrinking.”

Nader said he expects further adjustments to the budget, and Infante said he should be able to reduce personnel costs by attrition as jobs are vacated through retirement.