Salem alters distribution of income interest
SALEM — City council has agreed to change the way income interest is distributed to cope with a $350,000 projected revenue drop this year.
Councilman Bret Apple said Tuesday that council will keep the interest, which amounts to about $250,000 a year, and is close to filling the revenue gap in the 2010 appropriations. Previously, the interest was given to the city’s utilities department, which is in good financial shape.
Tho 2010 appropriations have to be completed by the end of March. Council’s vote to keep the funds goes into effect March 1.
Council’s plan will require that any expenditure from the $250,000 be approved and documented.
Councilman Brian Whitehall pointed out the move “is a temporary fix.”
The drop in city revenue has been attributed to the poor economy.
But Mayor Jerry Wolford said he also wants to talk about costs with members of the city’s four unions which represent workers in the police, fire, utilities department and American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. Wolford said he hoped to be able to talk to the four unions at the same time.
They have a total of 50 to 60 members combined, he estimated. The city has about 25 more workers who are not in unions.
The mayor said he wanted to talk about the amounts workers pay toward pensions and for health-care costs.
In a “state of the city” address, Wolford recalled being on council in the mid-1980s when the city was in a similar financial crunch.
He said that Mayor Robert Sell, who died recently, and council at the time had the vision to push for economic development.
“The main difference is that the industries that laid off workers in the ’80s called them back. Now, most of those industries are nothing more than a memory in Salem — gone for good,” he said.
Wolford added that officials must rebuild the city’s industrial base with new businesses in a new industrial park. The mayor is involved in a proposed annexation of portions of Perry Township in Columbiana and Green Township in Mahoning County to the city to have land available for new companies.
wilkinson@vindy.com