Mahoning’s 3 tax-map workers’ jobs being abolished

By Peter H. Milliken

The engineer sought to transfer tax-map payroll costs to the general fund.

YOUNGSTOWN — All three employees in Mahoning County’s tax-map department, who have served the county between 21 and 30 years, have been notified they’ll be laid off, effective Jan. 31, when their jobs will be abolished.

The three workers, all of them nonunion employees, were notified Wednesday afternoon in a meeting with Richard Marsico, county engineer, and Marilyn Kenner, chief deputy engineer.

Those receiving layoff notices were Dorothy Ann Meredith, conveyance manager in the tax-map office, who has worked for the county since 1980; George J. Kovach Jr., an engineering technician who joined the county in 1979; and Randall J. Repasky, an engineering technician who became a county employee in 1988.

After receiving their layoff notices, Kovach and Repasky began taking vacation time Thursday, but Meredith remains on duty.

The tax-map office will remain open under the engineer’s jurisdiction and be staffed by John M. Newhard, an auditor’s office real-estate abstract specialist paid through a real-estate tax fund; and Michael P. Marcis, the engineer’s information-technology administrator, who is paid through motor-vehicle-license fee and gasoline-tax revenue, Kenner said Thursday. “Our intention never was to close it,” Kenner added.

However, Kenner said the tax-map office would accept only documents, such as deeds, plats and splits of plats, between 9 and 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“We cannot shut down that department. It’s a small department that does a lot of work,” said county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino.

Dealing with county government will be streamlined for tax-map users, who now will be able to ask Newhard not only about tax-map issues, but also about issues related to the auditor’s office, Sciortino said.

Newhard will be based full-time in the tax-map office, performing tax map and other functions, and Marcis will spend part of his time in the tax-map office on the first floor of the county administration building and part of his time in the engineer’s office on Bears Den Road.

The layoffs follow a letter from Marsico to the county commissioners, saying the engineer’s office could no longer afford to subsidize the tax-map department and asking that the $244,000 in annual salary and benefit costs for the three tax-map workers be shifted to the county’s general fund. The commissioners did not respond to the request to shift tax-map payroll costs, Kenner said.

The tax-map workers reviewed every real-estate deed transfer to ensure its accuracy and prepared maps to show every such transfer. The engineer’s office paid them from traffic-fine revenue and investment income.

Besides those of the tax-map workers, the engineer’s office also abolished two other nonunion positions in its office on Bears Den Road, those of Daniel J. Dlwgosh, an engineering technician, and Carl Vimmerstedt, a field technician, both to be laid off Jan. 31.