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Acting JFS director sticks up for Oakhill
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Judee Genetin
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Oakhill Renaissance Place
JFS | By the numbers
Judee Genetin, acting director of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services, provided these statistics to commissioners Thursday from the JFS income-maintenance division:
Caseload: Rose from 23,074 in November 2007 to 28,814 in May 2010, an increase of 24.8 percent.
Staffing: Dropped from 234 in 2007 to 210 today, a decline of 10.2 percent.
Clients: In May 2007, the staff saw 4,099 clients, compared with 4,642 in May 2010, a 13 percent increase.
Pending benefit applications: Dropped from 863 in November 2007 to 741 as of April 2010, a 14 percent decrease.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
Oakhill Renaissance Place provides the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services with desirable and spacious quarters, the acting JFS director told the county commissioners.
In the years at Oakhill, employee productivity has soared, despite budget and staffing cuts and a massive, recession-induced caseload increase, said Judee Genetin.
A new system, initiated last November and known as case-banking, which organizes employees into specific functional groups, expedites service to clients, Genetin said.
Genetin said every complaint about working conditions at Oakhill is tracked by her staff; and the county facilities department responds immediately to such complaints.
Some vermin-related complaints are attributable to disturbances caused by interior renovations and to the large number of people entering and leaving the complex, she said.
“We’re not mice-infested. We’re not snake- or flea-infested,” Genetin said, acknowledging, however, occasional sightings of such creatures. “They catch the snake. They catch the mice or mouse, and they get rid of the fleas,” she said of the county facilities department. “We have very nice facilities and a very nice area to work.”
Genetin was responding Thursday to complaints of mice, fleas and garter snakes, which had been presented to the commissioners a week earlier by Helen Youngblood, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2001, which represents JFS employees.
Youngblood described both the county-owned Oakhill and JFS’ former rented quarters at Garland Plaza as decrepit buildings, but Genetin said Oakhill is the better facility.
Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which the county bought in 2006. JFS moved from Garland to Oakhill in July 2007.
Barry Landgraver, director of the county’s Veterans’ Service Commission, said insects and snakes occasionally have been seen in the former hospital, and the facilities department works to control room-temperature fluctuations there.
Landgraver said, however, his agency’s first-floor quarters at Oakhill are superior to its former second-floor offices in the county’s South Side Annex on Market Street. The commission moved from the annex to Oakhill in December 2008.
In other action, the commissioners unanimously renewed for 10 years the lease for the current Austintown Court space in Austintown Plaza. The rent will be $8,965 monthly over the first five years of the lease.
Commissioner David N. Ludt said the commissioners and county court judges reached a consensus in favor of renewal at that location. Ludt said he believes the county can escape from the lease if it decides to consolidate its lower courts.