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Officials react to Oakhill dissent
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
The Tuesday news conference by three men who are potential targets of a special grand jury investigation into the purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place was a “self-serving” attempt to mislead the public, Mahoning County Administrator George J. Tablack said.
On Wednesday, Tablack and Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners, responded to Commissioner John A. McNally IV, Auditor Michael V. Sciortino and former county Treasurer John B. Reardon who continued to oppose the Oakhill purchase with just a week remaining before the end of the grand jury’s term.
The purchase of Oakhill has proven to be a much better long-term deal for the county than the rental of space at Garland Plaza for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, Tablack and Traficanti said.
On Tuesday, McNally, Reardon and Sciortino charged the “net expenditures to date” for Oakhill were $5.6 million.
In 2006 — the last full year JFS was at the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza — occupancy costs to the county totaled about $1,150,000, just for JFS, including rent, security provided by unarmed JFS employee guards, cleaning and repairs and utilities, Tablack said.
If JFS had stayed in its 100,000-square-foot space at Garland under a 15-year lease, Cafaro officials said the company could spend between $1 million and $2 million in renovations, after which the annual rent alone would escalate to between $604,305 and $732,964, Tablack said.
The county’s total occupancy costs to keep JFS at Garland, including rent, security, utilities and maintenance, would have risen to $1.5 million to $1.7 million a year, Tablack estimated. Over four years, that would be $6 million to $6.8 million.
That said, Tablack took aim at the financial documents Sciortino provided to the media during the news conference.
“That’s not even a financial statement. That’s an abomination, professionally. ... It doesn’t follow any accounting principles or anything that I’ve come to learn in my entire career. It’s just a hodgepodge of numbers that are self-serving,” Tablack said of Sciortino’s compilation.
Tablack, a certified public accountant, also said the way Sciortino reported the Oakhill numbers does not comply with generally accepted accounting principles because it improperly mixes operating and capital costs and the lawsuit settlement costs.
For Oakhill, the county borrowed $5 million for renovations for 20 years at 5 percent annual interest, resulting in annual debt payments of $400,000.
Only $2 million to $3 million of that will be needed for the JFS renovations, and the rest can be used to renovate space for other county agencies the county will relocate from its South Side Annex on Market Street, Tablack said.
On Tuesday, Reardon said a new county-owned and operated building could have been built for $15 million, which he said would have been cheaper than acquiring, maintaining and renovating Oakhill, the 353,000-square-foot former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
“The board of county commissioners didn’t have the luxury of considering a new building when the [bankruptcy] trustee issued eviction notices,” when Oakhill’s former owner, the Southside Community Development Corp., filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy in 2006, Tablack said.
Had they been evicted, the county coroner’s office would have had to immediately relocate at a cost of $2 million or more, and the Youngstown Health Department would also have had to leave immediately as a tenant if the county hadn’t rescued Oakhill, Tablack said.
Aside from ending rent payments to a private landlord for the mold-plagued Garland Plaza and keeping the coroner and city health department at Oakhill, the county has achieved a one-stop shop for government and social service agencies at Oakhill, Traficanti said.
Oakhill is a safe, fenced-in, accessible and well-lit facility, which has adequate parking Traficanti added.
“Now, we will have something to show for our efforts. We have nothing to show for all the rent that we paid on a building we did not own,” for 19 years at Garland Plaza, Traficanti said.
“To me, it was a no-brainer,” to acquire Oakhill, he added.
Over a projected 40-year period of county ownership, Traficanti said he is convinced Oakhill is a much better deal than Garland would have been. Once it closes or donates the annex to another entity, the county will no longer incur maintenance costs there, he added.
Tablack also said it is misleading for Sciortino to have included the $913,590 settlement of Cafaro’s breach-of-lease lawsuit concerning Garland in the Oakhill cost tabulation because it had nothing to do with costs incurred at Oakhill.
That settlement would have had to be paid, no matter whether the county bought Oakhill and moved JFS there or built a new building for JFS, Tablack said.
In the Tuesday news conference, Sciortino released figures showing the county has spent $9,961,541 on the Oakhill project from its 2006 purchase of the former hospital complex to date, collected $4,393,051 in rents there, and has future liabilities of $5,809,671 at Oakhill.
Tablack blasted Sciortino’s efforts, however.
“What other purpose are you using taxpayer funds to compile this for? ... Why are you using taxpayer funds to compile something that, in my opinion, is solely for political or other nongovernmental-use purposes?” Tablack asked rhetorically.