No progress on Campbell youth center

campbell

Plans to establish a youth and community center are still on hold, even though a new levy has taken pressure off city officials distracted by a fiscal crisis.

Robert Walls, who headed a youth center committee that formed in January and met for several months, said last week that the city’s “political situation” is the biggest hurdle to the plan.

Lack of money was only part of the problem. Fights between Mayor George Krinos and the city council throughout the year included Krinos’ efforts to oust the city’s finance director and fill the post with his own appointee.

City officials also disagreed over Krinos’ recalling a laid-off firefighter when there was no money to pay for him and over Krinos’ taking his health benefits after promising not to so he could pay for a full-time secretary.

Krinos and council disagreed over the budget, with Krinos saying they should have adopted a version he proposed.

The council also filed a court action over a police contract that Krinos negotiated, which was finalized and signed in July.

Once it polled residents and found overwhelming interest in a youth center, the committee asked council in the spring for help finding state grants for a temporary, then a permanent location. Walls told council that city officials would have much more success getting those grants than the committee members would.

The city decided in March to start looking for grants, compile what it found after 30 days and come up with a plan to act on the information.

That never happened.

Read more in Friday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com