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Youngstown mayor to department heads: Communicate with me
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Mayor Charles Sammarone
YOUNGSTOWN
At the end of his first board of control meeting, Youngstown Mayor Charles Sammarone, chairman of the board, laid down the law to department heads.
“I want to know what is to be considered” by the board before the meeting, he said. “Make sure you get in touch with me. If not, I’m going to take it off the agenda.”
That’s what he did at Thursday’s meeting with three requests, including a recommendation from Water Commissioner John Casciano to reject all four proposals for a waterline replacement project on West Avenue.
Sammarone, a former water commissioner, said Casciano didn’t talk to him about why the proposals should be rejected.
“I want to make sure that if we reject bids, it’s for the right reasons and for legal reasons,” Sammarone said.
Sammarone said he wants information on all proposals to be considered by the board — there were 40 requests on Thursday’s agenda — before the meeting. He said this toward the end of a meeting at which more department officials than usual attended.
“An informed mayor is a cooperative mayor,” he said.
If someone asks him about a board of control vote and he doesn’t remember or understand it, Sammarone said it would make him “look stupid, and I don’t want to look stupid.”
The board of control, which votes on city expenditures, is part of the executive branch with the mayor, finance director and law director as its members.