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Austintown seeks replacement of police levy
By Elise Franco
Austintown
Township trustees approved a resolution asking the Mahoning County auditor to certify a replacement police levy for the March ballot.
Trustee David Ditzler said during the board’s special meeting Thursday the levy would replace a current 1.6-mill police levy voters first approved in 1976.
“We want to replace this police levy to try and bring it up to today’s valuations,” he said. “With our safety forces, we’ve pared them down as much as we can already.”
Township Fiscal Office Michael Kurish said the current levy collects only about 38 percent of its original value, or about $400,000, annually.
Ditzler said the auditor’s office will determine how many mills the levy would be and how much it would raise each year and certify it.
It would then be up to the trustees to vote for or against putting the levy on the ballot. The board will have another special meeting at noon Monday to make that determination.
“Following certification, we will vote whether to put the levy on the ballot, depending on how much it is,” Ditzler said.
The deadline to file with the Mahoning County Board of Elections for a levy to appear on the March ballot is Wednesday.
Kurish said the replacement levy will be vital in keeping the township’s budget balanced at current staffing and service levels.
“We’ll have $1.7 million less to work with in 2015 than we did in 2010,” he said. “We’ll have less money in 2012 than this year, and less in 2013 than in 2012, and so on.”
Kurish said the accumulated monetary loss of the township over the next four years will be about $4 million.
Ditzler said the board can’t afford to wait until then to bring money into Austintown, “We have to be proactive now in planning this.”