Brown considers Youngstown council president position
YOUNGSTOWN
Today is the last city council meeting for Jay Williams as mayor, Charles Sammarone as council president, and possibly Jamael Tito Brown as 3rd Ward councilman.
Brown, who is running unopposed in the November general election for a second four-year term as councilman, said he’s “leaning” toward replacing Sammarone as council president. It’s a departure from his July 6 statements to The Vindicator that filling the rest of the council president’s term, which expires Dec. 31, 2013, didn’t interest him.
“I wasn’t interested then, but I’ve had time to think about it and talk to other people, including other members of council,” Brown said. “I’m not totally all in because I’m concerned about my ward and my successor.”
If Brown gives up his seat and position on city council to become president, the Mahoning County Democratic precinct committee members in the 3rd Ward would elect his successor.
Brown said council members want one of their own to serve as president who “understands the direction we’re going in and what we’re doing, particularly with a new administration.”
Williams is resigning Aug. 1 to become the exec-utive director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers in the President Barack Obama Administration.
The city charter calls for the council president to automatically become mayor if the latter resigns. It also calls for the council president pro tem to automatically be named council president.
Councilman John R. Swierz, D-7th, will resign as president pro tem Thursday because he’s not interested in being president.
For Brown to become president, he’d have to be elected president pro tem by council and would then automatically become president.
Williams, who starts his new job Aug. 8, said he’s a “little melancholy” about today’s being his last council meeting as mayor.
At Wednesday’s meeting, council will consider legislation proposed by Williams to put a charter amendment on the November ballot to provide bonus points on entry-level civil-service tests to residents of the city. The proposal, if approved by voters, would give city residents an additional credit of 15 percent of their total grade on the tests.
Williams had wanted to create a charter-review commission to consider this proposal and other potential changes to the city charter.
Instead, the city is bypassing a commission because there isn’t enough time to create one to get this civil-service proposal on the November ballot, Williams said.
“It’s noncontroversial and is a generally approved concept,” he said of the civil-service proposal. “I didn’t want to create a committee as I’m leaving” office.
Council also will consider legislation today permitting the city to borrow money for one year to pay the interest — about $650,000 — on the money it borrowed in 2005 to help fund the construction of the Covelli Centre.
The city must make its first principal payment, in the amount of $375,000, by Sept. 2 under state law.
It will borrow the money to cover the interest on the remaining $11,625,000 by Sept. 8, said Finance Director David Bozanich.
Meanwhile, city officials have discussed a proposal with Centerplate, the food-and-beverage vendor at the Covelli Centre, to replace the company with an in-house operation run by JAC Management, which runs the facility’s day-to-day operations, and SMG, its management consultant, Bozanich said.
“We have not reached a final conclusion,” he said.