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County facilities director requests budget increase of $800K for 2012
YOUNGSTOWN
As it calls for restoration of lost staffing, the Mahoning County facilities maintenance department is seeking an increase in its operating budget from $3.2 million this year to nearly $4 million next year.
“All I’m asking for is to bring my staff up to where it was in 2006,” Pete Triveri, facilities director, told the county commissioners in a Monday budget hearing for his department.
Triveri said his department had 33 staff members in 2006 but now has 29.
Triveri added he’d like to recall the two laid-off custodians to replace two employees who left recently, one by resignation and the other by retirement, and to hire an additional electrician for the county jail and a boiler mechanic to work in all county buildings.
A lack of money for preventive maintenance is another problem for the facilities department, said Barbara J. Sours, budget director.
“It’s just got so much going on with so many buildings and so many repairs,” Sours said of the facilities department. “We don’t have any type of real preventive maintenance schedule here. ... His budget this year is tight,” Sours said of Triveri.
“We’re going to try to muddle, if that’s the proper word, through the rest of the year,” Triveri said.
The facilities-department budget includes about $970,000 annually for utilities for all county buildings, he said.
Triveri projected the county’s annual operating-cost savings at about $172,700 when it closes the county’s South Side Annex next year.
The county has been relocating county departments from the annex at 2801 Market St. to Oak-hill Renaissance Place at 345 Oak Hill Ave. in recent years. The county bought Oakhill in 2006.
Already relocated from the annex to Oakhill are the veterans service commission, recycling division and board of elections. The auto-title department and Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force are still at the annex.
The county commissioners also heard Dog Warden Matt Ditchey call for a modest increase in his operating budget from $634,204 this year to $640,360 next year to acquire two vans and hire an office assistant to free up a deputy dog warden for fieldwork.
Ditchey’s increase request is small because he has achieved savings in supplies, repairs and utilities, said Anna DeAscentis, an office of management and budget specialist.
Ditchey plans to use separate capital improvement money toward a planned $810,500 expansion of the county’s dog pound.
John A. McNally IV, chairman of the county commissioners, suggested that county officials arrange to tour the new Summit County dog pound to help them plan for Mahoning County’s pound expansion.