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Former staffer to get paid
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s board of control is expected today to give Jason Whitehead, the former chief of staff/secretary to the mayor, a $12,566.94 severance package.
Whitehead lost his job Aug. 5, four days after his former boss, Jay Williams, resigned as mayor to take a job in the President Barack Obama administration.
New Mayor Charles Sammarone replaced Whitehead with DeMaine Kitchen, who resigned as 2nd Ward councilman to take the job.
Whitehead was Williams’ first hire when the latter first took office in January 2006.
Whitehead, who received $74,186 in annual base-pay salary, will be paid $8,126.03 for unused sick time, $3,980.77 for unused vacation time, and a $460.14 bonus for not using any sick leave this year.
Whitehead and most other city employees receive bonuses, given at the end of the year, if they do not call off work for being sick during a quarter.
Whitehead received a $153.38 bonus every three months if he didn’t take a sick day during that quarter.
Also today, the board will consider purchasing the property of the former Jitso’s Place, an East Side bar declared a nuisance by a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court magistrate and permanently closed in June 2010.
The proposal from city Prosecutor Jay Macejko calls for the city to purchase the property at 2023 McGuffey Road for $4,500 from its owner, Charity L. Shockley of Columbus. The city will demolish the building on the property.
“The people in the neighborhood will be very happy to see it go,” Macejko said.
In the four years before it closed, city police received 242 calls to the bar for weapons offenses, shootings, loud music and liquor-law violations, according to a May 2010 restraining order.
The board of control will also consider a proposal today to lease 14.6 acres of land at the city’s Ohio Works Business Park to V&M Star for $100.
The company is building a $650 million expansion project nearby and needs the location for construction workers and vendor parking, and to store construction materials, said city Finance Director David Bozanich, a board of control member.
The lease would start this month and expire Aug. 1, 2012, with a one-year mutual-option extension, he said. Either side can cancel the lease at any time as long as 30 days’ notice is given, he said.
The company would pay a one-time $100 fee to use the land.