Parking deck debacle accents city government’s dysfunction

Two developments on the build- ing improvement front illustrate the timeliness and necessity of the top-to-bottom review of Youngstown city government launched by Mayor Charles Sammarone.

In both instances, taxpayers are left to wonder who had been minding the store.

In the case of the A-1 Parking deck on W. Boardman Street, it took a condemnation order from City Hall to get the owner, Yeshohua Weider of Brooklyn, N.Y., to make structural repairs. The building had become a safety hazard, which is why the Sammarone administration took the extreme action of shutting it down.

Given that the problems were identified — deteriorating columns and beams and loose concrete on the exterior — a year ago, why did city officials wait until March to force the issue?

Sammarone took over as mayor last August, which means he inherited the problems with the parking deck from his predecessor, Jay Williams. Who in city government had the responsibility to monitor the situation?

It’s a question that repeatedly goes to the heart of city government operations. As the mayor has found after a year at the helm, there are systemic problems with the management of various departments that must be addressed.

His decision to give the green light to a $250,000 study to evaluate and improve how city government operates is a reflection of his frustration with the way things are done.

David Eichenthal, director of management and budget consulting for the PFM Group, which is conducting the study, has said he expects the examination to provide dozens of short-term and long-term recommendations to make city government operations more efficient.

The study is being paid for by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Raymond John Wean Foundation and the city.

“Every department will find out what they’re deficient at and what department heads are deficient at, and we’ll make the changes,” Sammarone has said.

The A-1 Parking deck debacle — the facility was to have reopened Wednesday even though all the exterior work has not been completed — follows the saga of the PNC Bank Building, which resulted in city officials getting the runaround by the owner, Pan Brothers of New York City. After more than a year, repair work to the fa ßade was finally completed last September.

Again, the question: Who in city hall bears responsibility for that foul up?

It doesn’t end there.

Now, there’s another crisis involving a downtown building that the mayor has been forced to address.

Major expenditure

The city will spend $850,000 on elevator improvements and window replacements at 20 Federal Place, the office building it owns. The mayor only found out about the city’s contractual obligation to upgrade the building from a letter he received from VXI Global Solutions, a call center occupying the fourth and fifth floors. VXI Global is the city’s largest tenant and noted in the letter that the improvements were required in the occupancy agreement the company signed with the city in 2009.

The mayor says that while he had intended to have work done on the elevators, he was unaware that the city was required by contract to do that work and replace the windows.

But here’s the kicker: When Sammarone asked city officials familiar with the contract about those provisions, he was told the work was supposed to have been completed.

Did no one walk the very short distance from city hall to 20 Federal Place to see if new windows and elevators had been installed?

There are just too many instances of incompetence that make residents wonder how some of the people in city government got their jobs in the first place.