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Mahoning leaders OK supervisors’ pact with pay freeze
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners have approved a new three-year labor contract with no scheduled pay increases for 11 supervisors at the county Department of Job and Family Services.
The contract, already ratified by the supervisors, who are members of United Auto Workers Local 1112, is retroactive to May 13, 2011, and expires May 12, 2014.
Although no pay raises were negotiated into it, the contract calls for annual wage re-opener talks.
The bargaining unit includes 10 income-maintenance supervisors and one social services supervisor. The supervisors’ average annual salary was $58,000 at the end of the previous contract.
The union members will continue to pay 10 percent of their health-care premiums. Those monthly premiums are $728 for single coverage, $1,454 for a couple, $1,352 for employee and child and $1,549 for a family.
The county will continue to pay all but 0.5 percent of the employee contribution to the Public Employees’ Retirement System. The employee contribution is 10 percent of the employee’s salary.
Employer pickup of part or all of the employee contribution to PERS was traditionally negotiated in lieu of pay raises, said Rachel Livengood, county human- resources director.
Therefore, if the county tried to rescind PERS pickup, it would likely lose in fact-finding, unless it could show extreme financial hardship, she said.
In other business, from the county’s general fund administration category, the commissioners allocated $125,000 to the county’s Ohio State University Extension Office in Canfield, up from $115,000 last year.
Also on Thursday, the commissioners allocated $100,000 to the county Soil and Water Conservation District and $45,000 to the county’s emergency management agency. Both allocations came from the general fund administration category, and both match state grants dollar-for-dollar. The SWCD allocation is the same as last year’s, and the EMA’s is slightly higher than last year’s, said Annemarie DeAscentis, budget specialist.
In other action, Susan Mooney, a Chicago-based U.S. Environmental Protection Agency environmental scientist, presented Damascus Elementary School with its fourth Waste Wise Gold Achievement Award in five years for its paper-reduction program.
Receiving the award were Sue Dattilio, fourth- and fifth-grade teacher and recycling coordinator at the school, and Matt Bowen, school principal.
Among that school’s strategies are using dry erase boards for classroom math assignments, donating shredded paper to local farmers for animal bedding, and participating in the county recycling division’s paper recycling and in AT&T phone book recycling.
In 2010, the school won first place in the AT&T competition by recycling 3,275 pounds of outdated phone books.