Warren council president transfers donated funds to Urban League

Warren council president transfers donated funds to Urban League

Warren council president transfers donated funds to Urban League

Staff report

WARREN

Council President Bob Dean has transferred the remaining $10,860 from the funeral-expenses bank account for the six teens who died in a car crash March 10 to the Greater Warren-Youngstown Urban League.

At a news conference Monday, Thomas S. Conley, president and CEO of the Urban League, said the money would be used to pay costs associated with educational computer software.

The software helps students learn various subjects on devices such as iPhones, iPads and computers at no cost to them, Conley said.

The Urban League purchased the software earlier this month for use by students in its partnership with Life Skills schools in the Mahoning Valley, Conley said.

Earlier, The Rev. Rick Oaks of First United Methodist Church on North Park Avenue said he and several other pastors in charge of the donations had decided to keep the remaining funds in the original account, to be used the next time a tragedy occurs that requires money for funeral expenses.

But since then, questions have been raised about whether the remaining money should be turned over to the members of the families whose children died.

About $55,000 was donated to a bank account created to help with the funeral expenses of the teens, who drowned in a car that overturned in a pond along Niles Warren River Road about a mile south of downtown.

Dean said he decided on the Urban League donation after he recently spoke with a representative of the Charitable Law Division of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office regarding the best way to handle donated funds.