Candidates focus on roads

By jeanne starmack

starmack@vindy.com

liberty

Three candidates are vying for two seats on the Liberty Township Board of Trustees.

Two of those candidates, incumbents Stan Nudell and Jason Rubin, told The Vindicator Editorial Board that with the township’s financial troubles behind them, the focus should be on road paving.

The third candidate, Greg Cizmar, did not respond to a request for an interview.

“We learned a lot our first year,” said Rubin, who was elected as trustee in 2009.

“The three trustees work very well together,” he continued. “ We don’t overreact and we think things through.”

“I want to run the township like a business,” he added. Rubin is the owner and operator of CR Electric Inc.

Liberty’s financial situation looked bleak when he first started, he said.

The township was having trouble paying bank debt.

“We were paying interest and not money toward the payment,” he said, adding that now, the township is debt-free.

The township also made budget transfers from one fund to another that it should not have made and ran into trouble with the state auditor’s office.

The state placed the township under the status of fiscal caution, which is two steps above fiscal emergency. The township, however, believes it has rectified the transfer issues and has satisfied all the state audit findings. It will ask the state to reverse the fiscal-caution status.

The township also closed its emergency dispatch in 2012 to save $270,000. Trumbull County now dispatches for Liberty, and the move meant residents saw a reduction in their taxes, said trustee candidate Stan Nudell, who took a seat on the board in 2010.

Nudell concurred that four years ago, “the township was in trouble.”

“We had to let a lot of people go and downsize, and asked the road superintendent to retire,” he said. “We cut back, and the bank loans are paid.”

“Our worst problems are behind us,” Nudell continued. “Our main thing right now is going to be roads. They are deplorable. We have over 25 roads right now that need done.”

The trustees are asking voters in November for a 1.25-mill levy for paving roads.

“We could do four to five roads a year,” Nudell said.