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Canfield Absent Dragish leads to tie vote, no loan
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
With Councilman Don Dragish Jr. absent, Canfield lawmakers split the vote 2-2 to accept a $1.24 million debt-reduction loan.
The tie Wednesday night resulted in a “no” vote, but council President Steve Rogers said the matter will be voted on again at the next council meeting in May. “We can’t really put this aside. We’ve got to do it,” Rogers said.
Councilmen Chuck Tieche and John Morvay voted no; Mayor Bernie Kosar Sr. and Rogers voted yes. When reached to comment later Wednesday night, Dragish said he was caught in a work meeting and had not heard the vote ended in a tie.
After the meeting, Morvay brought up the idea of a levy, which he has been discussing since the 2014 budget talks last month.
“We’ve got to be frugal, and my opinion is we have a levy that supports capital improvement,” Morvay said, listing building upgrades, technology improvements, and infrastructure work as what the levy would go toward.
The $1.24 million loan through Farmers National Bank would lower the interest rate on the city’s Red Gate Farm debt from 3.65 percent to 3.07 percent, saving the city about $300,000 in interest payments.
Red Gate sits at U.S. Route 62 and Leffingwell Road and was purchased for $2.3 million by city officials in 2003. There are 290 acres on the farm, which has six buildings and a gas line.
City Manager Joseph Warino said the city refinanced its Red Gate debt in 2009, lowering the interest rate from 6 percent to 3.5 percent. He said the refinancing also meant the city had to pay both principal and interest, not just interest payments as city officials had been doing since buying the property.
Warino said interest rates have started to climb in recent weeks, and the city already has lost half of a percent in interest savings since officials began discussing the issue.
The 2014 budget shows the city plans on spending $24,050 on maintenance and running six buildings at Red Gate, two of which are occupied. The city has budgeted $137,500 to pay toward the principal on the Red Gate debt, which Warino said is about $832,000. The city will pay $27,700 on the interest this year.
Of the $1.24 million loan, $500,000 had been budgeted to build an extension to the eastern portion of the current police-department building. Police Chief Chuck Colucci has talked about the need for expansion in recent weeks during manager meetings.
He has said the department needs to expand because it has more employees and laws require evidence to be kept for longer periods of time. Officials have said the cost for off-site evidence storage would be about the same cost as the expansion.
“We do need the police building [expanded],” Morvay said. “We just didn’t agree how it should be funded.”
During the public-comment portion of the meeting, resident Frank Micchia questioned how council meetings are run. He gave examples of other local governments that have reports from the zoning and finance departments, among examples.
He questioned, “Why can’t we have a monthly report from these functions with those reports open to questions by residents in attendance? Where are they?”
At the end of the meeting, council members told Micchia this is how city government is run, and checks and balances were on display with voting down the loan.