43
CSB levy would add nearly $2.8 million
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Children Services Board is asking voters to approve a real-estate tax levy that would generate nearly $2.8 million more in annual revenue than the total generated by the two levies it would combine and replace.
The 1.85-mill, five-year proposal, which will be on the Nov. 4 ballot, would generate more than $7.3 million a year for the child welfare agency.
It would combine and replace a 1-mill levy first passed in 1995 and a 0.85-mill levy first passed in 1976.
“Children Services has been good stewards of diminishing resources. However, we have never compromised the mission of ensuring the needs of our children and families first,” said the Rev. Lewis Macklin, CSB chairman and pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s South Side.
“The support of this levy will allow us to continue to do the work which we’re mandated to perform,” the Rev. Mr. Macklin added.
“We here at Children Services believe every child matters and that communities thrive when all children have a safe, permanent and nurturing home,” said Randall B. Muth, agency director.
The 1-mill levy generates more than $2.9 million a year, and the 0.85-mill levy produces more than $1.5 million, for a combined total of more than $4.5 million.
The combining of the two levies into a replacement based on today’s property values raises more money than the two current levies together because levy revenues are based on property values at their initiation. Today’s values are higher than when the current levies began, Muth explained.
Property-tax levies “never collect more money than they did when originally passed, even when property values increase,” but CSB hasn’t asked for any extra local levy money in 20 years, Muth said.
The agency now needs the extra local money from the combined replacement in the long term to compensate for declines in state and federal funding, Muth said.
State revenues have fallen 13.71 percent since 2011, and federal revenues have dropped 4.72 percent since then, he added.
About half the agency’s funding comes from local real-estate tax levies.
Total CSB spending has dropped from $14.1 million in 2011 to $13.2 million in 2012 to $11.8 million last year as the agency has reduced staff by not replacing employees who resigned or retired and reduced costly residential placements, such as admissions of children to psychiatric hospitals, Muth explained.
“We spent $2.3 million less in 2013 than we did in 2011. Almost $1 million of that savings came from reducing personnel costs,” Muth noted.
Muth called attention to the $148,507 he said he has saved the agency annually in salaries by reducing its executive office staff from five people to three.
This was achieved by not replacing a $62,004-a-year lawyer, who retired; by replacing an $81,452-a-year fiscal officer, who retired, with a $56,000-a-year fiscal officer; and by combining the jobs of a $58,531-a-year human resources manager, who resigned, and a $39,020 executive assistant, who retired, into a single $34,000-a-year job, he reported.
Muth, who is a lawyer, and the county prosecutor’s office are now doing the agency’s legal work.
“We cannot cut much further without depriving our children of services necessary to ensure their safety and well-being,” Muth said. “We’re asking the public to recognize the need to reset our levies to today’s valuation, but only at the same millage as they were when they were originally passed.”