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Youngstown council passes late contracts
YOUNGSTOWN
The city council unanimously approved three contracts Wednesday under which work was continuing even though they had expired at the end of December.
One of those contracts, an extension not to exceed $60,000 for the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., had been taken off the April 1 agenda because council members Annie Gillam, D-1st, and Janet Tarpley, D-6th, had questions.
The two also questioned and criticized the YNDC at a council finance-committee meeting April 8.
At the finance-committee meeting before Wednesday’s meeting, Gillam said she received a clarification from T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s director of community planning and economic development, that work done by YNDC so far this year will be paid for in the $60,000.
She also told The Vindicator she’s satisfied with additions to the contract since last week’s finance meeting.
“They didn’t have Oak Street as a main corridor and didn’t have McGuffey Road development as a main corridor, and that’s been put in,” she said.
She also said they are no longer treating the Oak Hill area as low priority.
“They will look at it like everything else — give it the attention it needs,” she said.
The other two contracts were for as much as $62,000 for the Warren-Youngstown Urban League to continue to run the city’s Human Relations Commission, and up to $64,000 to Guy Burney to continue to run the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence Program.
Councilman Paul Drennen, D-5th, questioned why it took so long to renew the contracts.
“Why is it, a lot of these contracts, we’re just working on them now?” he asked.
Woodberry and police Chief Robin Lees said the 2015 budget hadn’t been passed.