Port authority planning committee to review executive director applications May 12

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The planning committee of the Western Reserve Port Authority will review job applications for the authority’s executive-director position and continue the discussion of its strategic plan at its next meeting, at 10:30 a.m. May 12 at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna.

The committee met last week at its office on Champion Street in Youngstown to begin talking about the authority’s mission statement, vision statement, bylaws and other issues raised by its new strategic plan.

The authority approved the plan a week ago but noted that it still needed a mission statement to be written and for the planning committee to begin to implement it.

Dave Mosure, planning- committee chairman, said the mission statement should be about a paragraph long, and the vision statement is “like a slogan.”

Committee members and Dan Keating, legal counsel for the board, will review the current bylaws and mission statement before the May 12 meeting. Staff will suggest changes to the committee.

The committee discussed whether to establish qualifications or experience levels desired in future members of the port-authority board, who are unpaid. The commissioners of Mahoning and Trumbull counties select the board members, but it would be helpful for the board to “set experience levels,” interim executive director John Moliterno said.

The committee talked about new limits being placed on how much board members can comment to the news media.

Through the strategic planning process it became clear many people thought some board members were creating too much controversy through their remarks, so chairmen of the board and committees and the executive director should primarily talk to the news media, though staff members also would be expected to release information, committee members said.

The bylaws also could be modified to keep a board member from overwhelming the staff with requests for information, as was alleged in 2014, Keating said.

The deadline for applications to be the authority’s executive director are due by May 15, but the planning committee will review the applications it has at the May 12 meeting.

Moliterno said he will be one of the applicants.