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Canfield officials unsure of cuts after tax increase rejected
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
It won’t be until the next round of budget talks, usually in February and March, when the city will know what cuts will follow after voters Tuesday rejected a half-percent income tax by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.
City Manager Joe Warino said Wednesday that the rest of 2015 is budgeted for, and that was done during budget talks in the spring.
City leaders decided then to take on more capital projects due to concerns over future state budget cuts.
Warino said the city has determined there were an additional $6,000 to $7,000 in local government fund cuts this year.
That is on top of the uncertainty on how much the city will lose after Gov. John Kasich cut income taxes for small businesses valued under $250,000.
City Attorney Mark Fortunato will make a motion to hire legal counsel in the coming weeks to make sure the city’s income-tax ordinance falls in line with that new state law.
Warino has said there are only a handful of businesses above that $250,000 threshold in Canfield.
“I can only suspect that’s going to hurt us because the primary business we have in the city is small business,” Warino said.
Canfield Police Chief Chuck Colucci said things won’t change in his police department as a result of Tuesday’s vote.
“I think it’s too early” to know the effects on the police budget, he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to provide the services our residents expect within the means that we have.”
Canfield police and city employees agreed to one-year contracts in December 2014 instead of typical three-year deals due to uncertainty surrounding health care costs.
At that time, there were 1.5 percent pay raises and 12 percent health care contributions from police employees.
The city employees mirrored that, and the police were given an extra holiday day while city employees received a personal day to use at their discretion.
Negotiations for new contracts are approaching, and Warino said health care costs could rise by at least 10 percent.
“We’ve not seen an increase [like this] in the time I’ve been here anyway, the last six years. We’ve always been able to manage a 2- to 4-percent fluctuation in insurance cost,” Warino said.
“It’s all relevant and from a negotiations aspect, I believe the city has always approached it as, ‘What does our city need?” Colucci said.
“We’re going to give this community everything we can within our means.”