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Lowellville mayor claims former police chief owes village for unearned pay
By SARAH LEHR
LOWELLVILLE
Lowellville Mayor James Iudiciani says former Police Chief Ryan Bonacci should return $6,394.19 he was wrongly paid for accumulated time.
Iudiciani contends Bonacci received pay for about 179 hours that should not have counted as accumulated time. Village council will look into the matter at a claims meeting next week.
Bonacci resigned in June. The reason, Bonacci said, was that the mayor had intimidated him and interfered with his management of the police department.
Iudiciani denies that his claims about Iudiciani’s pay are retaliatory.
“It’s not politically motivated,” Iudiciani said. “It’s a matter of correcting a mistake.”
Iudiciani does have oversight over the police department, but he said he did not notice the possible discrepancy in Bonacci’s pay because he had not previously looked closely enough at Bonacci’s time sheets or at the village’s monthly expense reports.
“Going forward, I will be managing the police department a lot more closely than I have with these last two police chiefs,” the mayor said.
He added that he has since implemented a system in which the police department submits time sheets to the mayor’s office about every two weeks.
Responding to the mayor’s allegations by phone Thursday night, Bonacci told The Vindicator, “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Bonacci denied that he owes the village the money. “It’s just simply not true,” he said. “The mayor, as the head of the village, was given copies of policies and [accumulated time] reports.”
In other business, council voted 4-3 to approve a mayoral salary increase beginning in 2016. Councilmen Robert Coppola, Paul Meehan and Ronald Rotunno voted in favor of it; Councilmen William Flora, Keith McCaughtry and Phil Alfano voted against it. Mayor Iudiciani broke the tie by voting yes.
The new salary will be $12,000 a year, which is a $7,200 increase from the current $4,800 salary. City councilmen make $3,600 a year.
Council members and the mayor had thought they had already approved the salary bump during a special meeting in July when council voted 3-2 in favor of it. Two councilmen were absent from that meeting.
But Solicitor James E. Lanzo, who also was absent due to a family death, informed council that the legislation did not, in fact, pass, because council lacked a majority vote (four) necessary to pass emergency legislation.
Council voted 4-3 to send the measure to a third reading this week, when it was approved.
During his mayor’s report to council last week, Iudiciani addressed the three councilmen – Flora, McCaughtry and Alfano – who had voted against sending the salary to another reading, stating, “The mayor’s job is turning into a full-time job. I’d encourage the three of you who don’t think it’s worth $12,000 to sit in this chair. You have the opportunity.”
As of now, no one has filed to run against Iudiciani in November.