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County health board 2015 allocation is $220,067
AUSTINTOWN
The Mahoning County health board is analyzing where it can cut its landfill- inspection and well-water testing programs because of a $10,000 decrease in its allocation from the county’s Solid Waste Management District.
In its 2015 budget, the SWMD imposed a 4.36 percent across-the-board cut in allocations, said Lou Vega, SWMD director.
Though revenue from disposal (dumping) fees in county landfills is expected to remain about the same, costs have increased, Vega said.
For example, he said, the cost of the schools fiber (paper) collection went from being a free service to costing $30,000. The SWMD’s 2015 budget is $2.3 million.
The 2015 allocation to the health board is $220,067, down $10,000 from 2014.
“We recognize that revenue for the SWMD has dropped in recent years and that expenses have risen,” said Patricia Sweeney, county health commissioner.
The board has not determined exactly how it will handle the reduced allocation, but it likely will involve frequency of testing and inspections, she said at the health-board meeting Wednesday.
In other action, the board approved a new three-year contract for Sweeney, who became deputy commissioner March 1, 2012, and commissioner June 1, 2012.
Sweeney’s compensation is a 2 percent bonus, or $47.60 per hour, for Feb. 1-May 31; and 1.5 percent wage increases in each of the remaining two years: for June 1- May 31, 2016, $48.31 per hour; and the third year, June 1, 2016-May 31, 2017, $49.03 per hour.
The bonus and wage increases mirror those received by department employees represented by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3759, Sweeney said.
She said highlights of her first three years on the job included bringing the Women, Infants and Children’s Supplemental Nutrition Program under the umbrella of the county health department; becoming one of the first local health departments in Ohio to be accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board; and taking on the challenge of trying to reduce the county’s high infant-mortality rate.