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Port authority budget has room to add additional economic-development employee
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The board of directors of the Western Reserve Port Authority, which will meet today to possibly hire a permanent executive director, has money in its budget to cover the salary and benefits if it chooses to hire an additional person for economic development.
The authority’s most- recent financial report says the economic-development fund is likely to have $300,000 or more left when 2015 closes.
During the most recent full year – 2014 – officials spent about $100,000 from the economic-development fund for the salary of Sarah Lown, senior economic-development manager, and one intern.
This year, $95,674 of the economic-development fund’s $527,232 budget has been spent through the first five months of the year, or 16.6 percent, leaving $480,826. Most of the cost is for Lown’s salary.
Kevin Kern, an accounting consultant for the airport, said he would expect there to be $300,000 of the fund’s budget left at the end of the year, depending on what the executive director does once he is on board.
He would expect that the director – either interim director John Moliterno being hired as permanent director or someone else being hired to take his place – would want to begin to implement an economic-development program that would begin to cost additional money.
“There will be more activity – more expense, more receipts,” Kern said, noting the economic-development part of port authority is relatively new and evolving.
Four board members and several staff members drove to Toledo recently to learn about the economic-development projects carried out by the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority, which has been in the economic-development business for about 30 years.
The Western Reserve Port Authority hired its first economic-development manager in 2009, when it hired Rose Ann DeLeon, who was at the time working for the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
She worked here for more than four years before leaving with an illness in early 2014. She died earlier this year. Her salary and benefits were more than $200,000 per year, Kern said.
But when David Mosure, chairman of the search committee interviewing candidates for executive director, announced last week the committee was proposing two candidates to the full board to consider today, he mentioned that a “reorganization” might be in the offing.
The finalists are rumored to be Moliterno and Anthony T. Trevena of Ormond Beach, Fla., chief of staff from 2008 to 2010 for former U.S. Rep. John Boccieri, who is a port authority board member.
Dan Keating, legal counsel to the port authority, declined to discuss whether Boccieri had sought advice from him on whether Boccieri needed to abstain from those discussions, saying such a conversation would be “privileged information.” Boccieri did not reply to a text asking for comment. The Ohio Ethics Commission did not reply to a phone call seeking comment.
The port authority has a 2015 budget of $4.3 million, $2.8 million of which is budgeted for operating the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. The airport operates on fees from parking and hangar rental, for instance, and more than $1.5 million worth of hotel-motel fees – $1.1 million from Mahoning County and $450,000 from Trumbull County.