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Public support needed for Niles recovery plan
By Jordan Cohen
NILES
The five-year recovery plan for the city to emerge from fiscal emergency will depend heavily for its success on the support of two constituencies that may not be willing to completely go along: voters and the city’s unions.
Support of both will be hard to get say members of the Financial Planning and Supervision Commission, which took over control of the city’s finances after the state auditor declared Niles in fiscal emergency last October.
The plan, submitted by Mayor Ralph Infante and approved by council, includes a 0.25 percent increase in the city income tax, which would have to be approved by the voters. The increase would generate $600,000 in 2016 and $900,000 each of the following three years.
“Some of this is going to be a heavy lift,” said Robert Marino, council president and commission member.
“It will take the efforts of everyone to make it successful.”
Among the numerous cost-reduction items that require negotiations: elimination of minimum manning and three captain positions through attrition in the police department, and revision of health and life insurance coverage and rates.
Infante, who was upset in last week’s primary elections after serving nearly 23 years in office, believes the city’s precarious financial status will help its case should the unions balk and the issues go to a fact-finder.
“We’re one of the very few cities in Ohio that has no co-pay and a small deductible, and that has to change” the mayor said. Infante’s plan calculates savings of $265,000 on health care annually should the city and unions come to an agreement.
Council enacted some of the items contained in the mayor’s plan earlier this year, most notably a 10-percent increase in water rates to help eliminate a projected $2 million deficit in the water department fund.
Sharon Hanrahan, commission chairman and administrator from the state office of budget and management, said she is “impressed” by the number of items contained in the plan, but is concerned that some of them “are not easily quantifiable.” She cited collection of the city’s income tax, which state auditors have indicated may be better served through an agency rather than the city’s own efforts.
“I know it costs money to use something like the Regional Income Tax Agency, but they are aggressive,” she said Tuesday.
If the plan were to be approved exactly as Infante has projected, the deficit in the general fund would be eliminated this year followed by positive cash balances the remaining four years reaching $2.1 million by 2019. That, however, is not likely to happen, Marino said.
The commission, which has to vote on accepting the plan, will meet with council next Wednesday.