43
Trumbull County voters will decide 3 renewal levies
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Three Trumbull County renewal levies are on the Nov. 3 ballot. They benefit senior citizens, children and developmentally disabled children and adults.
The one for senior citizens is a 0.75-mill, five-year levy that raises $2.4 million each year to provide all Trumbull County seniors with access to senior centers, where they can socialize and keep active, and inexpensive transportation.
“The senior centers are really important,” county Commissioner Frank Fuda said. “They give the seniors the opportunity to have activities so seniors don’t have to sit at home.”
Fuda said line dancing and boccie at the Howland center are popular examples. “Lordstown has the crafts that other centers don’t. Champion has meals in the afternoon and exercise programs. Warren and Niles play cards and Bingo.”
Fuda and Diane Drawl, the levy administrator, say transportation for $1.50 each trip for senior citizens in some communities and $2 in others also is important because of the increasing need for public transportation. The levy provided about $425,000 for transportation services in 2014.
Because of the Baby Boom generation, there is an increasing number of senior citizens in Ohio and the United States, and that increase will continue in the years to come, resulting in an increasing amount of need for senior-citizen services in Trumbull County, Drawl said.
Almost $1 million of the seniors levy is for in-home and protective services, such as home-delivered meals and help with chores and personal care, such as bathing.
Drawl acknowledges there are waiting lists for these types of services, and low-income people get them more-readily than others.
The 2.25-mill, 10-year Board of Developmental Disabilities renewal levy will raise $7,281,314 annually to run the Fairhaven school in Niles, and provide adult employment and other services for developmentally disabled children and adults.
The agency serves 1,135 people per year, including 60 children ages 3 to 5 in a Fairhaven preschool. The preschool serves children with disabilities and those without disabilities side by side, said Edward Stark, superintendent of Board of Developmental Disabilities.
About 80 at-risk children from birth to age 3 receive services in an early intervention program. The Fairhaven school serves 118 children from age 6 to 22.
“Most children and adults receive services throughout their entire lifetime,” Stark said.
If the levy fails, the board would need to cut services, such as closing one or more adult workshops, eliminating early-intervention or preschool programs and create a wait list for services, Stark said.
All employees have paid 20 percent toward the cost of their healthcare since 2010, Stark said, adding that he believes this is the highest employee contribution in the county.
The board’s 225 bargaining-unit employees received raises in base pay of 1.5 percent in 2013 and 2014 after freezes from 2010 to 2013. The board has increased its ability to obtain federal Medicaid funds to offset the loss of certain revenue sharing from the state, Stark said.
Trumbull County Children Services has a 2-mill, five-year renewal levy on the ballot that will raise $6,718,407 annually.
The levy provides close to half of the agency’s annual revenue for things such as salaries and care for children who have to be placed in agencies outside of Trumbull County because of the seriousness of their behavioral issues, said Tim Schaffner, children services executive director.
Children services approved wage increases of 2.25 percent in 2015, 2 percent in 2016 and 2 percent in 2017. The number of staff members has dropped from 185 in 2005 to 170 now, the agency reports.
Trumbull Children Services has the highest percentage in the state in a category called alternative response, Schaffner said, citing a report from the Public Children Servcies Association of Ohio.
That category includes children who remain with their families while agency employees work a case plan with them. That type of case plan costs less than having the child live in the agency’s residential facility or go to an agency outside the county, Schaffner said.
Trumbull County’s opiate-addition crisis is most-likely the reason TCS has experienced a 40 percent jump in the number of children in agency custody in the past two years, Schaffner said.