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Mahoning commissioners adopt budgets
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners adopted 2017 budgets of $34.2 million for the general fund and slightly more than $28 million for the justice fund.
The numbers are identical to the revenue amounts certified for each budget by the county budget commission, which consists of the county prosecutor, auditor and treasurer.
They compare with original 2016 general and justice fund appropriations of $34,067,135 and $27,495,661, respectively, adopted a year ago.
Revised appropriations, however, raised the 2016 totals to $35,264,316 for the general fund and $27,875,433 for the justice fund.
The general fund is the county’s main operating fund, which supports the courts and central operations of county government.
The justice fund consists of the sheriff’s, prosecutor’s and coroner’s offices and 911 emergency dispatching center.
“It’s a responsible approach to budgeting for next year,” county Auditor Ralph Meacham said of the new budgets at Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting.
The auditor’s office’s own initial general-fund appropriation for 2017 was reduced to $915,118 from its initial 2016 appropriation of $946,624.
Meacham said that’s because he asked for less money because of savings he achieved in his office, notably in information-technology costs.
“If you don’t need it, you don’t ask for it, so we didn’t ask for it this year,” he said of the money he didn’t request.
“Each of the elected officials and department heads have worked with the commissioners to bring in a balanced budget. Everybody was responsible in the requests” they made, said Audrey Tillis, executive director for the commissioners.
“This budget does cover our current staffing levels,” she said, adding she doesn’t expect layoffs of employees paid by the general or justice funds next year.
In other action, the commissioners approved borrowing from the U.S. Department of Agriculture $12,973,000 for projects related to the closing of the New Middletown Wastewater Treatment Plant and the transfer of all the sewage it treats to the Boardman treatment plant.
The money will be borrowed at 1.875 percent annual interest for 40 years.
The borrowing items include $3.3 million for closing the plant and replacing it with a New Middletown pump station; $6.3 million for the new regional Five Points pump station on East Western Reserve Road in Boardman, west of its intersection with North Lima and Springfield roads, and new sewer lines; and $3.3 million for upgrades to the Boardman treatment plant to prepare it to accept the new sewage flow.
The Boardman plant discharges effluent into Mill Creek.
The borrowing is being supplemented by $5 million in USDA grants for the project, whose cost totals $18 million.
William Coleman, office manager in the county sanitary engineer’s office, said he hopes the project can be finished in 2019.
The New Middletown WWTP is closing because the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ruled it discharges too much effluent to meet water-quality standards in Honey Creek.
Continued annual sewer-user rate increases of 5 percent to 6 percent will likely occur after 2019 to pay for this project and ongoing county sewer-system operation and maintenance, Coleman said.