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Most Trumbull departments attend second set of budget hearings
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Though it may have been awkward for some county department heads to participate in a second budget hearing Monday, most did attend to discuss their budget, along with changes in personnel and minor problems with their facilities.
The budget hearings were conducted a second time Monday to rectify the lack of notification to the public and news media the first time the hearings took place over two days in late November.
Typical was the budget hearing for Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, Trumbull County coroner, who talked extensively at the first hearing about the need to hire a second forensic pathologist to assist him with the roughly 320 autopsies that will be carried out by his office this year.
A manageable number for one person would be around 220 or 230, Dr. Germaniuk said.
In the first meeting, he told the commissioners he was hoping to find someone for a salary of about $130,000 annually. But after doing some research, he now thinks the number will be higher – perhaps around $225,000 per year, he said Monday.
The commissioners want to accommodate Dr. Germaniuk’s request for a second person because they feel it’s necessary, Commissioner Frank Fuda said. “He’s just overwhelmed by the heroin [overdose death] problem,” Fuda said.
Dr. Germaniuk plans to retire in four years.
At Monday’s hearing, Germaniuk said one reason it costs so much to hire a forensic pathologist is because no one realized that the current explosion of overdose deaths nationwide was coming, and forensic pathologists are in short supply.
The hearing for the sheriff’s office essentially didn’t take place because neither Sheriff Tom Altiere nor Sheriff-elect Paul Monroe attended.
Monroe was in Columbus attending a state-mandated training course for new sheriffs. Altiere said late Monday he didn’t attend because he was never “formally notified” of his hearing date and time.
That left only Paula Maas, who said she will be Monroe’s human-resources director when Monroe takes office next month.
Maas said she expected Altiere to attend and didn’t have anything to say about the budget because Monroe only “asked that I sit in.”
Neither she nor Monroe wrote the budget request, and they will need to “get in office and assess the situation before we can do anything with the numbers,” she said.
Monroe said later by telephone that he will live by the budget, whatever it is. He just needs to know the number.
Altiere wrote a budget proposal asking for a $3.9 million increase in 2017 – $14.3 million instead of its 2016 budget of $10.4 million.
County Auditor Adrian Biviano has said that without additional revenue, the commissioners will need to trim 5 percent from every department’s budget compared with their 2016 budgets.
Fuda is proposing that the county sales tax be increased by a quarter percent to provide the commissioners with an additional $6 million annually.