Ohio wants more info on plan to save Niles dispatchers

By Jordan Cohen | February 10, 2016 at 12:04a.m.

NILES

Questions about allocating $124,000 from the utility departments to pay police dispatchers have placed state approval of the city’s revised recovery plan from fiscal emergency on hold, Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia revealed Tuesday.

Should auditors reject that component of the plan, the dispatchers’ days on the job could be numbered.

The mayor told The Vindicator if the auditors do not approve, he will have no choice but to lay off the dispatchers and turn their responsibilities over to Trumbull County’s 911 system.

“If I have to contract with the county, I will,” the mayor said, “but that means there will be nobody at the station because [the police] will all be on the road.”

The city’s safety forces already are working with reduced staffs as three patrolmen and three firefighters begin layoffs this week.

The dispatchers had been paid through the general fund, which has a projected deficit of $1.5 million.

Scarnecchia said the auditors want more information about the amount of time the dispatchers spend on calls for the water, light and sewer departments before they approve the use of the city’s enterprise funds. Those three departments operate with enterprise funds because they generate their own revenue.

“I don’t know what [the financial supervisers] need,” Scarnecchia said.

Auditors may be looking at the state of the water fund, currently at a $1.6 million deficit. Barry Steffey, D-4th, council finance chairman, said last week he expects water-rate increases to enable the city to balance the water fund by mid-2017.

The city has a recovery plan developed by the mayor’s predecessor Ralph Infante, however Scarnecchia opposed several items in the plan, including eliminating dispatchers. That led to the revised plan he submitted to auditors last week.

Some of its components include early-response assistance fees for ambulance calls that Scarnecchia said would raise $74,000. Should council approve that plan, the city would bill the ambulance services at $50 per call.

“We had 1,481 [ambulance] calls in 2015, and we didn’t charge for them,” the mayor said.

Another provision would sell the naming rights to the Ralph Infante Wellness Center for a projected $50,000. The former mayor is the subject of a criminal investigation by the state auditor, the FBI and the IRS.

The state requires the city to balance the budget without including revenue from the 0.5 income-tax increase on the March 15 ballot. The increase would generate $2 million annually for the police and fire departments.

If voters turn it down, however, Scarnecchia’s plan requires the layoffs of six more employees to save the city another $300,000.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” the mayor said. “We will be scraping the bottom of the barrel if it doesn’t pass.”