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Plan long range, auditor urges
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County needs to emphasize long-range planning as it enters 2016, county Auditor Ralph Meacham told the commissioners.
“We need a harder look at our long-range planning” aimed at achieving “a more-formalized and detailed” vision for the future, Meacham said Monday during his annual financial state of the county address.
“If we’re going to control the expenses of the county, we have to address that,” he said.
“We have to get a plan for Oakhill” Renaissance Place, the former hospital the county acquired in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2007 and uses as a county office complex, Meacham told the commissioners.
“It’s an asset of the county. We have to try to utilize that asset to the fullest extent possible,” he said of the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
The forthcoming county employee compensation study planned by the commissioners is a necessary step in planning for the county’s future, he said.
The commissioners already have discussed elements of a five-year plan for county government in their staff meetings and will continue these discussions, said Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chosen president of the board of commissioners for 2016.
“We’ve got to always be on top of it because the growth isn’t there,” Commissioner David Ditzler said of county spending in the context of the area’s population decline.
With the county’s population having been 238,000 in 2010, state projections show that figure will drop to 224,000 in 2020 and 212,000 in 2030, Meacham noted.
“I think we’ve got to go out 10 years, really, on a plan on where our income and where our expenditures are,” Ditzler said.
“The cost of health care continues to skyrocket, and it’s something that’s very difficult to keep on top of,” Ditzler added.
Commissioner Anthony Traficanti commented on the larger economic-development issue facing the Mahoning Valley.
“Job retention is key. As trends change nationally in the economy, we want to be prepared for that,” Traficanti said. “Looking ahead five years can only help us.”
“Our sales taxes are stable and growing,” Meacham said, referring to the extra quarter-percent sales tax that took effect last year.
“If you’re looking for a big kick in revenues, we’re not going to see it,” based on population trends, Meacham said.
He reported, however, the county’s sales-tax collections, were $33,747,000 in 2014; $39,146,000 last year; and projected to be $43.5 million this year.