Warren council irked by enterprise funds transfer

June 21, 2016 at 12:04a.m.

WARREN

Members of Warren City Council gave an earful to Mayor Doug Franklin and Community Development Director Mike Keys at a council committee meeting Monday, asking why $230,000 is being transferred from money-making enterprise funds such as water and sewer to the CD Department without its knowledge.

Councilman Dan Sferra, who has a son and brother who work in the water department, made his feelings perfectly clear.

“Snatching money for the enterprise funds is the wrong thing to do,” Sferra said. “I don’t agree with it. I’m going to write to the state auditors,” Sferra said of the practice, which Franklin said the city only started doing this year.

It was done because the federal grant funds the CD Department receives from the federal government, to operate programs that help a large number of community organizations and low-income neighborhoods, have shrunk dramatically in recent years, Keys said, leaving less money to pay the five employees in the department.

Law Director Greg Hicks told council members the practice of using funds from departments such as water and sewer for community development is legal because council approved a 1986 ordinance that authorized it. The theory is that administrative departments such as CD provide services to the water and sewer departments, so they can receive money for those services, Hicks said.

Franklin said the decision was made in February to move the money to keep the CD department afloat. Without the money, the department might have to shut down sometime this summer, officials said.

“Not one of us knew about it,” Sferra said.

Keys said he doesn’t answer to council; he answers to Franklin, and there was plenty of discussion about the shortfall his department would have this year.

Franklin said the transfer was legal and is done in other cities. “I understand council felt slighted. We were working in real time,” the mayor said. “We had a problem we tried to fix.”