Financially strapped Niles delays action on police pact, 2016 budget

March 3, 2016 at 12:10a.m.

NILES

Preoccupied with its fiscal emergency and faced with a $1.5 million general-fund deficit, city council on Wednesday tabled a motion that would have approved a tentative labor agreement with the police department’s ranking officers.

The decision, which followed a lengthy executive session, came as a surprise since council, at its previous regular meeting, had moved the agreement to a second reading.

“The hour we spent in the back was productive [with] conflict and an exchange of ideas,” said Barry Steffey, D-4th, finance chairman, in his public comments at the end of the council meeting.

“Please be patient with us,” he asked the large crowd who had turned out for the meeting.

Steffey declined to reveal specifics about the plan, including the objections voiced by several council members.

The Vindicator reported Monday that the police department, already short-staffed due to layoffs, has been stretched even further because Chief Robert Hinton and Ken Criswell, chief of detectives, are on indefinite sick leave.

Council also took no action on its 2016 budget, although that, too, was on Wednesday’s agenda. A special meeting was scheduled for Tuesday to vote on that.

“We’re waiting for our fiscal supervisors to complete their analysis and provide guidance,” said council President Robert Marino.

What council was able to do was enact several provisions of Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia’s revised financial recovery plan, including one provision to maintain the city’s three full-time dispatchers by paying them out of the city’s utility funds as well as the general fund. The mayor had opposed a previous recovery-plan provision that would have moved the dispatchers to the Trumbull County 911 Center.

Jill Montevideo, a longtime dispatcher, said she and the others agreed to some concessions.

“It was financial, and we agreed to less staff,” she said.

Council unanimously approved spending $15,000 to pay for an impound lot for towed cars – another provision in Scarnecchia’s plan. The plan projects annual revenues from the lot in excess of $40,000.

Looming over the meeting is the fate of the March 15 election vote on the 0.5 percent income-tax hike that would generate $2 million annually for police and fire. Council members and the mayor again called on residents to approve the increase.

“We are in terrible financial shape,” Scarnecchia said. “To even comprehend how we are going to operate [if the issue fails] is a mystery.”

“We’re burning through cash at breakneck speed,” Marino warned.

However, the tax increase was not the only issue to draw an emotional response. So did the fate of a 1-mill replacement levy for the parks department that also will appear on the March 15 ballot. After one resident made critical comments, Carmen Vivolo, parks director, launched into a lengthy and heated response.

“If the park levy does not pass, there will not be a parks department,” Vivolo said.