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Commissioners have closed meeting on labor issues
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners spent more than two hours in executive session Thursday on personnel and labor-management issues, including the health concern over lead in the water supply at Oakhill Renaissance Place.
During part of that executive session, they met with representatives of three unions at the county’s Department of Job and Family Services at Oakhill: the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers Union.
AFSCME also represents workers in the city health department, the county maintenance department and the county auto title department at Oakhill and has more than 220 of its members working at Oakhill.
Also in the meeting were heads of county departments at Oakhill, assistant county prosecutors, city Health Commissioner Erin Bishop and county Health Commissioner Patricia Sweeney.
“We were in executive session because, of course, these are labor-management issues,” said Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the commissioners.
“They had a lot of different varied issues they wanted to discuss with us – the building being one of them,” she said of the union representatives, declining to elaborate on the personnel, safety and health matters discussed.
“Now we have what their real concerns are, and we will try to address them,” she said.
“We made no decisions in this meeting,” she added.
“We want to ensure the health of our members and the general public that uses the building,” said Jack Filak, regional director of AFSCME Ohio Council 8 in Youngstown.
“They are investigating it and have not, I think, gathered a sufficient number of facts to resolve it,” Filak said of the status of the commissioners’ probe of the lead issue in Oakhill’s water.
Four of 29 Oakhill water samples taken last week had elevated lead levels, three of them in the city health department and one at JFS. Retest results were not yet available for the offending city health department faucets. The offending JFS faucet was shut off.
Although JFS workers have access to water coolers for drinking water, Filak said workers may use tap water for coffee-making.
AFSCME has had pregnant or breastfeeding women, who, along with young children, are in a high risk group for lead exposure, in its membership at Oakhill since JFS moved there in July 2007, he noted.
“It’s a predominantly female population in the Oakhill building that we represent,” he said.
Thursday’s discussion with the union representatives followed a 30-minute emergency executive session meeting between commissioners and Sweeney on the Oakhill lead issue on Monday morning, during which assistant county prosecutors provided legal advice.
“There’s nothing to worry about, and it’s just kind of business as usual because I think we’re taking the proper precautions by making sure that the water’s tested again. We had the people screened [in the city health department for blood lead levels] and they put the filters on,” the offending health department taps, Bishop said.
None of the 23 workers in the city department, whose blood was tested Monday, had elevated lead levels.
Water was collected Thursday for lead testing from Oakhill’s Comprehensive Care AIDS Clinic, and it will be collected from the morgue Monday, Bishop said, acknowledging that not all areas of Oakhill have been tested recently.
All Oakhill water tests for lead taken in 2008 had satisfactory levels, she said.
NEW DOG POUND
During an earlier public meeting at the Meshel MASCO workshop in Boardman, commissioners approved a $20,400 agreement with All Excavating Co. of Youngstown for demolition of the former Jump Stretch fitness center, a house and a sign on the site where the county’s new dog shelter will be built.
Bids will be opened at 1:30 p.m. March 16 in the county purchasing office for construction of the new 14,000-square-foot, single-story dog shelter to be built at 1230 N. Meridian Road.
The new shelter, estimated to cost about $4 million, will have nearly double the capacity of the county’s current 43-year-old Industrial Road dog pound.