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TRUMBULL COUNTY Niles voters OK increase in city tax
By Ed Runyan
NILES
“Thank God for the people of Niles,” Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia said of the voting that approved the 0.5 percent Niles income tax increase and the parks and recreation levy.
“It was a long haul,” he said of the campaign to get support from Niles voters, especially for the income tax, which was approved by a solid margin, despite voters voting no to a smaller 0.25-percent income tax increase in November.
Scarnecchia attributed the turnaround to the new personnel at city hall.
“One reason was because of the new administration,” he said. Scarnecchia became mayor in January, replacing longtime mayor Ralph Infante after Scarnecchia defeated Infante in the Democratic primary a year ago.
“What we set out to do, we will do,” Scarnecchia said. “It would have been disastrous if it wouldn’t have passed. We had a tremendous effort from police and fire. Everybody realized how important our police and fire are.”
Scarnecchia said the 12 city employees he laid off last month will be able to return to their jobs. Without the additional $2 million it will raise annually, another dozen workers would have been eliminated, he said.
It will be several months before the laid off workers can return because the city must wait for the revenue from the income tax to begin to arrive, he said.
The tax will raise an estimated $2 million annually and prevent the city from having to move its dispatching operation to the county 911 center in Howland.
The city went into fiscal emergency in 2014 as a result of deficit spending. Infante wrote a financial recovery plan. Scarnecchia revised it after he took office. Niles City Council approved it.
The acting Niles police chief, Jay Holland, and others have warned that failure of the income tax could make enforcing laws in Niles difficult because of the reduction in manpower.
“All you have to do is look at neighboring communities that laid off officers, and the communities have never returned to where they were before,” he said.
The 1-mill, five-year replacement levy for Niles parks and recreation also was approved.
It will raise $249,127 annually, an increase of $89,721 per year over the $159,721 the current levy provides.
Carmen Vivolo, parks director, said the additional money will allow the city to reduce the amount of general-fund money the city uses for parks.
Vivolo said without approval of the levy, there would be no parks department, which would mean that sports such as soccer, baseball and football that use the parks would have to find another place to play.
In Liberty, voters barely approved a 3.4-mill school district renewal levy that will generate $740,680 per year. With most of the votes counted, it was passing 54 percent to 46 percent.
In Hubbard, voters said yes by a wider margin to the 5.8-mill renewal leavy for the Hubbard Exempted Village School District. It will raise $1.2 million annually.