By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Mahoning County commissioners approved two event-sponsorship grants using county hotel and motel bed-tax funds.

One resolution approved late this week authorizes a $7,500 sponsorship of the American Junior Golf Association All-Star Tournament on June 20-23 for boys and girls age 12-15, at the Mill Creek Park Golf Course.

The tournament is new to the Mahoning Valley.

“It’s a great opportunity for our area. Hopefully, this will turn into an annual event,” Linda Macala, county convention and visitors bureau director, told the commissioners.

The other resolution authorizes a $1,000 sponsorship for Triple Crown Sports to support the Battle on the Border XI Baseball Tournament for teenagers in June at various county locations.

The commissioners also passed a resolution to form a labor-management health care roundtable consisting of union and management representatives.

Three new health care plan options for about 1,400 county employees, which are designed to contain county employee health care costs at about $24 million a year, are scheduled to take effect April 1.

Plan terms had to be negotiated with unions representing county employees.

The commissioners also appointed Kathleen Dillon Kennedy, a loan originator at Home Savings and Loan Co., to serve on the eight-member Western Reserve Port Authority Board now through Dec. 31, 2018.

Having worked in mortgage lending since 1988, she has been a loan officer, loan processor, underwriter and closer. She is the wife of Dr. David Kennedy, county coroner.

She was chosen from among “four excellent applicants,” to complete the unexpired term of John Boccieri, who left the WRPA board to become a state representative, said Commissioner David Ditzler.

“The need was for someone with a finance background, and Kathy Dillon [Kennedy] made an excellent choice,” Ditzler said.

The county will begin a three-minute test of its emergency warning sirens at 9:50 a.m. Wednesday in conjunction with the statewide observance of Severe Weather Awareness Week, announced Dennis O’Hara, county emergency management director.