Niles council skewers Scarnecchia over latest recovery plan

April 12, 2017 at 8:35p.m.

NILES

The majority of city council has little or no use for Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia’s latest recovery plan from fiscal emergency — the sixth such version.

Angered over what several complained was a last-minute presentation by the mayor and unhappy with some of the document’s contents, council refused to pass the plan as an emergency measure in a special meeting Wednesday and would only approve it as a first reading in a split vote. Councilmen Steve Mientkiewicz, D-2nd, and Frank Pezzano, D-1st, voted against it.

Contained in the plan were proposals from the mayor for two $5 increases in the city’s license plate tax that would have generated $180,000 for street resurfacing. They went nowhere. A motion on the first tax died because no one would second the motion. The ordinance for the second tax was tabled unanimously.

“There’s no adjusting the budget and all this is doing is passing the buck to the taxpayers,” Mientkiewicz said.

Mientkiewicz and other council members were unhappy that the taxes were introduced in a special meeting where public participation is prohibited.

“This is what you get with last minute,” said Robert Marino, council president in pointed comments directed at the mayor. “We’re running a $70 million company like a neighborhood grocery store.”

Law Director Terry Swauger said the city has until July 1 to submit the tax increases to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles for them to go into effect in 2018.

The mayor and council have to approve the amended plan in time for next Wednesday’s meeting of the Financial Planning and Supervision Commission, which oversees spending during fiscal emergency. Chairman Quentin Potter had cancelled the commission’s March meeting to allow the mayor more time to complete the latest version.