Niles mayor hopes new plan can move city out of emergency
By Ed Runyan
NILES
Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia and city council have provided the city’s fiscal commission with a seventh try at a fiscal recovery plan.
The purpose of the plan is to “restore the fiscal integrity of the city” and serve as a “master plan” by which all future appropriation measures must comply, the 22-page document says.
The biggest change in the plan, compared with the last one, is turning over income-tax collections to the Regional Income Taxing Agency and eliminating the city’s income tax department.
The switch to RITA will begin immediately with collection of six months of data. Full collection by RITA will begin Jan. 1.
One of the tax department’s three employees is retiring, and the other two will work in other departments, Scarnecchia said.
The change saves the city $42,000 per year compared with current costs, and RITA has the potential to deliver additional revenue to the city, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in tax collections, said Ed Stredney, Niles service director.
Another increase in revenue in the plan is a $10 increase in license-plate fees, which will raise at least $335,000 per year for a street improvement program.
The city currently doesn’t have a street improvement program. This year, the city will only upgrade one road using a grant, Stredney said.
The plan calls for renovations to buildings operated under the general fund, such as the police, fire and court building. The work will be done with $1.6 million loan to be repaid through annual payments of $205,000.
In the water department, the city plans to spend $250,000 in the next two years to install water meters.
It plans to spend more than $1 million in the next five years to replace water department vehicles and spend $300,000 over the next three years to replace fire hydrants.
It also will spend $350,000 over five years to purchase police vehicles.
Stredney says the plan anticipates no deficit spending over five years, which is a requirement of the fiscal commission.
“Hopefully, with these plans, we can get out of fiscal emergency,” Scarnecchia said.
The recovery plan now goes to the fiscal oversight commission for a July 27 vote on whether to approve it. Niles has been in fiscal emergency since October 2014.