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Delay of Niles recovery plan leads to commission cancellation
Commission meeting on matter rescheduled
By Jordan Cohen
NILES
Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia disclosed Monday that his amended financial recovery plan will not be ready in time for city council to review it at its regular meeting Wednesday.
“We have been discussing this with our [state appointed] fiscal supervisors and we have not been able to come up with a dollar figure to put into the plan,” the mayor said.
During a roundtable last Wednesday, Robert Marino, council president, warned the mayor to submit the plan by Monday or he would advise council to take no action at Wednesday’s meeting.
The mayor and his administration will have more time to work on revisions. The Financial Planning and Supervision Commission meeting scheduled for March 22 has been canceled because of the delay and rescheduled to April 19. The commission, created after Niles was placed in fiscal emergency in October 2014, must review and accept the amended plan only after council approves it.
Quentin Potter, commission chairman, made the decision after Tim Lintner, one of the two fiscal supervisors, advised him of the city’s request for postponement.
“I understood from Tim there were two or three critical issues [and] I didn’t want to force the plan,” Potter told The Vindicator. “Hopefully this works out and we’ll have better information and a better meeting in April.”
Scarnecchia said he is not certain when the amended plan – the sixth such revision since the city was placed in fiscal emergency – will be ready, but he expects completion ahead of the commission’s rescheduled meeting.
“We have more research to do on some new items we have to formulate,” the mayor said. He declined to provide more details, but said one of the items is the financially troubled Wellness Center.
“We won’t go with any Plan B at this point,” Scarnecchia said. “We’re looking at other ideas.”
Marino said he has no plans to cancel Wednesday’s council meeting despite predictions of a heavy snowfall.