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Trumbull commissioners expect 2018 budget to rise slightly over this year without sales tax increase
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County commissioners plan to write a $45 million budget for 2018 – $600,000 more than the 2017 budget – and do it without a sales-tax increase.
The commissioners started budget hearings Monday, talking with department heads and learning that the largest department, the sheriff’s office, wants a budget increase of about $2.5 million. The hearings will finish this afternoon.
The commissioners and Auditor Adrian Biviano say department heads overall are asking for about $6 million more than the 2017 budget and won’t be getting it.
Payroll is likely to cost the county more in 2018, officials said. A contract with corrections officers recently approved included pay increases of about 1.5 percent per year for three years. The county expects to have new contracts with other bargaining units in the coming months.
“We’re trying to keep it in line with this year,” Commissioner Dan Polivka said of the 2018 budget they will finalize in early February.
“We can balance a $45 million budget,” Biviano said.
Biviano and Commissioner Frank Fuda have been discussing the county’s poor financial health for several years, with Fuda calling several times for a county sales-tax increase to raise an additional $6 million per year.
But using about $6.5 million in excess funds from the county’s health-insurance fund a few years ago kept the county afloat in 2015 and 2016. Late last year, Biviano and others feared that the loss of Medicaid-related sales-tax dollars might require the commissioners to lay off workers in 2017.
But a few months ago, the Ohio Assembly replaced those dollars through 2018.
Sheriff Paul Monroe did not attend Monday’s budget hearing, but majors Jeff Palmer and Dan Mason presented the sheriff’s budget request.
Palmer said some of the increased amounts the sheriff’s office seeks for 2018 are offset by revenue the sheriff’s office plans to generate through new fees.
Among them are fees for booking inmates, serving warrants and other types of legal papers and renegotiating contracts for deputies serving as school resource officers at the Trumbull Careeer and Technical Center and Bloomfield-Mespo Local School District.
Some of those fee increases already are in effect. Others are coming online later, Palmer said.
Mason, who is jail administrator, said some of the increased costs at the jail are related to the large number of inmates being housed at the jail, which increases the jail’s food costs.
Mason said the closing of mental-health facilities at Northside Youngstown Hospital and St. Joseph Warren Hospital also have increased the amount of mental-health medication and care inmates need at the jail.
Ernie Cook, county 911 center director, said the center is likely to be adding employees in 2018 because of technology changes coming soon.
The good news is that the center will receive additional funds from the fees charged to wireless phone customers, Cook said.
The opiate epidemic is increasing the workload at the center in the form of ambulance calls, Cook said. They have risen 25 percent in the past year.