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mahoning county Commissioners to finalize 2019 budget
By JUSTIN DENNIS
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County commissioners must pare more than $2 million from 2019 appropriations before the year’s finalized general fund budget is presented at a Nov. 29 meeting.
Commissioners met Tuesday with representatives from the county’s probate court, auditor’s office, building regulation and data processing departments, closing a series of 2019 budget request meetings with eight county departments.
County departments requested a combined amount that is about 3.6 percent or $2.4 million more for 2019 than they received this year and about $2.8 million more than is in the county’s current certificate of estimated resources between the general and justice funds.
“Some of those things are true needs,” said Audrey Tillis, commissioners’ executive director. “The goal is that we maintain our current service level.”
Commissioners are expected to approve the 2019 budget Dec. 6. At a meeting Tuesday, commissioners approved $172.9 million in non-general-fund appropriations, about $10.1 million less than certified for next year.
The county data processing department requested $1,572,759 from the general fund, more than $200,000, or 14.7 percent, more than it received in this year’s budget.
Jake Williams, executive director, said Tuesday the department was budgeted this year to hire one new employee – for whom wages and benefits are expected to cost about $75,000 – but one employee resignation balanced out that cost, pushing the new costs to 2019. The department also has placed dedicated IT workers in offices that don’t have their own, such as the sheriff’s, the sanitary engineer’s and the county DD board’s, he said.
Though the department had much lower expenses between 2008 and 2012, various improvements to the county’s IT infrastructure – such as cybersecurity improvements required by the county’s insurance provider – will mean higher equipment costs in 2019, Williams said.
“We’re now just catching up and getting our infrastructure where it needs to be,” he said. “The commissioners have funded some of this through capital projects ... but as some of these bigger projects come out of their capital project budget, we have to support them operationally.”
The county auditor’s office requested $915,982 from the general fund, $11,174 or 1.2 percent more than it received this year. Auditor Ralph Meacham said Tuesday a union-negotiated 3 percent raise for about half of his employees is budgeted for 2019. The department now runs with one fewer worker than in 2017, he added.
The building regulation department’s $872,139 request will be appropriated from the general fund next year. Tillis said Tuesday she’s unsure why the department was formerly supported from a separate fund, but officials started moving it into the general fund in 2016, when the fund was up to $2 million.
The remainder of that fund, projected to be about $325,000 going into 2019 – which was not certified for that year – will be used for large purchases such as vehicles, Tillis said.
The county probate court requested $1,107,180 for 2019, just $4,514 or 0.4 percent more than it received this year.
Tillis said commissioners expect to meet next year on potential revisions to the county prosecutor’s office budget request of close to $4,996,251 from the justice fund, which is $347,277, or 7.47 percent, more than it received in 2018. She said officials are awaiting a permanent solution to the statewide loss of a tax on Medicaid-managed care organizations, which is costing Mahoning County about $4.7 million per year – 60 percent of which went into the justice fund.