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County’s budget progress under scrutiny

2017 committee questions efforts

WARREN — Former members of a citizen budget review committee that studied the county’s operations and created a report for Trumbull County commissioners in 2017 with recommendations, question how much their advice was heeded four years later.

Stephan Stoyak, a member of the former committee, attended a recent commissioners meeting with other members he served with to question the implementation of the recommendations and requests the committee made in June 2017 to aid the administration with a limited budget.

“Had commissioners implemented even half of the recommendations detailed, the fiscal situation of the county would be greatly improved today. It is no wonder that citizens hesitate to strive forward when good faith efforts are met with such ambivalence,” Stoyak states in an email to commissioners.

The committee spent a collective 800 hours of service to generate about 20 recommendations for county commissioners, at their request, and have previously questioned commissioners about their commitment to the recommendations. The members had recommended quarterly meetings to check in with commissioners about their implementation progress, but in 2018, and recently, questioned why the meetings were never held.

The committee was made up of people in the community experienced with budgets and running organizations.

The committee, in addition to quarterly meetings that were not held, also requested a “scorecard” to track progress and a point person to “champion” progress by communicating milestones, metrics, distribute the information publicly and hold the county government accountable to more efficient spending, which wasn’t done either, Stoyak said at the meeting.

In a follow-up email to county commissioners, Stoyak draws attention to two of the recommendations the committee made — for commissioners to create a budget stabilization fund and a permanent improvement fund, inspired by the commissioners’ discussion of their ill-performing heating and cooling system.

“Band-Aids” to repair the system in the five-and-a-half months since Commissioner Niki Frenchko took office in January are “approaching $100,000,” she said. And there were repairs to the system before she arrived. A final fix that would have cost $100,000 wasn’t carried out in previous years, and now the county isn’t only on the hook for a total fix of $100,000, but also the repairs. A temporary fix alone to help the county get through the summer before a permanent fix can be made in the fall costs $56,000.

“It is essentially doubling the cost,” she said.

If commissioners had created a fund for permanent improvements three years ago, the problem could have been avoided, Stoyak said.

“Had these suggestions been implemented three years ago, such a discussion would never have occurred. Any factory owner or engineering manager would also have implemented a comprehensive preventive maintenance program implemented specifically to head off problems as you are experiencing today. Waiting until mechanical units fail before addressing the issue represents poor facility management,” Stoyak states in the email to commissioners.

Commissioner Mauro Cantalamesssa said the county has been working on some of the recommendations, to reduce the amount of sick and vacation leave employees were allowed to hold onto and sell back to the county, and the amount of pension payments the county makes on behalf of county employees. The issues have to be decided in labor negotiations, mostly, but there has been some success, Cantalamessa said.

And, the county went through LeanOhio training and used a consultant to examine utility costs.

“We tried to implement about 40 percent of their recommendations. Departments run as lean as possible. We are getting the most out of every asset the county owns before we replace it and that process has served us well for a long time. Once in a while it comes back to bite us, like with the (HVAC) system,” Cantalamessa said. “We had a proposal last year to fix it, but there was some uncertainty with COVID-19. I will never apologize for trying to get the most useful life out of everything.”

He also said the county does have discussions annually about maintenance costs, forecasted out 10 years.

“But we can’t account for the crisis du jour (crisis of the day). Those things happen,” Cantalamessa said.

Fuda said the commissioners have worked to update the jail, spending millions with “strategic” borrowing to do so. And, the commissioners tried one recommendation, hiring a county administrator, but that didn’t work out, he said.

The county still needs an administrator, Frenchko said. The former person was asked to do two jobs, administration for the county and for the transit system, which didn’t work. And her training was in law, not in administration, Frenchko said. She believes the county needs someone to handle day-to-day administration.

Stoyak said that may be the most important recommendation.

“I believe that a very large percentage of your time is spent doing administrative work better handled by a professional. Such a person could unilaterally research many issues, develop a recommendation and present it to the commissioners with options,” he states in an email to commissioners.

At a recent meeting, Frenchko said the commissioners’ special project coordinator ought to be made the point person to create and monitor a scorecard, and share it with the public. Cantalamessa said Frenchko should meet with the committee, if they like, and she can report back to the other commissioners.

The committee’s other recommendations include the employee work day being amended, as employees are paid for eight hours of work though their day is just 6.5 hours because of paid lunches and breaks; the creation of new reserve funds; consideration of centralized purchasing; and checking with a consultant to ensure the county’s wages, benefits, organizational charts and policies are aligned in a manner consistent with peer communities.

A performance audit would help with some of the items in the report, Frenchko said.

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