LIBERTY — With the 2025 fiscal year wrapping up, trustees and residents heard updates regarding the township’s 2026 budget, which includes new money.

As part of his report at Monday’s regular meeting, Fiscal Officer Matt Connelly reported that the TownePlace Suites by Marriott — which broke ground in March 2024 after several years of planning — was finally open for business.

Connelly said the hotel will start paying excise and bed tax to them in November, from October, when it originally opened. It is located on Belmont Avenue near Interstate 80 next to the old Holiday Inn MetroPlex. Last year, Trumbull County commissioners granted a 75%, 10-year tax abatement for the hotel, which helped encourage the developer, Steel & LIberty LLC, to choose this area for the investment.

“I went and visited them and took them the invoices to send to us,” Connelly said. “‘It was really nice of me,’ they said, and I asked them what else we could do for them as a township, and they said, ‘You’ve done the most you can do by paving the road out in front and tearing down Hotel 30,’ which we did.”

Connelly said he expects the hotel to bring in approximately $60,000 a year in bed tax, just like Hampton Inn and Comfort Suites — other hotels in the township — already do for them.

Connelly said Girard Municipal Court Judge Jeff Adler has issued an order of garnishment for the township for a Wyndham hotel, alleging the owners haven’t been paying taxes for “quite some time,” and hoping the township will receive the $15,000 it is owed soon.

Also as part of his report, Connelly said he was notified the township will receive local government funds again because the traffic enforcement cameras have stopped.

“That will bring us in about $178,000 a year versus the $6.5 million that we got for the past five years,” Connelly said. “A little bit of a discrepancy there, and hence, putting the pencils to the paper on the budget.”

DEVON STANLEY

As part of the trustees’ closing remarks, a resident asked officials if they would speak about Trustee Devon Stanley, who remains in the Trumbull County jail without bail on a second-degree felonious assault charge. A motion to set bail was filed by Stanley’s attorney, Ronald Yarwood, on Friday.

Trustee Greg Cizmar said the township had to ride it out, just like everybody else, and that there was nothing he could say about it.

Law Director Cherry Poteet said if Stanley is convicted, he will not be on the board anymore, noting that it was state law. The office would be vacated, and officials would choose someone new, she added.

Stanley was arrested by Niles police on a warrant during a football game last month and his case recently was bound over to a Trumbull County grand jury.